Anne isn't pretty.

Gilbert knows that. She isn't pretty the way Ruby and Diana are, or Prissy Andrews. Her mouth is too big and too full of teeth, her eyes are too round and blue, and that hair...

Her hair was actually beautiful, he'd thought. Like fire, thick and waving around that expressive face. It was soft and heavy. He knew. He remembered from the single time he'd touched it, before she'd cracked the slate across his face. He'd touched it in his dreams (both awake and otherwise) a thousand times since.

He dreams of touching her in other ways too, but it feels wrong somehow. She's still so young. They really aren't far apart in age, but she's still a girl. This year, with his travels, he's somehow become a man.

Women overseas looked at him. When he came home, the odd Avonlea woman looked at him too. Some of the girls, even. They may not know what they want, but they like to look. The older ones know they want his hands on them. He's tempted, a little, but knows it would be wrong. Not because of what society or the minister say, but because his hands only want Anne, and she isn't ready. It wouldn't be right to use another that way.

He looks at her in the glow of the Christmas tree. Her poor shorn head. Everything not pretty about her is magnified even more now. Her mouth looks bigger, her teeth more plentiful, her freckles are EVERYWHERE, her ears stick out... his heart hurts because he knows hers does. He can feel how she feels when they laugh. He wants to pull her to him and whisper that it will grow back, and even if it didn't, he doesn't care because he...

What? Fancies her? Loves her? It's ridiculous but yes, he knows that he DOES love her, like some men love some women. The kind of woman you don't get over, the kind that are so oddly shaped that the hole they leave in a man's heart can't be filled.

When they bend over the same candle he can feel her breath on his face. She's so close and his entire body hardens, tightens, grows watchful. She looks shocked when she stares at him, and he knows she's feeling something of what he does even just for a second.

He knows he could kiss her, and in his head he almost does. He's ready to do it just this once, just a quick dry pressing of lips. He knows what men and women can really do together, knows about tongues and hands and all of it. What holds him back is that Anne knows, too.

He remembers what they said when she first came here, called her a trollop, said she was dirty. They don't realize that the precious innocence of their daughters is just ignorance. Anne's is real purity because she KNOWS how dark and grimy the attention of men can be, and chooses to be sweet and hopeful and romantic anyway.

So he balls his hands up and pulls back. Swallow, makes some strange sound he'll beat himself up over later. (The hell was that "hhmp", Blythe, you idiot) He knows that he'll kiss her someday. He also knows he's going to have to marry her to touch her the way he wants to, and if he's being honest with himself he knows that it's what he wants more than anything.

Because Anne might not be pretty, might never be pretty, even though he can tell she's going to grow into her looks more than people imagine. But since the day he saw her in the woods, staring at Billy Andrews in terror and defiance, he's thought she was beautiful. And until the day he draws his last breath, he knows she's all he'll want to look at.