There Somewhere
Takes place during Season 3's "The Second Ginger Grant" between the scene where Gilligan runs away from rehearsing with Mary Ann (Ginger? GinMary? MaryGin?) and the Skipper promptly sends him back and the scene where they return to camp after dark.
Gilligan trudged into the clearing and sat down next the rock. He leaned back and laid his head on her knee. "Okay," he began with a resigned sigh, "where were we?"
She lit up and tossed the book of scenes over her shoulder. "Oh, Scott!" she exclaimed before attacking him once more.
Gilligan squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath, trying to force himself to black out. Unconscious was the only way he could deal with this completely ridiculous situation. He could feel her grab a handful of his shirt with her left hand, the fingers of her right tangled in his hair. He instinctively pulled his elbows up to protect himself from the onslaught.
Mary Ann never ever acted like this. Come to think of it, Ginger didn't either. She never rehearsed love scenes. It was always monologues and acting like trees and the occasional jealousy scene where some poor unsuspecting guy got killed at the end.
He should be so lucky.
He could barely talk to Mary Ann when she thought she was herself. How was he supposed to deal with the new reality of the girl who makes him feel like the earth is being perpetually pulled out from under him not only being convinced that she's someone else, but insisting on rehearsing love scenes with him too?
This was not how it was supposed to happen.
After a moment, she slowed down and Gilligan felt her release her grip on his shirt, laying her arm across his abdomen. He cautiously opened his eyes and saw her heavily eye-shadowed lids not two inches from his face, her long false lashes gently brushing his cheeks as she kissed him sweetly. How he had begun to imagine it would be like for Mary Ann to kiss him. And how he was positive it was impossible for Ginger to kiss anyone.
She must have sensed him watching her because she released him and opened her eyes. Gilligan's deeply furrowed brow unknotted itself as she smiled that bright smile and gazed down at him through those big brown eyes. He would've fallen face first into the sand if she didn't have her arm still wrapped around his torso.
He almost gave up the fight right at that moment, but then she opened her mouth. "You have the next line, Gilligan," she purred in her version of Ginger's low voice.
Gilligan gaped at her, eyes suddenly growing wide. "You shouldn't have done that!" he blurted and squirmed away from her. He wrapped his arms around his knees and stared at his sneakers, one shoelace eternally untied, snaking through the sand, and the other knotted beyond repair.
She slid off the rock behind him and before he knew it her lips were at his ear, her hands on his chest. "But Scott, we're destined to be together. Don't fight it." Gilligan could feel her warm breath on his neck and her nose brush his temple as she whispered in his ear. "It's fate," she finished her line and a chill ran down his spine.
"Stop!" Gilligan freed himself from her arms and crawled backwards in the sand until he collided with a tree.
"Gilligan, what's the matter with you?" she demanded, indignant fists on her hips.
"Nothing! You're the one who's not yourself!"
"I feel fine!" Gilligan stared at her, breathing heavily from his spot safely tucked against the tree trunk. She sighed. "Gilligan, it's just a scene." She suddenly giggled and pouted at him playfully. "Did Ginger scare you?" She carefully got to her feet and brushed the sand off her skirt, holding out a hand to help him up. "Come on, honey."
Gilligan studied the offered hand warily. She raised her eyebrows and wiggled tan fingers, encouraging him to reach out to her. But he couldn't move, just continued to stare up at her fearfully. There stood one of his best friends, his sweet innocent Mary Ann, in one of Ginger's sexy leopard outfits, her hair precisely coiffed, with twelve pounds of makeup on her face, trying to do all sorts of un-Mary Ann stuff to him.
He didn't like it.
Gilligan finally stood up on his own, giving her a cautious sidelong glance.
"Oh, come on, Gilligan. Don't look at me like that. You're gonna give a girl an inferiority complex. Besides, we all know how you feel about Mary Ann anyway. I say go for it, stud muffin." She tweaked his nose lovingly and turned away.
She had retrieved her book, perched back on the rock and crossed her legs, the slit in her skirt falling at a perfectly rehearsed and distracting angle, before he managed to say anything.
"WHAT?!"
She looked up nonchalantly and waved a flippant hand worthy of Mrs. Howell in his general direction. "Oh, relax. Everybody knows it."
"Even Mary Ann?"
The question flew out of his mouth before he realized how ridiculous it sounded to ask Mary Ann if she knew what she had just told him.
She looked into the foliage thoughtfully and finally shrugged. "I'm not sure. I heard it from the Professor. Although she'd have to be blind, deaf, and dumb not to. You're not terribly subtle," she added with a sympathetic glance in his direction. "But you don't have to worry – you have the Skipper's blessing," she continued. "And Mrs. Howell is beside herself. How she hasn't cornered the poor girl yet to pick out her china pattern is beyond me."
Gilligan took a tentative step towards her.
"Um, Mar – Ginger?"
"Hmm?" She studied the table of contents in her book, running a perfectly manicured nail down the list of scenes.
Gilligan shuffled his feet, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. He watched the toes of his sneakers disappear under the soft sand. It felt like cheating to ask her this way, but it was also significantly less terrifying. "How does – ? Do you ... do you know how ... how she –."
"Oh, Gilligan," she breathed and he looked up to find a look of heartbreaking compassion on her features. His heart dropped into his feet and he was about to turn and flee into the jungle forever when she stood and crossed to him faster than he could unbury his sneakers and run away to his new life of self-inflicted lonliness.
She stood a little too close to him and took his hands warmly in her own. "Gilligan," she began again, a brilliant smile spreading across her face, "I said you don't have anything to worry about. I promise."
"What?" He was too distracted by what she said to fully comprehend what she said.
He watched her with an odd mixture of confusion and anticipation and she laughed richly. "Do you remember what I told you when Mrs. Howell was trying to set you two up?"
"About the bat-eater?"
"No! When I said that sometimes a girl feels a certain way about a boy, but doesn't know how to show it. And then you thought that it was me who had the crush on you. No offense, but sorry," she added for good measure and he felt his heart sink slightly to hear those words escape Mary Ann's mouth, even though she wasn't really the one saying them. She saw his face fall and she stamped her heeled foot impatiently, pulling on his hands. "Gilligan! I told you two years ago how she feels and you didn't listen! This won't go the way of Susie McGillicuddy in the third grade, I promise."
Gilligan's smile slid off his face as quickly as it had appeared a milisecond before. "How do you know about that? I told Mary Ann that story in confidence."
"I don't –."
"She promised she wouldn't say anything."
"Gilligan, I –."
"She'd never break a promise like that!"
"I don't know how I know, I just ... know." She blinked a few times as if it would help her comprehension, trying to drum up a memory that she was sure wasn't hers. "At the beach!" she yelled suddenly. "You told me at the beach while we were butterfly hunting."
"Ginger hates butterfly hunting."
"But I hate butterfly hunting. I'd never go butterfly hunting! Gilligan! Why do I know that story?" She was becoming slightly hysterical, but Gilligan felt an invisible lightbulb click on over his head.
Gilligan steered her back to the rock and sat down beside her.
"Ginger, what's Mary Ann's horse's name?"
"Her what?"
"Her horse. On the farm in Kansas. What's his name?"
"Flower," she answered instantly, smiling fondly. She quickly turned to Gilligan, her nose wrinkling in confusion. "Mary Ann never told me that. And who names their horse Flower?"
Gilligan grinned. "She named him when she was nine after the skunk in Bambi. He smells," he added and she looked appropriately disgusted. Encouraged by her correct response, Gilligan plowed ahead: "When Mrs. Howell played matchmaker, what was the last thing I said at dinner before the Howells came back with the champagne?"
"What is this, The $64,000 Question?"
"No, it's worth more than that," he replied with a seriousness that made her pause mid-objection. "What did I say?"
She sighed dramatically. "Gilligan, I wasn't there." She tried to free her hands and stand, but he leaned forward slightly, squinting as he peered into her eyes. "Now what are you doing?"
"I know you're in there somewhere," he whispered, watching his reflection in the chocolate orbs. He half expected a tiny gingham-clad Mary Ann to appear there and reach out to him from deep within her psychological prison, to wiggle tan fingers, encouraging him to rescue her.
The illusion disappeared when she finally lowered her eyes to the rock between them. "What did I say at dinner?" he repeated firmly.
She thought for a long moment, studying the tiny pebbles that had fused together millions of years ago into the boulder. She watched his hands hold hers with white-knuckled intensity and inexplicably understood how much was pinned on this one answer.
When she met his gaze again, something was different and he smiled triumphantly even before he heard her answer. "You're twice as sweet as me."
"There you are."
This story assumes, of course, that she isn't totally cured – that she severely relapses before going back to camp, making the performance at the end of the episode the only sure-fire cure. But I stopped here because I loved this ending. :o)