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Gilligan felt awfully silly as he washed off the rest of the mud that stubbornly stuck to his skin. He’d slipped while out collecting firewood and fell into a nasty bog, drenched from head to toe in slimy, muddy water once he finally climbed his way back onto the sand. He’d been graced with a few laughs from the others when he wandered into camp looking like a creature from the deep, but he ignored them in favor of heading to the bamboo shower by the jungle just behind the huts.
Cleaning himself off was simple enough, though his clothes were the bigger nuisance. He hoped Mary Ann wouldn’t have too much trouble getting the stains out, but lord knew she’d been made to wash much worse from the castaways’ garments over their time on the island. (At least where the men were involved; unlike Ginger and the Howells who had quite the hefty wardrobe to change into when needed.)
Gilligan felt the last flakes of mud fall from his hair and he switched off the makeshift shower, letting a few stray droplets of water drip against his nose for good measure. He poked out a hand from behind the curtain and snatched his boxers and undershirt from the rock he’d laid them on, quickly dressing himself before stepping out into the jungle. Thankfully his undergarments had been mostly saved from the muddy onslaught, as he shuddered deeply at the image of having to laze around camp in nothing but a towel until his clothes were washed.
Though this option was hardly the most appealing; his shyness and modesty aside, Gilligan couldn’t help but feel uneasy with the prospect of his arms being completely exposed. There was a reason why he’d stopped rolling up his sleeves for work, why he’d stopped taking off his rugby shirt when it was time to turn in for the night.
The thoughts brought him a level of shame that he wasn’t fully ready to process yet, so he buried them back to the depths of his mind where they usually resided. His clothes wouldn’t take very long to clean. He could stay in his hut until they were finished, nobody would fault him for wanting to keep his modesty intact.
It was very possible Gilligan was overthinking the entire thing like he tended to do; maybe no one would even notice if they saw him with his sleeves rolled up. But that wasn’t a chance he was brave enough to take. So he’d stay in his hut where he was safe from the six pairs of prying eyes.
Of course luck was hardly ever known to be on his side.
“Oh, there you are, Gilligan!” Ginger practically came sprinting into the jungle, her face lighting up when she saw Gilligan free of his muddy casing.
He kept his arms pinned awkwardly to his sides as she approached.
“Oh, good, you’re all clean!” She flashed him a toothy smile, giddily unfolding the stack of what looked to be fresh linen cradled in her arms. “I knew you’d be without your clothes until Mary Ann washed them, so I thought I’d bring you some of mine, since we’re about the same size.”
She displayed her offerings proudly: a pink turtleneck sweater and a pair of long blue denims. “I tried to pick out the least girly thing I could find,” she laughed coyly.
Gilligan fidgeted nervously, a dozen concerns clouding his mind; being half dressed in front of Ginger was embarrassing enough, even without his exposed arms at the forefront of his thoughts. And now he’d have to wear women’s clothing to hide his shame. He honestly couldn’t decide which was the worse alternative.
“Thanks Ginger, but I-I–”
His hesitation made Ginger’s demeanor soften, become laced with that sultriness she had whenever she was trying to coax a certain reaction out of him.
“Oh, don’t be shy, Gilligan, I’ve seen you in your undershirt before.” She snaked her fingers in between his, prying his arm away from his side with a stern yet gentle tug. “Now, be a good boy and try these on so I can make sure they fit.”
“Wait Ginger, I-I can do it myself–” He tried to wrestle his arm out of her hold but she kept a firm grip, determined to get the clothes on him before he could turn them down.
She managed to get the right hand sleeve halfway up his forearm when she froze abruptly, the playful smile fading slowly from her face.
Any words Gilligan could think of to mend the situation died in his throat. He felt like a butterfly caught in one of his own nets; helpless and on display.
“I’m sorry, Gilligan.” Ginger slipped the sleeve back down his arm, notably avoiding eye contact now. “I didn’t mean to be so hasty. I’ll let you dress yourself.” She smiled again, but it was forced and hollow. It made Gilligan feel nauseous.
“Ginger–” she was already turning back for camp by the time he got his voice to cooperate, and he swallowed down the rambles and excuses he had ready on his tongue.
He clutched the stack of clothing tight against his chest, resigning himself. It was all he could do to keep from crawling away into his little cave and hiding until nightfall.
Dinner was viscerally unpleasant. Ginger’s clothes fit Gilligan comfortably, the waistband of her denims only slightly too baggy around his thin hips. Skipper made sure to tease him well and good for wearing women’s clothes when he joined the other six for their meal, and Mr. Howell barely contained his laughter only thanks to his wife shushing him.
Mary Ann whispered quiet apologies to Gilligan, assuring him that his proper clothes would be washed before bed. The Professor didn’t seem to pay any mind to the awkward air between the castaways, as he simply babbled on about some weather device he was working on. Ginger didn’t say a word to him even through dessert. She would hardly look at him; only an occasional subdued glance from across the table.
Gilligan struggled to keep any of his food down, making up some excuse about having had a big lunch to avoid being served seconds. He couldn’t get Ginger’s expression out of his mind. That raw look of disappointment. Was she mad at him? Would she tell the others what she saw? Would they be mad at him?
As soon as everyone’s plates were empty Gilligan excused himself, running off into the jungle behind the huts to vomit up his shame.
It wasn’t until they’d all settled into their huts for the night that Gilligan collected his clothes from Mary Ann, who giggled something about how he pulled off the pink sweater better than Ginger did. He wished desperately he had the will to laugh with her.
As he made his way back to his own hut he felt the claws of bone deep exhaustion begin to claim him. Skipper was most likely dead asleep in his hammock already from the day’s work, so Gilligan could quietly get dressed and get into bed without having to face any more eyes.
When he pushed open the bamboo door to the abode, he was met with a very much awake Skipper seated at the little table in the center of the hut. Gilligan paused in the doorway; the captain had obviously been waiting up for him if the look on his face was any indication. It was the same face he made whenever Gilligan did something stupid; that rough look of fatherly indignation. Disappointment.
“You’re awake,” Gilligan squeaked out the first words that came to his head.
“Take a seat, little buddy.” Skipper’s voice was flat, heavy. Gilligan swallowed and sat down across from him as instructed.
Skipper’s eyes were red rimmed, almost like he’d been crying. Gilligan shelved the thought instantly. In all their years together on the island, he’d never once seen the Skipper cry.
“Ginger brought something to my attention earlier,” Skipper started.
Gilligan could feel the bile rise in his throat again, and he forced it down with a cough. “Skipper, before you get mad–”
“I’m not mad, Gilligan,” came the immediate correction. He wanted so badly to believe him.
“Sir, I don’t know what Ginger told you, but I’m fine, really I promise I am, a-and I promise I won’t do anything dumb–”
“She said you’ve been hurting yourself.” The words were said very matter of factly, but the weight of them wasn’t lost in the Skipper’s tone.
Gilligan hardly had a counter to the straightforward admission, so he clamped his mouth shut and looked away guiltily. There was little point in trying to deny it; they both knew Ginger would never lie about such a thing, and they both knew Gilligan would never accuse someone of being a liar when they weren’t one.
“Tell me she’s wrong, little buddy. Tell me she made a mistake.”
The deafening silence was the only answer Gilligan could muster, and Skipper broke it with a shuddering sigh that lacked all the usual irritation such a sound was known for.
“Show me your arm.” It wasn’t a demand or an order, like most things Skipper delivered to him in that cadence, but a request. A concern from a friend. Part of Gilligan wished it was an order; it would make obeying it far easier.
Instead he didn’t move, just drew the pile of clothes in his lap closer, like they would somehow solve his predicament. (He didn’t pay any attention to the irony of the matter, which was the fact that these clothes were the reason he was in this predicament at all.)
“Skipper… I don’t–”
“Show me your arm, Gilligan. Please.” There it was again, a request said in the cadence of a demand. His Skipper could’ve easily reached across the table and pulled the sleeve right off of him, or yanked him across the table so hard his shoulder popped out of its socket, but that wasn’t even an option in the old man’s mind. Gilligan had to make the decision himself, and that was the most sickening part.
Gilligan pushed down all of his nerves and his shame and his self doubt, just for a single moment, long enough to tug the sleeve on his right arm up to his elbow with a shaky, uncertain hand.
Skipper’s breath hitched at what he saw: a sea of thin, faded scars along the expanse of the first mate’s skinny forearm, some more recent than others. They were scars that could only be made with a small blade or razor. Gilligan didn’t have the heart to tell him they were from his trusty pocket knife.
Gilligan begged internally for the Skipper to say something witty or sarcastic, something like ‘I knew you were stupid but this takes the cake’, or ‘I don’t know how you managed to fit that many cuts on such a puny canvas’, or anything other than the look of utter heartbreak that was glued to his face like plaster.
It took all of Gilligan’s mental strength not to bolt out of their shared hut at the speed of a jack rabbit and never look back.
“Why?” was the Skipper’s awaited response, a catch in his voice so weighted one would think he’d just been told that the sky was going to crash to the earth. “Why would you do this, Gilligan?”
The first mate was all out of excuses, at least any that would be even reasonably believable, and the glint of returning tears in the Skipper’s eyes was enough to break the dam.
“Because I hate myself.” It came out in the tiniest voice he was capable of, a far cry from his usual anxiously chipper tenor.
The Skipper reacted as if struck, something flashing in his eyes that wasn’t quite anger. “Of all the ridiculous things I’ve ever– Why would you hate yourself? There’s nothing to hate!” He wasn’t necessarily yelling, but his voice had risen a considerable octave since he last spoke. This was more in line with how Gilligan was used to his captain reacting.
“Skipper, all I do is mess everything up, what isn’t there to hate?” Gilligan was ashamed of himself, he really was, but he raised his voice too, because suddenly he had a reason to say it all out loud, say all the thoughts he carried deep inside his head like an anchor on the ocean floor.
“Every time things are looking up for us, I find a way to ruin it, or-or make everyone’s job harder! Remember when we were low on water and I spilled it all? Or when I broke the transmitter? Or-or the Mars camera? Or the telephone cable?” As the memories came flooding, so did the tears. “Every chance we get to be rescued, I do something stupid! If it weren’t for me, you’d all probably be off this island! I’m the reason we’re stuck here!”
“That’s enough!” Now Skipper was yelling, standing up from his chair even, and Gilligan flinched at the familiar sound. “I don’t ever wanna hear those words out of your mouth again, you hear me? It’s no one’s fault but God’s that we’re on this island, and I’d rather be stuck here with you for another fifty years than have you slicing your arm open because you think you’ve doomed us all!”
They were both very quiet for a moment as the Skipper seemed to realize his outburst, slowly, mournfully, sitting himself back down, like a dog that’d been chewed out for biting someone he wasn’t supposed to.
“I’m sorry, little buddy. I didn’t mean to yell.” His voice had that weight in it again. It was almost worse this way. “I just don’t understand how you can hate yourself. You make mistakes like everybody on earth does, but you have so many good qualities, too–”
“Like what?” The fire in Gilligan’s gut hadn’t gone out yet, so he let himself keep going, “all I ever hear is how inept I am, how all my ideas are stupid! Why wouldn’t I hate myself when everybody else hates me, too?”
And there it was, the unspoken assumption that he’d managed to keep under tight lock and key for nearly three years of being a castaway. He recoiled at his own confession, and that was nothing to the look of hurt on Skipper’s face.
“No one hates you, Gilligan,” the old man said softly, like the concept itself was unthinkable. “I know I’m hard on you sometimes, but-but I– I don’t– I couldn’t–”
Gilligan must’ve been a picture of misery; his shoulders slumped and his face scrunched up in despair, with tear tracks down both cheeks and his scarred forearm still resting uncovered on the table.
“I couldn’t even get some firewood without slipping,” he added in a self-deprecating mumble, adding the cherry to the top of this pity sundae. “I didn’t mean for Ginger to see, I didn’t mean for anyone to see. You weren’t supposed to know that I… that I do that– it’s just a nasty habit I can’t break, like-like nail biting, but… worse…”
He sounded dumb to his own ears; the idea of nail biting being at all comparable to cutting himself would’ve been laughable if it weren’t so grim.
There was another question weighing on the Skipper’s mind, Gilligan could tell with how determined his expression became, with how his posture shifted noticeably.
“How long?” he said it sternly, expecting a clear cut answer.
Gilligan had to think for half a second, and the pause made Skipper’s fists tremble slightly. “There were a few times when I was a kid, before my dad died. But since being shipwrecked… do you remember when that crate of magic tricks washed ashore, and I kept trying them out?”
The rest went unsaid: that he’d failed every one of the tricks and gotten so far under the other six castaways’ skin that they’d all shunned him privately, only for him to overhear and exile himself to a cave out of betrayal and shame.
The Skipper didn’t need the whole story retold to him if the flash of disgusted realization that crossed his face was anything to go by.
“The magic tricks…? That must’ve been more than a year ago–” Something in the old man finally broke, because he shot out of his seat with a fervor that knocked the table over an inch and came across to envelope Gilligan in strong, protective arms like he weighed nothing more than a plush toy or pillow.
The first mate only slightly winced back when his Skipper grabbed him, flashes of a man long gone running across his vision before he settled comfortably into the warm embrace. The tears were back now, and not just his own.
“I’m so sorry, Gilligan,” Skipper breathed between quiet sobs. “If I’d known you were hurting like this I would’ve done something, changed something– the image of you all alone in that cave, taking out our anger on yourself…” the words faded as they settled on his tongue. Gilligan could feel him squeeze just a bit tighter.
“I’m sorry, too, Skipper,” Gilligan whispered against navy blue cloth. “I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“Don’t you dare apologize to me.” The Skipper pulled Gilligan back just enough for blue eyes to meet turquoise. “You have nothing to be sorry for. It’s my responsibility to keep you safe and a lousy goddamn job I’ve done of it.”
That broke Gilligan’s heart the most; the fact that his Skipper was disappointed in himself for something the first mate had chosen to do. The captain’s words hurt sometimes, the looks he gave Gilligan when he was fed up with his nonsense hurt sometimes. But there was never a time when Gilligan felt more like taking a blade to his skin than when he let the Skipper down.
“I promise I’ll do better, little buddy,” was whispered into the top of his sailor’s hat. “Just promise me you won’t hurt yourself again.”
Gilligan squeezed the Skipper back a little, taking in one long, shuddering breath and letting his eyelids flutter closed. “I don't know if I can promise that… sir.”
To his surprise, Skipper didn’t get angry or start yelling or double down on his order, he just tightened the embrace. “Then promise me the next time you feel that bad, you’ll come to me. Or Ginger, or Mary Ann. Or the Professor, or the Howells.”
Gilligan pulled away a bit to cock his head to the side and look up to the Skipper in question. “Who else would I go to? Those are the only people on the island.”
And for once, Skipper didn’t roll his eyes or thwack him on the hat for his stupid comment, instead he smiled. His eyes were still red-rimmed and stricken with grief, but they weren’t as pained and hopeless.
“Promise me, Gilligan?” He emphasized the request with a soft pat to his first mate’s back.
Gilligan weighed his options. Running off to that cave had become instinct for him, and he knew it wouldn’t be easy to override that instinct, especially when the emotional turmoil of a failed rescue or a ruined plan was fresh in everyone’s mind. But all those nights spent alone on a rocky cave floor, carving a new line in his skin for every heartbroken glare he’d been faced with, were not something he enjoyed reliving on the best of days.
“I’ll try, Skipper.” It was the best he had, and it was good enough for the captain, because his smile remained and he nodded in appreciation.
It was quiet for a bit, neither one of them wanted to be the first to break the hug, and the air was still thick with emotion and uncertainty.
It wasn’t until Gilligan shifted uncomfortably in his denims that he decided to speak up. “Skipper, can I change out of Ginger’s clothes now?”