Title: Solvent
Author: Derien
Fandom: Gilligan's Island
Pairing: Gilligan/Professor
Summary: Stuck together with pineapple paste, Gilligan and the Professor strive to find a solvent. (Prequel to "Gilligan Moves Out" by MizzMarvel in which the Professor proves to be a solvent to Gilligan's long association with his rather abusive father figure, the Skipper.)
Notes: I blame this on MizzMarvel, and thank her for the beta, and urge you to read her "Gilligan Moves Out" ( http://www.livejournal.com/users/mizzmarvel/152206.html#cutid4 ) before you read this.:) I also freely acknowledge that writing Gilligan/Professor slash is Evil and Wrong and that I deserve a spanking. But it was so much fun.;) Technical notes: According to http://www.gilligansisle.com/, Gilligan's first name is Willy and the Professor's name is Dr. Roy Hinkley. (Roy Hinkley, Jr. according to http://www.tvtome.com/GilligansIsland/ which does not give a first name for Gilligan.) Imagine that, I never knew they had other names. According to the summary of "Rescue from Gilligan's Island" (which I found here: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6309482479 ) they were trapped for 15 years. I didn't bother to decide how long they'd been there when this story hypothetically happened, because this is just a goofy fanfic of an incredibly goofy and unrealistic show, and doesn't really deserve a whole lot of thought, okay?

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He had found a lump of perfect glass on the slope of the volcano a few days before, and from it Dr. Roy Hinkley had ground two lenses. He had then devised crude surveying equipment, with which he was now taking more precise measurements of the volcano than he'd previously been able to. Absorbed in these calculations, he was not paying close attention to the nearby jungle - he had long since decided that the jungle on their island held nothing to fear - and very little attention to the slippery scree slope that fell away immediately before his tripod. He paid no attention to the thrashing noises approaching through the forest, surmising (correctly, as it turned out) that it would soon prove to be Gilligan, who tended to adapt a most ungraceful and unquiet approach to his progress through the woods when he was in a hurry. This actually worked out well, as he'd just been cursing himself for not bringing Gilligan along to help him with the surveying - one person really couldn't do this job effectively, he had found, and he'd only just realized he was going to have to go back to fetch the boy.

Therefore that part of his brain which categorized Gilligan as "harmless" did not bother to alert the rest of his brain. If it had he may have remembered that, although Gilligan never intended harm, he often inadvertently caused mayhem. He was completely unprepared when Gilligan burst from the jungle at his usual knees-high, ungainly, but deceptively fast, pace, clutching a bowl as a quarterback would a football, and barreled directly into him. Hinkley's last thought, as they both went over the edge of the steep slope and were drenched in the sticky contents of the bowl, was thankfulness that they hadn't taken the tripod with them.

They rolled over and over, clinging to each other, and slid rather painfully down the slope for a few long seconds before they came to rest on a small outcropping.

After a moment of stillness Gilligan emitted a small moan. "Are you alright, Professor?"

"I'm fine," Dr. Hinkley snapped, ignoring the hundred tiny scrapes. "Get off of me."

Gilligan jumped and began to thrash, causing them both to begin sliding again.

"Hold still, hold still!" He clung hold of Gilligan again to quiet him.

"I can't hold still AND get off," Gilligan responded, reasonably, but held still. "What should I do?"

They had stopped sliding again. The Professor summoned his patience and tried to speak calmly - it wouldn't do to scare the boy again; he would only thrash them all the way to the bottom of this slope. He wasn't positive how far away the bottom was - he hadn't gotten that far in his surveying yet. There could be a much steeper drop at any time.

"Try moving one limb at a time, and concentrate on moving very slowly."

Gilligan began. He seemed to think concentrating required a frown and sticking his tongue slightly out of the corner of his mouth. (This was a habit the Professor had found interesting to observe in the past. He would have called it 'cute,' but his years as a high school teacher had ingrained the habit of avoiding such thoughts.) Gilligan placed one leg and both hands such that he could begin to push himself up, but as he tried Hinkley felt an odd pulling at patches of skin on his torso.

"Professor? I can't seem to move."

Wherever their clothing had been saturated with the warm, sticky white liquid that had been in the bowl, and was now cooled, clothing and skin were now glued tightly together.

"Gilligan. What was in that bowl?"

"I don't know. Something Ginger and Mary Ann were cooking. It smelled like pineapple, and I was so hungry - I'd spent all morning digging a new garden plot for Mrs. Howell and re-thatching the girls' roof. I didn't think they'd mind me taking just a small bowl. But the Skipper saw me and hit me with his hat, so I ran."

"Oh my." The Professor's eyes had gone wide. "I told them they shouldn't try to make the pineapple paste until I'd found a solvent for it. I was afraid of something like this happening. Although I'd imagined only someone sticking their fingers together, not their whole bodies. No, don't try to pull anymore. You could cause damage to our skin."

"But Professor, we can't stay like this!"

"I'm aware of that. But do you want to lose large patches of skin off your chest? Not to mention, er..." He could distinctly feel that some rather sensitive areas were probably also well-glued. "No, just try to keep still and let me think what to do about this."

After a minute or two of silence Gilligan whispered, "My arms and legs are getting tired."

Hinkley hadn't realized Gilligan had still been trying to hold his weight suspended. "You're fairly light, I'm sure you can safely let your weight down on top of me." His breath whoofed out of him as Gilligan dropped sharply. "Or," he continued, when he'd gotten it back, "We could roll a bit so you're uphill."

That helped a good deal and was accomplished without too much sliding, and Gilligan went back to doing his best to be quiet. Unused to being still, he fidgeted, and every twitch pulled on the skin of Hinkley's chest, not to mention things - both physical and mental - that Roy really didn't want to think about. Gilligan would turn his head from side to side as though his neck was not comfortable. He would stare at the Professor for a while, then at the sky, and then slowly his head would turn back to gazing at the Professor's face. Hinkley realized he couldn't get angry at him for doing this - there weren't a whole lot of choices of view at the moment - but he found the intensity of Gilligan's gaze distracting, no less than the fact that he had really nothing else to look at but his companion's face.

Nearly imperceptible lines scored out from Gilligan's eyes and beside his mouth. He suddenly realized that Gilligan was certainly not the 'boy' everyone always considered him. Whenever anyone even mentioned his first name it was only as 'Willy,' a very diminutive form, not as 'William' or the acceptable adult form 'Will.' If they bothered to remember his first name - all they needed to remember was enough to call him to do some work. He'd spent the morning doing all the things nobody else wanted to do. Dr. Hinkley felt a stab of guilt at the fact that all he'd thought on hearing Gilligan approach was that he would have someone to run about on his orders and drive stakes for the task he had chosen to spend his day on. It was a class differentiation, he realized, part of the assumption of superiority, to think of this man as a 'boy.' They had been here a number of years already, everyone got older. It didn't make sense that he should be surprised by this, but he'd never really thought about it.

Periodically Gilligan's stomach would growl, and he would murmur an apology. After a particularly long growl Hinkley muttered, "Isn't there something you can do about that?" The audible sign of hunger had made him feel more guilty, reminding him that time had passed and he had been woolgathering, not dealing with their current problem at all.

"I'm sorry. I'm hungry. But there's a huge glop of pineapple paste on the side of your neck. I could eat that."

Dr. Hinkley blushed brightly as Gilligan's face moved closer. He attempted to crane his head away. "NO! We don't know what effect that might - " He could feel an effect that he'd been trying not to think about all these long, quiet minutes with the younger man's body lying pressed against his own, with nothing to look at but his face, and he blushed still more. "I mean, who knows what ingesting it could do! At the very least your lips might be stuck together."

"Don't worry, I ate some before, I'm not sick yet." With that Gilligan managed to get an arm around the back side of Hinkley's head to hold him still, and his lips were on the Hinkley's neck, nibbling and licking at the recalcitrant glob of paste. "Mm. Yum."

Dr. Hinkley whimpered and froze, his whole body tense. Then it hit him. "You ate it before?" His voice was barely audible. He tried again. "Your lips aren't stuck together, even though you ate some of this before? Before the Skipper chased you, I presume?"

"Yeah, I'd eaten half the bowl. There's another right below your collarbone; I'll get that." He twisted his neck and began to lick, which caused Hinkley to yelp.

"Ah! Ah! Saliva! That's it, that must be the solvent! If, if, good heavens... presumably if you keep licking you may be able to remove our clothes from our bodies. Um, I mean..." He trailed off, staring down at the back of Gilligan's head. He apparently had taken the Professor's word for it and began to unbutton the prim, button-down shirt as he continued to lick.

"I can't reach much further this way, though," he responded, looking up. "I just can't turn my neck that far." His maneuver had pulled hard on their skin but made little progress.

"Could you, um, wet your fingers with saliva and... like this?" Hinkley stuck his own fingers in his mouth, then quickly moved to slide them under the edge of Gilligan's shirt, attempting to find the place where it was stuck and prise it free before his fingers dried. Gilligan's breath caught, almost a gasp. "I'm sorry - do you mind?" Hinkley asked, belatedly. "But we do have to get unstuck."

"No. No, I don't mind. Did you mind me eating it off your neck?"

After a moment of indecision he decided to be honest. "No."

"Then you wouldn't mind if I did it again?"

"Uh. No?"

"Would it be a problem if there weren't actually any pineapple paste there?"

"What?"

"Um. There wasn't really any on your collarbone." Gilligan winced as though he expected to get hit.

Hinkley stared at him in confusion.

"I just... I thought the reaction you had the first time was interesting and I wanted to know what would happen if I did it again."

"Why... Gilligan. What a scientific curiosity."

"I'm a scientific curiosity? I thought I was just a freak of nature."

"I meant you had curiosity which you set about to satisfy with testing, as a scientist would."

Gilligan assayed a cautious smile. "I HAVE been curious. Ginger and Mary Ann practically throw themselves at you. I'd give anything... well, you know. Or maybe you don't? They're... wow. But you don't seem interested. I had to know."

Hinkley found himself unaccountably annoyed that Gilligan seemed quite interested in the girls. Although intellectually he realized it was silly to jump to this conclusion, emotionally he suddenly felt like an insect placed under a microscope. He'd had a momentary hope that it was something more than simply a scientific curiosity which had moved Gilligan. "Okay, you've guessed it. Now if that was all you wanted to determine, you've managed it, and we still have to get unstuck. You might have picked a slightly less drastic method." He glowered, and Gilligan flinched again.

"I didn't mean... I mean I... It wasn't JUST that." His eyes shot this way and that before coming back to meet Hinkley's. "I sorta like you, Professor. I know I shouldn't, but I do. I think I AM a freak."

Dr. Hinkley goggled again, his mouth falling open. "No, don't say that. I'm sorry. It's just that... with my career, when teaching high school, you understand... I mean, I couldn't possibly let on, I didn't even dare think about it, mostly. I wanted very much to be able to teach high school, I like kids that age. Not THAT way, before you even ask. I had to not think about it for so many years. I never considered changing my habits when we came here. I didn't think there was hope of anything..."

"That's too bad."

It was very simply said, and very sincerely, he could see it in Gilligan's eyes. He could have stopped himself, but it was a great relief to think that maybe he didn't have to, a relief that washed over him with a physical tangibility, leaving him lightheaded. He put a hand behind Gilligan's head and pulled him into a kiss.

When they eventually pulled back from the kiss Gilligan beamed at him. "Maybe this is okay, then?" His smile faded as he tentatively touched Hinkley's lips with his first three fingers. In response, Hinkley took them into his mouth, caressing them with his tongue, which brought the smile back. When Gilligan eventually pulled the fingers out he plunged them into the unbuttoned front of the Professor's shirt and began to work the cloth loose from the skin.

Hinkley's eyes fell half closed as he swallowed. "I suppose we'll have to make up some story about a large dog licking us free of this, and then swimming away."

"Do you think anyone would believe it?"

"Stranger things have happened."

Then talking ceased for a long while, as they worked on their mutual problems.

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END "Solvent"