I Believe We're The Enemy

Ray’s P.O.V.

“Guys, wake up! Ray, Ginny, guess what! The showers here actually WORK!” Mikey’s hyperactive shouts jolt me out of my sleep, and my spastic flinch knocks Ginny’s sleeping form out of my arms. She awakens with a start, her green eyes panicked, but I grab her hand under the covers and she relaxes.

“Mikey, what the hell is wrong with you?” I groan, stretching my arms sleepily. Insulted, Mikey gives me an irritable glare, which I return with a quiet huff of exasperation.

“You were gonna have to get up soon anyway if you want any breakfast. Gee found a big patch of edible cacti, so we’ve actually got something other than that dog food shit to eat!”

“Great. Can’t we just sleep for five more minutes?” I grumble, turning my gaze from Mikey’s blinding hair to Ginny.

Mikey rolls his eyes. “You’re so lazy, Ray.”

“I’m not a morning person.”

“Good for you.” Mikey picks up Ginny and I’s pile of clothing and tosses it onto the bed, sighing. “Wake up your little girlfriend and get out there if you want some real food before I eat it all.” I glare at Mikey as he stalks out of the room, closing the door behind him, but then my face melts into a smile. Girlfriend. I like that word.

“I guess Mikey’s right. I must be your girlfriend,” Ginny mumbles, heaving an enormous yawn.

“I’m okay with that,” I reply, squeezing her hand gently. She smiles and I feel a wave of heat flowing over my body.

“You’re blushing,” she teases, poking me in the center of my chest, which only sends another rush of warm happiness over me. For some reason, I suddenly feel incredibly self-conscious and almost shy.

“No I’m not.”

She sits up and grabs her shirt, pulling it smoothly over her head. “Yes you are. And now you’re staring at me.”

“Sorry,” I murmur, looking down at the sheets. She laughs.

“It’s okay. I never get that kind of attention anyway, and I have to admit, it’s not that bad.” She tosses my shirt over to me and I throw it on reluctantly, wishing that we had a washing machine.

“Oh, yeah, I’m the only person who ever stares at you,” I grumble sarcastically.

“Frank doesn’t count.”

“Yes he does! He exists just as much as I do!”

She gives a rather charismatic toss of her hair and looks at me over her shoulder, grinning. “But that doesn’t mean that he’s as attractive as you.”

“You’re such a flirt,” I growl, resisting the temptation to pull her back toward me and give her the fiercest kiss I can muster.

She giggles. “And you’re not?”

“Leave me alone.”

“I love you, Ray,” she chimes, pulling her jeans on in the most taunting way possible. She’s obviously aware of how much she’s torturing me.

“I hate you.”

“No you don’t. You think I’m sexy.” I stay quiet, suddenly afraid that Gerard might hear my response.

She inches across the bed smoothly, curling up next to me. “I won’t let Gee kill you, I promise,” she says, her voice suddenly kind rather than taunting. “Or, at least, if he does kill you, I’ll kill him back.”

I put one arm around her gently as she leans her head on my shoulder. “Three cheers for sweet revenge.”

“What?” she queries, looking up at me with confusion glinting in her eyes.

“Nothing.” It feels wrong to use Gerard’s own album against him. He’s the one who writes the words for our songs anyway.

After another five minutes of affectionate procrastination I tug my jeans onto my long legs and follow Ginny into the front room, where Gerard and Mikey are rapidly consuming a messy green-and-pink mush. “Where’s Frank?” Ginny asks anxiously, looking around the room.

“Sleeping,” Gerard replies bluntly.

Ginny leaves my side and walks over to the bed, where a tiny tuft of Frank’s jet-black hair sticks out. When she’s only a few feet away from him, he lets out a horrendous shriek, and all of our hearts skip a beat. What’s wrong with him?

Ginny’s P.O.V.

The boys seemed to think that Frank was diseased or something when he screamed, but I knew the problem in an instant. I leap onto the bed and rip the covers away from Frank’s body hastily, my hands flying to his sides as I pull him toward me. Though his eyes are still shut from sleep, tears are barreling down his face, and his banshee-like screams start to quaver as he squirms, attempting to escape the horrors plaguing his nightmares. My face scrunching in concentration, I scream his name once, twice, three times as I grab his shoulders and shake his fragile form. Deep within me I feel a wave of pain rising in my gut. For some strange reason, seeing Frank suffer hurts me as well.

When he finally jerks out of his dreams his eyes glance all around, panicked, before focusing on me, and he lets out a long, miserable wail, his tears coming even faster. I pull him toward my body and wrap my arms around him tightly, letting him sob into my shoulder. “It’s okay, Frankie,” I whisper, running my fingers through his filthy hair. “It was a nightmare. It’s all imaginary. I saw it, Frank, it’s not real.” He takes his face away from my shoulder, and I nearly drown in the heartbroken despair pouring from his eyes. “They can’t hurt you now. You’re safe. Those dracs aren’t real, they’re not going to kill you.”

His face suddenly morphs into horror. “Gerard,” he whispers, his fists clutching my shirt. His mouth opens wide in a silent scream.

“Frankie? What’s wrong?” I ask, running one of my hands down the side of his pallid face.

“Gee,” he squeals, looking as if he’s about to drop dead.

“Gerard?” I call, confused. “There’s something wrong with him...” Frank looks up at me for a moment, hope flashing in his gaze. Then he turns and, seeing Gerard making his way toward us, he breaks away from me and shuffles at high speed toward his friend, his arms held out in desperation. When he reaches Gerard he hugs him so hard that they both nearly fall to the ground. Frank, still kneeling on the bed, wraps his arms firmly around Gee and buries his face in his broad chest,moaning with relief. Gerard sits down on the bed next to him, not daring to attempt disentanglement.

“What’s wrong, Frankie?” he asks gently, his magic touch quickly calming the red-haired boy. Frank shudders and lays his head on Gerard’s chest, closing his eyes to listen to his heartbeat.

“You were dead. They killed you. Then Ginny said she saw it, and it was all a dream, but she didn’t say anything about you... Just that I wasn’t dead... I thought you were gone, Gee,” Frank croaks, his voice shaking almost as hard as his body.

Gerard’s face softens and he pulls Frank closer to himself. “I’m not going to leave you, Frankie,” he whispers, leaning his head on Frank’s.

“Good, ‘cause I think we’d all die if you did.”

Gee smiles sadly. “I really shouldn’t love you all so much, should I?”

Then pain in my stomach recedes as Frank finally smiles. “It doesn’t matter if you love us or not, Gee. You’re amazing either way, and I love you and I need you,” he murmurs, turning his face into Gerard’s shirt. I crawl across the bed to them, one of my arms wrapping around Frank as his fingers entwine with Gerard’s. Gee looks at me over Frank;s head, and I feel as if I’m only staring into a mirror, seeing my own concern and overwhelming emotion reflected back at me. Then, to my surprise, a bolt of electric protectiveness races across Gerard’s face and he pulls Frank away from me. Though his civility returns quickly, he refuses to give Frank up.

“Just a few minutes, Ginny, please. I need to be with him.” I nod, understanding his need to heal Frank’s wounds. Something about Gerard tells me that his friends’ pain affects him just as much as it does me.

I stand and cross the room to where Ray and Mikey sit, picking a spot on the couch next to my *ahem* boyfriend. Mikey looks as if he hasn’t slept at all; his blond hair is matted and prominent dark circles show under his eyes. “Poor Frank barely slept at all last night. He woke me up four times with his screaming,” he murmurs, blinking slowly.

Ray looks over at me. “Same here. Ginny dreamed about Frank’s dream, like she was watching it.”

Mikey cocks his head to the side and squints at me. “Weird,” he murmurs. “I always thought there was something special about you.” Ray and I both shoot him quizzical glances, which he returns with a shake of his head, muttering under his breath. They only word that I catch is “beast”.

When Frank finally gets over the fact that Gerard is alive, he drags his red-haired friend across the room and sits down on the sofa next to me, leaning his bony cheek on my shoulder. After a few minutes of silent calm while Ray and I eat, Frank tires of sitting and curls up with his head in my lap, gazing dreamily at the rough fabric of the sofa between Mikey and Gerard. My fingers run absentmindedly through his hair, which makes his emit a tiny hum of pleasure. Ray stabs his cactus mush violently with a spoon.

I sigh. “Get over yourself, Ray,” I murmur teasingly in his ear, my lips hovering dangerously close to the tanned skin of his neck. He blushes an interesting shade of pink.

“Ginny, leave poor Ray alone!” Gerard exclaims, barely able to hold back a snicker.

“But he’s fun to tease. Plus, I like him.”

“If you like him so much, shouldn’t you be nicer to him?”

“No, why would I do that?”

Gerard rolls his eyes. “You’re crazy, Ginny,” he says, his hazel eyes boring into mine. I give an evil cackle.

“At least I’m crazy for him,” I murmur affectionately, leaning my head on Ray’s shoulder. Gerard just rolls his eyes, while Mikey makes a face of disgust, and Frank laughs so hard that he nearly falls off the sofa.

“Kidding,” I laugh quietly. Ray gives me a puppy-like look of pleading sadness.

“Psycho,” he mumbles, looking at me with mocking tenderness. I stick my tongue out at him and he hugs me, laughing hard. A special sort of grin tiptoes across my face as I lean into him, thoroughly enjoying the feeling of his arms around me.

We spend the next few days doing practically nothing. The desert can be surprisingly boring, especially when all we have to do is eat, sleep, and spontaneously kiss each other, a liberty which Ray and I take great advantage of. His lips, nothing short of oversized, render him an amazing kisser, as I soon discover. Frank spends many an afternoon teasing me about my “Ray addiction”, which simply makes me laugh and kiss Ray again. Though at first he seemed jealous of my boyfriend (I still can’t get over that word), it fades quickly, and Frank alone soon becomes my favorite pastime. His entertaining antics keep me endlessly activated.

Gerard, in the meantime, keeps a very close eye on Ray and I, but in more of a joking way than a protective one. It doesn’t take me long to realize how truly affectionate he is. Rather than shouting out a spontaneous “I love you” to each of us every time we walk by him, he shows us his feelings with a silent flip of our hair, a set of fingers running down the sides of our faces, a warm hand giving our own a squeeze. Sometimes, when he has nothing better to do, Gerard pulls me onto his lap like a little toddler and sings to me, resting his head on top of mine so that I can feel his throat vibrating with each note.

Similarly, Mikey has started to open up to me. I soon find that he’s very capable of being hyperactive, naive, and even flirty when he wants to be, and even though we still fight a lot he grows to become a good friend. I had never before realized how close he was to Ray, and I feel rather guilty at the realization that my presence has ruptured their friendship.

As we settle into the hotel we start to explore it, finding not only a large number of other rooms, but bathrooms with working sinks, showers, and toilets. The hotel must’ve been a base for another group of Killjoys at some point in time, because it’s been kept up amazingly well. Running water is a luxury that we haven’t enjoyed in a long time. Outside the hotel, we find pipes that suggest that the water is pumped from underground. All around the area, small, brushy-colored trees and cacti cover much of the dusty ground, many of which turn out to be edible. We quickly adjust to a mixed diet of mashed plant matter and Power Pup, the canned dog food-ish mush that is standard fare for desert-dwelling rebels.

On this particular day we’re lounging in the shade of the hotel, eating one such meal and laughing over Frank’s latest tirade of random jokes. Mikey fished out an ancient picnic blanket from our expansive collection of random stuff, and we’ve laid it out on the swaying sand where we’re at least somewhat protected from the wind. A slightly hyperactive Frank carries out a hilariously dramatic reenactment of a draculoid being shot in the head and, subsequently, collapsing, and I laugh along with the others, letting the blissful calm of the moment wash over me. As one of Ray’s arms wraps around my shoulder and pulls me toward him I feel a rush of passion overcome me and I close my eyes, sinking into his warmth with satisfaction.

Suddenly I heart a quiet fizzling sound, and out of the corner of my eye a flash of white lights up the desert air. “GINNY!” Gerard shrieks, his voice full of horror. I turn to look at him, confused, and I try to ask him what’s wrong, but no sound comes out of my mouth. Then a wave of pain engulfs me and the world slowly but surely fades to black.