I Believe We're The Enemy

Ginny’s P.O.V.

When I find Glory Girl actually sleeping in Mikey’s bed, it’s all I can do not to squeal with girlish curiosity. Instead, I poke her head with my foot until she wakes up, giggling at all her possible excuses.

“Ginny...? Oh!” Glory sees Mikey’s unconscious body barely even inches away from her, and she hopes nimbly onto her sofa, blushing hard.

“And what do we have here, my dear?” I ask with a suggestive pop of my eyebrows.

She rolls her eyes. “You’re so dirty, Ginny. N-nothing happened... Please, don’t tell anyone about this. Not yet, at least. I... Well, I’m still trying to work things out.” I grin evilly.

“I’ll keep your little secret as long as you answer my question. Do you love Mikey?”

She looks taken aback but not afraid. “Yes. A lot. I just... I’m not sure we should be together.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Okay, I won’t tell anyone that you were sleeping with him, but in my opinion, you should go ahead and give it your all. Mikey’s sweet, and I’m sure he’s quite... talented, if you know what I mean.”

“Shut up, Ginger.”

“Whatever you say, Girly.” We both giggle recklessly at our ridiculous nicknames for each other.

Mikey jumps into wakefulness with a start, alarmed by our laughter. His eyes soften as they meet Glory’s, and a knowing look passes through the air between them.

“Hi, Glory,” he says stiffly. Her eyes are full of conflict, but she finally sits up straight and nods to him indifferently. Mikey looks hurt.

“What’s the heartless nod for?” he asks, puzzled.

“Self-control.”

“Is that really necessary?”

She glares at him. “What, you just want me to fuck you in front of our whole crowd?”

Mikey throws his hands up in surrender. “Fine, just ignore me then.”

“Will do,” Glory snarls. Mikey stands to leave the room.

“Wait, both of you, stop,” I interject, reaching out to grab Mikey’s forearm. “What the hell is wrong with you two? Glory, you just told me not even two minutes ago that you love him, and now you’re being quite the bitch to him just because he asked for a little affection. And you, Mikey, what she needs is someone to listen and be gentle, not to just be all smoochy-lovey-touchy all the time. Both of you, stop and think!”

Glory has shrunken into the corner of the sofa, her body compressing itself as she attempts to hide form the fury and tension thrumming around the room. On closer examination, I spy tears glistening on her cheeks.

“M-Mikey?” she stutters, looking up at him desperately.

His face melts. As I look on, he races across the room, grabs Glory’s wrists, and pins them to the sofa next to her as their lips collide with painful-looking force. Mikey jumps onto the sofa, half next to Glory Girl and half on top of her, and and her skinny legs entangle feverishly with his. I let out a quiet chuckle and retreat to my own room as Mikey starts to nibble at Glory’s neck, causing her to moan with pleasure.

“What’s all that noise?” Ray asks sleepily as I close the door behind me. I giggle.

“Glory and Mikey are making out. I left ‘cause it was getting a bit awkward.”

He raises an eyebrow. “They’re not the first ones around here to kiss in public.”

My self-control falls away from me and I practically attack Ray, pinning his broad shoulders to the bid as I straddle his hips with my legs. “No, they’re not,” I hiss in his ear. “But I prefer to do my making out away form the eyes of the whole wide world.”

Before I can even meet his lips he flips us over so that he’s on top of me, and then his mouth smashes into mine, our lips and tongues working furiously as we kiss. His hips grind against mine and I arch my body into his, letting the warmth of his soft skin flow over me. I let my fingers drift over his back and down his chest, and his hands find their way up my shirt, stroking my stomach gently.

We spend the next ten minutes in ferocious make-out mode. When we finally break away from each other, I lay on the bed, struggling to breathe, my lips still bearing the unique flavor of his. “Ray, you’re hot,” I gasp, glancing over at where he lays next to me.

He grins. “And you’re gorgeous. Not to mention sexy, delicious, and beautiful. We make a good match, don’t you think?”

I return the smile, my heart fluttering blissfully. “Yeah.”

Suddenly, we’re interrupted by a loud commotion as someone starts banging on our door, causing it to shudder erratically. “Ray, Ginny, quit fucking each other or whatever you’re up to and come eat,” Frank calls, sounding exasperated. “I actually bothered to cook something today, so if you want food, come and get it.”

I comb through my tangled hair as quickly as I can and drag Ray out into the front room, where everybody else is sitting on the sofas and eating what look like green pancakes. Ray and I sit next to Mikey and Glory, who are both watching their food with intense interest, their faces painfully pink. As we eat, I collect that Frank woke up to find them “as close to sex as you can get with clothes on,” which he says while covering Grace’s ears, and that he had commanded them to separate from each other before Grace woke up. They had obliged, obviously not having meant to be caught together.

“They were all like ‘no, we’re not together, nothing to see here, blah, blah, blah,’” Frank says, smirking mischievously. “I think they’re totally in love with each other, but-”

“Of course they are!” I interrupt with a cackle. “They’re just being all... hesitant.”

“Like you were?”

“Shut it, Ray.”

Glory Girl pokes me teasingly in the shoulder. “Joke’s on you, Ginny. That’s what you get for blabbering with that big mouth of yours!”

“What big mouth?” I purr, feigning innocence.

Ray startles me by grabbing his face and forcefully attaching his lips to my own. “That one,” he breathes when he finally lets go of me. Grace and Frank compete in a miniature barfing-face contest.

“You guys really do that... in public?” Grace asks, horrified.

I throw my hands up to display my innocence and point to Ray accusingly, inching away from him and feigning disgust.

“Yeah, Grace, they do that all the time,” Frank says, his voice void of the expected bitterness. “It’s gross.” I laugh.

“Shut up, Frankie. You just wait until you find a girlfriend, you’ll be even worse,” Ray teases, smiling slightly. Frank’s face falls, but nobody else seems to notice his sudden change in mood, except for Grace, who hugs him gently. I wonder if Ray said something so apparently hurtful to Frank on purpose, or if he just wasn’t thinking. Obviously, whereas Frank seems to have nearly forgotten about me, he’s still stinging from Ray being chosen over him.

“I love you guys,” I spurt randomly, moving closer to Ray again. It’s true; the boys, as well as Grace and Glory (who’ve finally forgiven each other), are the most amazing people I’ve ever come across. “You’re all so much nicer than anyone I’ve ever met before, and if I have to die out here, I want to die with all of you. Not, like, all of you dying... I’d just rather die with friends than alone.”

Ray hugs me close to his body. “You really had a shitty life before BL/ind, didn’t you?”

I nod. “I was the outcast. Mostly, I was just ignored, but every shred of aimless bad feeling ended up being pointed at me. Whenever someone tried to be nice to me, it just rubbed it in my face that they didn’t even know me at all, and that they didn’t even care. When I met you guys, I didn’t want to trust you at first, because real people would never be this nice.”

Rather than hugging me again, Ray kisses my forehead. “You’re amazing.”

“Not in the eyes of the world,” I continue. “When I ran away from you all, that’s all i could think about. It was all so unreal. You couldn’t really love me, because nobody else ever had. It felt like if I came back, it would be just the same as it always was. You’d turn me away, and I would be alone. Again.”

“B-but... You’re so pretty!” Frank blurts.

I smile sadly. “That’s only your opinion, Frankie. Before you guys, the only person who ever told me I was beautiful was my mum.”

“Didn’t you... didn’t you have a dad?” Gerard asks apprehensively.

“He disappeared when I was two,” I explain. “We found out later that he was killed in a pre-takeover scout mission. He got in the way of a bunch of dracs, and... Bam.” Gerard’s eyes widen.

“We’re all fucked up here,” says Glory Girl, her voice soft. “It’s not fair, and the only thing we can do about it is... Well, we’ve got each other. That’s all that matters.”

“Language, dear Glory,” Grace reprimands in a surprisingly maternal tone. I can’t help but laugh.

“I think we’re all beyond hope, Grace.” We all giggle guiltily.

“Shit,” Mikey responds.

“That’s one damn fucked-up ass-load of shit.”

“Frank,” I laugh, “you cannot fit four curses into one sentence to save your life.”

“Shit, fuck, damn, hell, ass, bitch, whore, MOTHERFUCKE-”

“SHUT UP, GEE!” roars Ray.

I giggle. “You like cursing, don’t you, Gerard?” He nods eagerly.

”Motherfuckerrr.”

“Again, Gerard, just shut up,” Frank hisses.

“Okay,” Gerard replies, finally succumbing to Frank’s will.

We laze around for hours that day and the next, slowly getting to know Grace. I learn that the bounds of her experience stretch much farther than a ten-year-old’s really should. Living in the city, which really is just as dangerous as the Zones, she’s seen everything from murder and rape to her own best friends going completely mad. She curses like a sailor (or Gerard), and she laughs at all the dirty jokes we’re indecent enough to make in front of her. Frank soon adopts her as his own little sister, and though this agreement remains unspoken, we all respect it. Nobody could hurt Grace in front of Frank, even if they wanted to.

On a somewhat more ethereal note, Glory Girl has finally been plagued by the horrible nightmares that we all feel the brunt of. Many mornings I find her curled up on her sofa between Mikey and Gerard, because they hadn’t been able to sleep through her screaming. Though she stays far away from Mikey during the day, I catch her in his bed nearly every morning. She claims that him and Ray are the only living people she really loves, and that when she dreams of the dead, Mikey’s presence is all that keeps her from going mad.

“Aren’t you afraid that he’s going to die too?” I always ask.

“That doesn’t matter. All that matters right now is that he’s here, he’s alive, and I love him,” Glory Girl responds day after day.