I Believe We're The Enemy

Mikey’s P.O.V.

“Mikey-”

“Rose, stay out of this,” I hiss, brushing her aside so that I can get to Ginny. “And you, GInny, need to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get over it. Sure, we’d all be a bit better off if you and Ray weren’t fighting, but you can’t just not eat. You’ll die.”

Ginny glares at me ferociously. “I’m not hungry.”

“Not eating isn’t going to change Ray’s mind! You’re just hurting yourself more!”

“She deserves it,” Ray growls under his breath.

I nearly slap him across the face, because everyone here is being so damn dysfunctional that it’s driving me insane. “Ray, you’re not doing us any good either! Ginny might’ve made one hell of an enormous mistake, but she doesn’t deserve what you’re doing to her. Either make up or just shut your mouth.”

Ray is quiet, and Ginny lets out a noise halfway between a hiccup and a whimper.

“Mikey,” Rose says from behind me, her voice as clear and even as ever. “Calm down.”

“Rosie...”

She sighs. “I know nothing’s working out and we’re al in one big hell of a mess, but shouting at everybody won’t help.”

I finally slump onto one of the sofas with a dejected sigh, because Rose is right. All I’ve done this morning is yell at everyone else, because everything is wrong and nobody’s being themselves and if Gerard wasn’t in a fucking coma or whatever everything would be just fine.

“I just want my brother back,” I moan, scooting over to let Glory sit next to me and wrap her gentle arms around my waist. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ginny averting her gaze, a single tear rolling down her cheek, and Frank gives her an affectionate hug. Shit, she misses Ray. Why is he being such an asshole? Still, I wish that Ginny would just get over her loss and eat already; I feel like I have to take over in Gerard’s absence, and if someone under my watch is starving herself, I won’t put up with it.

“Mikes, what are you pondering?” Rose murmurs into my ear. She’s suddenly become unusually affectionate; I’m glad for this extra attention, though, because it’s the only thing that’s keeping me from snapping right now.

“Will you go and get Ginny to eat for me?” I reply softly, turning to look her in the eyes. “I know she’ll listen to you, and I won’t have anyone starving to death while I’m in charge.”

“She’s really sad.”

I nod at the observation. “I know, but I think you and Frank can help her. Just... Please, I don’t want anything to happen to her.” Rose nods and crosses the room to sit beside Ginny, leaving my stomach cold where her arms had been wrapped around it.

After another hour of near-silence, GInny has consumed three bites of Power Pup, and she looks pale enough to be mistaken for a ghost. She refuses to make eye contact with anyone but Frank. Similarly, Ray hasn’t spoken to anybody except to make the occasional snide comment in Ginny’s direction, and even though he acts as if he was only angered by his fight with her yesterday, I can tell that he’s still hurt. Some nagging voice in my head reminds me that these two are (or were) as in love as human beings can possibly be, and they can only go for so long without each other.

This whole time, Grace has been sitting awkwardly off to the side, seeming unsure of who to approach. I’m tense and short-tempered; Ray is fuming; Ginny is utterly depressed; and Frank and Rose are busily watching Ginny to make sure that she doesn’t kill or completely humiliate herself in some way or another, while Gerard is still out cold, and we haven’t seen any sign of Last Inferno or Whatsername since they ran off yesterday. All in all, we’re just an angry enormous mass of awkward. Finally, Grace sits down on the sofa next to me, and I wrap an arm around her shoulders just to let her know that I’m not completely hostile.

As the sun reaches its peak in the sky, the room, with its windows shuttered and its door closed, starts to darken, so I stand and open all the various curtains and windows until the only things protecting us from the elements are the screen door, the walls, and the roof. This kind of busywork seems to be the only way to keep myself occupied other than yelling at everyone else, so I attack it with vigor. After I finish opening windows, I find some old rags in the kitchen, and I dust all seven rooms before sweeping the kitchen floor and shaking the living room rug out in front of the house so it’s not quite as sandy as we had found it. Every once in a while, Rose stands and helps with some task or another, such as cleaning the showers (again, they work!), but for the most part, nobody wants to get in my way. A determined Mikey is a dangerous Mikey, as they all know very well, so I’m left alone.

When I finally finish all the chores I can possibly think of, I find myself in Frank’s room, the door having somehow drifted closed behind me. Before my eyes, next to the imprints left on the mattress by Frank and Ginny’s needy bodies, is Gerard’s unconscious form, sprawled peacefully across the bed with his head propped up on a cushy-looking pillow. Before I even know what I’m doing, I’m sitting on the bed next to him, and then my slender body is curled into his stockier one, my arms around his waist and his chest rising and falling softly underneath my desperate head.

“I know you can’t hear me,” I begin, turning my head a little bit to look up at my brother’s face. “But if you can, Gee, I need you. Everything is falling apart, and even Ray and Ginny are fighting, and I don’t know how long I’m gonna last as our leader.” I sniffle gently. “If... If you don’t make it through this, Gerard, remember that I love you. You’re everything I’ve ever looked up to or modeled myself after or tried to be when things are going badly, and I can try to go on without you, but I doubt that I’ll be able to. Please, for me, please don’t die. No, not even for me. For Ginny, so that you can still knock some sense into her and Ray. And for Rose, so she doesn’t have to seduce me every five minutes to keep me from going insane. Not to mention Frank...” I swear that gerard lets out a tiny hum and shuffles his arms a bit at the sound of Frank’s name. “He needs you, Gee. He’s so lost and scared and he still has to be there for Ginny, and he’s got no one to lean on... I know I should t-take care of him, but I just can’t... I’m sorry, Gee, I-”

“You know he can’t hear you, right?” My tirade is stopped by Ray’s irritable voice calling to me from the doorway. I jump away from Gerard and turn to face him, annoyed that he interrupted me, but before I can speak I see his face, and I immediately change my mind. His eyes are glassy with tears threatening to spill, and beneath them, his cheeks are red from the salt water that’s been running across his tanned skin. Wrinkles show at the corners of his eyes, as if he’s aged simply through sadness, and his entire face seems to sag from frustrated loneliness. All in all, he looks miserable.

“Ray, what happened to you?” I ask, suddenly forgetting all about Gerard.

He sighs furiously. “You know what happened. She’s not the only one torn up about that.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. You didn’t seem that sad; you were just acting angry.”

“She betrayed me, Mikey. I trusted her, and I loved her, and I thought she loved me too, but I was wrong. Why can’t I get over that already?” he wails softly, closing the door so that only I can hear him.

“Ray, you weren’t wrong. She does love you. Can’t you tell?”

“She doesn’t love me, or she wouldn’t have said any of that.”

I huff in exasperation. “She didn’t mean it! She was just angry, and she panicked and blurted something she shouldn’t have said. Is it not obvious how much you’re hurting her right now?”

“She deserves it. She lied to me.”

“No, Ray, she doesn’t deserve it!” My voice has risen to a shout, and I’m standing now, my face inches away from Ray’s. “What she did was wrong, but she knows that, and you’re just hurting yourself by doing this to her.”

Ray’s eyes squeeze shut, but a few rebellious tears still manage to find their way out to his broad cheeks. “I can’t even look at her, Mikey. It hurts too much. I want her back, but I don’t trust her... She’s not mine anymore...”

“She is totally yours.”

“No, Mikes, she’s not!” he roars, his greenish-brown eyes flying open. “She’s not even the same Ginny I used to know. It’s like she’s a whole different person, and suddenly I’m seeing all the things that make her not perfect, and I’m scared of her because she’s changed, but I’m even more afraid of myself, ‘cause-”

”Just fucking forgive her then! She was never perfect, but you two were so happy together and now you’re just torturing yourself! What’s wrong with you, Ray?”

“You don’t understand.”

I have an irritated sigh. “Maybe I don’t, but I know that without each other, you two are utterly null and void.”

Ray’s hand twitches, as if he’s about to slap me, but he changes his mind just in time. As I watch, he opens and closes his mouth a few times, fighting desperately to keep his tears back, before turning and racing back into his own room. After a few minutes, the sounds of a guitar slowly being tuned ring out into the hallway. I sigh, because I know that by the time he’s done, his fingers are going to be bucketing blood, but at the same time, I’m glad that the guitars (and my bass) happened to be in the Trans Am when the hotel was burned down. I can’t imagine what Frank and Ray would do without them.

My feet carry me back into the front room, where heads turn the moment I walk into the room. Shit, I guess we were louder than I thought. “What?” I snap, stopping in the middle of the room to take in their expectant features.

“Is he... Is h-he okay?” Ginny asks softly before bursting into tears once again. Frank wraps his arms around her and coos comfortingly into her ear, which has next to no effect on her sobfest.

“Ginny, I know he’s being a bitch, but you need to grow up and get over yourself. Quit this stupid crying and get a life already!” Everybody is silent the moment I finish shouting, and out of the very edges of my hearing, I can detect uncontrollable sobs coming from Ray’s room. Ginny’s lip quivers dangerously.

“I just want him back,” she mumbles. “I want him to be happy again.” The look on her face is so pathetic that I feel my fist smashing down on the coffee table as I sit next to Glory. My face is hot from pent-up anger and irritation, and my temper is close to a snapping point.

“Crying won’t help anyone, Virginia. Wake up and meet the real world, or else you’re going to be in for a rude surprise.”

She only cries harder, which is the last straw for me. I stand, shouting incoherent things at her and Frank, and storm off into the room I share with Rose, my face feeling like a boiling tomato. Quiet murmurs are heard from outside, but I ignore them, flopping across my bed with a resigned air. Two minutes later, Rose walks in.

“Mikey, babe, that was a little harsh.”

I sigh. “I know, but her little crybaby act is pissing me off. She and Ray are in love, why can’t they just forgive each other and be done?”

“She betrayed his trust.”

“But she apologized! We all know she didn’t mean that! If he’s so unhappy, why doesn’t he just listen to her?”

Rose sits down next to me and rubs my back with her gentle hands. “He’s afraid that she’s changed. If I said something like that to you, would you still think of me the same way?”

“I guess not. They still need to stop crying and be useful. Or at least sensible.”

“Mikey, have some patience, baby. It’ll be okay.” Her voice is so soft and soothing that I quickly relax into her touch, sighing gently as she sits cross-legged on my back and rubs her fingers in slow circles on the back of my neck. Somehow, Rose always knows how to calm me down; I figure that’s just part of her Glory magic.

“I wish I could just forget about all of this,” I murmur. “That little voice in my head keeps reminding me that Gerard is unconscious and everything is wrong, and it’s stressing me out so badly that I swear I’m going insane.”

Even though I can’t see her, I can still envision Rose’s smirk in my mind perfectly. “I think I know how to fix that.”

“What?”

She slowly climbs off my back and peels my shirt from my torso with a casually flirtatious air. “I said, I can help you fix that,” she repeats, flipping my body over with gentle fingers. I don’t know how, but she ends up shirtless as well, and next thing I know, we’re both in only our underwear, her legs straddling my hips as I lean back against the headboard of our bead. Her hands trace rough but loving patterns across my hungry skin, and I quickly submit to her kisses, letting her tongue discover even the most secluded corners of my mouth. At first, this feels like a pointless and monotone activity, but as her spark-filled fingers grace places that make me shiver with lust, instinct kicks in and I finally begin to forget. Our hips meet a few times, tauntingly, and I soon realize that she’s trying to tease me, to make me want more. At the same time, I can tell that her emotions are getting the better of her, so I decide to take advantage of her growing weakness before I, too, succumb to my feelings.

I pull my mouth away from Rose’s, grabbing her hips with both hands, and attach my lips to her neck. Though she gives a loud, almost protesting moan, she doesn’t stop me as I bite down on her tender skin and let my lips abuse her.

“Mikey... You know that’s going to leave a mark, right?” she murmurs, her fingers clamped onto my shoulders. Smirking gently, I nod into her neck, suddenly almost grateful for Gerard’s absence. Now I no longer have to worry about his chastising when he notices whatever bruises Glory and I inflict upon each other. My arms slowly wrap all the way around her waist, pulling her closer, and her legs do the same to me. For a few minutes, all we do is breathe, desperate for the closeness that seems to hum with energy. She nuzzles her face into my neck, and I hold her as tightly as I can, never wanting to let go of the clarity and hope of this moment. Rose is everything; I believe that she understands this fact, because rather than mumbling useless condolences when the first of many tears roll from my eyes, she only leans closer to me, her fingers outlining smitten circles on my bare stomach.

“I don’t want to lose you,” I whisper, my fingertips running along the edge of her bra strap.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

I can’t help but smile. “Not that you’d get away with it anyway.”

Rose plants a few soft kisses on my collarbone, sending funny tingles down my spine, and my fatigue gets the better of me as I start to reach for the clasp of her bra, suddenly finding myself not to be as close to her as is desirable.

“No, Mikey,” she says softly, catching my by the wrists.

“It’s only a matter of time-”

“I know,” she interrupts. “But this isn’t the time. Not now, when we’re just trying to escape. We should be happy.”

I sigh. “Fine, then. But will you still take a nap with me?” She nods, chuckling gently, and we tuck our exhausted bodies into bed before drifting off in instants, our needy skin almost as close as possible.