The Pirate Prince | Frerard

six - sleep

A/N: Lyn-Z is amazing.

Later at breakfast Gerard and Mikey sat with the pirates again. Frank called Lindsey over. Gerard could see the nervousness hiding behind her usual calm facade and swallowed some nerves himself. If Lindsey got in trouble, she wouldn't be there to protect Jamia and the other girls, and Gerard certainly wasn't strong enough to hold his own against a pirate. "Would you like to tell us what happened this morning?" Frank asked, smiling slightly.

Lindsey swallowed, holding on to her composure, "Well, my," she paused, "friend, Jamia, was being harassed by one of your men. I wasn't sure what he said to her but it obviously made her uncomfortable and he didn't stop when she said no. So, I punched him lightly," she cocked her head, recalling what happened, "then he attacked me. I felt attacked so I punched him again, harder this time, and he ended up on the floor. After that I told him never to mess with any of the girls again or he would get worse and I went to comfort Jamia. Yeah, that's about it." She nodded to herself and made eye contact with Frank.

Frank's expression was blank, making Gerard nervous. Was he going to get mad at Lindsey? "That's not the story I heard from Evan. I was told that he was minding his own business when you got disrespectful and he asked you nicely to stop and then you started punching him and he didn't want to hurt a princess so he refrained from punching back, explaining your lack of bruises." Gerard had to chuckle at that. Frank looked at him, "Sweetheart, you were there, is Lindsey lying or was Evan."

"Evan was lying, he was harassing Jamia and the reason Lindsey doesn't have bruises is because he couldn't land any punches, not for lack of trying." Gerard had to focus on not stuttering because it might seem less credible if he did.

Frank gave him a smile before looking back at Lindsey, "Okay, I believe you. Sit with us," he grinned up at her. She nodded and glanced over at Jamia, giving her a thumbs up before plopping down next to Gerard. "Wentz," Frank glanced over to Pete, who was laughing quietly at something Mikey said, "on second thoughts, Urie, go get Evan, you know where to put him."

Brendon grinned at Frank as he stood up from the table, "Lindsey, was it? Good job," he smirked and gave her a good natured high five before wandering off to collect Evan.

The table joked around for another hour or so until all the plates were cleaned. Lindsey was fitting in with the pirates, Billie Joe even offered to find her some more clothes, seeing as they wore the same size.

They got back to work, Helen helped Gerard out with the kids and had some bonding time with her little brother. They played eye-spy and created a make-shift tic tac toe board out of stuff they found around the ship; Helen and Alex used blue sugar packets while Gerard and Jack used the pink ones. Gerard and Jack lost more often than not, to the point where Jack tried to get Alex to switch teammates with him because Gerard was no good at tic tac toe.

During lunch, Helen, Jamia and Ray joined them at the table with the pirates. The table was only meant for ten people and what was once six pirates sitting there had turned into twelve (not including the two kids). On one side of the table there was Ray, holding Jack, then Pete, holding Mikey, then Patrick then Brendon then Ryan. On the other side there was Helen, golding Alex, then Lindsey, holding Jamia, then Frank, holding Gerard, then Armstrong. When Gerard pointed out that there was an empty seat left beside Armstong, so he really didn't need to be sitting in Frank's lap, everyone gave him dirty looks.

The seating arrangement was the same for dinner and Gerard figured he just had to get used to it. Frank noticed he kept drifting off in the middle of eating, "How did you sleep last night?"

"Fine," Gerard muttered, not wanting to complain. Frank gave him a disapproving look, "Okay, okay, the floor down there is really uncomfortable. I had trouble sleeping."

Frank smiled sympathetically, "You can sleep in my bed tonight then. It's really soft. Helen can take care of Alex," Gerard looked down at the floor, which didn't really work seeing as he was sitting on Frank, and nodded softly.

Frank had a twin bed. It was a pirate ship afterall, what did he expect? A queen? Thinking about queen mattresses made Gerard think about his mother, the queen of Belleville. How was she doing? He missed her so much.

Frank noticed Gerard's distressed expression and pulled him down onto the bed, hugging the prince softly. Gerard couldn't help it, with all of the emotions flooding him and the stress of being kidnapped and held for ransom finally hitting him, he broke down in tears. Frank wasn't used to comforting anybody, much less crying princes, so he just laid there holding Gerard to his chest, whispering "it's okay, you're okay," over and over like a mantra until the prince fell asleep. Frank was the one who couldn't sleep that night.

The following days flowed by; eating, playing games with the kids and Helen, and crying himself to sleep in Frank's arms. Lindsey and Jamia got together, and they always managed to bring a smile to Gerard's face. There was news from the kingdoms, updates on the amount of ransom money they had gathered up. Mikey and Ray were getting really good at cooking pirate food. Nobody had seen Evan since Brendon was sent after him.

On the sixth night of sleeping in Frank's room, Gerard fell asleep peacefully.