"How on earth did you get any sleep?"
"I didn't."
I stared at him, before flicking him on the shoulder. "Gerard, why didn't you move back to your bed? Every day for the past, like, week and a half you've looked like shit, and it's all because of a lack of sleep, and yet you chose to sleep somewhere where you know you won't get any sleep?"
He sent me a sympathetic glance that I didn't understand. "I didn't want you to get scared again."
I sat up, annoyed, running my hand through my hair. "I would've been fine... I'm not a child. I don't need looking after." Sometimes I hate my phobias more than I hate the things that I'm afraid of. They were always causing trouble for the people around me.
Gerard sighed and then sat up, too. "I'm not trying to treat you like a child, I just-"
"I'm sixteen," I said defiantly, my voice trembling slightly, trying to prove to the both of us that my phobias weren't nearly as severe as they actually are. "I'm almost all grown up, Gerard. I can protect myself."
He pulled his knees up to his chest and then rested his chin on his knees as he wrapped his arms around his legs, sighing. "I know, Frank. I know you are, and I know you can. But you can't protect yourself from fear. No one can prevent fear from getting into their own head. It's an emotion, our brains are hardwired to process it and spit it out in all the worse ways."
"Then-"
"But if there's someone else there to distract you, you don't noticed the things that scare you nearly as much. And Frank, I just don't want you to get scared, okay...?"
I mimicked his sitting position, meeting his eyes from over our knees and processing his words. "Fine. Whatever. Just... Next time I stay over, don't do something stupid like that, okay? Sleep in your own bed. If I get scared I'll tell you, and then once I go to sleep again we can both go back to where we started."
"Okay. Sure. That works."
We blinked at each other for a few minutes. I studied his hazel eyes, attempting to figure out what he was thinking about.
"So, what do you want to do today?" I asked finally, giving up on cracking into that brilliant mind of his.
"I don't know... That's a good question." He glanced around his room for a few seconds. "There really isn't much to do in here..."
"What do you normally do on the weekends?"
He nodded to the piano behind him. "Practice. You?"
"Anything and everything," I laughed. "Anything that's doesn't bore my to death."
Gerard laughed, too. "Let's go find something like that to do, then. But get breakfast first... I'm hungry."
"Me too..."
He held his hand out to me and I took, letting him pull me up. We got thrown off balance and went stumbling, bumping shoulders and tripping over feet- our own or each other's, it was hard to tell- and went tumbling to the ground. Gerard's eyes went wide as his back thumped the hard wood and I landed on top of him, laughing as I rolled off.
We layed there on the ground for a seconds before we both started laughing.
I'd come to love the sound of Gerard's laugh- he had a very distinct, boyish laugh that made me smile.
"Let's try that again," I suggested, grinning at him.
He just smiled. We stood up, extremely careful this time. "Okay, that worked a little better."
Chapter Eight - Frank's POV
Start from the beginning
