He'd done it. Ryan finally successfully maintained a relationship for a year. Well - they'd already recently celebrated the milestone, but he was still ecstatic about it; he did have longer, more chaotic relationships in the past, and none of them were as good as he and Brendon were. They fit together like puzzle pieces, and with anyone else he just ended up not matching, getting irritated all the time, not splitting up despite the unhealthiness for an absurd amount of time. Brendon he understood, and it seemed Brendon easily understood him; they quickly learned so much about each other and had a close prior friendship to boot. Safe to say Brendon had fast become closer to him than anyone else before, possibly even surpassing childhood friends, and he didn't see anything but blue skies for them.

The band, on the other hand, was looking a little rough, and Ryan excused it away with them just being sick of one another after so much time working on the new album, executing everything as perfectly as possible, barely seeing anyone but each other and people from their team. Turns out you got sick of people real quick when you withheld annoyance at every little bothersome habit, had no way to really get away for a while, so on. He was fooling himself thinking all of that; the start of their venture had gone off well enough, but now he detected slight changes here and there, picked up on strange musical directions played from a hotel room over or down in the tour bus lounge that he would never incorporate into his work. Ryan drove himself a bit crazy when he thought about it too much, his ever-present anxiety turning him into a speculative, constant worrier, and promptly pushed everything to the side. The tour had been over for only a bit of time now - he could deal with it later if there was actually an issue.

Aside from his conspiracy theories, everything was fine. Great, actually. Their live album he'd initially been worried about, thought it was weird that so much of them backstage and all was going to permanently exist, but it was surprisingly successful. The real album received praise about they 'artistic evolution' (Ryan partially lent credit to Brendon for maybe inspiring that, since the process of making it conveniently came together a fairly short amount of time after he joined), and the goddamn [i]Rolling Stone[/i] claimed they'd made one of the boldest moves in rock history. Thirteen year old Ryan would've been even more ridiculous than he was, hearing that. And although he wasn't sure how to put it into perspective, he'd learned that the album was selling fast - in the thousands, tens of thousands, more - and that's what he'd been looking for. People to hear them out. Based on the reception during tour, they liked what they heard, too, must've been moved in some way.

They were lucky to get away with such a change, and there was plenty of critique on that, but still. Everything was [i]great.[/i] Usually Ryan would be right back on track writing, but he was creatively exhausted after this more exhausting round, and all he wanted to do was lie down forever and take back whatever ludicrous amount of hours of sleep he'd missed out on while he was gone. And that's actually what he did before it, unsurprisingly, got boring after a few days, and he was back to being around Brendon half the time if not more - even after months of being crammed together. Sometimes their patience ran short because they were human or whatever. Difference: Ryan very quickly recovered from those drained times with Brendon, whereas he'd really have to separate from Spencer or Jon for a [i]while.[/i] And with Brendon, for either of them it was 'hey, I need some space,' - he'd tell Jon and Spencer to fuck off for a bit and they'd definitely say the same back to him. So they worked well together.

Anyway. The exhaustion was fading away fairly quickly, and it became easier to actually get out of his house. When he rolled over from a close to middle-of-the-day nap (a concept he was unused to but enjoying), his phone was alight with notifications, and he scrambled to grab it. Blinked a few times to read the screen clearly. Brendon was asking if he wanted to come over, was he busy, and absolutely he wanted to come over, was that even a question. Honestly, they'd probably have already moved in together if only they hadn't been outside of their homes for the majority of the last year, where it was impossible to make a big change like that. Or at least, Ryan thought about it sometimes, mind drifting off to what could become of them, how they had so much ahead of them. That aside, Ryan tapped out what was a vaguely incoherent 'hell yeah,' typos abound from his sleepy state, and he quickly got out of bed, got ready. This baby blue V-neck was all he could find that appealed to him, and he realized it was probably not even his, or Brendon just stole it so often to wear when he was ofer that it seemed that way. In fact, it was a miracle it was even still in his house.

He figured Brendon would probably enjoy that kind of reminder, so he pulled it on, tried to undo all the signs of sleep in his face in the mirror, and headed out. He absently thought of what they could do in the car, and when the idea of playing music was introduced, he quickly shook it off. Playing guitar and singing [i]again[/i] so soon would probably kill him, or he'd do it himself. He texted Brendon a couple of minutes before he arrived that he was pretty much there, because like hell was he gonna [i]knock on the door[/i] like they were [i]acquaintances[/i], and instead used his spare key to let himself in. Not necessary, it turned out. [b]"Brendon Blake. Your door was [i]unlocked.[/i] Unless that's for my convenience, I'm disappointed,"[/b] he called, facetious, voice gradually lowering as he became more within earshot while approaching Brendon in his living room - who appeared to have been half on his way to meet him on the door, anyway. Ryan closed the gap himself and planted a modest kiss on his cheek in greeting, hands automatically going to his waist, levelling his gaze. [b]"Hey, you. What are you up to?"[/b]