Where's Brendon? Ryan had been wondering the same thing. He, Jon, and Spencer had crammed themselves into one of the cabin's little rooms, weirdly spatious without the fourth (and most noteworthy) band member. The goal was to actually make some music without getting too stoned first to either record it all or at least write down their progress, which, truthfully, happened far more often than not. They were absolutely productive - every day, without fail, they did something to further their own skills or add on to ideas for the album, but the issue was that they either didn't remember or couldn't quite recreate the success they had the first time around. So the solution was to bring out the pipes afterward, y'know, to preserve at least some of the work they used all their energy on. Anyway, that clearly brought out another issue: Brendon didn't really get out of bed unless weed was promised.

Spencer was the first awake, then Ryan, then Jon, all waking the other up, and Ryan could have sworn he'd tried already to get Brendon up. They started jotting down ideas without him under the assumption that he was just recalibrating to the waking world, but after an hour had passed, then an hour and a half, it was pretty obvious Brendon had fallen back asleep. And, yeah, maybe it was Ryan's job to try again with him, but Brendon was kind of his favorite and he deserved the rest if he really wanted it that bad, so when he was told by a stern Spencer to go wake him up, he instead sort of wandered around aimlessly to look like he'd gone to complete said task. Maybe that wasn't exactly helpful, 'cause it could make Brendon look worse in the process, but hey. When Ryan glanced in, he seemed so peaceful that it seemed wrong to make him get up - especially when he'd likely have no problem with immediately successfully performing whatever they came up with, when it came down to bringing everything together. Ryan was very familiar with their process, and typically, Brendon was the one who tied all the ends together.

"Umm," Ryan started, trying to look at least a little innocent, and Spencer studied him carefully while Jon was off in his own world, head tipped back with a notepad over his bass's neck. Clearly he had already guessed Ryan had mercy on Brendon. "Probably fell back asleep. He's always up 'til two, you know." Jon was more in tune to his surroundings than it seemed, chipping in a second later. Pretty sure it was four last night. Did someone give him coffee? Yeah, and though it was wisely decaf, Ryan had for sure put too much sugary bullshit into it. Brendon had some sort of puppydog eyes superpower that made people want to give him the world, though, so Ryan wasn't taking the blame for this one. "Don't think so. I'll wake him." He was already shoving aside all of the papers strewn about around him and the guitar from his lap while Spencer made one last slightly annoyed comment - make sure he gets up this time - and Ryan rolled his neck back, a nonverbal 'yeah, yeah.' So he definitely wasn't gonna get away with letting Brendon sleep past noon.

Despite that, Ryan wasted time as much as possible getting to him, trailing aside to the kitchen and grabbing him a water bottle from the fridge and an apple from the counter - no, wait, a muffin, right. He got to Brendon's room and hovered in the doorway, watching the light stream in and dust floating amongst it, then Brendon asleep, clearly having overheated during the night considering his blankets were all kicked away. Ryan pursed his lips, a weight on his chest he couldn't quite discern, before approaching slowly. "Brendon," he whispered, meticulous in keeping his voice as nondisruptive as possible, but that probably wouldn't do him very well with the whole 'waking up' thing. He tried again, crouching beside the bed and placing the water bottle on Brendon's nightstand, resting his newly free hand over Brendon's temple gently. "Bren, hey, wake up. Check it out, I got you breakfast." Ryan held the muffin up in front of his face, smiling warmly. "We gotta practice. If you don't wake up, Spencer's gonna come in here." If nothing else, that was scary enough to get him going.

So, yeah, Brendon didn’t get up unless weed was promised- and not some half-assed ‘you’ll get it after, Bren’, or a sweeter, more manipulative ‘but you do your best work when you’re not high’. Brendon, frankly, vehemently disagreed- Jon came up with that line when he was high, that working title literally just meant ‘weed’, and that lyric was about being high. He strongly believed that this new ‘pipes afterwards’ rule was just to punish Brendon and Brendon alone. So, in rebellion against the dictatorship of Spencer, Brendon decided he wasn’t going to get up- in fact, he’d stay in bed, preferably asleep, unless someone physically dragged him out. And he was a dead weight when he wanted to be, despite being considerably small. Not only was this effectively an efficient protest, it was a clever excuse for Brendon to just be lazy and not have to do any work for once, like they did every day without fail. He was sure they could handle it without him, and he stuck by that even when his three bandmates argued that he was the lead vocalist, he needed to tie up loose ends. Ryan even promised him more writing liberty if he didn’t sleep in so long. Brendon, apparently, could not be swayed.

What helped was that not everybody was on board to drag him out of bed first thing in the morning- Ryan was his guardian angel of sorts, his saviour, defending his honour against the wrath of Spencer and the passiveness of Jon, he supposed. Thank god for Ryan fucking Ready. That particular morning, Brendon had been in and out of consciousness a considerable amount of times, and he happened to be half awake when Ryan (he knew by his gait; you live long enough around someone...) entered his room, hovering by the doorway. Brendon mentally dared him to even think about trying to get him out of bed. To his surprise, he was better at telepathy than he had initially believed, and he heard the door shut and Ryan’s footsteps retreating. Brendon, safe in the knowledge he wouldn’t be disturbed for some time (unless Spencer got particularly annoyed by his absence, but Brendon had a death wish), drifted off right away, enclosed in his fluffy mountain of blankets. It was way too warm in there to even consider going out into the relative cold so he could listen to Jon play the same bass tab fifty times in a row.

Unfortunately, Brendon’s good fortune didn’t last him long, and when Ryan came hunting for him next, he had just finished kicking his blankets aside, deciding that he could only cope with so much cosiness. He was half-awake, and this time Ryan seemed adamant, approaching his bedside and just leaving the door wide open, letting more light stream in from the window in the hallway opposite his door. Letting out a quiet noise of complaint, Brendon turned over and groped to find himself a pillow, pulling it over his head. Brendon. He faintly heard his name and decided quickly after smothering himself with a pillow that it was really too hot for this, so he pushed it off the bed with a sleepy growl of sorts, resting his head against the remaining pillow again and willing Ryan to go away. Unfortunately, he didn’t heed his pleas, and Brendon sighed inwardly when he felt Ryan’s hand against his temple, cracking one eye open and pouting at him. Bren, hey, wake up. ”Go away,” He protested immediately, mumbling, letting his eyes shut tight again. Brendon really hated him right now. ”I really hate you right now.”

In obvious distaste, Brendon batted Ryan’s hand away, pushing it off his temple and then fully turning over onto his other side, facing away from Ryan, the traitor who was supposed to be on his side. Check it out, I got you breakfast. He didn’t care. If it wasn’t weed, he wasn’t interested right now. Though... he imagined he’d be hungry later. Brendon stirred, partway convinced. We gotta practice. Do we, though, Brendon thought; maybe you guys need to, I don’t. If you don’t wake up, Spencer’s gonna come in here. Brendon’s opened quickly and he let out a deep sigh of disappointment before he turned over again to face Ryan, propping himself up on one elbow and snatching the muffin with his free hand, turning it over, considering. He then sat up, resting his back against the headboard, eyeing Ryan, clearly irritated. ”You’re dead to me,” He announced, crossing an arm over his bare chest and narrowing his eyes, shaking his head to get some curls of hair out of his eyes. This morning, the last thing on his to-do list was ‘fix his hair’. ”You’re like, Spencer’s little lackey.”

So maybe wanting Brendon around for practice was a little bit selfish. Jon and Spencer were easygoing enough to deal with during their daily lives, but as bandmates, they totally didn't respect Ryan's control freak, perfectionist tendencies. Spencer would stare him down whenever he subtly tried to change chords that either of them had settled on (usually by playing his own way and waiting for someone to notice and question him about it, which only happened nine out of ten times), or tell him to get out and stop looking at words when he'd taken too much time staring at one particular lyric figuring out the best alternative to it, or put him in instrumental time-out when his playing became particularly discordant whenever he was frustrated. That kind of thing. Jon looked like the child of two fighting parents whenever that sort of stuff went on, looking between them with his hands paused on his bass and wondering what their stupid silent best friend language meant. It was never arguing, but Ryan could be difficult and annoying at times, and he knew it.

Brendon, though, was the fourth part of this equation, an essential piece that made them all work together. Whereas Spencer was his unrelenting, honest second half, and Jon was their patient observer, Brendon was the one who could always lighten the mood and find a compromise. It was a little surprising considering, in their daily lives, he was the sort of childish one, immature and sweet on the surface, but really after so much time with him they'd all realized he was a lot more than what he seemed. When Ryan replayed-replayed-replayed one tiny snippet of a song, wondering how to perfect it, Brendon pulled him away from the obsession and found a way to fix it in himself in impossible time - not just that, but he fixed it so that Ryan liked it, too, stopped searching for an answer and torturing himself. When Spencer was close to snapping at Ryan for that kind of behavior, Brendon could detect the oncoming storm, made something lighthearted out of the circumstances and pulled them all away from the stress without even lifting a finger. And, well. Jon was just prone to secondhand stress, mostly, but Brendon knew to stay near him, made him feel less alone when the two who'd been friends for probably too long were being negligent.

Things were good so far, because Ryan hadn't been too bothersome yet - not that he'd really had a bad obsessive episode since Brendon even joined the band; the worst he'd been was worryingly quiet and self-destructive, staying awake for hours to piece together solutions, but that was enough to bother his bandmates - and Spencer hadn't called him on being self-isolating, dealing with things alone when they were in this together, or something, and Jon hadn't resorted to lighting up to mentally escape the two of them, but it was only a matter of time before the semi-relaxed air was no longer that. So. Brendon had to get up, as much as Ryan wanted to leave him alone. He had a hard job as both the peacemaker and the frontman, so he kind of deserved the rest, but maybe Spencer was right - sleeping 'til noon might be enough, even if he'd stayed up concerningly late as per usual. And Ryan wasn't going to tell Spencer that he sometimes encouraged that habit by staying up with him, not ever.

When he came in, though, Brendon seemed to know what was happening, pulling a pillow over his head in silent irritation. Ryan mentally rolled his eyes at the drama of it all. When the pillow was thrust off the bed fairly aggressively Ryan watched it, trying not to smirk lest Brendon's eyes open and he see Ryan laughing at his theatrics. Go away. That pout, big brown puppy-dog eyes, and he could get away with murder. Ryan pursed his lips desperately, but when Brendon's eyes shut again he allowed himself to smile, overly amused. I really hate you right now. Ryan's fingers started carding through the hair by his temple, maybe messing with him. "No, you don't," he said, almost sing-song, and then Brendon batted him away before turning away completely. Ryan took his hand back and leaned over the edge of the mattress, staring at the back of his head. "Oh. Maybe you do." He hummed to himself, knew Brendon wasn't totally serious but would be irritated by him for the rest of the day at least, and that sucked. Ryan could barely handle thinking he wasn't in Brendon's good favor for, like, a minute, even. Fucking Spencer, really. Should've come here himself.

Speak of the devil. At the mention of the drummer's name Ryan heard his long-suffering sigh and was met with Brendon's gaze again, which would be fantastic if he didn't look annoyed. Brendon really didn't look like that often - Ryan wasn't used to it. He sat back on his heels, hands freed of the muffin, and put on his best innocent face, willing Brendon to forgive him for this terrible crime. You’re dead to me. Ryan looked down, running a finger over the hardwood almost guiltily. "I'll be dead for real if we're not back in ten. So get over it," he returned bravely, trying to match Brendon's ruthless just-awoken attitude. You're like, Spencer’s little lackey. Ryan stood up, clearing his throat and scratching the back of his neck, shrugging helplessly. "I got you an hour and a half more of sleep, you know. I was supposed to wake you earlier. Where's my thanks?" He was smiling gently, though, clearly having lost his resolve to be bold in facing a cranky Brendon. He pushed at his shoulder softly, gesturing at his breakfast. "Eat your muffin, drink your water, be nice to me. I'm your favorite." Ryan raised his eyebrows, amused, daring Brendon to tell him otherwise.

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