Give Me Some Of That Bass // phan

Gloom Boys

"I brought a knife to a gun fight
I brought my words to a fist fight
I brought my hell to you"

***

Phil woke up Saturday morning earlier than he would have liked. He didn't know if it was his internal alarm clock or just the general stress, but no matter how late he stayed up at night, he was always awake too early. Nine a.m. was for overachievers.

Grayson was hanging off the other side of his bed, curled around one of his pillows as he snored on quietly. He was the only of his three band mates who didn't kick in their sleep or hog all the blankets. Chris and Elliot had settled on the floor with very minimal grumbling.

The last time they'd all slept in one room together, it had been July and the sweltering heat had made them sleep in separate corners as far away from each other's body heat as possible. Now, the winter air had them dragging every possible blanket from around the house into the room to stay warm.

Phil pushed himself up heavily, still foggy from sleep. Gray didn't even move as Phil shifted around before standing up and heading to the door; they were all heavy sleepers, so he didn't worry too much about keeping quiet as he stepped around Chris and Ellie's splayed out bodies. By the time he made it to the hallway, he was much more awake and encouraged to go downstairs by the smell of coffee.

"Morning," his mum said as he walked into the kitchen. She was still in her robe and pajamas, but he knew she would soon get dressed in her regular work clothes. Even though she pretty much ran on the same schedule he did, she never wasted a free day. He felt exhausted just thinking about it. "Everyone else still asleep?"

Phil nodded half-heartedly and grabbed a mug from the cabinet. "Might be for a while, they stayed up pretty late last night."

"I noticed," she said. Phil tried not to feel too guilty about any noise-making from them that might have kept her up.

For the last week, they had slowly begun to make their way through Chris's friendship bucket list, despite the almost unending amount of complaining it got from Phil and Grayson. Phil would rather be left on his own for a little while, he had too much shit to sort through already without his band mates constantly dragging him out of the house for sleepovers and nights out in the city; he didn't need headaches and hungover friends on top of his thousand other problems. And Grayson didn't very much like being reminded of the ascending separation of their group, but he was much more easily convinced than Phil. Elliot had become a lot harder to say no to.

His mum only smiled wanly at him; she seemed to be walking on eggshells with him as of late, and he didn't know if that was because of Elliot or because of Dan. Whatever it was, it annoyed him, how pretty much everyone these days was suddenly starting to care about his feelings. Pity and sympathy and hope and worry, all thrown at him from every possible direction. They thought they were helping but it just made things worse, because he didn't like dragging people down into his bad moods with him.

The silence between them was just bordering on being awkward when Chris walked into the kitchen, giving his mum an excuse to leave the two of them alone. Phil relaxed his shoulders when she left.

"Mm, coffee," Chris muttered, dragging his feet as he walked towards the counter. He had never been much of a morning person, and Phil was mystified as to how he could even manage to speak actual words at such an early hour.

"Good morning to you, too," Phil said. "I'm surprised you're not the last one awake."

"Not by choice." Chris dropped an obscene amount of sugar into his mug and stirred it idly. "Elliot nearly punched me in the face. He's more violent when he's unconscious, have you ever noticed that?"