Hotel breakfasts tended to be a game of roulette.

Sometimes you could luck out with them, but more often than not something tasted weird or off, or your favorite food just happened to be all out when you arrived with not enough time to wait for seconds, or breakfast was only served at odd hours that you just so happened to miss by a couple minutes. Hostel breakfasts, on the other hand, weren't just roulette; they were a constant game of Russian roulette where the options were no breakfast at all, scraps on a plate, food poisoning, and servings large and heavy enough to put you in a food coma. Relatively speaking, Zeke and Neo had lucked out; their place fell squarely into the last category, and their biggest problem was figuring out what to do with all the food under their host's watchful eyes.

They had come at what they had believed to be a fairly normal breakfast time, but even though the hostel was allegedly fully booked they were the only ones in the room. Glaring at them from behind a rudimentary counter was the receptionist from last night, still in the same outfit as yesterday and otherwise showing no signs of having slept at all. Maybe she didn't need sleep, Zeke mused. Maybe she was some kind of middle-of-nowhere roadside hostel cryptid. Or maybe people working in these types of places were simply like that.

"Hey," he told Neo in an undertone, "have we ever had a music video with a creepy hotel theme before?"

Neo blinked, setting down his cracked mug full of a liquid that allegedly answered to the name of coffee. "What?"

"I mean, we are kinda running out of themes," Zeke continued, chewing on a piece of toast. "We've had vampires, werewolves, a creepy circus, some kinda religious imagery, uh, that one thing with the Grim Reaper that you guys still haven't explained to me—"

"That's because we don't get it either," Neo muttered.

"What?"

"It was just for aesthetics. Whatever. Keep talking."

"And you made me feel dumb!" Zeke burst out, gesturing with his piece of toast. "Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, video themes. We've had every gothic thing in the book, even though it's never got anything to do with the contents of the song and I still don't get it, and then we've got, like, a zillion videos where we pretend to be a bunch of normal dudes having fun in some kind of abandoned place. We need some new ideas, right?"

Neo took another sip of coffee and grimaced, then drained the whole mug at once.

"Disgusting," he muttered. "What did you say?"

"Were you even listening to me?"

"No," Neo said flatly. "I'm still mad at you."

"Because I interrupted your beauty routine?"

"Damn right you did!" Neo slammed down his mug on the table. "I already had to go without it yesterday! Do you know what I look like?"

Zeke studied his face. He did, for the most part, look like Neo, but less like Neo the ethereal emo icon and more like Neo the tired musician who hadn't slept properly in two days because of an album deadline. "You look like a regular dude," he said.

"Exactly!" Neo burst out. "I look horrible! Do you know how ugly regular dudes are?"

"It suits you, though," Zeke remarked. And it did; he kind of liked that Neo, the one with dark circles under his eyes and uneven red splotches over his nose and cheeks and murder in his gaze. Sure, he might be even more of a prickly cactus than his flawless public self, but at least he was a real cactus instead of a heavily-edited houseplant in an aesthetic Instagram post. Still a prick, Zeke thought, but at least he was a person.

"Go to hell," Neo muttered, chomping down on his eggs and bacon with a little too much vigor and otherwise ignoring him. Zeke let his gaze roam around the empty breakfast room. Maybe it wasn't empty, he thought idly. Maybe the other guests were all ghosts and he and Neo just couldn't see them, but they were actually all at the other tables, enjoying their so-called coffee and morning toast. That would make sense. Maybe he could go over and politely offer one of them his remaining pile of food.

Then a flap of wings caught his attention, and a very visible, very living sparrow came flying towards him, settling on his extended hand. "Hey, little friend," he greeted the bird. "What brings you in here? Are you hungry? Here, you can have some of my eggs—wait, would that be cannibalism?"

The bird only chirped in response. Zeke shrugged. "Or you can just have some toast and bacon," he said. "Bon appétit, little bird—what are you doing?"

Across from him, Neo had climbed up on his chair and just stood there, frozen, holding his plate high above his head. "What is that thing doing here?" he hissed. "Hurry up, kill it!"

Zeke looked around, fully expecting to find a snake or a venomous spider, but there was nothing. "What thing?" he said. "Can you see ghosts now?"

"The bird!" Neo gestured furiously with one hand while balancing his plate with the other. "What are you doing? Kill it!"

"No! Why would I kill a tiny little bird, you monster?" Zeke glared up at him. "They're friends!"

"They spread diseases," Neo retorted, "and it's not tiny!"

Understanding dawned. A grin spread all over Zeke's face, and he picked up the bird to hold it closer to Neo. "What," he said, "don't tell me you're scared of birds? Of tiny wittle birdies?"

"I'm not scared," Neo answered, backing away. "This one's just…damn big."

Zeke studied him with the eyes of a hungry cat studying its prey.

"Can we keep him—"

"No!"

Startled by the sudden shout, the bird flapped its wings and flew off—directly into Neo's face.

Several things happened at once. There was a blood-curdling scream, then a string of curses, then a loud crash as the plate landed on the ground, scattering its contents all over the floor. Then the chair tipped over, there was a clatter, another curse, and then the crack of a table breaking under Neo's weight as he toppled backwards to the ground. The bird vanished into goodness knew where while Zeke watched the scene unfold, grinning down at Neo as he groaned, cursed, and slowly scrambled to his feet.

"Can you do that again?" he said. "I didn't get it on camera the first time."

~ ~ ~

"We already said we were sorry!" Zeke shouted over his shoulder as they were being ushered out into the parking lot roughly ten minutes later. "What else do you want?"

The receptionist didn't answer. Instead she only pushed them both out of the back door, then slammed it shut behind them. "And stay out!" her muffled voice came from inside the hostel.

"We got the memo, sheesh!" Zeke made a face over his shoulder. "Thanks for the memories! Even though they weren't so great."

Neo didn't say anything. He had barely finished picking the last wood splinters out of his hair, and he was still bruised and scratched in places, a state of dishevelment that suited him quite nicely, Zeke thought. Brought the stuck-up bastard down a peg. Now that he was so badly battered, he almost looked like a person Zeke might just want to be friends with.

"You can stop sulking now, by the way," Zeke remarked on the way to the car. "You look really good like this."

Neo flipped him off, an irritated blush blooming all over his cheeks—or at least it looked irritated to Zeke, because this was Neo, and he was pretty much always irritated anyway. "No, I don't," he muttered.

"Yeah, you do."

Neo rubbed a hand over his face. "Really?" he muttered in a voice smaller than anything Zeke had known he was capable of. Very briefly, Zeke found himself wondering if he'd been possessed by one of the ghosts from the hostel, some shy little person who only spoke in a tiny font.

"What's with you?" Zeke asked, catching up to him. "You sound weird."

"You're weird," Neo retorted and unlocked the car, opening the trunk and shoving his overnight bag inside. "Let's go! Where are we, anyway?"

Zeke followed suit, then opened the navigation app on his phone. "Uh…the middle of the middle of nowhere," he said. "I think we've already gotten pretty far, though."

"Give me that."

Neo reached for Zeke's phone, but his aim was off, and instead of snatching it he ended up knocking it down on the floor of the car, where it slid and disappeared under the backseat.

They both looked at each other.

"Can you get that?" said Neo. "I'll try the car GPS."

By all known rules of logic and fairness Zeke should've said no. He probably would've said no, because it was Neo's fault and also on general principle, if he hadn't been so utterly flabbergasted by Neo's sudden and uncharacteristic politeness.

"Okay?" he found himself saying, sliding out of the passenger seat again and opening the back door to crouch under the seats and pick the phone back up.

Thankfully, sure enough, his phone was easy to find. But there was something else. Something he had no memory of dropping under the backseat.

"Hey, Neo," he said over his shoulder. "Neo."

"What?" came the irritable response. "Can't find it?"

Zeke narrowed his eyes.

"This is gonna sound totally crazy," he said, "but have we always had a huge-ass suitcase hidden under the backseat?"