When it came to putting your sleeping bandmate to bed, there were a few difficulties Zeke hadn't considered.

Carrying him out of the car hadn't been the problem. Neither was getting him up the stairs to their room; Zeke had simply slung him over his shoulder like a six-foot pool noodle in ripped jeans and black leather and made his way up. The problem was, now they were up, and he was standing in front of their beds, and Neo was still fully dressed on his shoulder.

Now here was the issue. You simply couldn't go to bed fully clothed. That wasn't something people did. Zeke had done it before, sure, when he was very drunk, or a few times on tour when he had only meant to relax for a moment and wound up passing out. Neo had probably done it too. But it still wasn't something you did. Especially not with your shoes and jacket on.

Which left him with two options. Option one, drop Neo on the bed as he was, committing a grave and heinous crime against the sanctity of beds that could easily be avoided. Option two…he'd rather not think about it. Gross. Uncomfortable. Wildly inappropriate.

"You're heavy," he muttered to Neo, flopping him down on the mattress. He could at least get him out of his boots and jacket, he decided, still deeply uncomfortable with the idea, but not as uncomfortable as he was with the notion of shoes on a bed. "Your feet better not smell."

Turning away as much as he could, he struggled with the shoelaces, then yanked a boot off Neo's foot where it dangled off the mattress. No noticeable smell, thankfully. Zeke yanked off the other boot and set them both down beside the door.

Slightly less terrible, he thought, regarding the sleeping figure on the bed. Sleeping and drooling slightly. He made a face. If only all the fangirls knew what kind of guy their dreamboat guitarist really was; maybe if they saw him in this state, they would finally stop drooling over him and realize that Zeke was a million times cooler than him.

"Do I take your jacket off?" Zeke mused, studying Neo's pathetic form on the covers. "I don't care, you know. You can sleep in your spiky leather jacket all you want."

With that he tried to turn and step away, only to pause before he could move more than a couple of inches.

Jacket in bed.

No matter how he twisted it, it just wasn't right.

"But you owe me one," he muttered, none-too-gently peeling Neo out of his jacket and tossing it over the chair in the corner. "Or two. Or a lot."

Neo didn't answer. He was out like a light, and to be honest, Zeke was getting pretty damn tired too. It was way too late at night, yet again, and they were still on the road when he was pretty sure they could've made it to L.A. already. Partly his fault, he had to admit that much. If they hadn't gotten sidetracked and then lost in the mountains, they wouldn't be stuck here right now, sharing a room again when he still wasn't sure why he hadn't just dumped Neo to sleep in the corridor outside.

Probably, he realized, because he wasn't actually a monster. Besides, Neo had been kind of, sort of okay on this trip, by his standards. Okay enough that he might actually be turning into a nicer person than Zeke himself, which was, of course, completely unacceptable. Neo was already better than Zeke at everything from skills to popularity; the last thing he needed was to get one-upped at niceness too.

"But that's as nice as I'm getting," Zeke remarked, changing out of his day clothes. "I'm not tucking you in."

Neo didn't stir. Zeke sighed, disappeared to the bathroom to freshen up, then crawled under the covers and curled up into a ball. At least there wasn't a storm going on this time, he told himself. He could finally get a good night's sleep. So long, and good night.

A good hour later, he was still lying there.

Groaning, he sat up, rubbing his eyes like that would make it easier to keep them closed. It didn't help. They were still wide open, and shutting them for any amount of time longer than a blink felt weirdly like an exercise. A weird, stressful eye muscle exercise.

On the other bed, Neo was still sleeping.

Well, he thought, this officially sucked. Another bout of insomnia, and he didn't have any of his usual remedies. His guitar was waiting for him in L.A. So was his laptop with his good headphones to watch dumb YouTube videos on. And he had run out of sleeping pills some time ago. What the hell was he supposed to do now? Just sit there and wait till sleep found him after all, or the morning, whichever got here first?

No matter how he thought about it, that option sounded terrible.

And here he could've been sleepless in the mountains tonight, he thought with a yawn that only added insult to injury. At least the view would've been nice. What did he have here? Not even stars. Just a dumb hotel…

…that he could at least go exploring.

Hopping out of the bed, Zeke strode over to the door, no longer bothering to be quiet. It wasn't like anything short of an explosion could wake Neo up anyway. Outside, the corridor was silent, lights flickering to life as he went, burning bright in his tired eyes. He squinted. Maybe coming out here hadn't been such a great idea after all; but now that he was here anyway, he was too proud to turn back.

Feeling his way along the wall, he found his way to the elevator, opening his eyes just long enough to hit the button for the ground floor. Down, down it went, and suddenly he found himself in the lobby again. The guy from earlier was still sleeping in the chair. Once again Zeke found himself wondering if he should wake him up. Eh, probably not. Not his circus, not his monkeys. Besides, that bastard was actually getting some sleep tonight. The least he deserved in retaliation was some back pain tomorrow.

But that guy wasn't the only person down here anymore—and no, Zeke didn't mean the receptionist dozing off at her desk either. There was another figure sitting on the couch, phone in hand, looking almost as cranky as Zeke felt.

"Hey," Zeke greeted him, flopping unceremoniously into the seat next to him. "Can't sleep either?"

The stranger looked up. It was a man of undefinable age, clad in the nicest, most well-fitting pajamas Zeke had ever seen (no, seriously—were they tailored?), somehow managing to look perfectly put together despite his slight bedhead and the heavy-duty bags under his eyes. Kind of like what Neo was aiming to be. That guy wished he could still look cool with panda eyes and his hair a mess.

"As you can see," the man replied slowly. He was speaking in some sort of foreign accent—vaguely Mediterranean, Zeke guessed, although he hadn't been to the region often enough to tell the country. Growing up his family had never had the money, then he hadn't had the time, and now he didn't have the energy to do paperwork just because some people in his mother's country hadn't realized their protest votes had consequences. But maybe this guy was Italian. Those were the ones who were always impeccably dressed, right?

The man didn't say anything else, but Zeke wasn't deterred. "That makes two of us," he said solemnly, placing a sympathetic hand on the stranger's shoulder. "Is that why you're down here too? Was staying in your room just too boring?"

The stranger didn't answer at once. Instead his face went through a brief journey across the whole spectrum of human emotion before he admitted, "The wi-fi is better here."

"Is it? Dammit, I should've brought my phone," Zeke muttered, his eyes landing on the man's phone. He paused briefly, his sleep-deprived brain catching up with the image on the screen. He looked at the man. Then back at the screen.

"Wait," he said, just as the stranger looked about to ignore him again. "Is that the kitten game?"

The man looked caught for a moment, then he raised an eyebrow, lowering his phone. "You play it too?"

"Of course! I love games with cute animals," Zeke replied at once. "I have so many of them! And no storage left on my phone. Anyway. What cats do you got?"

The man tapped on the screen to open his index of kittens. Zeke's eyes scanned over them and abruptly grew to the size of saucers.

"Princess!" he exclaimed softly. "You have Princess? I've been trying to get her for weeks!"

A glint of pride flickered over the man's tired face. "She's one of my best cats."

"She's the best! And the cutest." Zeke stared with longing at the fluffy white cat on the screen. "How long have you been playing? Getting this many cats must've taken forever—"

"Since Tuesday."

"Tuesday!" Zeke repeated, then the full meaning of the answer hit him. "Wait, this Tuesday? This week? You've been playing this game for a couple days?"

The man cleared his throat, sitting up straighter. "It's a great game," he said.

"No kidding, but no one gets Princess in a couple of days! Some people can't get her for months, unless…" Zeke sized him up and down, then he scrunched up his face in a full-body glare. "You've paid money to get her, haven't you?"

Frowning, the man shook his head, staring at Zeke in a mixture of confusion and mild offense. "Like I would spend any money on a game!"

"You better be telling the truth," Zeke shot back. "Paying to win is for cheaters. A real gamer grinds for his success! He works hard! He sacrifices his sleep and his social life to—"

"Zeke!"

He froze. Uh-oh. "Zeke" in a backstage voice. He was in trouble.

"Well, gotta go," he told the man, jumping back to his feet. "See you around? Maybe next time we can exchange friend codes. Bye!"

Scrambling to leave, he hurried back to the elevator, where Neo was leaning heavily against the door and glaring at him with tired eyes that screamed murder. They were also screaming a lengthy row of insults at Zeke, but that, Zeke decided, was a problem for when his mouth took over the job.

"First of all, I wasn't doing anything forbidden," Zeke declared before that could happen. "I couldn't sleep and started walking around. I didn't even leave the hotel! Uh." Neo was still glaring at him, and he was running out of excuses. "Why are you awake?"

"Why? Why?" Grabbing him by the arm, Neo hauled him back into the elevator, holding onto the walls for balance. "You just disappeared! I hear the door close and I open my eyes and you're gone—what do you think you're doing?"

Zeke couldn't help it; he did his second double take in the span of three minutes. "Wait a sec," he said. "You slept through me shaking you, hauling you out of the car, dragging you up the stairs, putting you to bed and taking off your boots and jacket—which was super gross, by the way," he couldn't resist adding. "And now you wake up the second I try to sneak out! What even are you, my mom?"

The moment the words had left his mouth, he already realized his mistake. "Wait," he said. "My mom wouldn't have noticed me sneaking out even if she was awake. So you're stricter than her!" He pointed a triumphant finger in Neo's face. "You're worse than my mom, you—you helicopter parent!"

Neo, who had grown progressively more awake during his speech, only groaned and stumbled out of the elevator. "Someone has to babysit your dumb ass," he muttered. "Go back to bed. We can't sleep in tomorrow."

"Great idea! I'd love to do that, Mommy," Zeke shot back, hurrying after him down the corridor. "What if I can't sleep, though? Do I have to pretend I'm sleeping?"

Neo pondered that. Either that, or he had briefly fallen asleep while power-walking to their room.

"Just stay in the room," he said at length. "What you do in there is not my problem."

"Even if it keeps you awake too?"

"Whatever."

"Awesome." Running through the open door, Zeke flopped back down on his bed to reach for his phone. "I'm gonna keep playing games here all night and there's nothing you can do about it."

"Do what you want," Neo said again, slipping out of his jeans, not bothering with the shirt before crawling under the covers. "Just don't leave the room again."

"Because you will hear it, even if you're sleeping?"

"Exactly." Neo pulled the blanket over his head. "Night."

"Helicopter mommy," Zeke grumbled, but he didn't try to leave the room again that night. Instead, he opened the kitten game again.

He might not be getting any sleep tonight, but he sure as hell could get Princess.