And this was how two idiots found themselves sitting at a wobbly table at an underpriced diner at eleven-thirty in the morning, sipping horrible coffee and hoping it wouldn't poison them.

Well, this was how it had started. The actual explanation required a few more steps. After blinking and closing his eyes for a good three hours, Neo had jumped upright and nearly knocked the lamp off his bedside table. Then he had let out a string of curses, yanked Zeke out of bed, and hurried off to the bathroom while yelling at him to get ready. Which, of course, had accomplished the exact opposite of what he'd intended, because then Zeke had dragged his feet on purpose, making them even later. The breakfast buffet had obviously been closed by the time they arrived downstairs, and they had been relegated, hungry and miserable, to the next-best place that served coffee and food.

"Stop being so grumpy already," Zeke muttered, taking a sip from his coffee and grimacing. "It's not my fault you overslept!"

"I overslept because I had to drag your stupid ass back to the room," Neo shot back, gulping down the vaguely dishwatery substance this place marketed as coffee and refusing to make a face. "Why did you sneak out? Like we haven't put up with enough shit already!"

"For the last time, I was bored," Zeke retorted, "and I didn't think you would care, Mommy."

Neo's face heated up. He had no way to talk himself out of this. The truth was that, ever since their early tours, Zeke had developed a habit of sneaking out and disappearing for hours on end, and Neo had never known peace until he finally returned. Young Zeke had been gullible, even more oblivious to stranger danger than his current self, and Neo had lived in constant fear that he would one day walk off after someone and never return.

So, like any sensible bandmate, he had started paying attention. Maybe too much attention, but at this point he had basically conditioned himself into a near-Pavlovian response to any sound of Zeke leaving. Okay, not the best comparison. He didn't start drooling or anything. But he did notice it no matter how fast asleep he was, even when a bomb going off under his bed wouldn't elicit more than a slightly louder snore.

Neo had, after all, brought Zeke into the band. And now he'd be damned if he couldn't keep him in it.

"You're not even saying anything," Zeke remarked, and abruptly Neo realized that he'd been spacing out instead of crafting a response. "What's with you? Are you sick? Do you have a fever?"

"No," said Neo and added, for good measure, "idiot."

"Ah, there he is." Zeke finished off the rest of his coffee. "Now are you gonna make a comeback to the mommy comment or do I have to feed you more caffeine?"

"No," said Neo.

"No, no comeback or no to the caffeine?"

"Yes," said Neo.

"What's wrong with you?"

Neo yawned, forced down another gulp of his horrible coffee, then sighed. Loudly.

"I can tell you that," he said, setting down his empty mug. "I'm tired, hungry, we're super late for L.A., and this coffee tastes like shit. Now what is wrong with you?"

Zeke shrugged. "Joke's on you," he said. "Even my therapist doesn't know that."

"You have a therapist?"

"Had a therapist," Zeke corrected him. "She said she couldn't help me either, so I stopped going."

Neo snorted. "Why, because you're hopeless?"

"No, she just never had time," he said lightly. "Food?"

They both chowed down on soggy bagels, trying very hard not to think about how long they must've spent on display before finally finding their way onto their plates. Neo was still fighting the urge to make a face. He hadn't had to deal with sketchy roadside diners and bad coffee since the early tours of the band, and he wasn't about to get used to them again now, thanks a million. Romanticize road trips all you want, but he liked the luxury of comfortable travel.

Across from him, Zeke was chewing with a little more vigor, looking almost like he was enjoying his food. "This is so roadtrippy," he said at last. "But it's kinda like the stuff we write songs about. It's cooler as a music video."

Neo pushed aside his empty plate. "Roadtrippy is not a word."

"First of all, you're not a native speaker, you don't get to tell me what's a word and what's not a word," Zeke retorted, and Neo rolled his eyes. "And second, I just made it a word."

"You can't just do that!"

"Why not? All words once got invented by somebody." Zeke finished off his bagel and chewed. "Language rules are just a social construct, Neo, don't be so boring!"

Neo didn't comment on that. He just gave Zeke a very long look, wondering how someone so weirdly smart could still be so painfully stupid.

"Let's go," he said instead, rising to his feet. "We're losing time here."

Zeke looked ready to protest, but he only let out a huff and followed. "Must be fun, living in the real world," he muttered. "Ain't it fun?"

Side by side they strolled back out, ignoring the owner's protests about returning their mugs and plates. Neo claimed the driver's seat again, and Zeke reached for the aux cord to play some songs and keep them awake. And then they were back on the road again, fast-paced guitars playing from the tinny speakers and the landscape racing past. Their routine felt well-rehearsed by now, almost like playing together on stage near the end of a tour, when every move and every note was carved into their muscle memory without any need for explanations. There it was again, that weird feeling of almost enjoying it, like they were actual…travel buddies. Neo grimaced at himself. Since when were Zeke's speech patterns invading his vocabulary, anyway?

The point was, he was stressed, tired and under-caffeinated, but right now he couldn't help feeling weirdly at peace.

And maybe, just maybe, he wasn't looking forward to this trip ending so soon.

Because the moment they reunited with their bandmates, Neo already knew they would go back to normal.

~ ~ ~

At least, Angelo thought around a stifled yawn, Las Vegas wasn't too far now.

There was still no information on their targets. They really had disappeared off the face of the earth, or else he had no idea what had happened to them. No one seemed to have seen them or indeed heard from them since Chicago, and at this point he often found himself wondering if these people existed at all. Maybe they were chasing an illusion, a phantom to lead them in the summer, and someone had scammed them. Should he check their man at the car rental again? He didn't know him well, and for all he knew that guy could well have made off with the suitcase himself.

"Hey, boy," he spoke up. "You said you knew the people who rented our car?"

He half expected the kid to say something about having a name again, but this time he had the good sense not to get sidetracked. "That's right," he said. "They're in a band, they're pretty famous—"

"Don't care, didn't ask," Angelo cut him off. "Give me the important details."

"Like what?"

"I don't know." He gestured vaguely. "Did they really rent that car? Do they actually exist?"

"I…think so," the boy replied. "The lead guitarist goes by a stage name, but he rented it under his civilian name. Why, you think someone tried to trick us about the car being rented out?"

Luca furrowed his brow. "It does sound suspicious," he remarked. "The car we need just so happened to get rented by two celebrities going to L.A.? If someone wanted to send us on a wild-goose chase far away while they made off with our money—"

"—they wouldn't have chosen two celebrities," the kid cut him off. "It's too suspicious and easy to disprove. I think the person who told us that was telling the truth."

"Hm," said Angelo. That was indeed a very good point, but the boy had been making a little too many good points for his liking lately. If he commented on every one of them, he might get cocky.

Fine. Different approach. "Describe those people, then," he said. "You said you know them?"

"A little," said the boy. "One is a tall blond Finnish man with long hair…down to here, I think," he said, motioning to his shoulders. "The other is average-sized, muscular, dyed blue hair—easy to recognize. He has a strange accent, but he's not a foreigner," he added. "Both of them are in their mid-twenties. Anything else?"

Angelo tried to retain all that information and failed miserably. "To hell with it," he muttered. "Don't you have a picture or something?"

"One minute," the kid replied, swiping through his phone. "Here's one," he said.

Angelo turned in his seat. Staring back at him from the screen was a skinny young man with blond hair down to his shoulders, pale enough to get sunburned in cloudy weather, his already-wide eyes made even wider by a frankly tasteless amount of black makeup. There was something distinctly neurotic about the line of his mouth, and Angelo found himself thinking he might get along with this one after a drink or five.

"Good," he said. "Where's the other?"

The kid did another quick search. Then he held out the screen again.

Angelo stared.

The picture stared back.

Angelo kept staring.

Little by little, the gears in his brain started turning.

Then he turned back around and let out a long string of curses.

~ ~ ~

The day drifted by. There were no troubles on the road, neither outside the car nor in it, and Neo found himself relaxing. The silence in the car was filled out by song after song and the occasional voice of the GPS, the sun breaking through the clouds and illuminating the road ahead. Everything was going smoothly. So smoothly that even Neo found himself believing they might make it to their destination by tonight.

Noon came and went. The afternoon was in full progress. The landscape still kept changing. The silence between him and Zeke was almost companionable, or maybe he just imagined it might be. They had been getting along better over the past day or two. Maybe, his mind whispered, it would last this time instead of snapping right back to their pointless arguments and mutual ignoring of reach other.

But he still dreaded the end of the trip. Just a little.

So when the rows of taillights popped up ahead of them, indicating a traffic jam, he didn't think much of it at first. They had lost a lot of time, but he had still factored this in. They'd be fine.

Two hours later, they were still in the same spot as before.

And it was also getting dark.