It was Christmas Eve in George's household and the electricity in the air was enough to leave the hairs on Clay's neck standing. Everyone had been running around for hours since George's mom insisted everyone got up and took part in decorating the house. The twins were sent upstairs to put fake candles in the windows, Uncle Ben and Aunt Lily were in charge of setting up the fake Christmas tree, George's parents in the kitchen with the food and George and Clay were left to-

"George! Hold the ladder straight," Clay said, crushing the garland in his hands. He looks down at his friend, who held the ladder with one hand.

"I am! Your balance is just crap."

Clay holds in his groan and focuses his attention on laying the garland neatly on the windows. When Clay heard they were hanging garland, he thought that George's mom meant inside and over the TV stand or something. No, he was horribly wrong.

After a quick game of Rock, Paper, Scissors- it was Clay who ultimately got sent up. The one guy in the entire household that had a fear of heights, was sent up to do a task that required both hands and an ungodly amount of trust in George. The funny thing was that George was the one who lost the game, but he got shoved up the ladder because of his height.

The ladder beneath his feet quivers and sways and Clay's hands grip the shutters of the windows, snow falling down on top of George's brown hair.

"Hey! Quit dropping snow on me," his friend has the audacity to say to him like George didn't almost drop Clay.

"Hold. The. Fucking. Ladder." Clay pants out, heart hammering and hands shakey. He draws in a quick breath to calm himself and resumes laying the plastic shrub on the window. We're almost done, We're almost done, We're almost done.

"You okay, man?" George calls up to him. Clay sees him take one hand off the ladder.

"Yes! Yes, I'm fine but for the love of God, George, two hands on the ladder." Clay pleads. He hears George mumble something below him but he didn't have the energy to ask what he said. Between Clay's rocky sleep schedule (may or may not be because when he closes his eyes he sees George's face back from at pond) and waking up at five in the morning, he was exhausted and just wanted to lie down for a while.

When the two finally finish and Clay feels the solid ground beneath him again, he was relieved for a solid two seconds before George opened his mouth again.

"See? Was that so hard?"

"I need you to shut up."

"You're fine, you conquered your fear and you lived!"

"Uh, you almost dumped me off the ladder multiple times. If anything, I'm more fearful." Clay scoffs and George rolls his eyes.

"By the way, I wanted to talk to you about something."

Clay throws his head back and groans. "What now?"

"Well, now I'm not going to tell you," George said and Clay looked at his friend. George had that knowing look on his face, he knew Clay was going to want to know what it was and George was just being stubborn.

"Fine! I'm sorry, what did you want to say?"

"I want to adjust some of the rules. For our act." George adds the last part like Clay suddenly had no idea that they were supposed to be 'dating' and needed the clarification.

"Like what?" He said. This could go in a lot of different directions and a majority of Clay wanted it to go in reverse, limiting what they could do even more. George's pickup lines were getting annoying at this point.

"Like-" his friend claps. Clay could tell he was hyping himself up to say whatever it was. "-maybewecouldrelaxsomeoftheboundries."

Clay stares at him, getting not even a fraction of what he said. "What?"

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