I was trying to keep my eyes closed and pretend that I'm asleep, thinking that maybe Clay would get up and leave with Nick.

But Nick had other plans. He turned the lights on to wake us up quicker.

And there goes Clay's acting attempt.

I was looking at them through the mirror with half-opened eyes, trying to give the impression of just waking up and winning some time by doing so.

"Wait-" Nick looked around, "what's going on here-"

Cold sweat washed all over my back as I realized how stupid we were. Our plan to be as convincing as possible backfired on us, as our stupid selves left our clothes sprawled all over the floor.

I closed my eyes immediately, hoping Clay would manage the situation. And he finally got up, making a statement that worked against us by just standing there with his boxers, socks and nothing else.

"Bruh." Nick's response didn't make us wait.

"What do you want?" Clay squinted at the light, not bothering to put pants on.

"Not your half-naked body for sure." Nick's voice sounded disgusted.

I realized that it would be more believable if I pretended to wake up too. Cause let's be honest, both Patches and the boys were making a lot of noise, and pretending to be asleep would just make me look suspicious.

So I did. Turning around, squinting and not saying anything. Just looking at them and pretending like I was trying to understand what was going on.

And that's when it hit me. I could save the situation.

"Why are you half-naked? And what are you doing here?" I acted surprised about both Clay's and Nick's appearances.

"Oh, I got hot and took off my clothes in the middle of the night, sorry about that." He started to pick up both my and his clothes from the ground, quick enough to not let Nick analyze them and find out that some of those were mine. Luckily they all just looked like a pile of fabric.

We both deserved a star on our foreheads for our kindergarten-level of acting.

But at least it worked.

"As you can hear, Patrick is going insane." I didn't know if Nick really got her name wrong or was just doing it on purpose.

It was hard to focus on their conversation when there was Clay casually standing there in his boxers. But luckily Nick addressed it and made him put on some clothes before they left to deal with Patches. I waited for them to leave and only then got up from the bed and put on some pants myself, proud that I managed to hide the fact that I was just in my underwear.

We managed to calm Patches down by giving her some treats and putting the lights on the lowest settings. And after that we realized that there were only a few hours left until the night would end. And me and Clay haven't slept yet.

The rest of the day before the flight didn't have anything notable in it. We just slept for a bit, got up and did all the things we had to do. Driving to my place so I could pack, taking Patches to Clay's mom's place, helping Clay pack cause apparently he wasn't very good at it.

"Why are you taking so much merch with you, jeez." Nick complained, putting pressure on the clothes so that Clay could zip the suitcase.

"I didn't have time to ship the latest releases to George. I might as well do it now." He explained, almost ruining the zip from how strong he was pulling it.

And suddenly thinking about the climate in the UK, I realized something.

"I should've packed warmer clothes," I shrugged, realizing that our flight was 3 hours away, "eh, too late."

"It's okay, you can borrow mine-" Clay was too focused on the zip to realize that Nick was here as well, and what he said sounded weird. He made up for it by adding another sentence, "or Nick's.. Or George's... yeah."

I sighed seeing Nick's smirk. He knows way too much, and half of the information in his brain are probably the plot of his rich imagination.

Clay finally finished and got up, starting to look around.

"Papers check, keys check, clothes check, everything check," the last thing he did was turning off everything that had to do something with electricity, "we'll make it there on Christmas."

"Hopefully. If the plane doesn't crash." Nick always had something blunt to say.

"Or the train.. the iconic train." I added.

Clay was too annoyed at this point to make a remark. Or he was too stressed to speak. I could see it in his body language.

And that's how we locked all the doors and windows and got in the Uber that was waiting outside, throwing a one last glance at the house, in hopes of coming back in a week and finding it untouched.