#prompt.box

Sapnap couldn't even remember what he was looking at, honestly. But he had his hand saw open to start to cut into a damaged tree limb, yelled out a warning to Dream and George on the ground, and then... He didn't know. Maybe he heard a bird or something. (Or maybe he thought he saw a hornet's nest. He wasn't doing a repeat of last time; at first buzz or sight of a grey, blobby, paper nest, he was setting the canopy on fire before he'd climb up first, clients be damned.)

Next thing he knew, he heard his climbing rope snap, his weight was jolting down completely into his flipline, and he was pendulum-swinging feet first into the trunk.

That's one way to wake yourself up in the morning. He was suddenly grateful for all that safety and redundancy training.

"Shit, heads up!" He called out.

He looked down and watched his nearly brand new, beautiful, expensive, orange and blue dynamic rope drop seventy feet to the ground and coil on-top of and around his rope bag. Shit.

Somewhere, the sound of a chainsaw stopped. Below him, Dream came into view with his dumb, custom green and white saw pants that matched the rest of his hi-vis gear. His face shield was down, and he was lightly coated in saw dust. Dream looked up at Sapnap, then down at the rope bag, then back up at Sapnap.

"Dude, you good?" Was the first thing Dream said.

"Yep."

"Your rope's on the ground."

"Yeah, flipline caught me though." His voice was shakier than he expected. Sue him, he was a little spooked.

"Okay well, put your saw away and strap in with your lanyard," he turned back towards the house's driveway, as Sapnap started to do as he said. "George! Grab your gear, you're going up!"

—

Twenty minutes later, George was scrambling up to him even farther away from the trunk than Sapnap was because this tree didn't actually have any good unions for climbing. (In fact, he was surprised at how fast they managed to set another line at the correct height, considering.)

George paused when he got level with Sapnap, sitting back in his harness with his leg sticking straight out because of how his knee ascender connected to the rope.

"You okay?"

Sapnap nodded.

"We're gonna make fun of you for like, forever for this, you know?"

Sapnap nodded again. George grinned and continued climbing.

//

Context: the dteam are urban arborists a little ways into a job and Sapnap was going up to do some smaller pruning cuts. In my head, Sapnap and George are mainly climbers and Dream is mainly a rigger.