Love at Sea (Finnick Odair)

Chapter 5

"What in the world are you doing?" Finnick yawned as he came and noisily stumbled down into the basement.

"Oh, hey, hold this," Taiya said quickly as she hurled a pile of blankets at him.

"Taiya, it's 6 in the morning. We should be asleep."

"I had such a good idea and I couldn't sleep. I'm just waiting for Tyler to wake up. I left a note on his bench telling him to come over."

"So let me get this straight. You were drunk last night, right as rain this morning, you've woken up with some mystery idea, broke into Tyler's house to leave him a note and are now tearing apart my basement?"

"Exactly," she nodded. "Well Tyler leaves his door unlocked, so technically I didn't break into his house... I just walked in."

"Ok," Finnick shrugged as he sat down on the stairs and leaned against the wall. "What's this excellent idea?"

"What'd Tyler use to help me after my parents died?" she asked him with a smile.

"He told you what to do a lot, so bossiness?"

"Funny. I like it," she smiled. "Training's the answer. I think it's a good idea. The only training area we have in 4 is the school's training grounds. But I don't think either of us really wants to be holding deadly weapons around a bunch of children. So I thought, why not use this big basement? What else are we going to do with it? It's a dumping ground now."

"You're turning my basement into a training room?" He asked and she nodded. "At 6 in the morning?"

"Go to bed Finnick, it's ok," she laughed as she walked up to him and twirled a loose curl that was resting on his forehead around her finger.

"About last night..." Finnick started when thundering footsteps interrupted.

"Taiya?" Tyler called out.

"Seriously? How early do you two wake up?" Finnick exclaimed.

Taiya smiled at him before quickly ducking down and kissing him before yelling out, "basement!"

Tyler came down the basement stairs and smirked at a half-asleep Finnick. "Little early for you is it, fish boy?"

"He's sleepy," Taiya mocked.

"I am," Finnick reluctantly agreed. "I'm going back to bed. You two psychopaths can enjoy yourselves but this is not an hour any reasonable person should be functioning," he grumbled as he grabbed the pile of blankets and made his way back upstairs.

Tyler looked around the room in confusion. "Seriously? You leave a note saying come over when you wake up because you want help redecorating?"

"I'm not redecorating Tyler," Taiya sighed. "And if I was, I wouldn't ask you. Have you seen your place?"

"Ouch," Tyler smirked.

"I had a brilliant idea!"

"Did it hurt?"

"Dude," Taiya scowled making Tyler chuckle.

"Ok let's hear the idea."

"I want to turn this into a training room. You did training with me after my parents died and it helped me. I know we've started running again but I'm thinking we should do weapons training. It helped before it could help now."

"I'm not so sure Taiya," Tyler hesitated.

"We're leaning away from it when I think we should be leaning into it. You think me holding a weapon will push me over the edge, but I think it might help."