The Sterling Nightingale ⟷ Finnick Odair/OC

To keep me afloat

Chapter Sixty Eight | To keep me afloat

"Is it that you have the taste to renew the devilish sport which you played so successfully last year? Do you wish to see me once more a love-sick suppliant at your feet, so that you might again have the pleasure of kicking me aside, like a troublesome lap-dog?" Emma Orczy, The Scarlet Pimpernel

"Hey, watch where you're throwing that thing!" a loud voice shouts from the other end of the docks. Finnick chuckles, looking up just in time to see old man Rory hurl the end of a rope back into a docked boat. The boy who had slipped up is a new worker who is here to learn the basics, and he hurries to grasp it before it falls back into the water.

The six o'clock sun pours down on the docks of District 4 with beautiful splendor. As it reflects off the ocean's surface, it seems to turn the water into a thousand gems that glitter with wild intention back at him. Most of the district is already up. There's work to be done, and the docks are already bustling with activity. The shopkeepers will be up soon enough to sell their wares – that is, if the raucous yells from the fishermen don't wake them first. Finnick grins and looks around, nodding to a few of the men he's become friendly with over the last few weeks. They're a hardly bunch, and he's proud to be a part of something so honest and straightforward.

Hands casually stuffed into his pockets, Finnick arrives on the scene just as the tackle shop door swings open and out steps Rory's wife. In a lot of ways, Cordella is even tougher than her husband. Especially when someone refers to her by her full name instead of the shortened, less girly one she prefers.

"Della!" Finnick greets as he approaches. She grins widely at him and claps him on the back the moment he's in range. He tries not to flinch – she slaps really hard.

"Hey, look, it's the prettiest man in Panem!" she exclaims to the docks at large, ruffling his hair playfully. In response, she gets several jeering laughs and retorts from nearby sailors. Someone even shouts, "Toss 'im in the water!", much to Finnick's amusement. He laughs and darts away, hands up in surrender.

"Well get Odair over here, woman!" Rory yells when he hears his wife's loud voice. "We've got a quota to fill! Best get our nets out early."

Della gives Finnick a smile and pats him on the back. As her husband curses rather colorfully at the teenage boy, Finnick sighs, "Guess I should probably go save that kid from Rory's fury."

Della snorts, "Go on, then." He turns to where his own boat sits proudly beside Rory's larger helm, but Della calls him back. "You've got a paycheck waiting for you after your shift, Odair." With a smirking grin, she adds, "Still saving up to bring that pretty lady home?"

Finnick feels himself smile a little bit, but he bites it down with an embarrassed laugh and a duck of his head. Della snickers at his expense, amused at how he can't seem to reach his boat fast enough.

He can't. The nearby sailors who had heard Della's mischievous question all start shouting, "Yeah, when'll we see 'er, Odair?", and "Is she as pretty in person as she is on TV?", and "This pretty boy's a romantic fool, ain't he boys?"

Finnick, for his part, just calmly climbs onto his boat with a loud laugh and shouts back, "She's the prettiest girl in Panem! Just wait till you see her!"

The cheers that bolster through the docks are louder than usual that morning, made all the more potent by the way Finnick doesn't hesitate to describe white-blonde hair and twinkling green eyes and sun kissed skin and a desert heart. By the end of the day, when Finnick is sailing back to the docks as the sun sinks into the horizon below him, he leans back in the ocean breeze and imagines her beside him, tucked into his side and chirping about whatever holds her current fancy. He chuckles at the thought. He can already imagine her quick words bathed in the cadence of her excitement.