Trained One ✓

Chapter 25

"Hey!" Finn called as soon as we entered the house.

I followed the sound of his voice to the kitchen where he was on the tile floor, cross-legged, and writing on the giant whiteboard.

"You survived the jail, wouldya look at that!" he exclaimed, looking at me.

Hushed voices were coming from the living room and I looked over to see Cameron sitting in one of chairs. Annabeth was on the ground, sorting through a handful of papers that were spread out in front of her. Ben and Travis went straight over to the two and started relaying everything I had told them in the car.

"How was it?" Finn asked, like he was asking me how my first day of school was.

I rolled my eyes, a smile playing at my lips as I sat down next to him on the cold tile.

"Was Scully his usual, personable self?" Finn added as he made a list of names I didn't know on a part of the board.

"I feel like I need to shower to wash off talking to him," I said quietly, not wanting Annabeth to hear because I didn't know if she'd get offended or not.

Finn snorted.

"He mentioned your name and didn't profess his undying love for it this time," I said, remembering how much Scully idolized Finn's name the first time I went to talk to him.

Finn shook his head. "I swear he wanted to give me his blessing to marry Annabeth as soon as he learned my name."

I laughed, "Really?"

"Yeah," Finn nodded, making a new list on the whiteboard, "But right before that, I tried to burn him with a hot metal rod so he didn't say the words because he was pissed but I could tell. It was in his eyes," Finn said, looking at me for a moment to point at his own eyes.

He seemed to skim right over the violent part of that sentence, like it wasn't a big deal and I figured to him, it probably wasn't but I'd never heard about this and Scully definitely left it out of his descriptions of Finn.

"You what?" I asked, when Finn carried on like nothing happened.

"I sensed it, the blessing."

I shook my head because we were talking about two different things. "You tried to burn him?"

"Mhm," he said casually.

I shouldn't have been surprised. Finn liked burning everything it seemed, but I hadn't expected a first meeting with a parents to go like that. But then it was a first meeting with Scully - the version of Scully before he was imprisoned and locked away and I wondered what he did to cause such a reaction from Finn, who was usually smiling even during destruction. He had greeted Josh nicely when they first met and Finn knew Josh was a cop trying to arrest him. It wasn't until Josh had hit on Annabeth that Finn showed any dislike. That dislike causing two guys to have to drag him away from Josh.

I looked behind me towards the living room but the couch was blocking my view of the people on the floor. All I could see was the top of Cameron's head.

"Because of something with Annabeth?" I asked, looking back at Finn.

"Mhmmm," he said, sticking his tongue out and tilting his head to the side as he tried to focus on writing in a straight line.

"Didn't you...How did you..." I scrambled over my words as I tried to figure out what I was trying to ask. "Weren't you scared?" I decided to go with in the end.

Finn shrugged, "I didn't know anything about the gang so I didn't know who he was, really." He leaned closer to me, letting his voice drop in volume, "But I barely went anywhere without Annabeth for a week after that. Snuck into the Casey house every night to sleep and basically wore her around like a bulletproof vest."