sixthiterationlogs | the time to repair your roof is in the sunshine {Finnick}

WHO: Annie Cresta
WHERE: House #57 The Windemere
WHEN: 5th December
OPEN TO: Finnick Odair
WARNINGS: TBA as needed
STATUS: Ongoing

Things changed after the feast. It feels... Easier. She can touch Finnick again. She can kiss him, brush against him. Have sex again, which has helped taken the edge off. And while now, the smoke from the chimney and the occasional flickering light from the fireplace means that their location is now known if people think (even without Steve Rogers having found them), somehow it feels different. A more familiar fire. No hiding, just trying to keep an eye out. She knows that. She's grown up with that.

She doesn't know what to think of Johanna's theory. She's still mulling it over.

But she's mulling it over while climbing over the roof, so, it might count as progress. Annie doesn't know. What she does know are knots, ropes, and she secures a safety line to the chimney so if they fall, they don't break anything.

"All right, line secure!" Annie calls down to Finnick. "Bring the baking tray, would ya?"

Their tasks are divided: Finnick with the gutters and the chimney, Annie to knock the snow off the roof.

It's progress.

She hopes.

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So far, they'd deliberately left the house in the same state of disrepair it had been in that afternoon when they'd broken in out of the rain because they couldn't stand the constant cold. Any repairs would have given away their position as surely as a fire. The smoke, though, has already done that, so there's little point in avoiding it now.

Unfortunately, as someone who's had more money than he could ever actually need ever since he was fourteen, actually cleaning gutters and chimneys is not something he has any experience with. This is something he's having to trust Annie on, and she doesn't have much experience, either.

Especially not with snow.

So Finnick is watching her intently as she climbs, because there's extra risk there until she has the line secured. Once she does, he lifts a hand in acknowledgement to her and shoves the baking tray into his backpack before he starts to climb.

"Hey," he says, when he's up near her on the roof. He gets a good hold with one hand, then turns a little so she can get at his backpack. "Tray's in there."

Having given him space, now Annie shuffles closer to unzip his pack and remove the tray. In the absence of shovels, this will just have to do.

"Got it," she says, and then gets to work to clear some space for him on the roof. "You're set." It didn't take long, but then, she was just trying to clear a bit of space. Enough to lessen the risk of his grip slipping, or him misjudging where the roof actually is.

Annie watches him climb all the up, and offers him a wry smile.

"'Least the view's nice up here."

"You do know I've never cleaned a gutter or chimney in my life, right?"

In other words, Annie, he's not entirely sure what you expect him to do. And safety line or no safety line, he plans on keeping a very close eye on her.

He'd expected the roof to feel colder than it does, after being covered in snow for so long, but his hands actually feel warm as he presses them to the slope and starts to edge along towards the chimney. Her comment, though, makes him turn his head a little to look around them.

"We should take a good look at the lay of the land from up here, see if there's anything unexpected."

She grins at him, a shining expression that deepens the lines already forming at the corners of her eyes. "I know," Annie says, all playful innocence. "I must admit, part of me is gonna enjoy watchin' you."

It's petty, yes, but it's a normal kind of petty. The kind of petty which comes from knowing the other person for years and years. The kind of petty teasing, as if everything is normal.

"Use the branch that's sticking out of your backpack - y'want me to get it? Shove it down the chimney to clear it."

Annie tilts her head, glances out the side and using her hair as a veil.

"We should. It's different seeing things out here, instead of from up a tree."

Finnick, for once, isn't feeling too cold. It actually seems like a nicer day today, despite the snow still lying thickly everywhere, but looking across at Annie in the plain black coat they'd been given when they arrived, she doesn't look as warm as he feels.

(It's a shame, he decides, that they don't have any way of getting extra clothing; Annie should have a nicer coat than that, something tweed with pretty applique details, as impractical as such a thing might be in a place like this.

He misses bringing her lovely things.)

There's work to do, though, so keeps creeping along to the chimney.

"I'll get it," he says. Once he's there, and stopped, he'll be able to brace himself with enough points of contact to reach back into the pack. It's a big branch, big enough that he won't actually have to dig in the pack like he would have for the tray.

There. He's crept along the roof enough to be nearly in reach of the chimney, and he guides himself a little further up the roof, one hand grabbing firmly onto the ridge while the other grabs at the branch.

"Don't think I'll recommend it as a permanent sentry post, though."

"No. If nothing else, we'd stand out," Annie says, deciding not to rib him over the colour he is wearing. It's not his fault, after all. It's a uniform from the gamemakers, and they don't have the security to mock the fashion choices. Or, they'd mock them anyway, but she's already been teasing him.

"And the windchill's kinda hellish here," she adds, as she starts to clear the roof.

A baking tray isn't a shovel, which Annie thinks might be easier. But it's the best she could come up with, and it's not completely useless at this. It's just...cold, frustrating and slippery work, without the payoff of sea-breeze or pay. The alternating days of snowclouds and sun have made the snow layered in ice, and her hands rapidly become both chilled and tense as she works and stays balanced on the tiles.

Still, there are satisfying thumps as snow hits the ground.

"You wouldn't. You're finally starting not to stand out," he points out dryly. Annie had been as uneasy about the bright white this place had put her in as Finnick had been about the red, but the difference between those color schemes is that as winter's drawn in, Annie now blends into the scenery, or would if the coats they'd all been given when they arrived here weren't black.

Finnick, if anything, stands out more against the snow than he did the green, and certainly more than against the turning fall foliage in the forest.

She's not wrong about the windchill, although it's not too bad today. It has been a lot of other days. He laughs.

"Good thing we did this today."

the time to repair your roof is in the sunshine {Finnick}

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