A/N: Rated T for language.
"Jo. Jo, come over here."
"The fuck, Cresta? If this is another goddamn spider, I'm going to –"
"It's him. He's here." Her voice quivered, and Annie knew she couldn't be making much sense, but no, this wasn't supposed to be happening. There were what, six, seven billion people on the planet? And out of all of them, it just had to be him. No, please, she couldn't handle this right now. Or ever, for that matter. She supposed it had to happen sometime, but today? Oh God, she wanted to cry. Keep it together, Annie.
Johanna squinted against the blue light of her laptop. "Who are you – oh. Fuck."
"Yeah."
"Show me your arm." Instead of waiting for Annie to move, she grabbed her arm and pushed up the sleeve. In the darkness, it was impossible to make anything out, and Johanna swore as she reached for the light switch, pulling Annie along with her.
"I did check that they matched, you know."
Johanna studied the two names. "Looks like you're screwed, Cresta."
She had already started to come to terms with the fact that her greatest enemy would be in charge of her for the next sixteen weeks. Not much she could do, after all. "Maybe it's just a guy with the same name. It doesn't necessarily have to be him." Or maybe it would just be a rough few weeks and afterwards she would carry on with a wonderfully charmed life. She didn't know what she could do to attract a really bad worst enemy. He'd probably be only unpleasant. Fantastic.
"Yeah, I'm sure there are a bunch of Finnick Odairs running around."
"You could at least let me hope."
"And get your hopes up? Nah, I'd rather have you cry now than later." Johanna flopped back down onto her bed. "Get some sleep, Cresta. Being sleep-deprived isn't going to help anything."
Annie tried to rub away the goosebumps that had appeared on her arms and legs. "Aren't you a nice, supportive friend."
She snorted. "The hell do you think I am? If you thought I was going to be sunshine and rainbows about this, you've got bigger problems than I thought."
"Just go back to sleep."
Johanna grinned at her, her expression pure mischief. "One more thing."
"Fine. Don't make me regret it."
"Wow, I'm so glad you're giving me permission. It's not like I would have said whatever I wanted to anyway." Annie wanted to wipe that stupid grin off her friend's face. Couldn't she see that this was a crisis? "If you're going to fight him, don't fuck up that face. It's a national treasure." When the pillow struck her face, she burst out laughing.
Okay, Jo had a point there. No TA had any business being that good-looking. That he managed to look cute in the little thumbnail picture the college attached to all their emails should have been her first clue. Annie's picture looked like a child who had just realized she was about to be devoured – an accurate description of how she had felt on her first day as a freshman. In fact, she couldn't think of anyone whose photo looked more than halfway decent.
Add the looks to that slight hint of an accent – English? Australian? Maybe Irish? she really ought to be better at picking out the difference between those – and she had one heck of a semester in store for her. Okay, not really, since she had the form to switch recitation sections waiting in her backpack, but she could always forget about it. Remember he's your worst enemy, and this section won't seem nearly as appealing. Good to know her own mind was a pretty okay source for wisdom and advice. She should really listen to herself more often.
"Annette Cresta?" She jumped at the sound of her name. Oh no, he'd realized who she was, God have mercy, please sweet baby Jesus –
Oh wait, calling attendance was a thing. Not a cool thing, because it meant she would have to show up to class, but way better than him knowing that he would be her worst enemy. "Here," she squeaked in a terrible attempt at keeping her voice even. A couple of her classmates glanced over at her, concerned, and she avoided looking at them by almost burying her face in the syllabus. As much as she wanted to – this was her last class in her major, and Annie refused to mess up her grade point at this stage- she couldn't focus on the words in front of her. Did he know? These relationships, both good and bad, weren't always reciprocal, after all. Finnick could easily have a way worse enemy. Annie couldn't really be that bad, could she? If she could just remember to wear shirts with sleeves every day, there was no reason he would ever have to know. Yeah, she could get through this just fine. Wait, what was he wearing?
Annie lowered her syllabus to sneak another peek at him. Nope, long sleeves. No luck there.
"I think you all can handle reading over the syllabus yourselves, right?" He waited for a second but received no reply. "Seems like we're going to have to work on this yes-no question thing." He chuckled at his own joke, and she wasn't sure if that was endearingly dorky or a sign of the evil dwelling inside him. "All right, if nobody has any questions, I don't have any reason to keep you. Have a nice day, everyone. I'll see you in lecture on Thursday."
She wasn't going to ask for another excuse to get the hell out of here. Annie crammed her stuff into her book bag in a way that would make her cringe any other day. Even now, thinking about all those wrinkled papers made her anxiety creep up a little. She pushed those thoughts away as she hurried out, trying not to think about how Finnick's eyes followed her every step of the way.
A/N: The ever-wonderful ohsoloverly recommended that I write a soulmate-style AU featuring enemies instead of friends, and the idea kind of ran away with me. I expect this to be around five chapters long. Thanks for reading! I'd love to know what you think of the story so far!
