A/N: Trigger warnings for domestic violence. The solution to this problem came from a University of California Riverside web page, where it is attributed to Ted Stanford.


She carefully examined the bed, smoothing out each and every wrinkle in the comforter, lifting up the blankets one by one. Annie had already been surprised by one giant spider. She wasn't going to make that mistake again. The bed squeaked as though she was trying to murder it when she hopped on. God, this hotel sucked. No matter how long she ran it, the water never got warm, the coffee in the lobby might as well have been oil sludge, and every single surface felt just a little bit grimy. The best part? They were shelling out a hundred and thirty bucks a night for this pit. If that didn't convince Alec they couldn't afford to live in this part of Seattle, she didn't know what would.

She ought to just give up. Everything she saw as a drawback, he managed to interpret as an asset. Couldn't find anything that fit Annie's (admittedly limited) tastes for lunch? What an opportunity to try new foods! The only things they could afford anywhere near Alec's work are tiny studio apartments that still cost twice what she'd been paying for her and Jo's spacious one bedroom in Lexington? I've been wanting to clean all the junk out of my life and live a more minimalist lifestyle! It will rain almost every day and almost never get above eighty degrees? Annie, you hate those hot, humid Kentucky summers! She swore to God that man would be lucky to make it back to Lexington alive. She had wasted her Thanksgiving break apartment hunting out here only to find that she hated this place.

Okay, that wasn't fair. She didn't actually hate Seattle. True, hating both most vegan foods and all seafood would be a little bit of a struggle here, and the weather was shit, but everywhere had its downsides. Annie would be more than happy to come and visit again, but to live here was a different story. It would take her an absolute minimum of six, seven hours and three hundred dollars to get home to Lexington, completely wiping out the possibility of weekend visits. Her mother would hate having her so far away.

Even the wildlife was trying to warn her away. A giant, hairy brown spider had climbed on her hand! Alec had suggested that maybe the poor little guy was just trying to make a friend. In related news, he had been banished from their hotel room so that she could get some work done.

One more check for critters later, she was finally ready to get started. The English went quickly enough. She liked that about literature classes: take the number of pages you had to read, divide by the number of pages you can read per hour, and you had a pretty solid estimate of how long it'd take to finish an assignment. Math was an entirely different story. By the middle of the first problem, she was stuck. Like saber tooth tiger in a tar pit stuck. Some archaeologist or paleontologist or something would probably come and dig her up in a couple thousand years. She hoped said scientist looked like Harrison Ford.

Indiana Jones fantasies weren't helping her get done any faster. Time for the big guns. Finnick had told her he wasn't doing anything with his long weekend. Got a minute? she texted him.

Yeah. How's Seattle?

Alright. Can I ask you about a homework problem?

Curse those blinking ellipses of doom. It wasn't technically cheating, because he would help her with questions like these in office hours, but something about texting him for help from a thousand miles away made this feel not quite right. Finally, his message appeared. Sure. What's the problem?

She took a picture of the problem set and sent it to him. Third part of #1. Any ideas?

Theorem 7.8 maybe? Damn, he'd figured that one out quick.

No, wait, that's what she'd already tried. Not working for me?

U got Skype? I think I need to talk you through a picture. What kind of person used correct capitalization in their texts but then used u instead of you?

im anniecresta123

Creative.

She snorted out loud at that. Thank goodness she was alone. thanks. so whats yours

finnickandhistrident

that sounds like a euphemism for something. I rly hope u dont use that for work

He chose to ignore that. Wait one sec and Ill get you added.

Sure enough, no more than a minute later, she was accepting his request, and it only took a few seconds after that for a grainy, hotel Wi-Fi quality image of Finnick to appear on her screen. Even on the low-resolution image, it was obvious he hadn't bothered to brush his hair yet today, despite the fact that it was close to six PM in Lexington, and she would bet just about anything that he hadn't shaved either. "Can you hear me?" he asked. She hadn't realized how much she missed his voice after only a few days apart.

Annie filed away that observation for later. She didn't have time to think about shit like that right now. "Yep, you're actually pretty clear."

"That's surprising."

She grinned. "Looks like Microsoft isn't out to get us today. There's a first time for everything, isn't there?"

"I guess so." He brought up a notebook on which had been sketched a larger version of the problem. "Can you see this okay?" Annie glanced behind her for spider-spotting purposes before scooching backwards in the bed and adjusting her screen to a better angle. The shift, which couldn't have been more than an inch or two, made the image far clearer. She nodded.

"Okay, so you see this knot?" He held up an image that only a few months prior she would have considered a doodle to some really confused tapeworms. "What do you know about this knot?"

Annie carefully copied it down and stared at it for a long moment. "It's one-adjacent to the unknot, for starters." She gave it another couple seconds. "Okay, my goal is to show it is not also two-adjacent to the unknot, right?" God damn it, why had she signed up for this class? Not for the first time, Annie considered the very real possibility that she might be a bit of a masochist when it came to math.

"Yeah, you're on the right track. Don't worry, this is supposed to be a hard one."

The door opened, and Annie smiled across the room at Alec. "Hey. How was your walk?"

"Who are you talking to?"

"Just getting some help on my math homework."

The change in him was immediate. Alec slammed the room door shut with enough force that the walls rattled. Annie cringed, waiting for the cheesy prints of the Seattle skyline above the bed to come crashing down on her, but thank goodness, neither of them did. "Annie, what's going on? Are you okay?" Finnick's voice was concerned, but there was nothing she could do to reassure him now.

"It's him, isn't it?" Alex roared.

"Annie, are you all right? Do you need someone to call the police?"

She shook her head. "No, no, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. We'll talk again –"

Alec ripped her laptop out of her hands. "You stay away from her, you hear? I don't know what your game is, but she's mine, and there's nothing you can do to change that."

"Alec, cut it out. I'm sorry, Finnick."

His gaze snapped towards her. "Be quiet. You're not a part of this. It's between me and him." Alec then turned back to the screen. "I don't want to hear anything about you again, Odair, you hear? Whatever it is you and Annie have, it's over. I see you around her again, and I'll –"

Oh, hell no. She wasn't about to let anyone talk to her like that. "Excuse me? I'm not a part of this? This is about me! If you don't like what I do, you can talk to me about it."

"I have talked to you about it! And yet you still insist on going behind my back, making me look like a goddamn fool, to see this fucker!" She reached for her computer, trying to claw it out of his hands, but he slammed the laptop shut, barely missing her fingers. "The hell do you think you're doing, Annie? You want to make a fool out of me, mess around while I sit around waiting for you? Me, I offer you everything. Fuck, I was ready to support you, let you stay at home like some fucking pampered princess while I worked my ass off, and you were ready to throw that all away for that bastard!"

Annie shook her head. "No, we're not doing this right now. We're both angry, and this isn't working out. We can talk later, when we've both had a chance to calm down." She tried to slip past him towards the bathroom, but he wouldn't budge. Annie rolled her eyes. "Come on, Alec, we're not going to have a productive conversation right now. Let me go."

"No." She tried pushing past him, but he grabbed her arm. "You never want to have this 'productive conversation.' I've tried, again and again, to get you to agree to something, but you just brush me off! No more of that. We're setting down some rules right now, and this time, you are going to follow them."

"Let go. You're hurting me."

"So it matters when I hurt you, but not when you hurt me?" His grip tightened, and she hissed in pain. Suddenly, he let go, pushing her backwards as he did so. The back of her head crashed against the sharp corner of a half-wall, sending a screaming, bright white pain shooting through her. She screamed as for a brief, terrifying instant, her vision went white. "Stop it. You're not hurt."

This time, the instant she felt his hands on her, she scratched at them, doing everything she could to keep him away from her. When he still insisted on coming closer, she slammed her foot down on his, earning a curse in return. She then pushed away with all her might, and it sent him stumbling back a step or two. Annie didn't pause to see if he fell. She sprinted towards the bathroom, locking the door shut behind her. She hated the glimpse of herself she caught in the bathroom mirror. She looked like a nightmare, her hair wild, her eyes blown wide. Her hands shook with far and adrenaline as she explored the tender area at the back of her skull, trying to assess the damage as Alec banged on the door, demanding that he be allowed inside.