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Annalise instantly hates her the first time they meet.
Well, not meet per say, Annalise only takes notice of her existence when she has the audacity to stand up in a lecture hall of over one hundred people and refute her defense strategy in cold blood.
She is ruthless as she speaks, a perfect picture of superiority clad in Givenchy heels and a tight pencil skirt.
Annalise doesn’t even bat an eye at her when she immediately defends herself against such a poorly constructed assault.
You don’t get credit for trying and failing. Foolish bravery has its own reward of self-hatred.
---
Eve Rothlow.
Annalise finds her name from the official roster and ends up spending the rest of the day scolding herself for even thinking about her again, much less putting a name to that terribly pretentious face who apparently thinks curly ringlets are still in style.
It doesn’t matter what her name is. Mock court is coming up in a couple of weeks and Annalise has already decided that she will crush her just like everyone else in the class.
Harvard Law is a shark infested tank and she refuses to allow herself to fall prey to a set of batting eyelashes.
---
Except that much like everything else in life, it all goes to hell.
Change is good, their professor says, change keeps you on your feet, he continues. That god awful change being that this year they will have to work with a partner and present a defense strategy as a team.
Learn to work together or fail, is the basic premise.
Partners are assigned at random, two names being pulled out of a hat to decide which two people will have the misfortune of working together.
Annalise wouldn’t consider herself a saint but so far she hasn’t broken the law, not majorly, at least, and sometimes she even manages to drag herself to go to church on Sundays and say a few weak prayers so she doesn’t quite understand why the universe has suddenly decided that she is deserving of the harshest punishment imaginable.
What doesn’t kill you may makes you stronger but this will kill one of them and it won’t be Annalise.
---
Her handshake is firm and her nails are painted a delicate shade of pink that seems to have been chosen deliberately in order to highlight her femininity.
Her fragility, basically.
Eve isn’t fragile though, far from it, she rips into the envelope holding their assignment with clean precision and attacks the writing with expert and calculated eyes.
In a symbol of truce, Annalise reads over her shoulder instead of snatching the paper out of her hands in a vulgar assertion of dominance. There is no dominance here, she has to remind herself constantly, only partnership.
There are worse people she could have had the misfortune to be partnered with, she admits in a moment of weakness. Or maybe better.
After all, wretched people always make the best lawyers.
---
“You don’t like me.” Eve sounds almost pleased as she says those words.
“No, I don’t.”
They’re mulling over the details of their defense strategy because after handing Annalise her proposal this morning, Annalise spent the next hour ripping it to shreds before showing up at her apartment and shoving the papers against her chest with a sneer of the word garbage. In her defense, to say that the proposal was weak and severely lacking seemed like a gross understatement.
“Why?”
Annalise presses the highlighter a little too hard against the paper. “Does it matter?”
From the corner of her eye, she sees Eve shrug. “No, but I want to know. I want to know why you hate me even though I never did anything to you.”
“I didn’t say I hate you.” Annalise looks up this time and fixes her with a pointed look. “I said I didn’t like you.”
There’s a smirk on Eve’s face now and Annalise would like nothing more than to wipe it off her perfectly painted lips. The fact that they have to start again from scratch is more than enough reason for Annalise to not like her or even want to be in her presence.
“You’re afraid of me.” It sounds like an epiphany, an epiphany that Annalise shoots down without even blinking.
“I’m not afraid of anything, much less you.”
---
Ripping the buttons off her shirt is strangely satisfying.
So is kissing her until she’s gasping for air and breathing her name with the kind of desperation she has always craved. Everyone wants to be wanted, it’s human nature. It’s hardwired.
“ Annalise .”
This is not an act of love. This is an act of war.
This is Annalise rendering her to a moaning mess with fingers clutching at the couch cushions for leverage as Annalise gives and takes as she pleases while Eve begs for more and surrenders herself to her mercy.
This is Annalise asserting her dominance.
---
It takes a whole day for her to realize that Eve had left her lipstick in her bathroom and that Annalise had grabbed it and put it on in her rush this morning.
Temptation, the bottom of the bullet reads, and Annalise laughs because oh, how fitting.
When she kisses her again a few days later, she makes sure there is more than enough temptation on her lips for a lasting effect. But then again, when has she ever needed something as trivial as lipstick to have a lasting effect?
---
It’s not cuddling, she tells herself. It’s not.
Eve’s head is pillowed on her chest though and her fingers trace lazy patterns into Annalise’s skin but it’s easy enough to get lost in her words and forget that this is too tender of her own good.
“...I’m just saying, Jason doesn’t even know what MO means. He probably thinks it’s the sound that a cow makes.”
When Annalise laughs, it’s loud and hearty and real and it shakes her to her very core to realize that they have been holding hands this whole entire time.
By morning, she is gone but Eve can still smell the faint traces of her perfume on the sheets when she wraps herself in them and searches the apartment in a foolish attempt to find Annalise.
---
They pass with flying colors.
A deadly duo, their professors says, and they smile at each other in unison in a silent form of agreement.
Later that evening, they buy the most expensive bottle of champagne they can pronounce and Annalise licks the liquid from Eve’s breasts as her fingers dig into Annalise’s shoulders to hold her close.
Shotgunning with champagne is new. Eve’s lips are sweet when they close over her’s, a sharp contrast to the alcohol inside her mouth and the solid grip on her hips.
Though the highlight of the night is the way Eve screams her name loud enough for the whole world to hear.
It’s still an act of dominance but maybe they could both share the role of queen.