A/N: Welcome to the newest big project I have started on! The College AU! I hope everyone enjoys this first chapter, and future chapters to come.

PIPER

Piper McLean's first choice for college was her soccer mom minivan, a big ass paycheck, and a name change. What she got was this lame-ass state school where the only pass she got was that no one here seemed to be even halfway into pop culture enough to connect her name with her dad's. He was lucky – he had the ability to walk through the crowd as if he wasn't Native American, like the whole thing didn't matter to him. People didn't call him out of it, and, if he didn't mention it, people just overlooked Tristan McLean for anything but his face and acting chops. Piper, on the other hand, was lucky enough to be both Native American and a woman, so essentially everyone thought she was an alcoholic who belonged in the kitchen.

To which she always responded, "I can hold my liquor for longer than you could hold down a girlfriend, and the next time I walk into the kitchen is when I'm shoving your ugly ass into a boiling pot of water." That's usually the last time she ever hears from whoever it was.

Why she's sitting in a dorm room in the middle of god-knows-where, New York, she can only explain by her father. "You better be a decent student at least," Tristan McLean demanded the day before, when she set off for school. The day she got kicked out of the Wilderness School for pretending to push a girl into the Grand Canyon was the exact day she could pinpoint going from being a troubled-but-loved daughter to a troubled-and-rejected daughter.

Coincidentally, that was the same year that she got her first tattoo with her friend Leo and shaved off half of her hair for the first time. "If you make any more of these mistakes," Tristan continued, "I can't bail you out anymore. No more money following you around, no more rich dad fixing your mistakes. I'm done treating you like a kid, Piper. You're on your own now."

She'd moved into her dorm room on her own, finagling a random dude who owned an off-campus lot to give her a parking pass even though she's a freshman (she has a way with words – and with her boobs. She's done great things with a low cut top and an innocent glance.) She'd put together her dorm room on her own, and she'd met some of her floormates in her bathroom during an awkward not-locking bathroom stall moment.

And when her roommate moves in? That's when things change.

She's blonde with curly hair and a really shy smile, and Piper would totally put her on the would-bang list if she wasn't living with her for a long time.

And if she spoke. At all.

"Hey," says Piper, rolling off of her bed and putting down her book. "I'm Piper McLean. I'm going to be your roommate this year."

The girl smiles and looks like she's about to respond, but somebody bursts into the dorm room behind her and the smile drops from her face.

"Jesus, could you move?" asks a younger boy, ramming into Annabeth with a serious lack of balance. "We're trying to help you here."
Piper's not one to be belligerent toward middle schoolers – she's lying, she totally is – but this one seems like he needs a nice slap across the face.

"Sorry, Bobby," the girl says quietly, sidestepping. Piper takes the box out of her hands. The young boy drops the box into the girl's arms, and she puts it down on the bed. "I have a couple more –"

"Yeah, yeah, mom and dad are getting them. I'm gonna go to the car."
She goes to say something, but apparently the boy ignores her on a daily basis, because he turns and leaves immediately.

"He's a gem," says Piper with a single eyebrow going up.

The girl shrugs. "They're not too fond of me," she says quietly, and she's pretty much silent as a man Piper could identify as her father and the woman Piper could identify as her brother's mom drop a few suitcases down on the floor.

"Come with us, Annabeth, we have a few more things to drop off here and then we need to head home. The boys have a soccer game to get to."
Annabeth, Piper notes. The girl's name is Annabeth.

She smiles back at Piper as she makes the trip down the two flights of stairs.

"Well punch me with a tree trunk and call me Shirley Temple," Piper mumbles as she watches the unhappy family walk down the stairs. "Looks like I've found somebody with shittier parents than mine." Piper moves a few things of hers out of the way so that Annabeth has more space to put her stuff, and just as she busts open a box of clothing to put away, the family returns, with two boys instead of one.

"You've got a roommate?" says another one of Annabeth's brothers. "Ew, that sucks."

Piper refrains from her usual response of "actually, I blow" and just waves at him from the corner of the room. The surprise on his face makes it clear he hadn't realized she had been in the room when he said it.

"Oh," he says quietly, "um, I'm going to go wait in the car. Bobby, put down the box in your hands and we can go play DS. Bye, Annabeth, see you, like, for Thanksgiving."
They dart out the door and don't even give their older sister a second glance, and Annabeth's still barely in the room by the time they're out of it.

"They'll miss you," says the boy's mother, not too convincingly, "they're just distracted."

Annabeth just shrugs in response and puts various items down on the bed, making enough room for the parents to come in and stare at her awkwardly while she works on unpacking.

"Well," says Annabeth's father, "I will see you – sometime."

"Thanksgiving," says the other woman, "we'll see you then."
"Right, of course," says Annabeth's father, absentmindedly staring out the window. "Well, we hope you have a great first semester!"

"Bye dad, bye Christine," says Annabeth with a smile, but the only one who hugs her is her father. It's an awkward dance as "Christine" puts her hand out for a shake and Annabeth moves for a hug and then changes her direction at the last moment.

"Be good!" is the last thing Piper hears from her roommate's parents. Then the door closes and the girl called Annabeth visibly loses half the tension in her shoulders.

"Well then," says Piper, "that was pretty interesting. Let's try that without the meddling kids. Hi, I'm Piper."

"I'm Annabeth," says Annabeth quietly, sticking her hand out for a shake. Piper does so and grins at her.

"You need to actually smile more," Piper comments. "You're not stuck with your family anymore, and, from my experience, that's a good thing for everybody."

Annabeth, thank god, laughs, and Piper grins broadly. "So," says Piper, "tell me a bit about you. I'm assuming you're my roommate."

Annabeth nods. "Yep. You're a freshman too, right?"
Piper nods. "Fresh meat and all that. So. Let's get this show on the road, shall we?"

Annabeth gives her a weird look, and it's almost like she's curling up into herself as Piper gets more and more friendly. Piper, in all her experience, has never made somebody do that.

Annabeth and Piper talk mindlessly for a little while as the afternoon passes, about high schools – Annabeth hated hers and Piper's three different places were three different levels of hell, so there wasn't much easy chatter to be had about them.

After a long period of silence during which Annabeth doesn't even complain when Piper starts blaring Sky Ferreira as they put away clothing, Piper gets exasperated.

"Alright," she says firmly, "we're going to go to a party tonight."

"But we have the floor meeting," says Annabeth, confused.

"At six," says Piper, "we'll get lunch and then finish some of this unpacking, hit the bookstore, and go to the stupid meeting to get our RA off our backs. Then we'll get dolled up and try to find some parties in this podunk town. There's got to be something going on tonight, right?"
Annabeth shoots her a look. "Do I look like the person who could give you the answer to that question?"

"You have a good point," says Piper. "I'll take care of all the logistics – you just unpack and look pretty."

For a split second, Piper thinks she went too far with the comment and that Annabeth's going to yell at her for being stupid (she can dream, right?) but instead Annabeth does that quiet little laugh again and nods. "Change of pace for me, sitting back," she replies, "but I think this is probably more your area of expertise than mine."

Piper nods. "And you have GOT to let me do something awesome with your hair."

"My hair?" Annabeth asks, running her fingers with it. "What's wrong with my hair?"

"Literally nothing," says Piper, "other than the fact that you've probably never done much with it other than a braid or a ponytail."

The look on Annabeth's face tells her she's hit the nail on the head. "Oh, don't worry," says Piper, turning back to her closet. "Living with me, I'm sure you'll get better at this kind of stuff."

Annabeth, Piper discovers, only gets more uptight when she gets around a big group of people she doesn't know.

"Piper, I'm not sure I want to be here," she says, squirming. She begins pulling on the intricate braid in her hair that Piper had insisted she put in, and Piper, rather belligerently, slaps her hand away.

"I don't care if you want to leave, I want your hair to look badass. So stop fiddling with your goddamn braid before I hit you in the neck."
Though it has only been a few hours of knowing each other, Piper thinks that Annabeth's really getting used to her. Or maybe she's just so scared she's not doing anything.

Piper will have to look into that.

"So," says Piper, trying to speak loudly enough to be heard above the throbbing sound of – was that a remix of Call Me Maybe? What was it, 2012 again? – to Annabeth, "see anyone you like?"

Annabeth shrugs, and Piper's going to actually hit her in the throat if she keeps doing that weird "I'm too shy to talk" thing. Sure, she's too shy to talk to people, but it's a freaking party. There's literally no one here who looks better than they do or is more in control of themselves than they are. Well, that's mainly because Piper's not going to get wasted on the first night of the semester and Annabeth's too nervous to drink around people she doesn't know.

But that doesn't change the fact that they're far from sloppy.

Piper scans the room, and a guy with dark hair and light blue eyes catches her gaze. "That guy's hot," she says, nudging Annabeth with her elbow. Annabeth smirks.

"I'm not into blue eyes," she says, and something in Annabeth's tone makes Piper think there's something else going on behind the words, but Piper's not going to say anything until Annabeth brings it up. "But," Annabeth continues, "that guy's staring at you like he's ready to bang you into next Thursday."
Piper's eyebrows shoot up. "Did you just say that?" she asks, startled. "Or were you, like, temporarily overtaken by some sex demon?"

"Just because I'm quiet doesn't mean I know nothing about sex." It's meant as an offhanded comment, but Piper's dangerously good at reading people. And something about that sentence throws her off, just like the comment about the eyes, and Piper realizes in that very moment that there's a lot more to Annabeth than the bookish silent stereotype.

"I'm gonna believe that," says Piper. She runs her hand through her dark hair and flips it over to reveal the undercut and the dark blue streak underneath the back. She looks for the guy that Annabeth was talking about, and the second she makes eye contact with him, she groans.

"Well fuck me with a chainsaw and call me Joan Rivers," she grumbles. "Annabeth, say something interesting."
"Um, marine snails all start off male and then one of them becomes female on a whim when they decide to mate."

Piper stares at her. "Dude, I meant, like, make it look like we're in deep conversation, not tell me something about fucking snails –"

"Hey," interrupts the guy who was staring at her, "I'm Dylan."

"I'm not interested," replies Piper.

Dylan leans against the wall, his arm knocking into Annabeth as if she were invisible, and tries to cage Piper. "Come on, beautiful eyes, don't you want to dance?"

"Yeah," says Piper, "with the hottie who just walked in."

"What?" says Dylan, and when he turns around to look, Piper nails him with a shove to the gut to get him out of the way. "Ow, what the fuck?"

"Do you need us to translate douchebag into English for you? I'm not interested means no," says Annabeth, her grey eyes glittering with anger.

What the fuck is WITH this girl, Piper thinks.

Dylan slouches off into the shadows from whence he came (Piper can only assume, really, maybe he'd been in a well lit kitchen) and Piper turns to Annabeth.

"Tomorrow morning," Piper says firmly, "we're having one of those weird girly talks and you're going to explain to me who the hell you are, because right now you're acting like a freaking character in a spy novel. Or some misandrist feminist man-killer."
Piper would have asked her why she started humming "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," but she's suddenly sees, from across the room, something she couldn't resist.

Dark hair, dark eyes, and a fuck-it-all expression (though the context Piper wasn't sure of,) Piper's favorite combination, walks into the door. And in that moment, for Piper, the party's over.

It's all about that girl.

"Annabeth," she says lightly, "I might be home late tonight."

Annabeth's eyes are distractedly flitting around the room, like she's too worried about catching someone's eye to focus. "What do you mean?" she asks.

"Well, if I'm going to bang that girl over there, it'll be in her dorm, not ours. I actually like you. I'm not going to screw a chick with you in the bed next to me." The comment is a gamble – she has no idea how Annabeth's going to take the whole thing, but, surprisingly, Annabeth gets pissed about something else.

Annabeth turns to her. "Are you kidding me?" Annabeth squeaks. "You're going to leave me here alone?"

"No," says Piper, "I'm going to put my cell number in your phone and we're a five minute walk away from our building and it's," she looks down at her cell phone screen, "nine-thirty. People are still moving into their apartments and it's basically still light out."
Annabeth sends her a look. "You're insane."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," Piper replies.

Annabeth shakes her head, looking at Piper in a way that's half reverent and half disturbed. "I'm not sure if it's a bad thing yet," she says quietly. "I'll text you when I get to the apartment. If I don't text you in twenty minutes can you –"

"I'll call you obnoxiously," says Piper, her attention still on the girl who walked into the room, "and tomorrow I'll get you booze or something."

It looks like Annabeth's going to try one more protest, but instead she sighs and turns back into the girl that Piper had first met earlier that day, quiet, withdrawn and hiding.

"Smile," says Piper as Annabeth leaves, "it makes them wonder what you're up to."
She thinks she can see Annabeth's shoulders relax as she walks out the door, but there are other things on her mind.

Most importantly, what that dark haired girl would look like with her hair out of that braid.

REYNA

This is the night it's going to happen. Reyna Avila Ramirez Arellano is going to get this v-card gone so that she can check it off of her list, so help her god.

She scans the room for acceptable guys, and one with dark hair and blue eyes meets her gaze. Looking him up and down, she shrugs. He'll do, she supposes.

That's when she's intercepted.

"Hi," says a girl, her hair styled in an oops-rolled-out-of-bed style and makeup that accents her multicolored eyes. "I'm Piper."

"I'm busy," replies Reyna, "preferably with that guy over there."

The girl glances over her shoulder and scoffs. "Please. He'd be a two pump chump. Why don't you go for somebody's who's got a little more skill in that area?"

Reyna's not sure what the hell she did to piss off this girl, but apparently that guy's an ex-boyfriend or something. No one would be such a dick about a stranger.

"Meaning you?" Reyna asks incredulously.

The girl, Piper, Reyna supposes, leans against a wall, some of her dark hair falling into her eyes, and Reyna finds herself inextricably drawn to her. As if sensing Reyna's reaction, Piper reaches her arms above her head and the trail tattoos that starts at her hip and disappears into the waistband of her leather pants reveals itself easily.

"Staring, really?" Piper laughs. "Well, then, that's good to know."

"I'm not staring," says Reyna firmly, "I'm just…I…I like tattoos."

"Bet you're wondering where they lead."

Reyna folds her arms across her chest. "Pretty sure I know."

"Pretty sure you WANT to know."

Reyna moves to disagree, but someone knocks into her and she stumbles against the wall next to Piper. They're close enough that, if Piper lowered her arm, she'd be able to wrap it around Reyna's shoulders and drag her in for a kiss.

It's both too close and not close enough, and this sudden revelation sends Reyna reeling. She's not gay. She's not into girls. Or, at least, she hadn't been back the last time she had a boyfriend, which was when she was fourteen. There's something sparking in the back of her mind, something that maybe wouldn't have been there had Reyna been drinking, even though it's only been one, telling her that, nope, this girl is a whole new category. Anything Reyna had been into before this night is now irrelevant.

So she takes the chance as says fuck it to her parents and her sister and everyone else that ever dubbed her the goody two shoes girl next door.

"Maybe I do," says Reyna, and she shifts just close enough to make the move that invites Piper to make The Move, and Piper makes it. Their lips meet and it's like lightning striking through Reyna as Piper grips at her hips through Reyna's thin, flowy shirt. She dressed to get laid tonight and she'll be damned if it doesn't work.

It looks like it might. Though, of course, it's in a situation Reyna never could have planned if her life depended on it.

"Come on," says Piper as she breaks away from Reyna's lips, "there's some dude staring at us and I really don't want to have to kick anyone in the nads tonight."

She lets this girl with the crazy hair and the fuck-it-all attitude drag her somewhere in the frat house. She would bet Piper has no idea where anything is this place, either.

They knock on a door, and what they hear in response is a high pitched girl's voice gasping and panting, "In a-a minute," followed by a pleased scream of some guy's name.

"Sounds like Devon's doing a good job," comments Piper, and Reyna chuckles.

They finally find an empty room – it's a bathroom, but beggars can't be choosers – and Piper pushes Reyna up against the door. Desire floods through Reyna as her heart pounds, and she's waiting – just waiting painfully – for Piper to do something.

"Staring, really?" Reyna asks, flashing back to earlier than night.

Piper smirks and looks Reyna up and down, lingering at where her shirt catches at her breasts and falls gently. "Why the hell wouldn't I?"

That's when Reyna surges forward and kisses Piper hard.

There's something slightly gnawing at the back of Reyna's mind while Piper's hands move all over her, one in her hair and one gripping at her waist, her hips, her ass, her back, telling her that, hello, Reyna, you like dudes, what are you doing.

The rest of her mind is going, if a girl can do this to you, you fucking let her do it as long as she goddamned well pleases.

Reyna is fully aware that that part of her mind is the part that's going to win.

Piper pulls away from Reyna's lips for a moment, and then Reyna realizes it's because someone's been knocking on the bathroom door for the past few seconds.

"I really need to go," says a girl's voice, "like, really bad, are you almost done?"

"Are we almost done?" asks Piper.

"No fucking way," says a voice that totally wasn't Reyna's but, yep, was Reyna's.

"Good."

Piper grabs Reyna's hand and physically drags her out into the hallway, bypassing the stunned-looking girl who was just looking to pee and barreling through the dance floor to make it to the door. Some guy yells, "fuck yes, lesbians!" at the two of them, but before Reyna can shout something back at him, Piper's kicked him in the nads and called him a "misogynist fuckless toolbucket" and Reyna's not sure she can top that, so she stays silent.

"Do you have a single?" Piper asks.

"Am I single?" Reyna replies, and she's beginning to wonder, really, what was going on with her and this girl. Is she looking to date or something?

"No, you idiot, where do you live. Do you live in a single?"

"Oh," Reyna replies, "no, but my roommate literally told me last night she planned on living with her boyfriend this semester so my room's all –"

Her words are cut off as Piper crushes her lips to Reyna's again and Reyna finds her fingers threading through Piper's hair. Reyna swallows the gasp Piper lets out and pulls away from her lips.

"Hey," says Piper with a glare. "I was in the middle of something."
"Are we going back to my room or what?" Reyna asks. "Because I don't want to get cited for public nudity during my first semester."

"You a freshman too?"

Reyna shrugs. "That matter?"

"Only if you live all the way in Harbucket."

Reyna shakes her head. "No, I live in Hale – the athletic dorms."
Something flashes in Piper's eyes. "Athletic dorms?"

Reyna rolls her eyes and kisses her again to shut her up, and then starts walking toward her dorm without a second word. "Are you coming or not?"
Piper smirks. "I think we'll both be in a few."

Some sort of chill runs up Reyna's spine as she realizes, yep, this girl is definitely the right choice.