Title: I Thought You'd Be Taller
Fandom: Supernatural RPF
Characters / pairing: Danneel-Gen friendship
Words / Rating: 3000 words / PG-13 for language
Warnings: knotting, references to prior sexual abuse
Summary: Danneel is so done with being the traumatized survivor. She's ready to learn things and make friends and be, you know, normal. Yeah, right.

A/N: This is the first fic in what is looking to be a whole 'verse of SPN RPF knotting fic. Eventually there will be Gen/Jared and Danneel/Jensen, but I don't think that's going to happen for a while yet.

Thanks much to verity for the once-over and ghostyouknow27 for the cheerleading.

~~~~~

Danneel was absolutely certain she was ready for college. The thing with Rick was over, it was done with. These days Danneel could walk past an alpha on the street and not even shudder – or not visibly, anyway. She didn’t need to hide in her bedroom anymore.

Two weeks in, Danneel is pretty sure she was wrong. First, college is massive: it only makes her feel more podunk to know that although this place has a population ten times the size of her high school’s, it actually ranks fairly low in size, even for a private college. The lecture hall of her history class is half the size of her old auditorium. She still doesn’t know the names of two-thirds of the buildings on campus, which makes her feel perpetually misplaced even when she knows exactly where she is.

That’s not the really big thing, though. She expected all that, more or less, even though the reality of two thousand students didn’t hit her until she got there.

The big thing? There are alphas everywhere. Their scents waft through her window on every breeze. Except for one beta running back Danneel feels sorry for, the entire football team is composed of alphas. The alphas have tables in the cafeteria claimed as theirs, and every day, resolutions be damned, Danneel finds herself eating her meals wedged in a corner booth as far away from them as she can get without letting them get out of sight.

Today it’s worse; today she’s somehow come down with her winter cold in September and can’t smell a thing, which just makes her nervier. She can barely eat, watching the alphas out of the corner of her eye.

She thought she was over this. She slams a fist down next to her half-eaten macaroni, because that’s better than crying.

“What’s up, roommate mine?” Adrianne, blonde and goddess-tall and intimidated by no one, slides in across from Danneel. She glances over her shoulder at the alpha corner, and then shakes her head. “Pack of Rottweilers,” she says. “Huge paws and their tongues hanging out.”

“You’re dating one,” Danneel ventures. His name is Aldis, and he’s pretty as long as he’s downwind; one sniff of him kills Danneel’s libido and all her social skills, too.

“He’s hot, I’m shallow,” Adrianne says, like she didn’t get all fluttery that one time he came by the room. Or rather, she fluttered until she realized that Danneel was hiding practically in the closet, at which point the ‘no alphas in omega rooms’ rule gained an enthusiastic new enforcer.

She’s maybe the most awesome roommate ever. Danneel’s pretty sure she doesn’t deserve her.

“So, hall party tonight,” Adrianne says.

“Dry?” Danneel says, for something to say. They’re all dry here, which confuses more than bothers her; she always thought college partying was about booze.

“Maybe someone’ll spike the soda. God, I hope so. I’m going to die of sobriety, I just know it.”

“There are parties in town, aren’t there?” Danneel asks.

“Sure, with townies, Adrianne says. “And even worse, Shacklers.”

Shackleford is the small, pricier, and uppitier college across the river from Landingham. Shacklers, Danneel has conscientiously been instructed, must be hated on principle. On the other hand, Shackleford is a wet campus, so she’s skeptical of how far that enmity extends.

“Shacklers, pointless,” Adrianne says. “Point: hall party.”

“Luau.”

Adrianne’s eyes light. “Luau! Yes! I’m pretty sure Lauren has real coconut shells for her costume.”

“Because those are both comfortable and functional,” Danneel says. She’s gratified when Adrianne barks a laugh.

“So you’re totally coming, yes?” Adrianne says, eyes full of mischief. “Fake grass, fake flowers, reconstituted punch and steel guitar? It’s the place to be. It’s just a bunch of betas and omegas, right? Totally alpha-free. And it’s Friday, Danneel.”

“Of course I’m going,” Danneel says, shrugging away the force of Adrianne’s plea. “Why wouldn’t I go?”

“Beats me,” Adrianne says, as if it never occurred to her Danneel might call up her parents and let them talk her through two hours of bitter homesickness like she did last Friday night.

And that, Danneel vows, is totally going to be a one-time thing. Yep.

--

The luau is really, really cheesy, and Danneel kind of loves it. She recognizes most of the girls from her corridor now, Alona and Nicki and Lauren (who does not, in fact, have the outer casings of any fruit strapped to her chest, on account of lending them to Nicki). Hall mom Julie presides over all, and there’s Kool-Aid fruit punch (“for old times,” Julie says wisely) and very squeaky steel guitar (some with Elvis), and it really isn’t scary at all.

“This? So much better than my hall party.”

Danneel turns to the voice, which belongs to a girl at least four inches shorter than Danneel, with great big dark eyes and long dark hair. “Yeah?” Danneel says.

“I am not fucking kidding,” the girl says. “We’re talking broken furniture, blood. And that was before the booze showed up!” She snorted. “Jocks.”

“Ugh,” Danneel agrees. Now isn’t the time to fess up to soccer, she supposes. “Could you move, do you think?”

“Not hardly. Frakes dorm and me, we’re going to be besties for four freaking years. I’m one of the ‘special cases.’” She rolls her eyes. “You know.”

Danneel doesn’t, but that isn’t new. “So you crashed our party instead?”

Gen leans close and whispers, “You guys have Tab.” She swipes a can off the table and pops it open. “So, college life. Sucky, awesome?”

“Yeah. I mean, both.” Sometimes Danneel thinks everyone got a pre-college course in perky attitudinal small talk except her. “What about you? Do you like it?”

“It rocks. Dorm life aside, I mean. God, my chem prof is awesome. If I switch from pre-med to some insane bio/chem double major, I swear it will be all his fault.”

“Yeah?” Somehow, what Danneel’s feeling blurts straight out her mouth. “So you’re gorgeous and and smart.” Wow, there’s your party manners, Danneel. Maybe the soda is spiked.

The girl makes a face. “I know, I’m such an entitled bitch. Don’t you just hate me? I’m poor, if that’s any consolation.”

By which Danneel figures she means she got a used Beamer for her sixteenth birthday instead of a new one, but the thought doesn’t have any heat. “Me, too.” By which she means she had to wait tables for two summers to pay for her little Honda.

“Cool. We can be impoverished together,” the girl says. “Hey, if we’re sharing a cardboard box, I should probably know your name.”

“Danneel Harris.”

“Like the robot? In the Asimov books?”

Danneel finds herself smiling. “No, like my great-grandmother.”

“Emotionless automaton, kindly old family matriarch, same diff. I’m Genevieve Cortese.” The girl stuck out her hand.

Danneel shakes it. “Wow. That’s....”

“A bit much. I know.”

“I was going to say old-fashioned.”

“Sure. Like a kindly old family matriarch, or possibly a mob boss. Stick with Gen.”

“Cool. Gen.”

Gen grins at her, all straight white teeth.

“Limbo” somebody says – Nicki, a hand holding one coconut shell in place. She grabs Gen’s hand, and Gen grabs Danneel’s, and then there’s a lot of yoga-style twisting, and over in the corner Julie’s dumping Kool-Aid packs into the tie-dye pots (tie-dying being so Hawaiian), and, yeah. Not really scary at all.

--

The Sunday after the luau, when Danneel is still too sneezy and miserable to get to breakfast with Adrianne, drags herself to the cafeteria just before it closes, and spots Gen across the sea of tables, looking for a spot, she catches her eye. They end up back in Danneel’s corner, comparing English classes and rating the alphas. Well, Gen rates the alphas, and Danneel tries not to look at them.

Gen notices eventually. “So, not into guys or not into alphas?”

Danneel just took a bite, which gives her time to chew and think. “Kind of both? I don’t know.”

“Girlfriend, I don’t get it. How can you be an omega and not be into alphas? I mean, why be omega at all if you can’t ride a knot?”

Danneel chokes. When she’s got her windpipe clear again, she says, “I don’t want to talk about knots.”

Gen eyes her closely. It’s a little unnerving; with the force of her focus she’s like a goddamn magnifying glass. Finally she leans back, information apparently gathered, decision made. “Fair.” She makes a face. “Not my favorite subject either.”

Which Danneel thinks is a little weird, but then Gen starts talking about her comp paper again, and that’s that.

--

Danneel likes Gen, she decides.

It’s not that Danneel is terrified of people. She really, really isn’t. She used to have an entire social life. It’s just big people that she gets bothered by. And male people, sometimes. And especially alpha people.

She’s gotten better. It only took her, like, a day to get over Adrianne being the height of the Eiffel Tower. She still avoids guys in clusters, but individually she can deal. One night she even ate dinner with Adrianne and Aldis and Nicki, and she looked Aldis in the eye and answered when he talked to her and generally behaved like a normal human being.

She’s pretty damned proud of herself, actually.

Gen, however, is the opposite of huge and the opposite of male, and therefore less intimidating than Adrianne (even though Adrianne is, to repeat, possibly the best roommate ever). So they end up eating breakfast together on Monday and dinner on Tuesday, and Gen feels like the first friend on campus that Danneel’s made all by herself.

She’s getting better, she thinks.

--

It’s Thursday when Danneel finally figures it out. She’s sitting in her usual place, minding her own business, when alpha hits her nose – way too close, and incoming. She stiffens and tries holding her breath; sometimes all it takes to cool a panic attack is to hold still and prove to herself that no one’s about to lean in to press his knotty crotch against her thigh and whisper sweaty threats/promises in her ear.

“Grilled cheese and tomato soup is the best,” a familiar voice says. Danneel looks up, and it’s Gen.

Gen reeks.

Well. That’s not fair. Gen reeks like any alpha with decent hygeine who wears the recommended scent-minimizers and then some kind of lavender bodywash on top of that.

This all goes through Danneel’s mind while she gapes. Gen sets her tray down and starts to slide in, and Danneel slides out.

“Damn, did I just miss you?” Gen says. She glances at a hall clock. “Pretty sure no class until one.”

“You’re an alpha,” Danneel says.

“Yes?” Gen’s got the skeptical eyebrow of doom lifted. “No kidding.”

Danneel takes a deep breath – uck, bad idea, alpha - and clutches onto the top booth seat. “I didn’t know. Cold.”

“What?” Gen’s starting to look pissed.

“I had a cold.”

“So, what, you figure out I’m a freak and you bail?”

Danneel just stares. She’s not sure she could get get any more words out even if she could find them.

Gen gets to her feet, and Danneel’s two steps back before she can help herself. Gen grabs her tray. “Screw you, Harris.” Striding past Danneel, shrunk against the wall, she mutters, “I thought you were too cool for this shit.”

Danneel watches her go and wonders what just happened.

--

“Yeah, she’s an alpha,” Adrianne says, hanging down from the upper bunk. “Someone told me at the party thing. I thought you were okay with it.”

“I had a cold. I couldn’t tell!”

“But she’s cool, right?” Adrianne says, uncertain. “She didn’t, like, get crude or heat-rapey or anything, did she?”

“Since I’m not actually in heat, no, there were no heat-rapey advances made.”

“Some people in this world can’t actually tell everything with our nose, you know,” Adrianne says.

“Adrianne.”

“Yeah?”

“When I’m in heat, you’ll know.”

“Oh. Okay.” This is how Adrianne is awesome: she grew up in some kind of beta commune, and therefore – or maybe yet – she doesn’t seem to know any of the omega cliches. Danneel doesn’t know quite how that happened.

After a while, Danneel says, “She doesn’t look like an alpha.”

“You mean, like I look like an alpha?” Adrianne says.

“Point.”

“She was cool, though,” Adrianne presses.

“Yeah,” Danneel says.

“Bet she gets a lot of stupid comments, living in Frakes.”

“Why?”

“You know. Alpha dorm.”

Oh. Things were falling into place. “How many girls are there over there?”

“Twenty? Thirty? The entire alpha female population, I think.”

Well, that would suck, a few girls and all those alpha males. Danneel understands Gen’s complaints about her hall party now.

“She doesn’t have much of an intimidation factor, does she?” Adrianne says.

Danneel thinks about that a moment. “She is kind of lacking,” she admits. It was a lot of why she liked Gen. She was all spitfire, but it was a small spitfire.

Of course, all that attitude makes more sense now.

She’s still thinking about it a half hour later when Adrianne announces her plans to hit town with Aldis for dinner. Danneel puts away the American history text she hasn’t been reading and walks across the quad to the cafeteria.

Tray in hand, she looks around and sees Gen, surrounded by her usual rough-and-rowdy group of girls. Other alphas, Danneel understands now. They aren’t in the alpha corner, and Danneel just didn’t realize.

Danneel takes her usual table and watches.

It’s not like she’s never met a girl alpha; her Aunt Regina is one. But she’s never seen enough of them together to be their own clique before. Of the three at her high school, two shared social queen bee duties and one was a pseudo-goth stoner whose junior high fighting reputation preceded her.

They’re pretty much like alpha males, she decides after a while: mostly loud and certain and big. Gen’s the shortest by a good two inches and definitely the smallest.

Eventually they leave, a few peeling away to do their own thing, but most of them getting up as a pack. Gen’s right in the thick of them.

Danneel doesn’t think. She grabs her tray and follows them out, and just outside the cafeteria she takes a breath - stupid idea, Danneel, no breathing – and says, “Gen!”

Gen turns, catches sight of her, and scowls. “What?” she says. Her arms fold in tight and her shoulders hunch, and despite her size next to all the other alpha females, it’s the first time she’s ever really looked small.

“I didn’t... I don’t care that you’re an alpha.”

The eyebrow lifts. There’s no warmth in it.

“It’s just... I’m sorry.”

“Look, I have stuff I gotta do. Alpha stuff.”

Danneel grasps at any possible way to fix this. “Meet me at the Grease later? Please?”

Gen scowls some more.

“Around eight, maybe? Curly fries.” Gen has already proclaimed her devotion to curly fries.

One of the other alphas calls Gen’s name, and she shrugs a tight little shrug. “Maybe,” she says.

--

Danneel takes a back corner table in the tiny seating area of the Grease, campus source of all things bad for you. The edibles, anyway. She sucks on a milkshake and tries again to read her history text. It goes badly.

“So, what?” Gen says. She’s standing on the other side of the table, arms crossed. She’s still scowling.

“I got you fries,” Danneel says. “They might be a little cold now.”

Gen looks at them and back at her, and then she climbs up onto the stool. And waits.

Danneel swallows. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re a freak. That wasn’t it.”

“What, then?” Gen’s stare is unforgiving.

“It’s, um.” Danneel picks up her napkin and starts to shred it. “So, I’m an omega, you know?”

“Yeah.” Her tone is not patient.

“And I was with this guy who was an alpha. He was kind of, you know, stereotypical alpha.” Danneel swallows. This is really the first time she’s made this speech; everyone in her town who needed to know already knew, and Adrianne guessed most of it without Danneel saying anything.

“It go bad?” Gen asks. Danneel glances up and sees a lot of the upset is gone.

“You have no idea.” Danneel peels another papery white layer off the napkin. “Anyway, when I get too close to alphas now I...” She shrugged. “I sort of freak.”

“Shit,” Gen says. After a moment, she adds, “Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“How do you do, like, anything? How are you even on this campus?”

“I hold my breath a lot,” Danneel says, “and I’m pretty careful about where I sit. It’s mostly okay when I’m not surprised, you know?”

Like with Gen, right now. Danneel is taking shallow breaths and repeating to herself over and over, Gen. This isn’t alpha, this is Gen. She’s safe.

“Shit.” Distractedly, Gen nabs a curly fry and munches. “So you weren’t freaking out because I’m a freak. You were freaking out because I’m an alpha freak.”

“Pretty much.”

“Huh.” Gen munches another curly fry. “So this is way insensitive of me, but that’s kind of awesome.”

“What?”

Gen backpedals. “I mean, not awesome for you. But usually I’m never alpha enough, you know?”

“Congratulations. You’re alpha enough to trigger me.”

She grimaces. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, well. I guess I get it.” She thinks back to Adrianne’s comments about life in Frakes Hall, and for once she thinks it might kind of suck to be alpha. “So we’re okay?”

“Are we okay?” Gen asks. “I mean, can you deal with the, you know, alphaness?” She gestures at herself. “All five foot four inches of it?”

“I hope so,” Danneel says. She takes a deeper breath, a breath of decision. “I think so.”

“Cool,” Gen says.

And Danneel thinks it pretty much is.

END

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