University (A Sherlock AU)

1: Molly's POV

It was a bleak London morning in December. The ice nipped away at my skin, and tears ran from the corners of my eyes as the wind blew in. I thought I was well prepared for the winter cold, but it seemed not.

I walked up and tapped the brass knocker of John's residence. He was my only friend in Bio; Sherlock preferred Chemistry and Lestrade was studying Law.

It was Mrs Hudson, the house owner and landlady, that opened the door to me. Everybody loved Mrs Hudson. She was like the mother away from home, only a lot more daring and risqué than any parent I've ever known.

"Come in out of the cold, dear." she said endearingly, gesturing me into the warm and inviting flats.

"How's the hip?" I asked, attempting to make small talk. I could hear John pattering about upstairs, probably just getting all his stuff together.

"Oh, it's playing up from time to time, but on the whole, a lot better." she replied. I adjusted my hat nervously; I had never been good at making conversation, and usually got my friends to do it for me.

Luckily I heard the door upstairs click open, and heard John kiss Sherlock goodbye. After the repeats of I'm not gay! and I'm not in love with Sherlock I don't know what you mean? It had turned out that John was very much in love with Sherlock, and Sherlock very much in love with him. And I had the audacity to ask Sherlock out in the first term.

"You ready to go?" I call up to John, who was busy making more goodbyes with Sherlock. I heard a kind of grunt escape him, and the door close shut as he plodded down the stairs.

"I guess" he said reluctantly. John had always hated Mondays; the drag of the shorter hand on the clock, that never seems to move between the hours, but simmers between each; the dreary drone of a lecturer making no sense in his unregistering brain.

We walked to the science department barely talking, too busy biting back the cold for our voiceboxes to even churn out a squeak.

When we finally reached the biology labs, the frost had turned my hands purple and orange and grey, and the tip of my nose a fluorescent red. The warmth of the school building welcomed us in, as we shed our winter jackets for lab coats.

Today was dissection.

And excited was an understatement.