A/N: I've been desperate to do a modern AU for these two for some time, so here it is. It's set at a fictional Redbrick university in England. I hope you enjoy, I'm not so sure of it, as I wanted something a little lighter to write, and period drama is proving difficult to translate - so do let me know what you think.

Patsy

University had been fun so far, she supposed. Well, as fun as it could be studying medicine. Halls were decent – she had been lucky. The horror stories of friends who had gone elsewhere about mould and cockroaches hadn't translated into reality for her, as she had been assigned to a relatively new-build accommodation block. No en suite, but she could dream, and it wasn't so bad as she was sharing a bathroom with five other girls, so the only downfall was long hair clogging up the shower and make up scattered all over the place, but no nude boys and general filth. Three weeks in though, and fresher's flu had taken hold of her. Her ears hurt, her throat burned and she couldn't remember what it was to breath through her nose. Three weeks of lectures hadn't equipped her with the knowledge of how to deal with this beyond gallons of honey and lemon, neither was she going to be able to prescribe herself anything anytime soon. She had gotten off rather lightly though, compared to Barbara, who had been bedridden for four days straight, much to Trixie's dismay as she'd had to miss out on her birthday trip to Paradise.

The girls she shared her kitchen and bathroom with were lovely enough, though she had only really gotten to know Trixie so far, and Barbara through sympathetic toast deliveries and Tesco shops on her behalf. Trixie had her all partied out to last her a lifetime though, to the point where she felt as if she'd seen the sweaty inside of Paradise, Voodoo's and Rev's more than she had seen her lecture halls or text books during fresher's week. Patricia and Lavinia were lamenting that she wasn't in their accommodation block though, and were forever trying to get her to come over for girl's reunions with some of the others. The amount of girls from her school who had come here was unbelievable – well, not entirely unbelievable. The only people who didn't go to a Russell Group from her school went to do an art foundation instead, or took a gap year. There were plenty of boys knocking about that she knew as well, from the boy's school and others. She kind of wished she'd gotten an entirely fresh start at a place where she knew no one, but that would have required applying internationally, and for medicine that was too much of a headache and unjustifiably expensive, not that her father wouldn't have paid.

"Patsy, are you sure you won't come out?" Trixie pleaded with her, as she sat cross-legged on the other girl's bed, watching her do her make up in her mirror.

"Trix, look at me." The other girl turned and glanced her up and down, in her pinstriped pajamas and her dressing down. "And have you heard my voice?" She croaked.

"Fair enough, I suppose." She said, whilst curling her eyelashes. "I went out with tonsillitis in fresher's week though."

"We don't all have your devotion to a 90's girl band tribute night though, do we?"

"It was all worth it when Wannabe came on." She shook her head blissfully, reminiscing with a smile.

"And when Tom Hereward came onto you, I suppose." Patsy ribbed.

"Not really, quite awkward when I had to spend the whole night dodging him because I didn't want to get with him for the first time and give him what I had." Trixie sighed.

"Made up for it the other night in Voodoo's though, didn't you?" She grinned. "And now all anyone can talk about is how the head of the Christian Union was seen getting with a fresher all night long."

"I know, right? They all think we went home together, but he got all awkward about it. I don't know why."

"You do realise he's probably a virgin, Trix." Patsy pointed out.

"No one's a virgin these days when they come to uni." She sighed, and Patsy shuffled awkwardly. "Sorry Pats, I meant boys. And besides, it's different for you."

Patsy held her breath, worried the other girl had guessed. She had made noble plans to just come out as soon as she got to uni – it wasn't as if anyone would care, and if they did, they would be in the complete minority. But then every bloody girl from her school had to get an offer and drag her along to every single rugby and rowing social, insist she go to their pre-drinks, and introduce her to all of their friends, and all of a sudden it had become a lot harder to just get it out of the way. And now she was afraid, rather irrationally, that Trixie wouldn't like her anymore if she knew, wouldn't pull her into a cubicle when they were clubbing to save them both queuing for the toilet, wouldn't feel comfortable when they passed out in the same bed together, wouldn't dance with her when they went out – and god knows, she needed someone with Trixie's moves to distract everyone else from her god-awful dancing.

"What do you mean by that?" She asked carefully.

"Well, it's not like you couldn't – you're really hot, Pats. So you don't really count. And besides, you went to a girl's boarding school so it's not your fault." She reasoned, and Patsy sighed with relief.

"I'm not hot, Trix. But thanks for the sentiment."

Trixie groaned, "You have to stop that. All the rugby boy's tongues fall out of their mouths around you, I swear its because you're way more subtle than the rest of the girls, acting like you don't want them while they fling themselves about the smoking area hoping to be noticed and pretending to need a cigarette."

"I don't want them." Patsy replied.

"Oh, come on. I understand they're not everyone's type, but you've got to admit, that Josh is absolutely gorgeous." Trixie sighed.

"They're not my type at all." She said firmly, biting her lip.

"Look, babes. I've got to run – it was nice of your friends to invite me to their pre-drinks even though you've been flaky as fuck." Trixie seemed to enjoy the company of her school friends more than Patsy did – she wasn't quite as jolly hockey sticks as the rest of them though, having gone to the private day school in her town, but she kept up well. She only wished that her friends from school didn't spend so much money when they went out, it wasn't fair on anyone else they invited, and Patsy couldn't justify fifty pounds on cocktails on a night out, even if her father would keep putting money in her student account as long as she needed it – it was just distasteful.

"I've not been flaky, Trix. I'm not well. I'm going straight to bed."

Trixie turned off the Taylor Swift playing from her laptop, and switched off her fairy lights, "Oh, there she goes again, playing that weird arse music." The other girl rolled her eyes as the whole building seemed to vibrate to the beat of next door. Trixie hadn't stopped moaning about her next-door neighbour Delia and her raucous pre-drinks and strange electronic music. "All that makes her bearable is that hot one who takes all the club pictures, Denny Wray, I think his name is. He's always round her place."

"Delia seems alright." Patsy reasoned.

"That's because you don't have to live next to her. Her and her friends were skateboarding down the hallway the other night when I was trying to sleep." She rolled her eyes.

"And you've never played Bey a little too loudly, have you?" She teased.

"No, actually, not since the last time I tried to do a rendition of Drunken Love. Winnie was banging on the wall. You remember?"

"Yes, you were trying to teach me to slut drop." Patsy laughed, recalling well how Trixie had tripped over the bottle of vodka and nearly cried in her drunkenness at the waste.

"Right, I'll see you later, babe. I hope you feel better in the morning."

She do desperately wanted to head to bed for the night, deciding to give the textbooks a miss until she felt better. She'd have so much to catch up on, but her head was banging so hard that she couldn't think of anything worse than studying right now. It was times like these she wondered why on earth she just hadn't taken something less time-consuming than medicine – art history, like Trixie, or Classics, like Barbara. She collapsed into her mattress, opening her laptop with the noble ambition of watching a few episodes of something or another on Netflix, but fell asleep minutes into Parks and Recreation, only to wake at an unknown hour with her throat feeling worse than ever. The pain and the heat radiating from it made her eyes water when she tried to swallow, and she hoped to god she hadn't picked up tonsillitis – Trixie had been given a clean bill of health a week ago, so it couldn't be. She really ought to know, but they hadn't studied that yet. Only anatomy.

She stumbled out of bed, pushing open her door and heading into the kitchen to rummage through her friend's cupboards, desperate to see if she had some Lemsip, preferably the drowsy kind, left over from her bout of illness – why on earth hadn't she stocked up in fresher's week? When she walked in it was dark, and there was a figure that appeared to be having an argument with a bagel. She frowned, flicking on the light, spotting Delia by the toaster wielding a large bread knife. The other girl was never in here cooking, so she deduced that like so many others she lived off a diet of various types of bread and pot noodles, unlike Barbara and Trixie, who seemed to have a love affair between them for avocado and quinoa and the like, so she was well looked after. She stumbled backwards when she turned to glance at Patsy, clearly drunk.

"Hello." She smiled.

"Um, maybe you shouldn't be doing that. Here, I'll cut it." She approached her, carefully taking the knife from her hand and slicing the bagel into two equal halves.

"You absolute star." She smashed each half with the ball of her hand. "You have to squish them to get them into the toaster." She explained when she caught the bemused look on Patsy's face.

"Right." Patsy said, opening Trixie's cupboards. "I'm just looking for some lemsip."

"Its in there, on the top shelf." Delia remarked, and Patsy wondered why Delia seemed to know the ins and outs of Trixie's cupboard, but all was explained when she reached into the fridge and pulled out Winifred's tub of butter. So she was the one who had led to all the angry post-it notes from the girl about stealing food from others, and she couldn't help but smirk, remembering how accusations had flown and drama had been lived out in the first week, but the real culprit had evaded all detection.

"Thanks. Good night?" She inquired gently.

"Absolutely cracking." Delia grinned. "Went to Bunker, Zed Bias was performing. Why he'd come here I have no idea, but it was amazing. Then I was so hungry, but I really wanted chips and curry sauce and no-one here seems to get that, you know?" Patsy feigned understanding of who this DJ was, and wondered why on earth she wasn't satisfied with cheap ketchup. "So I thought the next best thing was a toasted bagel." She couldn't argue with that.

"Do you want a cup of tea while the kettle's boiling?" She asked, watching her attack the now warm bread with Winnie's butter reasonably successfully.

"Aw, that would be lush." She said, half falling into a seat at the table and setting into her modest meal. Patsy glanced back at her after emptying a sachet of Lemsip into a mug and popping a tea bag into another for Delia. Everything she wore always seemed to be rolled up, the sleeves of her t-shirt, the hem of her jeans – maybe it was something that really cool people did. Bunker was the only cool place in this town, she knew that much, though she'd never been – it was intimidatingly edgy. Trixie much preferred her nightly dose of Katy Perry and Destiny's Child, and she preferred to be in a place where judgment went out the window, which it certainly did in their established haunts – there was no shame in Paradise in particular, just vomit, sweat, and desperate rugby lads. "Where are you from then?"

"Berkshire." She answered, registering the confusion on Delia's face. "Its one of the Home Counties. What about you?" She could tell she was Welsh, but not precisely where she was from.

"Must be posh." Delia said honestly. "I'm from Pembroke, but spiritually I feel like I'm from Cardiff, and deeply spiritually I feel like I'm from Chicago, but in the nineties." She slurred.

Patsy laughed, "Just in the nineties, then?"

"Yes." Delia nodded. "The musical innovation, the partying, absolutely unparalleled. What about you, where are you deeply spiritually from? Downton Abbey?" Patsy flushed a little – she knew she was posh, and she knew that it was blindingly obvious, but she'd just spent so much time with girls from her school and Trixie, and Barbara who would never say anything untoward, that she hadn't been made fun of for it yet. She tried her hardest not to be offended, but it was a little hurtful that it was coming from a girl who was so pretty, so unbelievably, untouchably cool. "I didn't mean to be rude, I was just joking."

"I know - it's fine." She sat down opposite her, wondering why she didn't just slink back to her room to watch Netflix while she drank her medicine and tried to fall back asleep, especially as Delia had made it quite clear that they were two very different people.

"You do medicine, don't you? I've seen you in lectures." She smiled, running a hand through her dark hair, the long chain around her neck swinging.

"Yeah, you as well?"

"Nah, I just turn up 'cause I feels like it." She ribbed. "Seriously though, its in my medical opinion that you're not very well."

Patsy chuckled, "I know. I couldn't go out tonight."

"Were you going to come and see Zed Bias?" Delia asked, her eyes lighting up. "You should have hit me up, I'm repping for Bunker, and it's much cheaper to buy from me."

Three weeks in and she'd already been pegged as cool enough to sell tickets for that place? Patsy felt unquestionably dorky in her presence, and especially dorky in her 'old-man' pajamas, as Trixie called them. "No, I was going to go out with Trixie and some other friends."

"Oh, well next time there's something good on I'll let you know. You can come with me, if it's not your friend's kind of thing." Delia said enthusiastically.

Patsy didn't know what implored her not to deny her offer, perhaps it was politeness, or perhaps it was not being able to resist the way the other girl's eyes had lit up, but she smiled. "That would be nice." She didn't know what she had gotten herself in for – she knew nothing about house or techno other than the people here who tended to go and listen to it smoked a lot of rollies and took a lot of drugs. But somehow she trusted Delia to keep her safe from being asked for a Rizla by someone with pupils like a saucepan, and she quite wanted to try meeting some new people, some different people unlike the ones she'd been surrounded with her whole life.

"Sweet. I can probably get you in for free, so if you don't like it you won't blame me for wasting your money." The other girl grinned, popping the last of her bagel into her mouth. "Now, I'm telling you to go to bed and get some sleep, future doctor's orders."

Patsy obliged, the other girl standing up, dusting the crumbs from her mouth and tossing her plate in their growing pile of washing up that would no doubt warrant another angry post-it soon enough. She head back to bed, clutching her mug between the paws of her dressing gown, and opening up her laptop only to find she'd received an invite on Facebook. She clicked on it – 'The Bunker welcomes/Dimitri from Paris' – and smiling, she pressed attending.