"Damnit Sorey, you didn't buy any kitchen roll. Or washing up liquid. Did you even -"

Rose looked in the fridge.

"- the damn milk Sorey?"

Sorey grabbed his coat off the rack and stuffed some cereal bars and an apple in his rucksack.

"Sorry. I'll pick them up on my way home. Promise."

"How am I meant to make my morning coffee?"

"I'll get some tonight."

"You'd better, or Alisha'll be giving you a lecture."

"I will, I will. See ya Rose."

He locked the door behind him. The three of them had been living together for a semester and they hadn't quite worked out the kinks. Shopping and cleaning rotas were good in theory but hadn't taken into account the complexities of real life, such as it being really cold and his nose turning so red and tingly he had hurried home as fast as he could, forgetting the shopping.

It was still cold in the morning, but he had remembered to wear a scarf today, which he had wrapped around the lower portion of his face. The sky was such clean pale blue and the crescent moon was still hanging there, even at half eight in the morning. It was a beautiful day to look at, he loved days like these, but preferred them from the window of his attic room.

It was the second week of the summer semester. Summer. Seemed an odd definition for the period between January and June. It was the first full week of lectures. Today was the first of the The World of the Vikings module. Vikings!

By the time he had gotten to the lecture theatre he was only three minutes late. That was pretty good for him, the lecturer hadn't even started yet.

When he did he listened intently. Images of old dug out long ships and roundhouses flashed up on the projector. Photos of bronze Mjolnirs from different areas and era's. A whistle stop tour through Norse mythology. Professor Mayvin was an excellent lecturer. He was knowledgeable, passionate and engaging. But introductory lectures were always fun for the first half. The second half, however, explaining the timetable and the assignments weren't.

"This assignment is to be conducted as a paired exercise, split into 3 separate hand-ins through the semester. This slide shows a list of the pairings, be sure to write it down."

He squinted at the tiny text in the tiny table to try and see who his partner would be.

M. Rulay.

That was that Mikleo guy, wasn't it? The funny looking one? He'd seen him around the last year and a half, but had never talked to him. They hadn't taken any of the same optional modules before and they had never been in any of the same groups or seminars for the core modules. He tried to look for him in the audience. He wasn't hard to spot, he had bright white hair. The stranger thing was that in the right light his eyes were purple. He had tried to rationalise this when he had first seen him. Maybe it was a kind of albinism, the blue pigment in his eyes was translucent and mixed with the red in his capillaries turned a kind of purple. It would make sense with the white hair, and he did have very pale clear skin. There was something oddly ethereal about him. He spotted him in the crowd, he was looking back at him. Sorey lifted his hand up to wave, but Mikleo had turned away. He looked like he was blushing. It was hard to hide it with such fair skin. Maybe he was shy, he hadn't ever really seen him hanging around with anyone else in the department.

The lecture ended and he packed up his notes into his satchel. He saw the light on his phone flashing and swiped it open.

Rose: Milk, dumbass.

She was right to have doubted him. He had forgotten.

Sorey: Of course! Its not like I'd forgotten. Have more faith in me.

He put it in his pocket and wrapped himself in his scarf. He left the lecture, and started to walk towards the main exit when he heard a voice behind him.

"Hey."

It was Mikleo. His voice was muffled by a high collared coat that was zipped all the way up to the top. His eyes were just as purple as he'd thought they were through his rimless glasses. His hair had been pushed up away from his face, but strands had fallen and swept across his brows. He was a little flushed.

"You're Sorey, right?"

"Yes," he said with a nod. "And you're Mikleo?"

"We're partners for the assignment."

"Did you wait out here for me?" Sorey asked.

Mikleo nodded.

"Did you want to exchange contact details?"

Sorey pulled his phone and opened it on the contacts page.

"Here put your number in."

The young man did and handed it back.

"Were you heading to the library?" Mikleo asked. Sorey nodded back at him, phone held in his mouth as struggled with his zipper.

"Wait -" Mikleo took the phone from his mouth and yanked the end of Soreys scarf out the teeth of the zip. "-there you go."

"Thanks. And yes I was. Gonna grab the recommended reading before it's gone."

"Me too. I'll walk with you."

The cold hit them like a wall after they left the double doors of the building. They walked in silence for a little while. Sorey noticed Mikleo wasn't wearing his glasses. He never saw him take them off. Maybe he only needed them for reading? He'd only ever seen him lectures and in the library. Maybe he didn't need them all the time? His eyes looked straight ahead, focused and serious. So very serious.

"If we're going to be partners you should know a little about me so um, I'm Sorey, you know that -" Mikleo nodded. "- um, I'm currently studying- damn, you know that too."

Mikleo nodded again, Sorey swore he could see him stifle a giggle.

"I'm from a little mountain village in the North West. You won't have heard of it. I live half an hour up the main road, with two girls, Rose and Alisha. My favourite colour is blue. There's a lot more to me, but I can't think of anything right now."

"I'm from a little village too. I also live with two girls, Lailah and Edna. And …my favourite colour is also blue. It sounds a little like I copied all your answers."

Sorey gave him a light shove on the shoulder, which he wasn't expecting. "That's cool, sounds like we have a lot in common."

The entered through the revolving doors of the library and were net with a humid heat and the condensed smell of students. Sorey pulled a folded up handout out of his coat pocket to look at the reading list, Mikleo had already done the same.

"Sorey, if we're looking for the same books, we can split it up between us. I'll get the first four, you get the second, and we'll meet back here."

"Good thinking."

Sorey looked at the reading list. It didn't have the Dewey decimal codes for the books, so he went onto the libraries database on his phone.

Alisha: Remember the shopping! :-)

They had so little faith in him.

You: Gotcha :)

He stuffed his phone back in his pocket, then remembered why he'd got it out in the first place. He found one of the books on the fourth floor, the next on the second, remembered he was meant to be getting two of each, ran back up to the fourth to get a second of the first book, spent a long time looking for the third book, which was right next to the second, and went to get the fourth book, which was on the fourth. He went back to the ground floor foyer and found Mikleo already sitting on a bench on his phone, next to a large stack of books. He dropped the books next to him with a thud, and sat.

"Here you go, that's all of them."

The young man looked up at Sorey startled.

"They only had one of copy of the Bronsted text."

"We can share it, we'll be working together anyway. You can take it for now. I'm going to head home."

They walked home together partway. Mikleo was strange. He could never meet his eyes, it was like they couldn't focus. Maybe because he wasn't wearing his glasses. Then why wasn't he wearing them? Most of the time he was staring blankly at either the floor or the sky and nothing in-between. He wasn't being the best conversationalist, he took a while to respond and got lost mid-sentence. Maybe he didn't get enough sleep last night?

He went to the shop and bought the milk, and also Ben and Jerry's ice cream was on sale, so he bought a tub of chocolate brownie and cookie dough, and also a tub on raspberry sorbet that took his fancy.

"Guys, I come bearing milk," he said as he walked through his front door.

"What about the kitchen roll and washing up liquid?" Rose said as she poked her head out of her room.

Sorey handed her the bag of milk and ice cream.

"I'll be back with them in twenty minutes."

Thirty minutes later Sorey came back and dropped down into the cushions of the sofa, Alisha next to him.

"Have a good day Sorey? Anything interesting happen?"

"Yep, it was OK" he said. "Nothing monumental though."