He had a bloody nose again. The boy in the grey top – it was always a grey top – who refused to sit anywhere but the front row, had come in at least once every week with some kind of injury.

In September it had been his wrist. He had worn a cast that he mostly hid under a speckled grey hoodie. The last time she had seen him with the cast had been a few minutes after their Friday lecture in the Starbucks around the corner. She had been startled by the sight for three reasons.

One – He was holding a pink Frappuccino.

There was of course nothing wrong with a man holding a pink drink, but there are some people who you expect to only drink hard whiskey and drain-water and when you see them standing in Starbucks holding a pink Frappuccino it startles you.

Two – His cast - the cast that meant he sat in lectures like he didn't give a shit and would look all this crap up later on Wikipedia all because he couldn't hold a pen, the cast that she thought was slightly badass, was lime green and covered in signatures.

Three – He knew her name.

She had been leaning against a pillar, waiting for her drink, trying not to take up too much space in the crowded coffee shop, and had allowed her attention to drift.

By the time she heard her name the drink had gone. She flicked her head around at the faces nearby but no-one met her eye and then suddenly he was in front of her.

"Arya, this is yours."

"Then why did you take it?"

"Didn't want anyone else to nab it."

She frowned at him but he had already turned and gone.

October brought a limp. She couldn't quite see whether there was a bandage or any support beneath his jeans, but that didn't stop her peaking down at his legs whenever she had the chance. He definitely noticed her staring, and more than once gave her a look, but she would just shake her head and look down. They didn't know each other well enough for her to explain herself, and his sharp eyes made her blush.

By the end of the month he was walking normally again, without nothing to suggest that anything had ever been wrong. But by next week there was another injury. The first bloody nose.

It had obviously dried by the time he arrived in the lecture theatre, but it was crooked and bruised and Arya almost laughed. Because of course, him with his face disfigured made her a little hotter under the collar than usual. She spent most of the hour considering why it. Perhaps it was the intrigue, the question of how he could take a punch and carry on with his life and not let anyone know what had happened. Or perhaps just the difference between him and the other boys in this class, the ones who spent more time on their hair in the morning than Arya did. Or perhaps it was something more raw and primal. She didn't want to admit that there was a part of her that appreciated the caveman who would fight for her, but she couldn't help biting her lip at the picture of him in a fight.

When she saw him later that week – across the library, in the silent section – his face was back to its normal colour. She tried to hold back her disappointment.

But Friday morning came and there he was, in the front row of their most boring lecture with a twisted nose and what looked like blood still on his face.

Arya normally sat near the back with some of the guys from the wrestling team, but the bloody tissue sitting on his desk made her pause and she found herself sitting in the second row, just to his left.

"Do you need a fresh one?" she asked, tapping him on her shoulder with her packet of tissues.

He turned around and frowned.

"Thanks." He took them and then turned around without further comment.

"No problem." She muttered to the back of his head.

She should have left it there. She could have, if he hadn't been so damn secretive.

"Did you get in fight this morning or something?"

He turned around again, his eyebrows raised.

"I mean, I know you're often injured but this looks-" she paused, taking the opportunity to examine his face, "-fresh." She squinted suspiciously and thought she saw the flicker of a smile on his face.

"I'm fine." He turned back, but Arya wasn't done.

"No, you're not though. You're bleeding onto the desk. And you had the remains of a bloody nose on Monday too."

"So?" He turned back, resting his elbow on the back of his chair.

"So, why? How? Is there some kind of University fight club that I've been missing out on?"

This time he really did smile. "No, no fight club. Just some idiot."

"The same idiot as before?"

He sighed, but hadn't bothered turning back around so she wasn't sure why he was complaining.

"Yes the same idiot, no it's nobody you know, no it's not always him, and no there's no fight club."

"That didn't really give me any answers." She leant forward and glared at him with her chin resting on her palm.

"It gave you plenty of answers, just not the ones you wanted." He laughed an exasperated laugh and shook his head. Before he could turn back to the front she grabbed his arm.

"Well, give me those then."

He laughed properly this time. "You're a persistent shit aren't you?"

"I'm not a shit, I'm a girl." She glowered at him.

"Oh, I know, don't worry."

The lecturer clapped his hands and the rest of the room began to fall silent. He turned around and she sat glaring at the back of his head.

She cornered him again on his way out.

"Are you going to Starbucks again? Can I come with you?"

She hadn't taken long packing her bag because she had never opened it to begin with. Whichever battle Dr. Gibson had spent the past hour covering would surely have been adapted into a film by now. That was the whole reason Arya had taken his class to begin with; Jon had said it was piss-easy.

He didn't look up to speak to her, but continued to pack his bag.

"You ask a lot of questions, don't you?"

"Well, you're so bad at answering them, if I keep asking them then you're bound to answer me at some point, aren't you?"

He stood up straight and grinned down at her.

"Am I?"

She looked up at him resolutely ignoring the height difference. "Yes. So, coffee?"

He turned to the door, "I don't really drink coffee."

She followed, "Tea? Juice? Froofy Frappuccino?" His steps were long but slow, so she didn't have trouble keeping up, perhaps by design.

He groaned, but Arya was certain this time that he was also smiling, "Gods' sake, fine."

She beamed up at him.

"Gibson always makes it seem like nobody is ever the good guy. Just once I want to hear about a battle where the good guy beat the baddie."

"Isn't that the point though? That there is no such thing as 'good versus evil' but only people on different sides?"

"Don't you ever want to go back to a time when everything was black and white, though? When of course you were right because that was what you thought was true so damn the other side, you were right?"

"I never thought like that. I think my world's always been a bit grey."

"Is that why you always wear that hoodie? To allow your outer self to display your true inner being?"

He snorted, "No, it's just a good hoodie. It's got pockets inside and all."

Arya laughed and reached across to scoop up some of the cream off the top of his drink.

"Oi!"

He swatted at her hand and flicked her spoon away, sending with it flecks of cream towards her.

She laughed and wiped it off her face.

"If you could just give me what I want, there wouldn't be such a kerfuffle." She looked at him pointedly.

"Alright," he said, laughing at how she perked up, "I work at a nightclub as a bouncer and drunk people are idiots. But you still can't have any cream." He added, shielding his cup from her.

"Oh, come on!"

She whined and he laughed and the day passed with more questions.

"But what about the cast? The green one? Who signed it?" she had grabbed his arm that had been bound in lime, as though examining it for remaining scars.

He gave her a quizzical look, "My friends. Who signs your casts?"

"Oh anyone I can get to. I imagine. I've never actually broken a limb."

"Really? I thought seeing as you're so annoying that surely you must regularly get beaten up."

"Oh shut up, I'm a treat to be around. Although my brother did once push me from a tree."

"Ha! See. Nightmare."

"I'm not the nightmare! He is, little blighter. Although it was only because when I'd pushed him he fell and hit his head and had to go to hospital. He's fine," she added quickly when a look came on his face that she hoped was concern, but was probably actually just outrage, "it was just to check how bad his concussion was."

"Oh well then it's totally fine you pushed your baby brother out of a tree then." He scoffed.

"It wasn't my baby brother, it was just Bran, although he is younger than me, but Rickon's the baby." She grinned at the thought of trying to push Rickon out of a tree.

He was looking at her now with something new in his eyes. He looked pensive but sounded cautious when he asked, "How many brothers do you have?"

"Four. Well, three and a half, but that's still technically four, because even though we don't know who his mum is, we are certain of dad. And then there's my sister too, but we don't get on as well."

His eyebrows were raised and for the first time he looked taken aback.

"Sorry," she bit her lip, "that's a load of Stark drama you didn't need."

"No, no." he muttered, blinking, "it's just- gods there's a lot of you."

Arya laughed, "Yeah, but any less and the house would be too quiet, dad always says."

He was still looking shocked, so it didn't take much for Arya to surmise - "only child?"

He nodded, "Orphan too. Quiet house."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She frowned. In her enthusiasm for talking about her family she did often put her foot in it.

"No, it's okay, my mum died a few years ago and I was with her then, but I'm fine. It's fine."

Fine?" she asked quietly. She couldn't imagine losing a parent, let alone losing a parent and then being all alone in the world.

"Fine." He nodded firmly, his blue eyes turning steely.

"You know," she began quietly, cradling her mug in her hands, and unsure about how this would sound "whenever Robb – my eldest brother – says that he's 'fine', it's because he's really not fine but he thinks that we can't possible see him upset or we'll lose all respect for our big brother." She dared a glance up at him, "Not that I'm saying you're not fine, but just that in my experience when a person says they're 'fine' that much, they're actually not, they just don't have the space to be 'not fine'. Does that make sense?"

He didn't say anything, just pressed his lips together. Probably wondering why this strange girl from class was psycho-analysing him.

"The point," She continued taking a deep breath, "is that it's okay not to be fine and if you feel like you need a space to be not fine, then I'm happy to provide."

She left the point hanging for a few seconds, and when he didn't respond she started speaking again, hoping to the gods that she could bring them back to the laughing place of ten minutes ago.

"Gods, I'm talking as if I'm your best friend or something, which I know I'm not, because you're obviously a super popular guy who can fill a whole arm with signatures."

He gave her a crooked grin, but no words.

"Unless those were all you and you just didn't want people to think you had no friends, but all along were trying to tempt me in with the intrigue of your injuries so that I would become your best friend." She squinted at him suspiciously, letting a smile cross her lips when he huffed and rolled his eyes.

"Of course, that would never work because I am not friends with liars. But then, maybe you're not a liar, simply mad and believe yourself to have friends who wrote all over your cast but actually just can't remember your last manic fit where you did it yourself." She declared.

"So either I'm a sad and pathetic liar or I'm crazy?" he asked, raising his eyebrows at her.

"Or you're a perfectly decent guy who I'm a bit intrigued by." She offered, smiling into her coffee.

"How intrigued?"

She frowned at the question, "What do you mean?"

"Intrigued enough to give me your notes from today?" His head was bowed, his chin tucked down towards his chest, but he flicked a glance up at her and with it she saw a smile.

"I didn't take any notes today."

He tilted his head quizzically. In a strange way it reminded her of her brother's dog. "None?"

She shook her head and held his gaze, determinedly not blushing. "No, I was a bit – er – distracted."

He was smiling now. Looking at her as she blushed and avoided the real question.

"I'm intrigued enough to steal you Hot Pie's notes though. So long as I get something in return."

"What would you want?"

She sat up straight and held his gaze. "Another coffee date."

"Date?"

"That too."

He laughed, and stirred his straw around his cup, "This morning I didn't think you even knew my name."

She looked down at his hands, "If we're being totally honest-" she started and then stopped herself. Surely there were ways of not admitting this. If she would only keep quiet.

"What? You secretly been stalking me?" he grinned again.

"No!" she cried, not looking at him.

"That sounds a tad too defensive to me."

"Shut up! No, I was going to say that- well, I still don't really know your name."

She looked up at him and then away again quickly, hoping he wouldn't be too upset.

"You pester me all the way from uni into a date and you don't even know my name?"

He sounded outraged, but when Arya looked up he was smiling. She couldn't help but smile back.

"Shut up. I know I like you, shouldn't that be enough?"

"No, and that is such a bad line, you should be ashamed."

She laughed but could feel her face burning.

"Okay, I'm sorry. I think you're intriguing and you're easy to talk to and I think you're attractive, but I don't know your name. Can you please tell me now?"

"For someone so full of questions I would have thought that would have been your first one."

"Well, you knew mine, and I still wasn't sure you weren't the TA."

He cackled at that, "Just because I'm old?"

"Older." She said firmly, "not old. My brothers would have a heart attack if they heard I was dating an old guy. I mean they'll probably have a heart attack about you anyway. Jon and Robb are both quite good at the 'intimidating big brother' malarkey. Goodness knows Sansa's needed it with the fools she's brought home."

"Big scary brothers? Oh dear, maybe this dating business isn't for me. I mean, if you haven't bothered to even find out my name, how serious can you be about it, after all?"

"Would you shut up?"

He grinned broadly.

"Maybe I don't want to date you," she sniffed half turning away from him, "see, I try not to date morons." She turned back to glare at him, but he just laughed again.

"There's a shame. Because I only date irritating girls who sulk when they don't get their way."

"I'm not sulking! You're just an arse!" She folded her arms and kicked him - lightly - under the table.

"An arse you're scheduled to go on a date with." He laughed easily, ignoring the physical violence happening down below.

She glowered at him, "Nothing's scheduled, you're just- just lightly pencilled in."

"And when is that pencilled in for?"

She thought for a second, going through the calendar in her head. Housemate night tonight, coffee with Sansa in the morning, but then nothing until Sunday - "Tomorrow evening?"

"Perfect. Here's my number, let me know your address and I'll come pick you up." He scribbled on a napkin and threw it across the table at her.

"To go where?"

He shrugged, slinging his bag over his shoulder as he stood.

"And I can't put this in my phone without a name, so…" she left the sentence hanging, anticipating a response that would finally satisfy.

"Call me whatever you like."

"I'm putting you in as 'horse-arse'."

"See you tomorrow, Arya."

"See you tomorrow, Horse-arse."