As Erik and Ray were walking down the hallway after what Erik thought had been a particularly mind numbingly dull lecture in Shakespeare that Erik was still surprised his roommate had shown up for, Ray came to a full stop. He spread his arms wide, clearly intending on preventing Erik from doing something insane and drastic like going home, with physical force if necessary.

“What is it?” Erik asked with a sigh.

“Look!” Ray pointed frantically to a painfully bright little poster printed on neon pink paper. “Look at that!”

Erik stared at the paper blankly. “It’s hideous. It’s an affront to the eyes of all humankind. So what?”

Ray groaned and grabbed Erik by the collar of his shirt, pulling him closer to the wall and nearly smashing his face into the poster. “Read it!”

Trying to lean away from the wall so he could actually focus on the badly designed poster, Erik read it with reluctant obedience. “It’s for some fundraising thing for the Ukranian student group on campus. They need volunteers. So what? Student groups are always looking for suckers to give them money or physical labour or just generally exploit. You and all your wannabe lawyers do it all the time.”

“Jesus Christ, Thor, are you blind?” Ray slammed a hand alongside the bottom of the poster. “Free vodka for volunteers. Free vodka! Free! Vodka!”

“Student groups are also always trying to organize alcohol-related parties. The stuff’s never as free as they claim. When your guys organized that free beer night – ”

“Vodka!”

“So it’s a scam that involves foreign alcohol instead of quality Canadian beer. Your point?”

“Vodka!”

“Vodka makes me throw up,” Erik pointed out sullenly.

“Everything makes you throw up. I swear to God, Thor, sometimes you’re such a crappy Viking that I think you’re adopted.”

Erik bristled. “Everything does not make me throw up. Just the cheap vodka you’ve bought. And this is a student society – the vodka’s probably going to bear more resemblance to an actual potato than something drinkable.”

“That’s stupid,” Ray said bluntly.

“This is stupid.”

“It’s clear, my dear Thor,” Ray said, putting a hand on Erik’s shoulder, which he irritably shook off, “that, for reasons that are unknown to me, you have an irrational fear of vodka.”

“What?!”

“An irrational fear of vodka that will clearly be crippling to you in all future social situations. The only course of action, then, is to confront this fear bravely, like a true Viking!”

“Did you come to class drunk?”

“This is the perfect situation to begin your cure! Not only will you be confronting your deep but stupid fear of potato-based alcohol, but you’ll be helping a struggling student society pursue their noble goals.”

“The only goal a student society has is to get drunk.”

“Is there any greater goal than helping a stressed young student relieve a bit of tension at the end of a hard week?”

“Yeah, that of going home and not throwing up.”

“They need help, Thor!”

“We’re not Ukranian!”

“Why would they care?”

“Because,” Erik said slowly, in case Ray’s clearly alcohol-fogged mind was having trouble processing words of sanity, “they’re a Ukranian student society. You don’t let vets hand out at your pre-law functions, do you?”

“But we don’t advertise, pleadingly, for volunteers,” said Ray calmly. “Besides, we can always lie.”

“You’re Italian! You’re Japanese! Your dad wasn’t even born on the same continent! There’s, like, all of Russia and China and water and who knows what else between them!”

“So I’m adopted,” Ray said with a shrug. “I’m adopted and I desperately want to connect with my parents’ cultural heritage at a time when I’m drifting away from them, in the hopes that it will bring us back to our former closeness.”

Erik boggled.

“And you’re practically a Hitler Youth poster boy. Clean-cut Aryan guys fit in practically everywhere in Europe. We can make up a good Ukranian-sounding name for you and they’ll never suspect.”

Erik reddened. “You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”

“Hey, I’m not the one who started it. You never deck that Kevin guy when he says it.”

“He’s my boss.”

“It’s what you get for establishing a precedent. It’s not my fault the culture of your country likes to stereotype you.”

“This is not endearing me to your stupid idea, you realize that?”

“It doesn’t matter. You know you’re in,” Ray said cheerfully.

“No, I’m not.”

“Think of the pretty Ukranian girls, Thor. The pretty, drunk Ukranian girls, who’ll be so grateful to you for helping to haul tables and shit for them.”

Erik looked from Ray to the poster and back again. Ray grinned encouragingly. With a resigned sigh, he pulled off one of the slips of paper with a contact number on it and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. “I hate you and your stupid ninja plans,” he muttered.

“That’s fine, Thor, just fine,” Ray said, slapping Erik on the back, and starting off down the hall once again, whistling jauntily.