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French Kiss (Skam - Chris x OC) Part 4

Synopsis : Life is a show and Nissen was Christoffer’s stage. He owned the place, people cheered for him, he brought life to the parties and good looks to his group of friends. But after high school he wasn’t so much of a star boy anymore and he found himself being terribly alone. Who really knew the real him? Only the people who got a backstage pass to his life could claim to do. But amidst all the turmoil of his young years, a strange girl is going to stumbled in his life - neither of them will be prepared for this.

Word Count: 2.1k

Part 3 <<< >>> Part 5

MASTERLIST

Rule number four: Only boring people get bored.

“Alright,” she chirped. “Tell me about you. I know nothing,” Helen demanded Chris, leaning her elbow on the table and resting her chin in her palm.

Chris thought she looked like she was expecting to hear the story of his life from start to finish. For a second Chris wondered what he was going to tell her – what he was supposed to tell her. Oh, I'm just the typical asshole who uses women for his personal pleasure but won't commit, and who’s wasting away his life, nothing special to say about me. If he ever wanted to charm this girl, that would sure do the trick. He also heard Andreas' voice in the back of his mind telling him to get his shit together for fuck's sake.

“I don't know what to say, I have a pretty boring life,” he told her. It was the easy way out, they both knew it. Helen didn't look like she was buying it though, and rolled her eyes.

“I don't believe that. Attractive people don't have boring lives,” she blurted out ever so innocently.

“You find me attractive?” Chris smirked so wide his face hurt and he leaned back in his chair. Could he sound any cockier? Probably not. He knew it of course, but hearing it felt great.

“You know you are.”

The way she said it wasn't teasing or reprimanding. It was the most factual thing he had heard her say. Far be it from her to judge, she simply stated that he was good-looking. Chris had to admit that this compliment left a bitter taste on his tongue.

“Knowing it doesn’t take away from the pleasure of hearing it,” he pointed out.

“True,” she simply mused, fiddling with the plastic menu. “Now tell me,” she said again, along with a little smile that wiped away all traces of unease. “Who are you, Chris? Don't lie, I can always tell when people lie.”

That last warning was dropped so candidly that he didn't know if she was pulling his leg or being serious.

“I'm the last person you want to ask that,” he said. “I can tell you who I used to be, who I'd like to be, but I'm not sure I can tell you who I am.”

Helen leaned farther forward, both her elbows and hands on the table now.

“That’s alright. There’s still time to figure out.” She gently encouraged him to continue.

“What do you expect to hear? You said it yourself, I look like trouble. I'm no boy scout.”

“Do you feel regret for your past?” Helen asked, a bit awkwardly. She looked displeased with what she said, as if she didn’t find the word she needed. “You sound like you did bad things when you talk like this,” she explained further, still looking frustrated with the end result.

He had already offered to switch to English if she really had trouble with expressing something but she was adamant on speaking Norwegian only, because English was cheating.

“No- I mean, maybe. I used to be proud of my shenanigans at the time, but the older I get, the more I understand....” he drifted off. He was the one playing with the menu laying on the table now. “I felt so cool back then, but looking back on it now… I was just a little disrespectful shit.”

Now would be a good time for a waiter to come.

“I don't judge,” she said, huffing a little and leaning away from the table. “You say that you're not like that anymore so you can tell me. Teenagers are always little shits, not only you.”

“Just imagine the worst, most self-absorbed jerk you could ever meet – well, that's me. Congratulations, you're spending your Tuesday night with the biggest fuck boy of all,” Chris almost snarled in distaste of this self-proclaimed title. “Sorry.”

He couldn’t help the hint of self-loathing that tinted his words so he stopped speaking before saying too much.

Helen opened her mouth to answer but that's the moment when the waiter finally came to their table. They ordered each a hot beverage and Chris asked for a piece of pie and two forks. As soon as the waiter turned around, Helen reached over to Chris. Her hand didn't quite touch him but it was close enough to show sympathy and that he was allowed to take it if he wanted. He did not. It felt forbidden. He felt like he didn’t deserve that hand.

“I don't agree. My day is also better now with you than alone in my room. And you don’t look like a bad person, I think,” she told him calmly and with less of an accent than usually. “I was stupid teenager too.”

“Some are stupider than others,” he pointed out. He forced a smile on his face to show her he was okay. Please let her drop the subject.

He didn't bother trying to change her mind or contradict her. She could think whatever she wanted, deep down he knew he was a fuck up and an unreliable jerk. No amount of puppy eyes and sympathetic pout would change his opinion of himself.

“Hey, I'm supposed to get you to talk and improve your Norwegian, why am I the one doing all the talking?” Chris suddenly asked to divert the conversation.

“Hearing Norwegian helps me too!” Helen tried to protest but Chris squinted his eyes at her and she gave in. “Okay, okay, I will talk.” She raised her hands in surrender. “But it's half half, I talk if you talk. Agree?”

“Fifty fifty, you mean?” He laughed. “I just shared my dark past with you!” Chris said. “Your turn.”

“You didn't say much, just that you were not nice,” Helen crossed her arms over her chest now and leaned back too. “I am not an angel too you know?”

“-either,” he corrected her. “You're no angel either.”

“Right. I'm no angel either, I did stupid things in high school and I continue even now. I just look naive because I don't speak good and I'm shy speaking Norwegian.” She shrugged a little, as if to make it look like less of a big deal when really, Chris could tell she was embarrassed to admit this. “I know you speak slow so I can follow, you don’t need to. I get better.”

“You’re already doing very good,” he pointed out. Not to congratulate her but merely to underline the fact. “I don’t dumb it down for you, I promise.”

“I like conversation better, it’s more easy. I get nervous when I talk and people listen with all their attention on me and I forget words.”

“I'm the least attentive person, you can relax. I get distracted when I'm in the presence of a pretty girl,” Chris replied teasingly.

He wanted to see her blush, nothing more, nothing less.

“Beau parleur,” she shook her head in amusement and exasperation.

“Ha! I’m sure I know what that means!” he exclaimed victoriously just when the waiter came back with their order.

“Not the first time someone call you that?” she asked with an eyebrow raised. Once again, her nose scrunched up when she laughed and Chris decided right then and there that it was his favorite thing about her – that is, until he found something else to like more. “It means that you talk well to girls, I don’t know the word.”

“Smooth-talker?” he offered.

She shrugged. “I cannot tell without looking up the word.”

“Doesn’t matter. You're not getting out of this, speak now woman!” Chris admonished her and she crossed her arms and sucked up her bottom lip with a pout.

“You are too impatient!” Helen replied and took her steaming cup of coffee between her hands. “What do you want to know? It's more easy with questions.”

“How old are you? Where exactly are you from? What's your favorite pizza topping? Are you single? Do you have siblings?” Chris fired question after question in hope to conceal the one he actually wanted an answer to.

“I am twenty-four,” she said. Chris let out what he thought was a discrete sigh of relief upon hearing they were the same age, but she heard it. “I come from a small rural town in Province. I like my pizzas with pineapple and without mushrooms. I'm an only child. And I don't think I need to answer the last question, I mean, I live here alone.”

The good thing about answering the most pressing question last was that Chris had to pay attention to everything that came before without being distracted. The way she said the last part though… something felt off.

“It sounds like you’re not telling me everything,” he pointed out, trying his luck. It’s not like she owed him the truth. She sighed a deep, deep sigh.

“It is complicated. I did have a boyfriend before leaving, but he was not happy with my decision to come here...”

Her smile was gone now. Served hm right for snooping.

“He broke up with you because you wanted to study abroad?” Chris pushed, perplexed.

Helen cleared her throat, looking a little embarrassed all of a sudden.

“No, I broke up with him,” she clarified. “Coming here, doing this… It’s my dream.” She shrugged. “I wanted it more than to be with him,” she explained slowly, choosing her words carefully.

“Do you regret it?” Chris heard himself ask, unable to keep his curiosity at bay. What he really wanted to know what: did she miss him? Did she love him still?

She finally looked up to meet his gaze.

“No,” she said with finality. “I can’t explain why, but I know I take the best decision in my life when I come here.” A beat of silence passed, then her smile returned and she switched back to their initial conversation. “Your turn now,” she told him before he could pry even more.

“I'm also twenty-four,” he said, grateful for the opportunity to change subject again. Like they agreed, he would share if she shared and vice versa. “And an only child. I'm from Bergen but my dad works here so we moved to Oslo right before I went to high school. I know this city like the back of my hand.” He stopped there and like he expected, she took the bait.

“Are you single?”

“So, you are interested after all?” he teased her, purely out of habit. She squinted her eyes, annoyed that she fell for this trick.

He didn't know how else to connect with a girl truth be told. He wasn't particularly funny or caring or smart, or any of those things that girls valued in a boy. He was just good-looking – and it turns out that once you walk out of the gates of high school, that doesn't help you get what you want as easily anymore. Girls wanted more – they deserved more of course, but for the first time in his life, Chris didn't know if he could offer it to them.

“No, I don't,” Helen proudly raised her chin and looked out of the window to their left before sipping her coffee. “You keep it secret, I don't care.”

“I don't think I need to answer either. It's pretty obvious, isn't it?” he asked completely rhetorically. He was branded single. It was written on his forehead in sharpie.

“But-” she leaned back again and thought about what she was going to say before speaking. “-If you're good looking and not a jerk anymore, why single? It makes you sad I see, so why not change it?”

“I think the answer to this is obvious too,” Chris told her and looked at her pointedly.

“Me?” she asked in disbelief and pointed at herself. “The silly French girl who doesn't speak correct Norwegian? You just met me.”

“You sound pretty damn good for a silly French girl who struggles with the language.”

“You don't know me, Chris,” Helen scoffed. A fond smile still etched her lips though. But it was a sad one, as if she pitied him for liking her. It should be the other way around. She was the sweet girl having a sorta date with the infamous Penetrator though she had no clue. “Je ne suis pas un cadeau non plus.”

He didn't understand what she said this time but the tone of her voice alone made it clear that it wasn't a happy thought that crossed her lips.

“Let's not talk about this anymore,” she quickly changed the subject when it became too gloomy and grabbed one of the forks to dig in the rhubarb pie. “If you're twenty-four, you finish your degree soon?”

Using the other fork, Chris slid the plate with the pie closer to him again, earning a gasp of protest from the brunette sitting across from him.

“No, I'm in first year.”

“What did you do before? Travel?” Her inquiring sounded a lot less intrusive than it would have if she was still leaning on the table and looking at him intently. Now that her eyes were trained on the piece of pie, he felt a little more relaxed and less under scrutiny.

“I tried uni but I dropped out because I didn't like what I did. Then I joined the military, and now I'm back to square one because my parents blackmailed me into going back to college. This time I chose a degree I like though, so there's always that.”

“The military?” she asked with big, round eyes. She sounded fascinated. “Why go? And why leave?”

“Military service is mandatory in Norway,” he explained. “I did nineteen months, the maximum I could, then I left.”

“What's 'mandatory'?” Helen asked him, titling her head to the side.

“It means obligatory,” he said. She only frowned more. “I have to do it, it's not optional.”

“Oh. We don't have that in France since a long time.”

“What did you do before coming here?” Chris asked her.

“I have a degree in medieval literature,” she told him casually. “I come here because I want to study Vikings and Scandinavian literature of the medieval period and it's the only place in the world I can study this. I spent last year learning Norwegian at home and now I move here to get better before going to uni again to get my second degree.”

“For helvete!” Chris cursed under his breath.

His eyes went wide in astonishment for the first time today – for the first time this month. It suddenly struck him that he had unjustly presumed she wasn't half as intelligent as she actually was, merely because she had trouble speaking his language. He realized she must be one hell of a conversationalist in French and would probably get tired of him quickly if he wasn't in an advantageous position right now. Maybe that's what's going to happen when she'll get more comfortable speaking Norwegian. She was already great, especially if you thought about the fact that she only started learning last year and had no one to practice with until now. She must have done nothing but that for a year straight. And she understood everything she read, and wrote flawlessly. It was the speaking part that she needed to work on, and the vocabulary. Soon, he would become useless to her.

Soon, he would become useless, period.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted out, making her freeze. She looked up from their shared plate.

“Why?” she asked warily, as if suddenly wondering if she’d been tricked.

“I think I underestimated you,” he admitted, not knowing where he was going with this. “You’re probably way smarter than me, and way more interesting, and I just… well, I’m an idiot.”

That was it, she would get angry at him for assuming she was a stupid little foreign girl, an easy target that he took advantage of, and he would never hear from her again. He should have kept his fucking mouth shut, but it felt wrong not to say anything, it just came out. At least, it was nice while it lasted. Fuck, Andreas was right, he was hopeless.

“You see-” she started, making Chris snap out of his dark thoughts. “-I think you are interesting.”

“Because of my fascinating past in the military?” he dead panned; not quite sure he believed her. “It would bore the hell out of me if some dude told me about his military service.”

“Nah.” Helen shook her head and gave him a crooked smile with her fork between her lips. “Only boring people get bored. I like to think I am not boring.”

And with that, she stole the last piece of pie.

A/N: guys you have no idea how long I can stare at the picture I chose for this chapter without blinking

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