by J. R Fox
“N-no problem,” Chris forced a smile.
He didn’t expect the man in black to suddenly drop into the seat next him, blocking Mary’s face from view.
“Professor!” she scolded him angrily.
“Now, now,” the man tsked. “Let’s not lose an eardrum, shall we?”
“Professor…?” Chris breathed, saying the word more to himself than anything. But then the man glanced down at him, his blue eyes piercing as he seemed to scan Chris’ face.
“Yes,” he finally answered in a dry, annoyed sort of tone. “Professor Holt, your savior from the airport.”
“Stop it,” Mary hissed, and Chris realized – belatedly – that she’d moved to stand beside their seat to look at his face around the man’s. “Chris, he’s the professor for history, so you’ve probably got him for one of your classes.”
“Oh?” Professor Holt blinked. “And why would you say that?”
“Because he’s a history major,” Mary said proudly, though Chris couldn’t have guessed why. Holt just looked at him again, but this time he had a small twitch to his lips, like he was holding back a smile.
“Ah,” he said, his voice a satisfied drawl. “So, they main campus has finally sent someone useful.”
Chris could only gulp, blinking back before he awkwardly turned to stare out the window. He didn’t miss the way that Professor Holt chuckled beside him.
The ride to the campus was long, and Chris found himself dozing off a few times only to jump awake as the bus ran over a particularly deep hole in the road.
“Didn’t get much sleep on the plane?”
Holt had said it so quietly that, for a moment, Chris decided that he must’ve imagined it. But then Holt set the papers that he’d been looking at down in his lap, and he turned his blue eyes on Chris.
“Or is it just traveling in general?” he asked.
“J-jetlag,” Chris stuttered.
Holt raised an eyebrow. “Are you cold?”
“Uh, no,” Chris shook his head. He’d thought that he would be, especially after spending his life growing up in the Georgia heat, but so far the temperature had been fine – nice, even. “You?” he blurted, his cheeks flushing as he realized how informal he’d just been with a professor.
But Holt didn’t seem to mind. “Eh,” he shrugged. “You get used to it. Though, I’ve got to say,” he added, shifting in his seat. “You’re like a little heater over here.”
Chris blinked at him. “Is that why you sat next to me?” he asked, though why it mattered he couldn’t say.
“Of course,” Professor Holt admitted easily, his attention already back on his papers.
Chris blushed harder and turned back towards the window, willing himself to calm down as his blood boiled even hotter than before.
Chapter Three
It was acceptable to take three classes a quarter and graduate on time, but Chris had doubled up on classes his freshman and sophomore year, leaving him with the option to take less at some point in his final two years of school. And, since there was only one class on the school’s long list of credits that a student could earn at Oslo in winter, one was all that Chris had signed up for.
And it was, of course, a history class taught by Professor Holt.
“Vikings,” Holt proclaimed, writing the word on the blackboard in white chalk. “Exploration and civilization.” Underlining it with a flourish, he turned back to face the class. “If this is not your class, then kindly leave.” When no one moved, Professor Holt rolled his eyes and dropped his shoulders, snatching up a stack of papers from his desk.
“Right now there are seven of you registered in my class,” he said, his blue eyes glancing at the materials in his arms. “But I see eight of you here with me now,” he looked up, eying them all suspiciously.
“Oh,” a boy said, raising his hand. Chris recognized him as Jimmy from the airport, a little proud of himself for already learning one kid’s name. “Sorry, I sort of signed up at the last minute. But if you check—”
“Mystery solved,” Holt drawled. “Very well, we have eight students. I trust you all brought the syllabus?”
“Uh,” a girl said, glancing at the others. “The computer labs are still locked—”
“Ah,” Holt said. “Well then.” Shuffling his paper, he ran a hand through his curly black hair and sighed. “Let’s just go over my copy and answer any questions that you lot may have, shall we?”
As Holt began the dry process of explaining how he expected his class to be run, Chris tried to hide his smile while he watched the professor from his seat in the second row.
“Oh right, excursions,” Holt rolled his eyes. “You’re in Norway, and you’re enrolled in a class on Norway’s history, so we will be taking full advantage and going on a few field trips.”
His lips were thin, something that Chris hadn’t noticed on the bus. He knew that his own lips were full, something that he’d inherited from his mother’s side of the family along with her straight nose and pale skin.
“Thirty percent of your grade, got that?” Holt said, taking a moment to look at each of them individually. Chris panicked and blushed when the professor got to him, but he met those blue eyes all the same. Holt grinned as he looked back. “Thirty. Percent. So you’d better write in these damn journals every day. I want facts, people, and sketches from when we go on our excursions.”
Chris loved his class already.
As a sister school that thrived on the students herded to them from the main campus in the States, Oslo University wasn’t big. With small classrooms and even smaller rosters, Chris couldn’t help but be reminded of his small town.
Still, it didn’t make interacting with his classmates any easier.
“Uh, m-mind if I sit here…?” he asked, his plate of food hot in his hands.
“Huh?” a boy glanced at him. “Oh, sure.”
Chris sat down hastily, his back straight as he took small bites and watched the others with wide eyes. He couldn’t help but express his desire to converse through body language, leaning forward subconsciously in anticipation for a familiar topic to arise.
Only, one never did.
Slowly but surely, the strangers surrounding him got up and left at their leisure, unaware of the mental panic that Chris was going through. Finally, he was left alone, his food barely touched and cold on his tongue.
“Alone again, eh?”
Chris looked up, a hope in his chest that the voice, any voice, had been directed at him. He just hadn’t expected it to belong to Professor Holt.
“Y-yeah,” he nodded warily. He liked the professor, really, but talking to him was like talking to five classmates combined – the man was beyond intimidating.
“Well then,” he said with yawn, scratching his side as he kicked out a seat. “You won’t mind if I sit here, then?” he asked, already dropping into the chair across from him.
“No,” Chris shook his head, glancing around. He felt a pit in his stomach as he realized that he was one of the last people in the cozy cafeteria, aside from the teachers. Meaning that he was intruding on their lunch period when all of the students were expected to have already finished eating.
“Uh,” he said, dropping his fork. “Should I go? I should go—”
“Hey, Chris,” Mary greeted him, her chipper voice a welcomed surprise. “This seat taken?”
“Don’t ask him,” Holt said, casually flipping through a few pages of the book that he’d set up before him. “He’s just leaving, apparently.”
“What?” Mary frowned, looking at Chris’ plate. “But you’ve barely touched your food! C’mon, we don’t bite,” she winked, taking the seat next to him. “Take your time.”
“But, the other teachers,” Chris said weakly.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Mary laughed. “They all hate Professor Holt. They won’t say a thing with him around.”
When Chris looked at Holt, the man just hummed in agreement.
“So, Chris,” Mary co
ntinued. “How are you finding your classes so far?”
Chris answered her in a bashful, awkward sort of manner, his food forgotten again as he finally found a topic that he could talk about freely.
Chris saw a lot of Professor Holt, after that. He’d run into the man during breakfast or on the way to the computer lab, and it slowly led to talks that extended beyond the habitual greeting of “hello” and “good day.”
It was odd, at first, but Chris enjoyed the snarky professor’s attention, not to mention the odd interactions with Mary that came with it. Still, Chris couldn’t help but notice that none of his classmates really talked to him, and the first thing that he’d learned in college often came to mind: Friends are made outside of class rather than inside the classroom.
Chris let it bother him until he realized that the same could be said for his favorite professor, a man who had been popping up in his life for far more hours than those spent in his Vikings, an Intro: Explorations and Civilizations class.
Which was probably why Chris didn’t have an all-out heart attack when Professor Holt called on him to stay after class one day.
“Chris,” Professor Holt said amid the scraping of chairs being pushed out as students fled from his classroom. “If you could come here for a moment,” he smiled, curling a finger at him. It wasn’t a question.
“Uh, sure,” Chris said, standing up with his backpack slung over his shoulder. As his classmates ran outside without a second thought, he approached Holt at his desk, his eyes uncertain.
“I hear you want to be a historian,” Holt said conversationally, shuffling a few papers.
Chris frowned. They’d never talked about his career before, let alone his major. He could only guess that Mary had said something. “I like history,” he said with a shrug. “I—”
“I love it,” Holt said, dropping into his chair. His eyes were downcast, studying one of his worn out books as he ran a fingertip over the cover’s rough edges. “Always have. To me, history isn’t just a story, but an accumulation of ourselves, of everything.” He flicked his gaze up to Chris, and, sighing, asked, “Am I making any sense?”
“It’s more than a record,” Chris said, nodding enthusiastically. “It’s us.”
Holt raised an eyebrow at him. “Well,” he said. “You’ve certainly got the passion for it.” Standing, he moved to the blackboard and picked up the chalkboard eraser, removing his neat handwriting with a clean swipe of his arm. Finished, he turned back around to face Chris. “How’d you like to be my assistant?”
Chris had never blushed so hard in all his life. He felt his ears warm at the same time that his cheeks burned, and he blinked to look down at his shoes. “Um,” he swallowed. “Mary…?”
“Mary is my teacher’s assistant,” Holt shrugged. “You’d be my history assistant, or something. Of course, you don’t have to—”
“N-no!” Chris shook his head. “Please, I would like that very much!”
Holt grinned. “Well, okay then, kid. You’re in.”
Being Professor Holt’s ‘history assistant’ was, as Mary had warned him, very time consuming. If he wasn’t in class, he was in Holt’s office, pouring over history books with the man as they discussed the previous lecture or, more often, the ones to come.
Chris loved it.
“Professor, you won’t believe—Chris? You’re here again?” Mary asked, pausing in the doorway.
“Chris is helping me prepare for the excursion to Akershus Castle,” Holt said absentmindedly, his eyes on the textbook in front of them.
“You mean Akershus Prison,” Mary rolled her eyes, closing the door behind her.
“Only after World War II,” Chris spoke up. “Before that, it was a renaissance castle.”
“Oh yeah,” Mary said, taking a seat across from him. “You love medieval studies, right?”
“That would certainly explain his vast knowledge of it,” Holt commented. Chris couldn’t help but blush under the praise. “Anyway, what’re you doing here, Mary?”
“Duh,” she rolled her eyes. “You said I could give the next lecture, remember?” Bending to pull a binder out of her purse, she dropped it onto Holt’s desk with a bang. “And, since you’ve been avoiding Norse mythology like the plague, I figured I’d be the one to cover it.”
“Oh,” Holt said, finally looking up. “I’d forgotten.”
Mary bristled. “If you take it back—”
“No, no,” he shook his head. “Actually, this is a nice surprise. It’ll be fun to sleep in for a change.”
“You have to be there,” Mary said. “To give me an evaluation at the end.”
That made Holt frown. “Can’t I just grade you now? A’s all around.”
“Professor,” Mary growled, her temper obviously near an end.
“Fine, fine,” Holt sighed. “But don’t think that you’ll have my undivided attention. That’s a two hour lecture block, and I’m sure that I can find a book that I haven’t read yet to bring along.”
Chris watched the exchange from his chair next to Professor Holt, his gaze glancing back and forth between Holt and Mary as they bickered like old friends. He felt forgotten, like an odd detail that’d been left out.
He wondered, sadly, what it’d take to make the professor treat him like he treated Mary.
“Whatever,” Holt finally waved her off. “Make a lesson plan, then, and I’ll look it over. Now, Chris,” he said, finally turning back to him. “Don’t forget to explore the courtyard. There’s this curious little—”
“Don’t forget? Won’t you be with me?” Chris asked bravely, frowning.
Holt just shrugged. “There are eight students in my class, meaning four groups of two. Besides, it’ll be more fun for you to run off with a classmate than wait for me to catch up with your young legs.”
Chris continued to frown, confused as to why Holt always brought up his age like he was a crippled old man, shuffling about in the halls. On the contrary, he was a muscular thirty-something, with jet black hair and intelligent blue eyes. He wouldn’t slow Chris down.
Mary opened her mouth to say something, as if also in disagreement with the professor, but Holt gave her a look and she clicked her teeth closed again.
“Now, about the armory,” Holt continued, pointing to the book. Chris swallowed a sigh and listened, his spirits lower than they’d been in a while.
Chapter Four
“All right, everyone on the bus!”
Chris followed his classmates up the steps, only managing a grin when Mary flashed him a reassuring smile.
Today, he’d have to pair up with a stranger and pretend to be normal for a few hours. It worried him, and he couldn’t help but glance at his classmates as he sat down alone, wondering just who it would be that got stuck with him. Of course, there was one person who he’d have loved to be paired with.
“Move over,” Professor Holt grumbled, sitting next to him. Chris gulped as their knees bumped.
“Geez, Holt,” Mary rolled her eyes, dropping into the seat across from them. “Give the kid a break, would you?”
“Can’t,” Holt shook his head stubbornly, already reaching into his bag to pull out a book. “Kid’s a furnace. Only thing keeping me warm,” he muttered.
“God,” Mary huffed. “You’re the reason he doesn’t have any friends.”
“No,” Chris spoke up. “He’s my friend.”
The professor seemed to freeze, his book half-open in his lap as his whole body tensed. Chris could tell that he’d said the wrong thing, and he scrambled to take it back, but Mary spoke up first.
“Awww!” she laughed, slapping a hand over her mouth as her cheeks turned red. “That’s so cute! Professor Holt, you have a friend!”
The professor seemed to cough and relax himself, but the cold stare of his blue eyes that he’d suddenly turned on Chris said everything.
He was not Chris’ friend.
And Chris had tried too many times to get close to people who didn’t want h
is friendship to know that it also meant that he wasn’t Holt’s by default.
“Okay kiddos, time to split into pairs! Sound off, who is going with who?” Mary asked, her pen poised at the ready. Immediately, Chris’ classmates began shouting out who they had claimed, and she jotted down it all down on her clipboard. “All right,” she said, looking up. “Does anyone not have a partner?”
Chris hesitantly raised his hand.
“Oh,” a girl said, looking over at him. “Me too.”
“Then you guys will be together for today,” Mary said happily, waving at Chris to move towards the girl.
“We aren’t your parents,” Holt spoke up gruffly, his long black jacket tucked around his shoulders tightly. “You can feel free to explore whichever part of the castle you’d like, with whoever you want. But,” he said sternly, scanning the small crowd. “That does not mean that you can leave your partner behind at any time. You’re responsible for them, and they for you.”
“Yep!” Mary added, her chipper tone a stark contrast to Holt’s sharp one. “Oh, and meet back at the bus at three!”
Chris swallowed as Holt and Mary walked away, and he rubbed the back of his neck as he introduced himself to the girl. “I’m Chris,” he said.
“The senior, right?” the girl asked, her brown eyes laughing. “I’m a sophomore, and these are my friends,” she swept a hand to indicate the two girls standing off to her left. “Jamie and Rachel. You mind if they join us?”
“N-no!” Chris smiled, “Of course not.”
“Great,” she smiled back. “Oh, and I’m Katie.”
The girls were perfectly pleasant and polite, something that Chris couldn’t be more grateful for. As a group they explored the rocky cobblestones, the girls giggling as their heels slipped across the snow and slush. Chris stayed a close step behind them, mindful of their space and their balance.
They spent the day walking around the grounds leisurely, their notebooks out as they wrote down the few facts that they could find in English rather than Bokmål. Chris made sure to sketch plenty of artifacts that were displayed in the glass cases kept inside, especially within the weaponry.