"I didn't hurt you tonight did I?"

"No. Ice kinda did but...no." Enoch sighed and reached up to touch the back of his head gingerly with his right hand, shrugging one shoulder as they walked up the pavement down the block towards Olive's house. He couldn't quite remember how he'd somehow agreed to seeing her home. Maybe it had just been the promise of not having five other people in such close proximity to make fun.

People had been falling over and tripping up the entire evening, he and Olive falling over each other had gone completely unnoticed amongst everyone but their friends. That had in turn led to not so witty comments about "falling for each other" in what wouldn't have bothered him too much were it not for the embarrassment.

He felt Olive's hand on his arm and looked down as she slipped her hand towards his. She was already looking when he cut his eyes up to her face, asking without speaking if it was alright. Enoch just scoffed a little but slowly folded his fingers over her hand in return. It still felt weird, and very unfamiliarly...couply...to him but he couldn't deny the warmth of the gesture.

"I'm really sorry."

"For what? Slippin' on ice? That's pretty easy ta do...although I still don' see what was so damn funny 'bout it." Olive laughed again and Enoch raised an eyebrow and stared at her. "Seriously?"

"I know...it was just your face..."

"Oh mah face is hilarious now is it? Didn' realise I was so funny ta you." He said dryly.

"No! Not like that. The situation was just...oh you can't tell me it wasn't a bit funny."

"It wasn't a bit funny."

Olive just giggled and squeezed his fingers as they lapsed into silence for a few moments.

It was...nice. He liked the way Olive's hand fit into his and dare he say he was still thinking about the way it had felt when he caught her. They hadn't been that close before. She was just the right height to fit perfectly to him.

They stopped a few minutes later outside Olive's home at the foot of the stairs and he dropped her hand when she turned around to face him. Her face was half bathed in the warm light that shone down from the light about the front door and down the steps.

"I'm glad you decided to come."

"Yeah well..." Enoch only muttered, looking off to the side before glancing back at her smiling face. She'd had a good time at least, that much was clear. His lips twitched slightly. Olive was really the only person who'd brought him close to actually smiling since he could remember, but he still didn't. If anything it was half a smirk.

She lifted up on her toes and kissed his cheek, shrouding them both in shadow for a second.

Oh what the heck. Acting on impulse, Enoch turned his head the moment she started to pull away and kissed her before she could go far. It was possessive and warm and for the first time Enoch felt the irrepressible urge to pull her closer to him. He couldn't have picked a worse moment to let his arm slip around her back and no sooner had he done so the door at the top of the stairs behind them opened. Theo Elephanta stood there in his fireman's bracers and boots and swinging his coat over his shoulders and now glaring at the two teenagers as Enoch let his arm drop back to his side.

"...I can't remember the last time I opened a door and you weren't doing that."

"Ya gotta be kiddin'..."

"I thought you said he wasn't gonna be there?"

"I'm right 'ere, I ain't invisible." Enoch snapped and rolled his eyes as Olive's father brushed past them in a rush.

"We'll talk about this later, Olive!"

Enoch reached up to scratch the back of his head as her father shouldered his face between them and towards the driveway at a brisk pace. His eyes went to Olive who, though she had a moment ago looked embarrassed and slightly annoyed, was chewing on her bottom lip almost nervously.

"Be carefu-!" But the car door had already shut and her father had gone.

"Really don' like me, does 'e?"

"No...he doesn't..."

"Still don't care." Enoch shrugged and took a step back as Olive started to walk up the steps. She paused halfway up and turned around while he kept his eyes fixed on her.

"I'll see you later, right? School's over for now so-"

"Probably, I guess." He interrupted and Olive smiled, her eyes twinkling prettily in the porch light. Enoch's own lip twitched and he turned around and cleared his throat to hide it. "Night then."

xxxXxxx

"She's a very nice girl Enoch, why haven't you invited her around again?"

Enoch rolled his eyes and speared a potato with his fork as he desperately tried to pretend he was anywhere else. He didn't so much as look at his mother and only grunted noncommittally.

"Enoch, I'm talking to you."

"What?"

"Enoch."

Enoch sighed at his father's warning tone and finally looked up at his parents. Being an only child was infuriating sometimes. Not that having siblings wouldn't have annoyed the hell out of him but at least he would be less of a focal point. "I ain't gonna talk 'bout 'er, why d'you expect me to?"

"We're just glad you've made a good friend-"

"Girlfriend, thank ya very much. Yeah, I ain't a total loss after all." Enoch caught himself by surprise and forgot to look unapproachably bitter for a second as his eyes widened. Oops. He had not meant to blurt it out to his family in so few words, even if they already knew without him having to say. His father certainly knew. It had been a peculiar, kneejerk reaction to clarify that she was his and not just someone else's friend, that he'd never had occur before. His expression soured again.

"I mean nofin'."

"I have to say, it's...quite a relief to hear you actually say it.

"...What?" He stared at his mother with his fork comically frozen in the space between his mouth and plate.

"Enoch, if ya fink we didn' know already then you've forgotten we were your age once too, son."

"...I'm not 'avin' this conversation. No way." It was far from the first time Enoch had wished the earth would swallow him whole rather than suffer unreasonably through some meal. His stupid mouth had to go and start it and now all he wanted to do was leave.

"Sixteen years wivout gettin' close ta anyone and then ya bring a girl 'ome and go out wiv 'er a few weeks after and keep goin' out when you've never so much as wanted ta talk ta other people your age-"

"-It's not specific ta mah age group." Enoch snapped, interrupting his father who ignored him.

"-it wasn't 'ard ta work out, Enoch."

"Owen, we don't need to badger him about it over dinner."

"Listen ta Mum. Please listen ta Mum-go back ta talkin' 'bout 'ow awful I am at school."

" 'oo's badgering? 'e's seventeen, it was a matter o'time."

"Oh bloody 'ell..." Forget the earth swallowing him whole. Just kill him because hell had to be better than this. Enoch groaned and dropped his hand back over the back of his chair, glaring at the ceiling like he could carve a hole in it with his mind. "Just kill me already." He could practically see where the conversation was going and might have actually screamed. "...I'm beggin' ya don't say it..."

"Speakin' of that...fink we needa 'ave another chat later."

"No way!" Enoch snapped and his chair scraped across the tiles as he stormed to his feet and out of the kitchen without another word.

He kicked his bedroom door closed hard behind him, leaving it to slam and not caring one jot if they thought it was an unnecessary attitude. Sure, it might have partially been his fault for letting his mouth get ahead of his brain and not thinking about the present company, but did they have to make such a damn big deal over his relationship just because it was him? It was one extreme or the other. He was in trouble over poor performance and lack of any improvement at school, or overly encouraged to be social just because there might be one person whose company he enjoyed.

Oh sure. Anyone might say that's what parents did...make a big deal and embarrass their kid but Enoch hated it all the same.

He kicked the foot of his bed, sending it thumping into the wall on the other side and dropped into the desk chair with his phone and sketchbook. He plugged himself in and turned up the volume enough that it could probably be heard clearly enough by anyone despite the ear buds.

School was over until after new year's. He'd failed Mr Barron's class dismally, as predicted, and only just passed English for the term. His report in all aspects, apart from biology, hardly spoke favourably about him anywhere from effort to behaviour and to say his father had been disappointed and angry would have been the severest of understatements.

It didn't make Enoch want to do better at all. If anything, he only cared less. What was the point when he knew exactly what he was going to end up doing for his life anyway. Did he mind the idea of arranging funerals and embalming bodies? Not particularly. It was familiar, and he was good at it. But there was nothing for him to work towards to want to bother in school.

Olive was the only part he cared about in any particular amount now. At least he had that going for him.

Olive. Her eyes were impossible to do justice to. He'd erased and redrawn a dozen times, and good as he fancied himself to be with a pencil, it never looked quite right this time. It was the longest time he'd put into a single picture now, and definitely the least morbid of them, his obsession for it to be exactly right preventing him moving on to something else.

He liked, no, needed, drawing for the same reasons he liked Biology, specifically the practical. Because he was really in control then. Like when he was the one to hold the scalpel and make precise, careful incisions in flesh and organs, he was in control of the pencil. It did what he wanted and Enoch liked feeling that he was at least in control of that much. So why was it giving him so much trouble now.

Enoch swore to himself and looked up, resting his elbows on the desk and scowling at the picture. It was fitting, that capturing Olive's eyes just right was giving him so much difficulty when he never struggled so much with any other non-descript, half face.

Because he was in a good deal less control of himself around her now. He'd been so damn careful about never letting anyone in, even his family, that the moment he started to, it was unfamiliar and he didn't know how to act anymore. He acted on before completely non-existent impulses with Olive, pulling her to his side and kissing her without even thinking about it usually. He'd even, granted not entirely happily, willingly held her hand to skate with him in public. He snapped easily when anyone said the smallest slight against Olive, his own pride be damned.

But unlike his struggle with calculus and English essays, where his brain just didn't want to focus and comprehend it all, it wasn't a loss of control that made Enoch feel like he was drowning and had to be alone. Unlike with his father's constant damned insistence that his grades would make a difference to his future which Enoch was sure as hell would not, it didn't burn up into an intense bitterness and anger with the world.

No. With her it was almost more like a freedom. It was unfamiliar and more often than not he was unsure about it, much like an animal that had been caged so long it didn't know how to be free anymore, but...it wasn't entirely bad.

But he could never tell her everything that swirled around in his head. He'd already let her in more than he'd expected, or wanted, to let anyone. Olive was so happy, so very unlike Enoch that he still didn't understand why on earth she would be attracted to someone so polar opposite to her. No matter how determined she might be to see the best in him that Enoch, despite his pride and jealousy, couldn't always see himself, Olive didn't need to know.