Enoch O'Connor was confusing to say the very least. He was an unreadable slate that changed so frequently that just when you thought you were beginning to figure something out, you'd blink and everything would change or completely erase.

Emma said he was part machine, and that seemed absolutely true often. Enoch, for all appearances, was not very in tune with anyone else's emotions or, it seemed, even his own. Yet, very recently, Olive had witnessed that begin to melt away before her eyes, and much to her happy surprise. He was letting her in even the slightest bit and she would take that as it came. He'd even admitted aloud that he "obviously" didn't hate her which, Emma had said, was the equivalent of anyone else's highest compliment and not something to be taken lightly.

"Can I ask something?" Emma said from where she lay across the foot of Fiona's bed, upside down so her hair just brushed the carpet. "Why Enoch?"

Fiona smiled as she sat cross legged on her floral patterned bed and looked between Olive, sitting on a mattress on the floor and Emma. She had convinced her parents, on a last minute idea courtesy of Emma, to let the other two girls over for the night as the Frauenfelds lived closest to the school. In fact, just a few blocks down.

Olive, sitting on her knees on one of the mattresses in her friend's bedroom wrinkled her nose and tried and failed to keep the colour from rising to her cheeks.

"I don't know what you mean." She denied in such a lame way that even she could tell it was painfully unconvincing. The red head picked at a piece of lint on the knee of her soft pink pyjamas and avoided anyone's eyes.

Emma laughed and rolled her brown eyes before pushing herself up and giving Olive a pointed stare that she couldn't escape. "Sure you don't. And you're trying to get through to him so insistently because..."

"Because I'm trying to be nice." Olive defended, "I want to be his friend..."

"Annndd...you think he's cute, annnnd maybe you just like the dark silent type."

"I do no-okay, well..." Olive flushed bright pink. She was a very obvious liar as it was, and could hardly deny that yes, she did think Enoch was a very attractive boy. But what girl wouldn't have? Even the ones who made fun of him and thought it was funny to try and provoke him had to notice that with his dark curls that fell over Enoch's eyes when he didn't tame them, and very prominent cheekbones, Enoch could hardly be considered unfortunate looking.

Did she have a crush on Enoch O'Connor. Yes, she very much did. When he'd pulled her away from the angry Malthus, his fingers had felt cool against her wrist and sent warm butterflies dancing through her stomach. But it wasn't purely because she found him strangely intriguing and very good looking that she wanted to get to know him at all. There was something there, deep down as it might be, that was very genuine about Enoch.

"I think he's interesting and that no one takes the time to try and get to know him." Olive huffed, relenting somewhat while Fiona and Emma both laughed.

"Oh people have tried." Fiona said quietly and Emma nodded to confirm. "But when someone bites every hand like Mr. Barron's dog, it's quite clear they don't want people to get to know them."

"I mean, I'm used to how Enoch acts." Emma added, raising an eyebrow. "Mean edges and all, but come on. He spent hours outside today with everyone. Enoch doesn't see the point in hanging out, and he was quite...well..."
Olive giggled a little when Emma stopped herself from using the word 'happy' referring to Enoch and continued instead, "...content, to stand around and talk to you."

"Oh please..."

xxxXxxx

For once, Olive was the first of their usual group of friends to reach the cafeteria at lunch time. She blew a strand of red hair away from her face as she stepped out of the lunch line with her tray and scanned the room for Emma or Millard. Finding none of them, her green eyes skipped over, and then quickly returned to, a familiar head of dark hair bent over a table in the corner.

Olive drew in a breath and released it before gasping and jumping out of the way as someone muttered "Keep moving!" and nudged her aside.

Would it be invading his space, which he so clearly held dear, if she went to join Enoch?

Deciding she would rather take the chance, she could always move if he were visibly annoyed by her being there, Olive smiled and started to weave her way through the students towards his table.

Enoch's head was down and his collar half folded up and he appeared so engrossed in his own thoughts that he didn't appear to notice her at first as Olive slipped into a spot on the bench across from him. It was only as her neat black shoe accidentally nudged his foot, that the boy looked up.

"Do you mind?" Olive asked, her small smile ever bright and cheerful as she looked over him.

Enoch said nothing at first, only looked over his shoulder. Searching, Olive assumed, for any of the others that he thought she should be sitting with. Or, hopeful that they weren't all going to flock to his table instead. Probably the latter.

"Go a'ead." He muttered after a moment and shrugged one shoulder as he popped a chip into his mouth and glanced back at Olive with his usual stare. "Why?"

"I thought you could use the company." She answered to which Enoch gave nothing but the raising of an unamused eyebrow. "And to...thank you again?" She added, more like a question than actually being sure of what she was saying.

Enoch sighed and shook his head. He shifted in his spot and Olive felt his foot nudge hers again, only this time he didn't move it immediately away.
"What, for the dog? Ain't like I saved your life, just a finger."

"Thank you anyway." Olive persisted, but it became clear very quickly that Enoch wasn't going to accept it any more graciously than with a shrug. "But...I did actually want to ask you something."

"If I listen will you be quiet?" Enoch muttered, glancing over at her over his food and Olive blushed as she caught his eye. There was the slightest hint of humour, for once, in his light eyes that wasn't often there. Was he actually joking for once? Or had his sarcasm grown another branch?

"Fine, yes." She huffed and played with her cutlery before swallowing her nerves and asking. "I just wanted to ask if you'd help with our biology homework today. I'm...not very good and you're the best in the class."

For a moment Enoch looked so surprised it seemed he'd forgotten to be surly. It was completely true. Science, and in particular biology, was certainly not Olive's strongest subject. It was sheer good fortune, or so she though anyway, that she had been paired and benched with Enoch whose natural inclination towards the subject was extremely impressive to her.

She watched as a whole range of emotions flickered through the boy's eyes and her face fell slightly as he took his time replying. But when he did, it was Olive's turn to be surprised.

"I 'ave a free last session. I'll be in the library."

"You mean it?" Olive asked, her face splitting into a wide smile at his words. She had a free too.

"Yeah okay but can you shush for once? Don' go talkin' 'bout it." Enoch grumbled and Olive laughed at him.

"Your reputation of being a mean spirited recluse might be hurt might it?"

"Somethin' like that."

xxxXxxx

"It's a library, Olive. It's only homework. Get a hold of yourself." The ginger haired girl scolded herself in the mirror of the otherwise deserted bathroom. Her heart was fluttering as she tried to calm herself down. The bell had just rung to signal the beginning of the last session and Enoch would probably already be marching his way towards the library. The fact that he had actually agreed to help her with the class she was struggling with was...thoroughly unlike Enoch. So much so that she had completely neglected to tell Emma or Hugh about it lest they try and make it into some joke to taunt him with.

Five minutes later, with her school bag over her shoulder and books in arms, Olive was slipping through the glass doors into the school's large library, a whole separate building across the courtyard.

She scanned the room, the shelves lining the walls and forming aisles, the large circular desk used by the library staff. There was no sign of Enoch, nor in the little conference rooms that could be used for scheduled study groups. Olive's heart sunk. Maybe he'd decided against helping her after all, maybe it wasn't worth the trouble and idea of people seeing him actually doing something nice for someone else.

After a full initial scan of the library, Olive sighed and swallowed a lump in her throat as she turned around to leave.

"Hey."

She yelped so loudly in shock as she almost walked right into someone almost a full head taller than her, that the head librarian, an elderly, Italian man who no one really know how to pronounce his name and so just called "Anonymous", shot her a glare and shushed her.

The someone chuckled and Olive looked up, past the blue blazer and absent tie to Enoch's smirking face.

"I thought you-"

"Weren't gonna show? I thought 'bout it for five minutes." Enoch shrugged and looked away from her as he sidled around to a more secluded group of tables between a few shelves. "I don't do this...teachin' thing, or the 'elpin' thing for that matter so...let's get it over wiv."

Olive shook her head to clear it partly in disbelief that he had shown instead of kept his free to himself, and partly to alleviate the embarrassment of being caught out thinking that.

Enoch rapped the surface of the table with his knuckles and Olive hurried over to sit down beside him, dropping her back onto the floor and pulling her books towards them.

Enoch had just began trying to go over the organelles of a single cell with her for the third time, when footsteps and a quiet snicker sounded in front of them and both Enoch and Olive looked up. Enoch groaned and stood Olive's textbook on its end, open, to try and hide behind it as Millard Nullings, eagerly starting another of his many shifts helping in the library, appeared in front of them.

"I'm not saying anything..." He snickered, almost singsong before he disappeared around the shelf with an armful of books and grinning to himself. Olive turned her head to look at Enoch whose head was now face down on the surface of the desk as he let the book thump loudly back onto the table. On cue, Millard's head appeared in a book free space he had no doubt cleared himself from the other side of the shelves beside them.
"Oh...but do keep it down, you're in a library you know."

"Nick off, Nullings." Enoch growled, his voice slightly muffled as he lifted his head and glared at Millard whose smiling face disappeared.

"You're not embarrassed to be helping me are you?" Olive asked, wrinkling her nose a little as she drummed her pencil against her notebook where she was trying to relabel the diagram again. "I think it's very nice of you."

"I don't get embarrassed." Enoch muttered, though, Olive thought, it would have been a lot more convincing if colour didn't stand out so obviously on his pale skin. "Shut up, let's just...try again."

"Don't tell me t-"

Enoch held a finger to his lips and Olive's eyebrows shot up before he gestured with his thumb over the bookshelf where, she realised, Millard was clearly still hiding.

xxxXxxx

"I did it!" Olive squeaked, actually leaving her seat as she bounced in excitement when Enoch gave the seal of approval to her answers. The boy promptly stared at her like she was mad and she grinned and settled down a little. Enoch, for all his sourness and lack of social skills and patience, was surprisingly good at making things seem a lot simpler than Mr. Clark ever did.

"...Blimey, you're 'appy about science...an' it only took like..." Olive followed Enoch's eyes to the clock on the wall and in perfect unison their jaws dropped and brows furrowed. It was almost 4:30. Olive didn't even remember hearing the final bell.

"Oh my goodness...where did that time go?"

"Never mind that, you missed the bloomin' bus." Enoch sighed and the same hard tone that had begun to ease off in the last few hours, was back. "An' Dad's gonna kill me... I shoulda been at the parlour twenty minutes ago."

"That would be a little ironic wouldn't it?" Olive couldn't stop the remark leaving her lips and clapped a hand over her mouth as soon as she said it. She knew very well that his father ran a funeral parlour and without thinking that it may be offensive, though silly it may be, the quip had leapt to her head.

Enoch stared at her and she was certain she saw his lips twitch before, to Olive's happiness and amazement, he smiled that rare little smile that lit up his hard eyes for a second and angled his jaw so strikingly triangular that she was stuck just staring at his face for a moment before she remembered herself.

"Okay fine, I'll give ya that." Even his voice had softened again and Olive felt the butterflies begin to dance wildly around her stomach again.
She blushed suddenly and busied herself packing up her books and pencils and stuffing them back into her bag with her back to him as much as possible.
"Thank you...very, very much. It was very nice of you. I hope you don't get in trouble because of me."

"Yeah...right..." Enoch apparently had remembered himself as well as she heard him clear his throat and the heavy thud of his own bag being put on the table as he pushed his chair out. "Whateva'...least it wasn' a total loss."

"I'll take that as 'it went well'." Olive interpreted, her face back to its original colour and smiling as she turned around to face him and they left the library alongside each other. She pulled out her phone and switched it off silent as she glanced at the four messages from Emma within five minutes of each other.
"Are you coming?"
"The bus is about to leave?"

"Olive, what are you doing?"

"Did you get lost?"

The girl hesitated before putting her phone away and smiling over at Enoch as they walked, quite casually together towards the school gates. She would tell Emma about it later.

"Do you mind if I walk with you? I'll be walking home now anyway...I'd sure we're going the same way at least a few minutes."

Enoch shrugged his shoulders and Olive caught him glance sideways at her.

"Suit yerself."

"Enoch?" Olive couldn't stop herself, she jogged to catch up with his long legs when he quickened his pace slightly and reached out to catch his arm this time and stop him by the elbow.

He sighed dramatically and looked down at her. "What, Olive?"

A pleasant tingle ran down her spine when he actually spoke her name out loud, it didn't happen much at all. He never needed to clarify who he was addressing, and even though he might be exasperated with her constant company, it was nice to hear.

"Thank you very much again." Olive bounced on her heels and chewed her bottom lip for a second before she sucked in a deep breath and took the chance. He could be a nice person when he wanted, he had been nothing but patient with her, more or less, while she struggled and she wanted, desperately for Enoch to know that she didn't think he was weird and a freak.
"I think you can be nice somewhere under there." With that she stretched up on her tiptoes and pressed very fast, very little kiss to his cool cheek.