CANTICUM | enoch o'connor

ii.

in the morning, the tenderness between the two of you has worn off. now that you've gotten enough sleep, you have the energy to be annoyed at enoch.

unfortunately, he doesn't have the decency to wake up so you can properly express your annoyance at him, so instead you drag yourself out of bed and get ready for work. this looks pretty much just like brushing your teeth, pulling out your laptop, some pens, a stack of manuscripts, and then sitting at your kitchen table and reading. it's a good thing you get to work from home today.

(being an editor is really nice.) 

by the time your workday ends, enoch still hasn't woken up. time to take matters into your own hands.

you reenter the living room. his position hasn't changed much from when you'd left him alone in the morning. he's facedown, horribly tangled up in the blanket you'd laid so carefully over him. his hair looks like it was the site of a tornado dance marathon. a single ray of late afternoon sunlight slants across his form. 

he's beautiful. also irritating.

"enoch," you say, standing in front of him.   

"hmngh," he responds eloquently.

you sigh and sit down next to him. "you know, you're an absolute vision right now." 

"sod off, portman," he grumbles.

"i'm not jacob, love." you raise your hand and start stroking his hair. 

enoch turns his head towards the sound of your voice and opens up one bleary eye to look at you. he's silent for a moment too long. 

"(y/n)?" he says finally. 

"mmhm," you hum.

"oh." he closes his eyes again and lets out a sigh, then rolls over facedown once again. 

"feeling better?" you ask kindly. 

"more or less," he mumbles, face pressed into a pillow.

"good." then you rub your knuckles into his hair.

"ow—god, (y/n)," he groans, rolling away from you.

you're unsympathetic, standing up and pulling the blanket off of him. "get up, enoch. you've been in bed for fifteen hours, now."

"'s not that bad. i could go for fifteen more," he mumbles.

"just because you could, doesn't mean you should."

"doesn't it, though?" he pulls the pillow away from his face just long enough to give you a shit-eating grin. "that's what makes life interesting, love. don't give me that face, now—you know i'm right."  

despite what enoch says, you will not stop giving him that face. he deserves it. "i'll make you pork wellington if you get up," you bargain.    

"your pork wellington is shit, sweetheart."

"yeah. and so are you." you poke him. "so the two of you should get on well." 

he scowls at you, but somehow, that's all it takes. by the time you're setting the platter of pork wellington down on your admittedly-small table, enoch has dragged himself off the couch and managed to get himself into a semi-presentable state. his hair still looks horrible, but oh well. you can't have everything. 

"it's shit, huh," you say, watching enoch devour another slice. 

"never said i don't like shit," he says through a mouthful of food, and you have to laugh. 

when his ravenous eating slows down, you ask, "so why aren't you on tour?" 

enoch immediately starts shoveling food into his mouth quickly again.

"enoch."

he continues to cleverly deflect by stuffing his face. 

you yank the plate away from him and wait for him to finish chewing. he glares at you, and you glare right back. 

"you showed up to my house in the middle of the night. the least you could do is tell me why." 

after another few moments of unrelenting stares, enoch finally looks away and shrugs. "bandmates. they were being arseholes."

"enoch."

he meets your eyes again, and this time, you're caught off guard by the intensity in them. "please," he says, and there's that word again, for the second time in less than twenty-four hours. "i don't wanna talk about it. just...let me just stay."

there's really only one answer you can give. 

"..okay."

♪ ♪ ♪

it's surprising just how easily and quickly enoch manages to become a daily part of your life.

in the mornings he's usually asleep, and for a good portion of the afternoon, too. that's when you get some work done. in the evenings, though, he's all too awake. he doesn't always stay at the apartment, and you never ask him where he goes, but when he does go out, he comes home every night without fail. sometimes he'll bring you a souvenir from his travels—a book about birds here ("because you obviously don't read enough," he says sarcastically), a glass sculpture there.  

some days he'll wake up and get it into his head that he wants the two of you to go out, so he'll pull you away from your screen to go sightseeing or out to eat. in the night the two of you'll watch a movie together, or play a video game together, or sometimes just sit next to each other, just existing quietly near each other while doing your own things. a month into the arrangement you ask him to start paying rent. surprisingly, he doesn't put up a fight.

when uni starts up again, it changes your routine a bit, but not by much. enoch's still asleep in the mornings when you leave for classes, and you still do your own things in the day, but night always belongs to the two of you. on the rare occasion he's awake in time, he'll walk you to class.

at some point, he discovers some pottery studio, and he starts leaving his creations around as gifts for you.

there's still so much you don't know, still so much enoch won't share with you, still so much he won't say to you. like why he left his band, or why you haven't heard him sing once since he's arrived, or what it means that whenever you sit down next to him he reaches for your hand. but enoch is around, and it seems like he's going to stay, at least for a while. longer than he's ever done before. and it's nice. 

and for now, you're okay with that. 

for now, your little home is filled with the irritation and beauty that comes from the presence of enoch o'connor, and every day the collection of handmade clay sculptures on your shelves grows. and for now, that's enough.