The Hopeful, The Hardheaded and the Homework

Chapter Twenty-Five : Christmas Lights or Lack Thereof :Enoch

"I thought you'd just be a wet blanket the whole time, Ebenezer Scrooge."

' 'oo says I won't be?" Enoch grumbled and glared at Hugh as the lighter brunette grinned all too cheerily and shoved his elbow where Enoch stood leaning against the wall.

"Olive, probably. You know, I've actually just stopped assuming you won't come anymore, I wasn't even that surprised when you said you were gonna come."

"Weren't ya? That's a real great story. But for ma sanity, don't start playin' Christmas carols." Enoch just rolled his eyes as Hugh seemed to give up on him and headed back across his own living room to lean over the couch and kiss Fiona's head.
It was just the three of them and Jacob here so far, which was a large part of why Enoch was barely saying two words to anyone. He'd intentionally tried to be late too. Apparently everyone had the same idea.

Hugh's mother had given him the house for the evening apparently, consenting to letting him have Fiona over without someone else in the house under the condition that his other friends did too.

The inside of the Apiston's home was as festive as anyone would expect, hardly unusual and painfully cliché to Enoch with the decorated Christmas tree in the corner and string of fairy lights over the doorway to the wreath over the wood fireplace. Hugh's house could almost have been a picture from a children's book. Sure, his parents got into the Christmas spirit but Enoch couldn't remember being interested in helping decorate the tree since he was in primary school. Christmas did not interest him, call him a Scrooge or a Grinch all they liked, he hardly cared.

Maybe it was a mistake to come after all. It was not the most pleasant environment to Enoch, despite being Christmas, with only the four of them and he couldn't go as unnoticed as he would have liked. While Fiona might be more of a conversationalist than Enoch was, she certainly was a girl of few words herself, which left Hugh and Jacob to do most of the talking. That in turn only irritate Enoch more with what was, in his opinion, an insufferable accent from a thoroughly annoying person. Olive would have scolded him for that.

Mercifully, there wasn't long to wait before the doorbell rang.

"Sorry! Kind of late, I know!"

Emma's confident voice preceded her before Enoch raised an eyebrow over to the doorway as she hurried in, with Olive right behind her, both bundled up in coats.

"Blimey, warm enough in here, Hugh? Oh, hi Jacob..." Emma grinned as she started to shrug off her coat and Enoch just rolled his eyes and raised his eyebrows as a greeting when Olive looked over at him and beamed.

"I thought you'd be here..."

"I did tell ya I mi-" Enoch cut himself off as Olive shrugged off her coat in the warmth. Clearly Olive, not entirely surprisingly, was one of those festive people who wanted to dress for the occasion. She was wearing a fitted white jumper embroidered with a pattern of snowflakes over a red skirt that flared a little to her knees and wouldn't have looked out of place in the fifties or sixties with the stockings. In fact the overall effect was, to Enoch's very uneducated eye, very festively sockhop-esque in a way that wasn't entirely unpleasant. Or at all unpleasant. He'd never been blind, he'd always known she was quite pretty but he'd never quite looked at her like that before.

"What? You're staring."

She'd noticed and Enoch immediately snapped out of it and closed his mouth which he had only realised had remained mid word for several long seconds. "No I'm not." He looked away, which probably did little to support his poor excuse and Olive clearly did not buy it.

"Is it too much? You don't hate Christmas that much do you?" Her fingers went to the hem of her jumper and twisted the fabric between them.

"I never said I 'ated it and...no. Wear what ya like." Enoch only muttered, and still didn't look back at her, trying to free himself from the awkwardness of the situation by jumping into boiling water and slotting himself into the others' conversation. Or at least pretending to.