“The Sculptor's Tremor”
| enoch o’connor
| He hates being touched. But he couldn't leave you broken.
The air in the loop was always thick with the scent of damp earth, sea salt, and something else. something ancient and sweet, like preserved flowers. you had grown to love it. it was the smell of safety, of home. but it was also the smell of enoch.
He was a storm in a bottle, all sharp angles and simmering resentment. most of the other children gave him a safe distance,which was exactly what he wanted. he would spend hours in his workshop, a dim, cluttered room off the main hall surrounded by jars of his homemade "hearts" and the lifeless clay bodies he so masterfully animated. he was a grim puppeteer and he preferred his silent, obedient company to the unpredictable warmth of the living.
You knew his aversion to touch was legendary. a simple brush of a sleeve would make him recoil as if burned. horace once tried to clap him on the shoulder and was met with a glare so cold it could have frozen the sun. enoch built walls around himself and they were made of barbed wire and snarling warnings.
So, you never pushed. you just…existed near him. uou would sit on the floor of his workshop, back against the wall far from his workbench, and read. you never asked him what he was doing, though sometimes he would offer a gruff explanation anyway. you would bring him a piece of cake millard had swiped from the kitchen, leaving it on a crate without a word. he would always eat it later, though he would never say thank you.
It was on a tuesday, the sky a flat, weeping grey, that everything shifted. you had been helping Miss peregrine catalog some old photographs in the library, a task requiring you to stand on a rickety stool to reach the highest shelf. one moment you were stretching, fingers brushing the spine of a leather bound album, and the next, the world tilted violently. the stool wobbled, your ankle twisted, and you crashed to the floor in a flurry of dusty books and a sharp, searing pain that shot up your leg.
You didn't cry out. a choked gasp was all you managed. the world swam in a haze of grey and brown. you heard the heavy thud of books hitting the floorboards and then, the sound of quick, determined footsteps.
"Idiot," a familiar rough voice muttered.
You blinked your eyes into focus. enoch was standing over you, his brow furrowed in a scowl so deep it looked permanently etched onto his face. but there was something else in his eyes, a flicker of something that wasn't annoyance. it looked an awful lot like panic.
"What did you do?" he demanded gesturing vaguely at your leg, which was twisted at an unnatural angle.
"Fell" you gritted out sweat beading on your forehead. "It hurts."
"No kidding." He knelt down, his movements stiff and awkward as if his joints didn't quite bend that way. he hovered his hands over your injury, a look of profound disgust on his face, as if touching you would be a fate worse than death. "don't move. you will make it worse."
You wanted to laugh at the irony. "kinda hard not to."
He let out a frustrated sigh, the sound of a man defeated by an impossible task. he looked at your leg, then at his hands, then back at your leg. he was at war with himself. the enoch who hated all contact was fighting the enoch who, for reasons you couldn't fathom, couldn't just leave you there writhing on the floor.
"Just… just do it" you whispered your voice tight with pain. "It's okay."
His jaw tightened. he looked like he was about to be sick. then, with the slowness of a man approaching a wild animal, he reached out. his fingers, cool and surprisingly gentle, ghosted over your calf before finally making contact.
You flinched, not from pain, but from the sheer shock of it. Enoch O’Connor was touching you. his touch was hesitant, experimental, nothing like the firm, confident way he handled his clay figures. it was feather-light, full of a reluctance that was almost touching.
"Does it hurt here?" he asked his voice a low rumble, his eyes fixed on your leg refusing to meet yours.
You just shook your head unable to speak. his hands were careful as they prodded, searching for the break. he wasn't being cruel. he was being… meticulous. he was assessing the damage with the same focus he applied to his art. When he found the fracture, you couldn't stop the sharp cry that escaped your lips.
He pulled back instantly, his hands hovering in the air again. "Sorry" he mumbled, the word sounding foreign and clumsy in his mouth.
"It's okay" you breathed, tears finally leaking from the corners of your eyes "Just… surprised me."
he stared at you for a long moment, his expression unreadable. then, with a resigned sigh that seemed to carry the weight of the world, he made a decision. "I can't fix this" he said, his voice back to its usual gruffness. "but I can make sure you don't jostle it while we get the Peregrine."
Before you could ask what he meant, he was scooping you up. one arm slid behind your back, the other hooked carefully under your legs, avoiding the injured one. it was the most intimate you had ever been with another person. his entire body was rigid, a board of pure tension. you could feel the frantic thrum of his heart against your side, a wild drumbeat of anxiety. he held you as if you were a bomb, ready to detonate.
He carried you through the halls, his face a mask of stoic endurance. you rested your head against his chest, the rough wool of his sweater scratching your cheek. he smelled of clay and something else, something uniquely him. it was the first time you had ever been this close, and you realized his aversion wasn't about malice. it was about fear. A deep seated terror of connection, of vulnerability.
He set you down gently on a chaise lounge in the parlor, his hands retreating from you the second you were stable. he took three large steps back, as if to put a safe distance between himself and the moment of weakness.
Miss Peregrine bustled in moments later clucking her tongue at the sight of your leg. as she tended to you, you glanced over at enoch. he was standing in the doorway, watching, his arms crossed tightly over his chest. his scowl was back in place, but it wasn't directed at you. it was directed inward.
Later that evening, your leg set and propped up on pillows, you heard a soft knock at your door. it was him. He stood in the doorway, not coming in, holding a small, crudely fashioned clay bird.
"Thought you might be bored" he said not looking at you, but at a spot on the wall just over your shoulder.
He held it out and for a second, you thought he was going to ask you to come and get it. but then, he seemed to steel himself and he took the few steps into the room to place it on your nightstand. As he leaned over his fingers brushed against yours.
You both froze.
His touch was no longer hesitant. it was just…there. a brief warm point of contact. he didn't snatch his hand away. he just let it linger for a second, a silent acknowledgment.
"It's… a crow" he said, his voice quiet.
"It's beautiful" you replied, and you meant it.
He straightened up and backed away, a flicker of his old self returning. "don't get used to it" he warned, but there was no heat in his words.
He turned and left, closing the door softly behind him. You looked at the clay bird on your nightstand, then at your hand where his fingers had touched yours. the skin still tingled. Enoch O’Connor hated to be touched, hated the world of warmth and feeling. but for you, he had crossed his own battlefield. and you knew, with a certainty that settled deep in your bones, that you were the only person whose touch he would ever allow to break through his walls.