#gareth

At first, he's pretty subtle about it. Steve resets all the clocks in the trailer so they're 15 minutes fast. That combined with Steve's insistence that they leave early gets Eddie to band practice with plenty of time to chit chat while Steve subtly plugs in the amps and hands Warlock to Eddie to idly tune as they talk. After practice, he saying things that he used to hear his coaches say, like "you know, all the guys really look up to you. You're like their leader and good leaders lead by example."

This all only gets him so far, Eddie tones down his language but he's still acting like a dictator, not realizing that even he needs to take a break, get a drink, and most of all, eat something. The next time Eddie unloads his gear from the van, Steve removes the cooler he'd packed. Everyone makes fun of him at first, "who brings snacks to band practice." But half way through the second hour, when everyone's patients is at it's end, Steve pulls out the orange slices, peanut butter-filled celery sticks, and string cheese he brought. "I haven't had ants on a log since I was like 5," Jeff exclaims, snatching up half of the contents of the Tupperware.

The last hurdle to overcome is scheduling. They're supposed to practice a few times a week, Eddie would prefer three times, but everyone else has stuff to do. By the time they're packing up and trying to settle on the next practice date, it ends up being a week away or sometimes more. Finally, Steve talks to each of them, figures out their individual schedules and settles on set practice dates and times.

With everyone getting along and double the practice time, Corroded Coffin starts to sound really good. So good in fact, that the next time Eddie, Steve, and Robin go to their favorite gay bar in Indianapolis, Steve can't help up talk them up to anyone who will listen.

"Well, of course you think they're good," the Manager says with a roll of his eyes. He'd only been talking to Steve cause he was so cute but he was kind of over it now that he knew he had a boyfriend.

"No, seriously, I hate that kind of music but unfortunately, they're actually really good," Robin groans, against her better judgement. She'd never wanted to develop a taste for Corroded Coffin but over the last few months, if she'd wanted to hang out with Steve, that usually entailed also hanging out with Eddie so she'd tagged along to a few practices and, much to her chagrin, she'd started to like them.

"We don't really play that kind of music here. It's not very danceable!"

"Yeah, but you have theme nights, right? And have you see how metal fans dress? Lots of leather... well, not lots if you know what I'm saying," Eddie said, shooting Steve a flirty wink.