#gin wrote

The photo pit at this place is light years better than his last venue. There’s more than enough room for all of the photographers and their gear without stepping on each other. Usually Steve is grateful for this because surely there is only so many more beatings his 35mm can take before it kicks the bucket. Today though, he’s grateful for the space because of the full-tilt sprint this band had him in. 

He’s never seen anything like it.

Well, less so did the band have him in a sprint and more so the frontman but, semantics. 

The guy is everywhere. Steve could barely keep up with the way he ran around stage, jumping, climbing on equipment, leaning off-stage toward the barricade.

It was fun but Jesus, what is his deal?

Steve hadn’t even known who Corroded Coffin was 24 hours ago. Now he’s burned through two SD cards in an hour and a half. 

The guy’s hot and a good photo subject, sue him.

Well, he thinks he’s a good photo subject at least. He won’t know until he’s culled through every single shot. Steve’s a good photographer, took to it naturally the first time he picked up a camera. His downfall though, according to his college professors at least, was that he pays absolutely no attention to what he’s shooting while he’s shooting it. Hence the overshooting. 

On more than one occasion he’s gotten started on editing and someone is wearing an outfit he’s never seen before, someone’s got sunglasses on in every photo, a tag hanging off their jacket. All he’s concerned with is the framing, the lighting, and the focus. The content can be a problem for Future Steve. Everything can be fixed in post.

Almost.

Anyway, his feet hurt and he hates culling, so he pours himself a full glass of wine and plops down on the couch in front of an episode of trash tv with his laptop and props his feet up. Settles in for a long night.

2,461 images.

He throws his head back with a groan. Ugh. 

The first hundred or so are garbage.

They always are.

A few shots spent fucking with the exposure, a few the focus, some the flash.

He denotes the purple flag as his ‘good’ tag and orange as his ‘trash’ tag. The orange is stacking up fast. Around 163 he starts finding some good images. Ones that aren’t tainted by motion blur from his running around after this frontman. 

His photos of the drummer are pretty sick; he can't lie. The lights and the smoke and the near-manic smile on his face make for great photos. He’s not even this band’s personal photographer but he can imagine at least one of these will get posted to the band's socials. He’s good, what can he say?

He has a good bit of the bassist, his energy infectious enough you can almost feel it through the screen. Purple is making a comeback.

He finally gets through some crowd pics, some more drummer, some guitarist, some detail shots before he finally makes it to the frontman. 731 photos later. 

What did Wikipedia say his name was? Eddie, he thinks.

Weird, the very first shot Steve has of him he’s making fierce eye contact with the camera.

Ew.

No matter how long Steve does this, photos of people looking directly at the camera never get less jarring. 

Orange tag. Trash.

The next one is exactly the same.

Shit. 

He’s really bad to fall victim to the high speed shutter on this camera and often finds himself with a dozen copies of the same picture. Looks like he’s done it again.

Orange.

More piercing eye contact.

What? He squints and flips back and forth between the last two photos.

They’re not even remotely similar. As a matter of fact, Steve was in a completely different location in the pit for the second one. 

Green tag. Come back to this.

Taking a long swig from his glass he shifts so his laptop is closer to his face. Thinks that surely he’s not seeing this right. 

He takes to forgoing his tagging system and just flipping through every photo as fast as his fingers can press the arrow keys.

He’s clicked through about 200 when he starts getting worried, his heart rate speeding up. Surely he got something usable.

“What the fuck?”

He’s clicked through 50 or 60 more when he decides that, no he did not fall victim to the shutter speed at all. This guy is just making direct eye contact with his camera in every single photo.

Steve’s not mad, the opposite really. He didn’t spend much time looking at the guy during the show and now he gets to have an eyeful while he works. What’s there to be mad about? 

He is, however, mildly concerned that he won’t have a single decent photo to use for the venue socials when he posts about this show.

Whatever. Maybe fans of their music are also fans of uncomfortable eye contact. Who knows?

He finishes sifting through the rest of the photos, Eddie staring directly down the lens in every one, one’s where he’s not the subject included. Throws them all in an editing software and mass edits them all at once. He’ll detail edit later.

While the eye contact was a little unsettling, he did get one photo he’s particularly happy with. One that makes it look like the staring was on purpose.

It’s during the second to last song, a ballad– or as close as you can get with a metal band. Eddie’s standing center-stage and Steve had snagged the spot directly in front of him. He’s looking straight down, backlit with red spotlights, surrounded by smoke pumping from side-stage, and just close enough that Steve can see the sweat dripping down his neck. He looks a little bit scary, but that’s how Steve likes ‘em. 

That’ll be the cover photo for sure.

He shoots an album link to his boss to review before he distributes them anywhere, then spends  the next twenty minutes laughing to himself while he collects the goofiest photos of Eddie staring straight at his lens.

He puts them in a new album and copies the link.

When he opens up Instagram and searches Corroded Coffin he lets out a low whistle at the six million followers. Maybe he really should know who these guys are. With that many followers he doubts they’ll even see a message from his personal account, but whatever. He clicks on the message button on their profile and hits paste.

@ steveharrington.jpeg Great show tonight! Somebody tell this guy that he is allowed to look away from the camera though…

He only waits a few minutes for the reply.

@ corrodedcoffin HOLY SHIT THAT WAS YOU

@ corrodedcoffin Wait hang on

His phone pings with a message from a new account.

@ whoiseddiemunson HOLY SHIT THAT WAS YOU

@ whoiseddiemunson Sweetheart I wasn’t looking at the camera

Steve furrows his brows, confused. Starts typing a response but gets interrupted by another message.

@ whoiseddiemunson I was looking at the smoking hot guy behind it. Kinda hard to get a good look when he’s hiding behind the camera though.

Steve feels his cheeks flush and huffs a laugh to himself.

@ steveharrington.jpeg Well the guy behind the camera did manage to get a few good ones even though he was under surveillance the whole show. Wanna see those?

@ whoiseddiemunson Hell yeah I do. I just scrolled through your profile, your work is amazing. Do you want to show me the rest? Maybe over coffee tomorrow?

Steve smiles. His earlier heart palpitations replaced with butterflies.

@ steveharrington.jpeg Is this a date?

Well- considering that all he can hear is “Eddie! Over here” from the wall of paparazzi to his right. As kind as Brooke seems, he would much rather be hanging off his boyfriend while the crowd screams his name and begs for autographs.

Dating another famous person is all fun and games until work calls you both at the same time.

He looks over his shoulder between questions and catches Eddie throwing him a wink. He’s stood on the red carpet with the other Corroded Coffin boys and they’re all joking and laughing and acting like they don’t have a care in the world.

Steve knows that’s not true. They were all but shaking in their boots on the car ride over while their manager threatened them each on their lives to behave themselves.

He laughs under his breath and tears his eyes away.

“Okay! Now for some rapid-fire fan questions!” she says.

Perfect, this will be a good distraction until Eddie’s done being a goddamned model behind him.

Steve claps his hands together and furrows his eyebrows.

“I’m ready, let's do it.”

“What’s your favorite cereal?”

“Frosted Flakes, obviously.”

“When was the last time you went to the dentist?”

He snorts a laugh. “Uh, about a month ago actually. I chipped a tooth on set.”

“Yikes.” She looks down at the card in her hand. “Who is your most played artist on Spotify?”

He smiles, doesn’t need to pull out his phone to know the answer to that one.

“That would be my boyfriend.”

Brooke smiles at him and leans in conspiratorially, “If he isn’t really, I won’t tell anyone.”

He laughs. “He really is! If you wanted some juice though, Sabrina Carpenter is my second.”

She laughs and nods. “That’s perfect. I so see it. Okay, last one, what is your favorite snack to eat in bed?”

Oddly enough, he doesn’t really have to think to answer this one either.

“Pretzels, easy. We’ve been watching “How to Get Away With Murder” before bed every night and I’ve probably been through three bags this week. Honest.”

Brooke breaks her professional character to laugh and it spurs him on.

“It’s one of those things, I probably haven’t thought about a pretzel in three years and now that I’ve remembered they exist, I cannot put them down.” He notices now that even the camera guy is nodding and laughing. “You know when I was a kid, I used to love dipping a pretzel in my Coke can and hearing it fizz. That shit-”

He cuts himself off with a smile when he feels a warm hand slide around his waist.

“Hey hot stuff,” he giggles.

Eddie smacks a dramatic kiss to his cheek and squeezes his hip. His pretty smile taking over his face once he gets a good look at the blush that paints his cheeks.

“Hey babydoll. What’re you guys talking about?”

Steve’s head whips back around to Brooke. “Ooh! Ask him! I want to see if he says the same thing I did.”

She smiles and points the mic towards Eddie.

“What’s your favorite snack to eat in bed?”

Eddie puts on a faux contemplative look, puts a hand on his chin. He hums.

“Hm. That’s a tough one. God, I just don’t-”

Steve cuts him off, wraps his own arms around Eddie’s frame and gets in his face with a laugh.

“Oh come on, I know you’re thinking it! I want to be right!”

He makes himself giggle into Eddie’s shoulder thinking back to a few nights ago when Eddie had stuck two pretzel rods in his lip and pretended to be a walrus. So his confusion as to why Eddie isn’t answering only grows when he sees the filthy smirk on his face.

Eddie leans back far enough that he can see the mic flag.

“Who did you say you were with again?”

“E! News.”

Oh good. Steve had wanted to know that.

Eddie chuckles and Steve figures out what’s happening as soon as he feels Eddie’s hand shift. He can’t move his own fast enough.

“Well, Brooke from E! News, my favorite snack to eat in bed is my baby,” he punctuates it with a smack to Steve’s ass, “what else?”

Steve buries his blushing face in his boyfriend’s jacket and rushes to smack a hand over Eddie’s mouth before he can get out a, “Have you seen his-”

“OKAY, that’s enough out of you,” he looks back toward Brooke who is laughing hysterically, “I’m so sorry. He’s an animal.”

Steve is going to beat him up. Really, he is.

Eddie grabs his wrist and pulls his hand away from his mouth and settles it over his chest, bare under his studded jacket.

“Can you blame me? Look at him. Never tasted anything better.”

Okay, he’s done for real this time. He grabs Eddie’s arm and pulls him away, back toward the boys and more importantly away from the cameras.

“Thanks so much Brooke, you’re a gem, I am so sorry, again.”

Eddie cackles behind him and he just knows that they’ll never live this one down.