Chapter Eleven
Nash
There were certain fears that society expected adults toget over.Spiders, heights, public speaking. Flying. Flying might be easier for Nash if he was allowed to be scared about it, instead of spending every ounce of his energy pretending he was okay.
“I got you,” Rory said from the seat next to him, Nash's hand gripped in his own. Nash bounced his knee and looked out the window.
“After we get the all clear to unbuckle our seat belts, we can go join the mile high club,” Rory whispered in his ear as he snuggled against Nash, the armrest an unwanted third.
Nash laughed, distracted right at the moment the wheels left the earth, one brief moment of relief. God, he could fall in love with this man, which would be a scary thought if he wasn’t in the heaviest machine he could imagine, climbing miles and miles into the sky. In this context, the idea of falling in love with Rory was nearly comforting.
Rory was comforting.
“Sam said he’d develop all the film,” Rory said. Had he saved that good news for this moment of terror?
“How do you know I hate developing film?”
“Honestly, I’m not sure. You mentioned it once five years ago or something and I tucked it away.” A knife right to Nash's heart. If he had any resolve left against this man filling up his entire heart, that resolve was crumbling.
“I think it’s tedious. I’d rather be pulling prints.”
“Same. But I also like how all the chemicals smell, so I’m willing to do it.”
“Good to know for the future.”
“I’m not huffing them, to be clear. Nothing else smells like a darkroom, and that’s where I want to be.”
“When Sam and I go print, come with us. I know the darkroom in your folks’ basement is small, but we’ve all fit in there before.” And before, when Nash was desperately trying to ignore Rory’s presence, at risk of revealing his crush, it had been excruciating. Now, it seemed like it would be more fun.
Maybe not for Sam, though.
“Count me in.”
Gradually they made it to cruising altitude, and their captain’s soft French accent greeted them all in both French and English, and invited them to get comfortable for their time together. Comfortable. Rory had already rearranged his legs twice, and they’d been in the air for what felt like eight minutes.
When they got the okay to use their tray tables, Nash pulled his laptop, a couple hard drives, all of the SD cards they’d used that weekend, and an adapter out, and started working on backing up the data. The process was always terrifying. On one hand, he was copying to two drives in case one failed. His cameras wrote to two cards at once as he took the pictures. Redundancy and never trusting technology was engrained in him. You only need one experience where you lose someone’s wedding photos to brand that feeling into your chest forever.
He sighed in relief when everything made it over without issues.
Sam had already offered to do the bulk of the editing, but they always liked to get some preview shots out as soon as possible, to give the couple photos to post on social, or share with grandparents.
Next to him, Rory was already asleep, head on Nash's shoulder. He tried not to move his arms much as he combed through the photos, looking for some solid key shots. One of the photos of the two of them in that classic car, for sure. One with a gust of wind carrying Olivia’s veil artfully behind her. A couple from their first look.
He chose the photos, and pulled them into Lightroom, then went back to search for a few more. He got to the end of the SD cards he’d shot on and to the ones Rory had been working with. Together, Nash and Sam had a unified artistic voice. They had spent years figuring out how to get the best results, and the creativity they brought to the day was usually in figuring out how to execute their plan. It was good to give your clients what they were paying for. Nash had taken more than enough of those kinds of photos.
Rory, though, had a different vision. His photos were less commercial, more experimental. Nash's photos were clean and professional, even though they would all need editing. Rory's had a rougher edge, but even while Nash thought he’d had his eye on Rory the whole weekend, as he took photo after photo, he hadn’t imagined what those photos would look like.
The macro shots of the rings were par for the course to begin with, but then turned into a geometric reflection off a small mirror that almost looked like a waterfall. His welcome-dinner portraits somehow captured personality in the guests, and Nash knew it was because Rory pulled it out of him. He had a series of shots of a guest flirting with a bartender, which may or may not make it into the final photo package, but was a cute flip book of a mini-romance. He got a shot of Bailey telling Olivia a secretfrom across the dance floor during the reception, the bodies of dancers out of focus in the foreground as she laughed.
Rory hadn’t brought the same aesthetic vision that Sam would have, and in turn, his photos were beautiful. He took a moment to be grateful Rory had wanted to do the guest portrait shots, which he was sure the bride and groom would be ecstatic about.
He shifted to press a kiss to the top of Rory's head, secretly glad when the motion woke him up.
“Are we landing in Ohio yet?” Rory asked, crossing his fingers.
“We have about seven hours left.”
“Fuck.”
