Mercia and Tiger’s June Prompt Challenge #5: ‘Love at First Sight’
Love at first sight - it was the sort of notion that Draco admired. In his firm opinion, it took a very strange sort of mindset to even believe in such a thing in this day and age. It was true - he thought - that people could certainly find lust at first sight. Most relationships started like that - on the basis of how hot the person was, or how much you fancied them. Love - the non-platonic sort anyways - was a lot more complicated.
He liked to think he knew what it was. The quiet contentment that his parents luxuriated every time he visited them in France, the youthful plastic and political smiles that made them a very handsome couple during his childhood, replaced by wrinkled lines and soft gestures. He liked to think he saw glimpses of it, little windows into other people's lives and their intertwined hearts. It was in the way Pansy and Astoria would burst into laughter, overexuberant and almost hysterical, until it should have made them nearly sick with it but instead beaming from ear to ear so hard it seemed like they'd caught the stars between their eyes. Sometimes, he saw it in strangers too - the way an elderly woman held open the door for the older gentleman behind her, fingers flicking through sign language fast and a teasing glint in her eyes; or the face someone made when stepping out of a flower shop - somewhere between proud and bashful.
But it wasn't something he could say he had experienced for himself.
He'd had plenty of his share of partners, of course. Draco knew he sometimes came off a little too strongly, but he liked to think that his personality and his looks weren't not attractive. He was twenty-five, in the prime of his life, why shouldn't he have his pick? Of the four serious relationships he'd been in, none of them had made him look at them the way he'd seen other people look at their significant others. Not a single one. After the initial flutter of novelty, the routine would sink in and then suddenly Draco would find himself glancing across the table on a date and thinking - was this better than nothing?
His job as a photographer meant he had to travel a lot - and thus, was usually his go-to excuse for a break-up. "I'm sorry - this long distance thing isn't working - we should just - " was his typical spiel and his mother seemed to think he'd gotten it down to an art. It wasn't that they were bad relationships, or shitty partners, just that he wanted something special - as cliché as that sounded. He didn't want to just settle for who he could get.
"Oh, and what do you think I did?" His mother would say primly over the phone, her tone light and airy, "I settled for your father, you know, and now I have a wonderful son, and a loving husband - you've grown up so much, that I forget what a child you are sometimes, Draco."
So perhaps, he had no idea what love was after all.
But it was something of a personal project of his to capture it in a frame. How did a slight smile differ from a look of love? What changed between shaping an expression on your face to looking at someone with love? He had thousands of snapshots in his studio of the faces of his friends that he'd bribed into being used as subjects on film, or black and white stills of people going around their everyday lives, whilst Draco tried to understand their expressions, just a little.
Despite all of that, he'd yet to actually capture the cliché 'love at first sight' - ironic, since that was the theme the fashion mag was going for in their May issue. They'd been flown out from London to Los Angeles and driven to the shoot location the next morning with little preamble in order to set up before the models arrived. The weather was far too hot for anything Draco would deem Spring, but at least the urban sets meant air conditioning. As usual, he'd brought Pansy with him to manage and assist - her official title was as his P.A. but that had somehow devolved into meaning he was responsible for giving her feedback on her selfies and getting updated on the gossip that he missed while focusing through the lens.
The shoot had run overtime, lasting several hours because the models just wouldn't move their face right for a theme like love at first sight and Draco was hot, and irritated, and wasn't nearly as recovered from his jetlag as he'd liked, which was why he flop down beside his unprofessional P.A on the sofa in their trailer with a grunt and tried to do his best to imagine something cold and sweet right about now.
"Ooh! Food's ready," Pansy's voice was annoyingly cheerful, "I can hear the caterers setting up."
"Not hungry," He mumbled into the cushions, macramé threading tickling his nose. "Lemme sleep."
"Fine - I'm starving, so I'm going." She said pointedly, before the clicks of her heels got quieter, followed by the sounds of the door.
There was another shoot after this, swapping the idyllic urban street they were in for an office shoot with chrome and metal finishes and glass several hundred metres above the busy streets. The six models (six now, because he told the seventh to go home) would be modelling an outfit each, and he'd need enough full body and close-ups to keep the stills intimate enough for the theme but also show off each garment.
Then after that, there was the reviewing process - he'd need to get the photos sent to the editor's office before eleven tonight and to do that, he'd need to go over the hundreds of frames on the memory card, and -
A loud knock interrupted his thoughts, plans vanishing in his head like smoke. Draco scowled, trying to find the tail end of the idea - right, the memory card and then the -
The knock repeated itself louder this time, and he'd just opened his mouth to tell Pansy to fuck off when the door opened of it's own accord and a distinctly not-Pansy stepped through with a fierce scowl on his lips. The man didn't even look up, breaking left away from the door to set down a tray with little finesse and not at all gently, the soup inside the bowl sloshing dangerously near the edges. He had dark hair, black and thick, glossy and messy like it would catch between his fingers at the slightest tugs. Framed by a pair of rounded glasses, were bright green eyes that were bracketed by a smattering of barely-there freckles on the man's dark skin.
He wasn't a model - he didn't have the build for it, lean though he was and well-muscled from what Draco could see under the white caterer's uniform that clung to him slightly in the heat. The man - because he was definitely a man - bared a flash of white teeth between rosy-pink lips, mumbling things that Draco probably wasn't supposed to hear.
"Stupid Garcia, send your fucking sous chef on your fucking errand, why don't you?" The man hissed to himself, in an English accent, strangely; laying out the silverware into the tray. "Fucking celebrities, why do you need a fork for fucking bisque?" There was a clatter and a sigh as the man - sous chef, hot sous chef - finished up and made to turn, and abruptly Draco realised he was about to be caught staring at the man, having overheard opinion's he was most likely not supposed to -
"Motherfucker!" The man spat, broad shoulders jerking in shock as Draco finally got a chance to see the nametag on his breast pocket.
Quite a shame his mouth wasn't as sweet as it looked. Maybe it could have been - not love, no, - but something like it. A warm, heady feeling uncurled in Draco's chest.
"No thank you, not my type," He said, arching one brow as the caterer's cheeks flushed. But you are.
