Camera Shy || Ben Barlow

Six

In direct correlation to his lack of mediocrity, Ben was nearly as big a drama queen as Dani, although simultaneouslythe most relaxed person I'd met. Exhibit A, his band-mate fell through the floor and he had a saunter around the hotel instead of panicking and calling for help. Exhibit B, his tour bus had broken down on the side of the motorway and here he was, on the hard shoulder, having a little chat with the merchandise team. 

"What do you mean the t-shirts were in the bread bin?" 

"He somehow left three whole tour shirts in the bread bin. Apparently, he wanted toast," Cara said, clearly excited to have someone listening to her anecdotes.

"Excuse me," Zach complained, "I was hungry. It's not my fault you people overwork me. I am not a slave!"

"How did they even fit?" Ben asked, completely ignoring Zach's protests, as the poor boy flailed around, upset, behind us all. 

"Ask Zach. We had a right game trying to get them out, didn't we Es?" I nodded along in agreement as Cara continued to make pals with the vocalist. she'd already been getting quite close to him, recently, and it was starting to look like she preferred the boys to Zach and I. 

"Yeah it was a pain."

"On the topic of pain," Ben said, looking up at me as I rolled my eyes. "You know exactly what I'm going to say," he laughed.

"How's your head?" I said, in my best Ben Barlow voice, mocking him as well as I could. He tried not to smile, he really did, but his efforts got him nowhere. I liked Ben. He was alright. "I haven't got a never ending headache anymore. Ready to come back to work, I reckon," I said with a hopeful smile, looking up at Ben with my best innocent eyes, literally desperate to convince him I was healthy enough for work again. I couldn't handle sitting alone in my bunk while they all lived it up in fancy concert venues anymore; it was legitimately starting to drive me insane. I hadn't taken any decent pictures of anything since the arcade debacle, and they hardly counted. They weren't work. "My camera's getting all lonely, Ben," I said, patting the camera bag hanging off of my shoulder, the bag that I normally refused to go anywhere without. This camera was my heart and soul. My life. As music was Ben's. 

"Not a chance." I turned to Cara, helplessly, for any kind of assistance but my (fake) best friend shrugged as precious little Dani shuffled his way off of the bus, a white book resembling the photo album my dad had always kept in his room in his hand. Even taking into account the fact that Dani was generally just confused as a person, I'd never seen him quite this lost in thought as his face scrunched up while he held the book up to look at it.

"Ben, what's this?"

"What do you mean?" He asked, frantically, jumping up onto his feet from his place on the floor, next to Cara and across from myself. I'd been working for the band for a good couple of years now and, even on stage, I had never seen that man move so quickly in my life. It was as though he were possessed.

"This ridiculous white book. What is it?" I'd honestly never seen Ben so offended, nor Dani so confused (which, looking back, was a real achievement). Cara looked just as baffled as I felt, looking up to Ben as if she'd never even met the guy. 

"I've never seen it before in my life," he responded, looking quite frantic as the rest of his band piled out of the bus, giggling like little boys. Now, let me tell you, Matt West had the least manly little giggle I'd ever heard and, trust me when I say, it was sound to behold.

"Ben why is there glitter all over your bunk again?" Sam asked, his features distorted by the excessive quantities of glitter scattered across his face, tumbling out of the bus.

"Wait... again?" Zach asked, once again to be ignored.

"Is it something to do with the book?" Dani added, desperate for answers.

"It's my diary!" Ben suddenly blurted, looking as though he was going to burst, his cheeks red and his ears presumably burning. He'd had questions fired at him from all angles and, honestly, I wasn't sure he was handling it very well. 

"You have a diary? With glitter in it?" Fil looked ready to quit the band, his expression one of disgust, mirroring West's eerily well. I wasn't sure whether I was allowed to laugh or not, but Zach had already burst into a fit of giggles, and the rest of the boys had been laughing earlier.

"Ben, that's so gay," I said, cracking a smile whilst leaning against a little hill on the side of the motorway. 

"Maybe I am gay," he said, defensively snatching the book away from Dani before he could take a look inside, hugging it to his chest like a frightened child. 

"Are you, though?" I asked, skeptically. 

"No, but that's not the point." He looked like a defiant toddler, having been told 'no'. I did feel somewhat sorry for the poor boy; I highly doubted the rest of the band were going to let him live this one down. 

"I happen to think it's adorable that Ben has a diary," Cara announced, standing from her place where she'd propped herself up against the railing of the hard shoulder. Her jeans couldn't have been clean anymore. I raised an eyebrow and observed Dani's head tilting to one side, from the corner of my eye. 

"You do?" Ben and I said, together, yet slightly out of time with one another, as Fil said, "but why?"

"It means he has feelings," she said, like a hopeful little girl going after the high school bad boy. 

"Feelings? Have you listened to their songs, Cara?" Zach sniggered, clearly tickled by Cara's declarations. Ben looked a lot more embarrassed now than he had done before. On an embarrassment scale of one to 'being sick on your crush', Ben had previously been 'stumbling while getting on the bus'. Now, he was a solid 'yelling the wrong name in bed'. Ben Barlow did not do feelings. His songs were his feelings, and that was all. His feelings didn't often move past the music. 

"Of course I have," she said, her cheeks flushed. What on earth was happening? 

"Right," Dani said, "so Ben has a diary, absolutely full of glitter, dripping with his private and personal feelings. Agreed?" Everyone nodded, except obviously Ben. "I say we read it." 

"NO!" He shot up and darted across the gravel road as if his mother were about to be shot in front of him. Dani tried to raise the book above his head to keep it away from poor distressed Ben, but they were too close in height for it to actually have worked. He snatched the book as if his life depended on it, gripping it tightly to his chest with the sternest of scowls over his face. It was weird seeing him like this. I was so used to the giggles and jokes that any amount of seriousness just didn't seem right. Cara had made it weird, I concluded. "It's mine."

"I still say we read it," Dani grumbled, rubbing his fingers where Ben had snatched them, forcefully taking back his little white book.

"I agree!" Fil announced, a proud little smile on his face. "You hold him, I'll get the book," he loudly whispered to his friend, causing Ben's eyes to expand to twice their usual size. 

"No! No, no, no. No one touches the book." He shook it in the air to emphasise his point, the light in his eyes dying as glitter fell from the pages. I caught a glimpse of a picture, but didn't get the chance to see, properly, what it was actually of. I needed to know what was in that book. I needed to know. 

As Dani reached for the book, Ben lunged away from him, dashing straight back onto the bus that we'd all been told to stay out of until mechanics arrived. I'd thought of it as cruel at the time. It was freezing outside, now, but Cara had managed to bring a blanket out with her so it wasn't really that bad. Better than being on the bus and having it explode, I supposed. 

"Feelings?" I said to Cara, grimacing. I didn't associate Ben with feelings. My best friend shrugged as Zach nudged shoulders with me, as if silently telling me he thought something was a bit dodgy, too. "Do you think it's actually a diary?"

"Knowing Ben, it's a book full of his own nudes," Zach sighed, placing himself between Cara and I and flinging his arms around the both of us. Oh, I did love Zach. 

A/N: This (extremely late) chapter has been brought to you by Alex Gaskarth. I couldn't sleep because his voice is too pretty

I apologise for how horrifically late this is. I promise to be more consistent now that college is over for summer!

L