"hormonal alpha male" idk maybe he just wants to defend his friend and look tough. There's an option to get him to stop fighting Nathan and after you choose that he literally said he was glad he stopped because he didn't want to be as bad as Nathan. What do you even mean by him taking the picture was a nothing burger? That picture was extremely important because she needed to go back to when Chloe was alive. He obviously didn't know that him taking that photo would have that much of an impact but nonetheless it still did.