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“Hey, Iggy, look here real quick!”
“Yes, Prompto-?” Ignis pauses in his writing of a new recipe, redirecting his gaze upwards, and immediately recognizes the lenses. “Oh, do you…?”
“Smile as if Noct ate his veggies today!”
The retainer knits his brows, then chuckles a little. “I’m imagining it.”
Click!
“Nice!” Prompto straightens up, checking the screen on his camera. “You’re looking so good today.”
“Why, thank you.”
A ding on his phone, and Ignis can see the newly developed result, himself with his eyes inquisitively looking up at the viewer, his pencil lifted up from his notebook. And his smile, genuine as day.
He feels his breath stop short. And he starts to think about how Noctis said Prompto loved to take pictures.
But he didn’t mention how beautiful they were.
“See you later, Iggs!”
Prompto bounds from the room, leaving the retainer staring after him, surprised and entranced all at once.
He’d like to see a little more.
————————————————————————
“Noct, give me one chance, okay? Promise. No weird filters or anything. Just one pic.”
The prince uncovers his burning face, caused by embarrassment, and fixes his best friend with a stare.
“Now you look like a handsome porcupine,” Prompto laughs, letting his camera hang down and stepping forward, hand going to Noctis’s hair. “Here, I’ll tell you a joke.”
“How’s that going to help?” The prince ducks his head anyway to let the blond get at it. “This feels so weird on me.”
“A good weird?”
“It’s so comfy and I look like shit in it.” Noctis picks at the shirt cuff, squinting at the mirror. “I shouldn’t have gotten it.”
Prompto falls back down from standing on his toes, checking the prince over. “Well, you can think that, but…”
His brows lift, and he gives Noctis an endearing grin. “For your first ever formal outfit that you chose, it fits you. It really, really does.”
And there’s a shocked silence, because the prince has been rendered speechless. “You…You like it?”
“Yeah, ‘course I do.”
Then the blond’s leaning forward. “Your buttons are a bit off, let me get those for ya.”
Noctis stands straight for him as he starts to realign, and he thinks his face is burning again, but for a different reason.
“I’ve got a question for you.”
“Uh, yeah?” He looks down at the mop of golden hair.
“What’s long, brown, and sticky?”
“…..don’t say it-”
“A stick. ”
“ Seriously? ”
But he can tell he’s smiling. He can tell, and Prompto straightens up with his eyes glimmering. “There he is.”
A click of the camera, and his best friend shows him the screen.
He may be smiling because of such a bad joke, but it was a real smile. And he really did look good.
“Take another one. Full body.”
The blond giggles. “As you wish.”
————————————————————————
“Alright, Gladio? I need to ask you, and I need to ask you one thing only. ”
The Shield lowers his sword from where he was practicing on the training room floor, turning to Prompto who was swinging his feet on a nearby bench. “Go ahead.”
“How are you so unbelievably hot?”
Gladiolus blinks at him.
“Well, I wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s true!” Prompto flexes his fingers. “It makes me itch to use my camera, so much it’s insane.”
“A photoshoot?”
“Yeck heah, I mean - heck yeah, I’d love to!” The blond catches Gladiolus sputter. “ Dude, stop. Your looks are making me trip over my tongue!”
“Didn’t know I had such an effect on you.”
Prompto pouts at him, and that’s what makes him laugh. “You got your camera on you?”
Blue eyes widen. “Wait, for real?”
“Yeah, I got time.”
The blond immediately jumps up and pulls up his camera from behind him, and the Shield inwardly laughs. Prompto's planned it all along.
“Nice smile!” A click of the shutters.
Then the blond’s shy gaze peeks out from behind the device.
Gladiolus sighs and takes off his undershirt.
So maybe the tattoo of the eagle is still the background of Prompto’s phone.
————————————————————————
It’s been a pretty great day, probably the best birthday Prompto’s ever had.
Funny thing is, it wasn’t even with his parents. It was on the road trip to Altissia, where he spent nights with his best friends, went on adventures and went to the bathroom in the scariest places in the world. And yet, it was still the most fun Prompto’s ever had.
They went chocobo riding, stopped by Crow’s Nest, and they even let him drive the Regalia again.
Except there was just one wrong thing.
He couldn’t find his camera.
The entire time, he thought he put it in his luggage. When it wasn’t there, he scoured the tent floor. When he asked everyone else, they said they hadn’t seen it, and told him to not worry about it.
They didn’t seem concerned, so he pushed it to the back of his mind.
All until dusk, when they have a cake in front of the campfire, having returned to the haven.
Now, he’s extremely worried, constantly looking around for it. He managed to forget about it the whole day, but now…
What’s he gonna do if he can’t find it? It cost a lot and it was bought with his own money. If he lost it somewhere out here will he ever locate it again?
Stewing in his seat, he doesn’t notice that the lens of his most prized possession is pointed at him until Ignis murmurs, “Prom, look up real quick.”
And the camera is there in his grip.
The blond’s eyes go wide, and he meets all of his friends’ eyes, his jaw dropping open. “Did you have it the whole time? ”
“Yep. Stole it away from you when your lights were still out.” The Shield smirks. “I was half tempted to snap a shot of you drooling in your sleep.”
“ What- I don’t drool!”
“It was tough trying to hide it from you.” Noctis brushes the hair out of his eyes, and motions towards Ignis, who hands the camera to Prompto. “But we did it. Thought our master photographer deserved to see how much we love him too.”
And when Prompto opens the pictures, he almost instantly tears up.
Because there’s pictures of everything. Everything from today.
There he was, riding his chocobo, laughing as the bird called.
And there he was, wrestling Ignis in the dirt right before they showered, giggling as the tactician tickled him, their hair both a mess.
Gladiolus hugging him from behind, whispering something into his ear and making him blush, and the blond remembers what it was a second later, “Happy birthday, sexy baby,” and he gives the Shield a shining side glance, to which the other winks back.
The pictures go all throughout the day, every happy moment, just them walking until the sun went down, their hunts and road trips.
And every time, Prompto was the focus. Every shot was of him and his grin.
The tears make their way into his eyes.
“Hey, buddy, don’t cry yet.”
Noctis plucks the camera from his hands, and turns around, maneuvering the screen so they could see themselves in the camera.
“Best friend selfie, but taken by His Highness.”
Prompto takes his camera back after but doesn’t look at the result, only flinging himself at the prince and wrapping his arms around him. “You guuuuys. ”
“Happy birthday, Prompto,” Ignis whispers back instead, joining in on the hug. “My dear friend.”
And Gladiolus is there only a heartbeat later, pressing a kiss to the blond’s head. “We love you so much.”