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A cleanly manicured nail traced along the edge of a wooden frame. Soft, faded lavender eyes stared up out of the picture inside to meet narrowed eyes in a more vibrant color than in the photo. The light caught against frame's glass covering the photo, reflecting Suzu's face next to Belle's. Their own expression was carefully blank, just like Belle's, they could remember it like it was yesterday, putting on the empty smile in the photo. Their mother had worked so hard to make them look nice for the Mother Bird cast photo, so they needed to put in the effort to look perfect, too, but the photographer apparently didn't like it when Belle put on a big smile, and they eventually had to settle for a small, demure, almost blank look.
"Do you miss her?" Suzu asked, not taking their eyes off the Belle in the photo.
Suzu tilted the photo frame slightly, letting the light catch Shirou's reflection in the glass to watch his expression. They watched as he seemed caught off guard at first, his eyes darting around at the faces in the frame and his mouth opening and closing around words that failed to take shape. Then, his brow furrowed as if he were thinking hard about the question, eventually settling into a determined pull to his lips as he gritted his teeth.
"Look this way," Shirou said, and Suzu turned their head, eyes going wide with shock to be met with the glimmer of Shirou's camera lens staring back at him instead of Shirou's perpetual glare.
Before Suzu could put on an appropriate expression for a photo, the shutter clicked, capturing their bewildered expression forever. Or at least as long as Suzu let it exist.
Shirou still had the camera up in front of his face, and Suzu's mouth dropped open in offense at the audacity as they heard the shutter go off once more.
"You're wasting your film!" Suzu said with a panicked tone, reaching for the camera only to hear it go off again before Shirou stepped out of reach and finally put the camera down with a severe scowl.
"Don't be stupid," he snarled, then ran off upstairs to no doubt hide the camera somewhere Suzu couldn't mess with it until he had time to develop the photos.
"Shirou!" Suzu called after him, but settled back into the couch, deciding it wouldn't be worth the energy.
Suzu gave one last glance at the girl in the photo. There were some days where they missed being her, but they would never be exactly the same. The way they were now felt right. Born a boy, raised as a girl, growing up into someone who wasn't quite both when the natural effects of puberty had made it impossible to ever be the same Belle ever again and they had to become someone new. And Shirou seemed to finally be warming up to the idea, even if he might never be fully accepting or understanding, the fact that he'd gone through so much for them, that was enough for Suzu.
With that strengthening their resolve, Suzu set the frame down on the coffee table. They needed to get started on lunch.
A week later, Suzu had almost forgotten about the photos Shirou had taken. But, when Suzu set some coffee for Shirou and tea for themself out on the counter, there was a new photo in the frame that the cast photo used to be in. It was faintly blurry, with Suzu's hand reaching for the camera horribly underexposed, their expression frantic and completely not photogenic.
But, for some reason, Shirou had still taken the time to carefully process and frame it. Suzu cringed looking at the photo, but picked it up and looked at it hard, trying to figure out why Shirou would go through so much for this.
Suzu jumped a bit as arms wrapped around him and clung to him.
"Every photo of you is a good one, okay? I got this camera to take photos of you. And I want you to look happy in them." Shirou muffled his words by burying his face in Suzu's back, and Suzu could just imagine the adorable, embarrassed look on his face.
"I don' t look very happy here, Shirou," Suzu teased, trying to push down the emotions welling up in them.
Shirou just made some kind of disagreeing noise, either shaking his head to emphasize that, or nuzzling into Suzu's back. Either way, Suzu sighed fondly and accepted it.