One for Posterity
He rarely took pictures of himself.
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Maes Hughes was behind the camera so much, so often, that it was easy to never think of the fact that the man was always taking pictures of others, but had few of himself.
He would peer out from behind the viewfinder at his unlucky prey and nudge them, over to this wall so the background isn't too dark, out from under that lamp, there'll be a shadow, turn your head a few degrees… or he would just take pictures. Snap the camera so distractingly that he annoyed Roy out of his skin.
On a few occasions, Roy was chain-ganged into taking up a camera. With Riza holding the tripod sturdy, her hands firmly holding Roy's gloves in case he got… a little too annoyed at his subjects. She was the one who was patient enough to develop the pictures, label the date and place on the back, and put them into leather photo albums.
They had pages and pages of the office gang, and even more of the Hughes family. Riza liked to be around them and dragged him there; without quite admitting it to himself, Roy immensely enjoyed it too. And on idyllic afternoons, few and far between, Maes would teach him how to improve at picture taking, until Roy could focus a shot and capture a candid expression almost as well as Maes could.
They had pages just of Elysia- she was an ideal challenge subject, and the women didn't like to be photographed.
Neither did Hughes. He would take it patiently enough for a while, but the man hated posing and was much happier rolling around with Elysia, involving himself in serious discussion with Riza, or flirting with his wife. He insisted, though, that Roy practice his photography with the family. He wanted plenty of pictures, he said, to show Elysia and the many other children he would have, when they were all grown up and he was old.
"Riza," Roy half-called.
His housemate entered the study; one look at the albums off of the bookshelf, and she knew. Without a word, she sat down beside him and nudged his hand over until she could turn to some of the last pages, where Elysia was older and they were all having a rare good time.
"Look," she whispered, gesturing at a surprisingly well-taken portrait-shot of Maes. "Isn't that a good one? Elysia will know that her father was really handsome when he was young."
"He'll always be young, won't he?" Royasked. "We can only keep our youth in photographs, but he'll always be that way- so happy when he was with his family."
Roy looked fondly upon Maes' smile, and wished that he had taken a million photographs.
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: endnotes
-cringes- What can I say? "Coveted Children" was killing me and I needed to get out of the HughesRoy for a while… this was an idea bugging me… I think it turned out ok. For a micro-micro-drabble.