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Prompto is the last to arrive at the diner where they’re meeting for supper. He slides into the empty seat next to Gladio and grins at him. “Dude,” he says, shrugging out of his coat and shaking snow from his hair, “why didn’t you tell us you’re moonlighting as a model?”
Gladio folds his arms over his chest. “I ain’t.”
“Oh yeah? Well, explain this.”
Prompto roots around in his backpack and pulls out a wall calendar, which he slaps down on the table with an air of triumph. In unison, Ignis and Noct lean forward to look at it. There’s a picture of two muscular individuals on the cover, a man and a woman, both artfully posed in dramatic lighting. Across the top is written:
Physiques of the Crownsguard
M.E. 753 Calendar
The calendar is not current; it is, in fact, three years old.
“Uh huh,” Gladio says. “What about it?”
“Oh, come on.” Prompto flips through a few pages until he reaches the spread for April, which features a photo of none other than Gladio, his body almost completely bare.
Noct wrinkles his nose. “Gross. I don’t need to see that much of you.”
Gladio ignores him, focusing instead on Prompto. “Where did you get this?” he asks.
“Weirdly? A box in the basement,” Prompto says, chuckling nervously. “I think someone gave it to my mom as a joke gift for solstice a few years ago. I found it when I was looking for some old books.”
“Yeah? She must not have liked it much if she stuffed it in a box in the basement.”
“Or it just wasn’t, you know…work appropriate,” Noct says.
Ignis remains silent, studying the spread. In the photograph, Gladio is reclined on an emerald green divan, completely nude but for a small bouquet of pink and purple wildflowers he holds over his privates. He is long-limbed, and everywhere, he is bulging with muscle—his thighs, his biceps, his abdomen, his chest. Each contour of him is softly shadowed, highlighting the strength in his physique and the outline of his tattoo. Ignis almost thinks that if he touched the image, he would be able to feel the silken firmness of Gladio’s skin.
There is also a graceful fluidity to his body that can’t be attributed solely to the way he is posed: half draped over the arm of the divan like an artist’s muse, with one leg bent at the knee to show off the thick, powerful curve of his hamstring. Somehow, he telegraphs sensuality and raw power all at once.
In a word, he is beautiful, a classical kind of beautiful that anyone who appreciates aesthetics will admire. But it is his face that primarily captures Ignis’s attention. There is an invitation in his smile and a challenge in his eyes, one that feels almost personal, as if the Gladio in the photograph knows Ignis is looking at him with more than just a friendly curiosity, and is daring him to do something about it.
When Ignis at last raises his gaze from the image, he finds Gladio already looking at him, his face neutral and his eyes unreadable.
Ignis clears his throat, his face heating. He cannot compliment Gladio’s body—not publicly, and certainly not as his friend and colleague—so he says only, “The photographer has a good eye.”
Gladio holds his gaze. “Thanks.”
“Are shields allowed to do this kind of thing?” Prompto asks. He rests his chin in his hand, squinting unabashedly at Gladio’s naked form. “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be above this or something?”
Gladio shrugs. “Depends what you mean by ‘this.’”
“You know.” Prompto scratches his hair awkwardly. “Nude photography?”
“I ain’t nude.”
“You’re pretty nude. If you moved the flowers a half inch, we’d be able to your di—”
“Dunno why it has to be such a big deal. They asked me to do it for charity, I agreed. Besides, it was a long time ago.” Gladio grabs one of the laminated menus from its holder by the wall and starts to scan it. “We gonna eat?”
“Charity?” Noct sounds skeptical. “What charity?”
“Dunno. An animal shelter or something. It was a one-time thing. I can’t remember.”
“Sounds vague.”
“Or like a BS cover story. I bet he asked them to be part of this.” Prompto leans across the table with a teasing grin. “Don’t you have any shame, big guy?”
Gladio responds by flexing his bicep and kissing it. “Would you be ashamed if you had a body like this?”
“No, but—”
“Could we perhaps move on, gentlemen?” Ignis interrupts. Under the harsh fluorescent lights of this squalid diner, as well as their gawking eyes, the artistry of the photograph is beginning to seem rather cheap instead. “I’ve been looking forward to an Ebony since I left the office.”
“Uh oh,” Noct says. “Someone get the waitress. We don’t want Specs getting cranky.”
Prompto spots their server and flags her down, and then they order, and after that, the conversation moves on. The younger two make a few more cracks at Gladio’s expense as they eat their cheeseburgers, but soon enough, the calendar is forgotten, pushed to the edge of the table until it is half wedged under the mesh condiment caddy.
But when they leave their booth to settle the bill at the cash, Ignis grabs it, rolls it up, and slips it under his coat before anyone notices he’s doing it.
“Gotta pee,” Prompto says once they’ve paid. “Be right back.”
“Same,” Noct says.
Gladio nods. “I’ll wait outside.”
Now that he’s wearing his winter coat, the diner is beginning to feel warm, so Ignis decides to join him. They stand together on the sidewalk, under a streetlamp, as the snow drifts down from the twilight sky, turning to translucent pearls in Gladio’s hair.
“Here,” Ignis says, bringing out the calendar and offering it to Gladio. “I thought you might prefer to have this back than leave it in Prompto’s hands.” He pauses. “Or his mother’s, for that matter.”
Gladio chuckles, accepting it. “Thanks, Iggy. Awful thoughtful of you, but I don’t actually care who looks at this. Wouldn’t have posed for it if I did.” All the same, he tucks it into his own jacket, out of sight.
“I know,” Ignis says. He bundles his coat closer under his chin to block out the cold. “That’s hardly news, with the way you strut about shirtless at every opportunity.”
For a moment, he kicks himself, thinking he’s spoken too sharply, but Gladio just laughs again.
“You take a lot of notice of me strutting around shirtless, Iggy?” he asks.
Ignis looks at him. A warm sort of amusement glimmers in Gladio’s eyes, almost provocative, similar to the expression he was wearing in the calendar photograph. It occurs to Ignis, then, that Gladio is flirting with him.
“Would you like it if I did?” he counters.
Gladio’s eyebrow rises, his smile still in place, and he opens his mouth to say something. But the diner door opens just then and Noct and Prompto emerge into the snowy street.
“So…back to my place?” Noct says, slipping his hands into his pockets. “King’s Knight?”
Prompto pumps a fist in the air. “Yeah!”
“Just for an hour,” Ignis says as they begin to walk toward the car, which he parked around the corner when he arrived. “Some of us have to get up for work early, Highness.”
“No one makes you get up at four a.m., Specs,” Noct says. “That’s all on you.”
“If you had to deal with the amount of work I do, I’m sure you’d rise at that hour as well.”
“Oh man!” Prompto interjects, stopping suddenly on the sidewalk. He half turns back toward the diner. “I forgot the calendar.”
“Let it go.” Gladio slings an arm around his shoulder and steers him back on course, throwing Ignis a wink over his blond head. “The waitress probably tossed it in the garbage already. It’s long gone.”
“Yeah,” Prompto says mournfully. “I guess you’re right.”
“It appears you’ll need to find something else to torment Gladio about,” Ignis says mildly. “Might I suggest his sense of style or his choice of reading materials?”
Prompto looks at Noct. “What does Gladio read?”
“Dunno. Romance novels, I think?” Noct says with a shrug.
“What? Chick lit? Dude!”
“First of all, there’s nothing wrong with chick lit,” Gladio says. “And second, literary romance ain’t the same thing as bodice rippers. Get it straight.”
“Uh huh, but do you read both?”
“He totally reads both.”
As Noct and Prompto continue to bicker about Gladio’s reading habits all the way down the sidewalk, Gladio meets Ignis’s eyes again. The warmth and the invitation are still there in his gaze, and it gives Ignis a little flutter, knowing that their brief flirtation outside the diner might have been more than a momentary amusement for him.
With a smile, Ignis tucks his chin into his coat, letting his shoulder bump against Gladio’s companionably as they walk.