Disclaimer: GW = not ours.

Picturesque
by mistress amethyst une and Omnicat

Relena's request was obscene, scandalous, and would certainly put her political career in jeopardy if anybody in the press ever caught wind of it. Still, the moment she whispered this particular whim into Heero's ear, he found that his first thoughts were not of the potential repercussions that came with fulfilling her wishes.

No, his first thoughts were of whether or not her cell phone would be able to accommodate a full body shot.

His second line of thought quickly devolved into imagining himself assuming provocative poses.

The third derailed entirely. It took more than a little effort to make sure his expression didn't show how awkward and ridiculous the previous one made him feel.

Heero wasn't what one would call a voracious consumer of porn. After a rather traumatizing initiation courtesy of Duo, he had become an expert at using Relena, and only Relena, for reference whenever arousal struck in her absence. As a result, he had remained almost entirely inexperienced in the area of erotic footage despite the sometimes long distance nature of his relationship with Relena.

Besides, there was always webcam striptease.

Her idea, not his.

Anyway, this uncharacteristic lack of expertise led him to wonder whether his inability to think of a suitable way to grant Relena's request was a result of aforementioned gap in his education, or of the fact that her request was not only obscene, scandalous and risky, but also a bit tacky.

Then again, her birthday was coming up and this was the one thing she asked for. She made her request as her hand restlessly moved up his thigh. Heero was practically helpless, trying desperately to focus on the terraforming technobabble Zechs was discussing at the dinner table.

She really wanted this.

"Of course, once you've gotten the hang of it, you could do a photo shoot of me, too," she added under her breath as she made her fingers walk up his thigh like a pair of little legs.

Heero could have sworn Zechs's words turned into a literal string of "blah blah blahs" then and there.

Damn. Oooh, damn.

The monthly dinners with Zechs were stressful enough as it was. Noin was never there to pacify him, always opting to go off for some "alone time" when she and Zechs were on Earth. Heero had always assumed that this was because even the former Lightning Count's wife needed the occasional break from him. At that moment, he wanted nothing more than to follow Noin's example.

Relena's suggestions became more and more debauched with every second and Heero found that keeping his thoughts in order was becoming next to impossible. In a strange twist of fate, he found himself mentally begging his former adversary for rescue. Shouldn't Zechs have noticed what Relena was doing by now? Could he really be so self-absorbed?

Heero wondered whether he should try to covertly push Relena away and put a stop to her sexual assault of his ear now. Zechs might not have noticed yet, but there was only so much fervour and passion one could impart while proselytizing about Martian botany. Discreet as Relena's whispering was, it wouldn't go unnoticed for long. Besides, indecent material of him getting leaked was one thing; erotic pictures of the vice foreign minister herself would mean a nuclear meltdown. Appealing as her offer of a pornographic trade-off was, he would have to decline if it involved her reciprocation. He could already imagine the fallout. The man sitting across from them at the table would be the first in line to murder him.

Slowly.

Painfully.

Creatively.

A wide range of unpleasant adverbs would definitely be used to describe his death at Zechs's hands. And yet, with images of her in provocative poses superimposed over images of himself in those same poses, the thought no longer seemed tacky in the slightest.

It almost seemed enough to risk life and limb for.

Almost.

Heero would have very much liked for Zechs to evaporate on the spot, so he could consider his options in peace without having to walk away himself and show off his excited anatomy, but tonight was not his night. Relena's whispers abruptly ceased. She had turned to face her brother, apparently addressing something he had just said.

Now?

Now she wanted to discuss the finer points of oxygenating Martian soil?

How long had her lips been pressed against his ear?

To Heero, it had felt like an eternity.

In reality, she had managed to give him a hard-on in just under a minute with a cleverly worded proposition and a few touches of her hand.

"I left the reports in your study," Zechs said presently. "If you'd like, I could go get them and then we can have a look at them over coffee in the living room."

Heero's blood turned to ice. Any hopes of the sudden onslaught of pure horror putting down his raging boner were quelled by Relena's ankle, which was still inconspicuously but confidently rubbing along his.

Her expression, meanwhile, was a vision of innocence.

"Oh, but we haven't had dessert yet!" Relena suggested cheerfully. "Why don't you bring them here? This table is bigger, anyway."

Perhaps it was just Heero's slightly panicked imagination, but he thought Zechs's eyes lingered on him with suspicion for a moment before he stood up and left to retrieve his files.

Relena rounded on Heero again the moment her brother was out of sight, a predatory glint in her eyes. Making certain that her brother was out of earshot, she gave Heero a lopsided grin.

"So, how many pictures should I expect on my birthday? It'll certainly be a timesaver for you. No shopping. No wrapping. Though I wouldn't be opposed to you putting a bow on it."

She punctuated her statement with a wink as he looked at her with wide-eyed disbelief. What had gotten into her?

"Have you lost your mind?" he hissed. After a brief but maddening pause to let the help clear the table and take Relena's order for dessert, he added: "Don't you care about the risks?"

"I'm turning twenty-five," she said plainly. "My career didn't let me make room for a quarter life crisis. Now that things are easing up a bit, I thought it would be good for me to stop being so prim and proper. At least in private..."

"Remember what happened to those pictures of Duo that were taken on your twenty-third birthday? The ones you kept for 'private' use only?"

"I don't recall," she replied, feigning ignorance even as she bit her lip in recollection. She knew very well what had happened. Putting herself in Duo's shoes, she found herself wincing ever so slightly.

"Duo does," Heero countered mercilessly. "As does one in every two tabloid-reading members of the Earth Sphere. His clients and partners may think it's a hoot to know what he gets up to when he's had a drink too many, but do I really have to remind you of what yours do when they smell weakness?"

"That's why I have you to protect me, isn't it?" she pointed out. "You don't have to accept anything in return if you think it's too risky. Look, all I'm asking for is a few shots. Keep your face out of it if you want. Worst that can happen then is my phone gets stolen and they find pictures of what appear to be random male genitalia in it. I can claim it's a set-up. Heero, if there's anything I've learned from you, it's how to make a contingency plan."

"Contingency plan?" interrupted Zechs's voice as he entered the kitchen with an armful of documents.

Heero swore silently, cursing everything from the images in his head to the sharp, questioning eyes of Relena's brother. He was perfectly aware that his objections reeked of paranoia, and his anatomy had yet to calm down. Even with Zechs right there, the idea was still far too tempting.

"Relena wants to let Duo come back for her birthday this year," he said, in an under-handed, last-ditch effort to convince both her and himself of how bad an idea this was. "I personally doubt he'd remember to claim he was crashing the party if he got drunk again."

Zechs only shrugged, setting the documents down. He could discuss regular politics just fine but the intricacies of his younger sister's social life proved either absurdly complicated or dealt with matters he would rather ignore. Her last visit to the red planet had involved Martian tequila courtesy of the genetically modified agave plants they had managed to cultivate on specially treated red soil. Suffice to say, he and Noin had received one earful too many concerning the young vice foreign minister's sex life. Zechs had never quite been able to look at Heero the same way again.

"He's amazingly flexible," Relena had chattered in her drunken haze. "One time, he had my legs over my head while -"

Zechs couldn't help but shudder slightly at the memory.

"And I think Heero should have a little more faith in his friends and stop acting like an old man," Relena said serenely, and pulled one of the files towards her.

Snapping out of his reverie, Zechs hastily snatched the file back. "I'm sensing a domestic dispute, and I won't have anything of mine used to delay a resolution in a potential conflict."

Relena arched an eyebrow. "You're opting for pacifism now?"

"Good night, little sister," he said firmly, planting a kiss on her forehead before making his way out with his files in hand.

Relena raised her eyebrows as the help entered through the other door. "He didn't stay for dessert."

Heero gave her a sideways glance, a smirk making its way onto his face despite his predicament. "Is it our domestic disputes that have him so scared or his own?"

"Don't think you're going to get me off-track," she warned, sinking her spoon into the small bowl of custard that had just been set before her. "I still want a dirty picture of you for my birthday. Preferably ten, but I shouldn't push my luck."

Ten?!

Heero made a small choking noise as the custard threatened to make its way out his nose. He would have been less shocked if she had said that was the number of children she wanted him to father. Insecurity, an almost foreign emotion to him, had somehow taken hold.

It didn't occur to him to not give her exactly what she wanted, if what she wanted was feasible, no matter how difficult. But how in the world was he going to do this? Coming up with one good pose that would make Relena happy from something other than hysterical laughter would be hard enough already, but ten?

The night of the party came too soon for his liking. He had accomplished his task but it hadn't been easy. For one thing, it wasn't exactly something he could do with assistance. There was no one he could ask a second opinion from. And looking at reference material... it made him a bit sick to his stomach.

He had convinced himself that there was no way genetics could account for those men's "talents". Performance enhancing drugs, no doubt.

It was the only way he could purge the disgusting feelings of inadequacy he felt.

Even though he had used a very real objection to Duo's drunken demeanour in shooting down Relena's so-called "contingency plan," Heero had not protested her decision to invite him to the party. The other man's presence actually provided him with a small sense of relief. His paranoia said he could use any distraction and red herring there was to find. True to form, the Gundam pilot turned scrap yard worker had once again spectacularly misjudged his alcohol tolerance, ensuring that everybody would be too focussed on Duo's antics to remember any signs of nervousness Heero might have displayed. It was a bit risky, but this year Hilde was sober enough to prevent anything truly disastrous from happening. Duo's presence at the party was the perfect blend of loud, obnoxious, embarrassing, and harmless.

Looking at his cell phone, Heero took a deep breath. The pictures were ready to go. All he needed to do was to press send. Anticipating the possibility for human error, he had keyed in her number and checked it countless times to make sure he wouldn't be inflicting the pictures on anyone else. Looking at her from across the room, he could see her conversing with her mother. Her cell phone was safely tucked away in a small clutch purse tightly clasped in her hand.

It was now or never.

He hit send.

His honed (and just slightly desperate) senses picked up the tone that announced a new message coming in on Relena's phone almost before he'd even pressed the button on his. Relena shot him a quick, excited look as she opened her purse.

That expression swiftly fell into one of mute horror when her mother suddenly, inexplicably, snatched the phone from her hands.

"Oh, that must be from the good Marquis Weyridge! Remember how he told us about his recent purchase of a new type of mobile phone?" Mrs. Darlian's fond, conspiratorial whisper carried, as such tones are wont to do, with perfect clarity to the far-off corner Heero had ensconced himself in. "I do believe he was planning on sending you his congratulations once he figured out how to text."

With the air of an expert she pressed a few buttons, grinned, and held up the phone for her horrified daughter to see.

"Look at that," she smiled at Relena. "He's even figured out emoticons."

Relena peered over at the screen and heaved a sigh of relief at what she saw.

Happy twenty-fifth birthday to our dear princess. :) The old coots have me occupied with some political codswallop but I'll come to visit you soon enough so don't fret. -Grandpa

But the relief was short-lived, because then another message came in and Mrs. Darlian, still holding the phone, was all set to open this one as well.

Panic propelled manners straight out of the window.

Relena made a grab and yanked the phone back abruptly, scratching her mother's hand in her haste, and with a cry of "Let me get that, oh look it's from Heero how lovely let me go thank the silly boy be right back mother!" she threw herself and the phone into a mad dash across the room toward Heero, who seemed to have turned to stone in his corner.

"Your timing was impeccable," she snapped once there.

At a loss for words, Heero went on autopilot and simply put into words the thoughts that had been running through his head since the first time his nether regions had ever been exposed to the indignity of a camera flash.

"Did you like them?" he blurted out.

"Do you think I would open them in front of my mother?!" she hissed, a furious smile on her face as she leaned in and pecked him on the cheek in so-called gratitude for being so thoughtful as to send her a message when he was right there in the room and had already greeted her in person.

Coming to his senses, he could only shake his head in disbelief. If Relena hadn't seen them, neither had her mother. Furious at himself for going catatonic and being so brash, he took her by the hand and dragged her away from the festivities.

"Where are you taking me?"

"Some place where we won't be interrupted," he grunted. "Besides, pictures offer only visual stimuli. Since we're both here in the flesh, we might as well go for a more three dimensional experience..."

Once they found a good spot, hidden in the shadow of the curved staircase in the empty foyer, Relena eagerly opened her present while Heero went for his 3D approach, secretly hoping to enhance the effect of the pictures with some extra input from his hands and mouth. She made small gleeful sounds, either at what she saw or what he was doing, Heero couldn't tell, but at least she wasn't laughing.

Stealing glances at the small screen, Heero was more than a little pleased with himself despite his lingering trepidation. The means of viewing may have been small but the object on display certainly wasn't. Relena had discovered the novelty of Heero's approach to the photo shoot. At first she had looked through the pictures slowly, wondering why the first one featured him fully clothed. It only took her a few seconds to realize that he had opted for striptease. Now, she was on her fifth viewing, going through the pictures quickly to simulate the effect of a flip cartoon.

"It's amazing," she whispered. "You really made me ten of them. You even put a bow on it! I was only joking about that!"

She laughed a bit then, but it was a warm laugh, and she squeezed the hand that cupped her breast to guide it further down her body.

Her voice had turned sultry when she spoke again. "Are you sure you don't want anything in return? Such hard work and natural prowess deserves to be rewarded."

"I've got my reward right here," he answered. The modest skirt she was wearing was just the fancy wrapping. The only difference was that in this case, he couldn't rip it off.

"Looks like you know a thing or two about lighting," whispered a voice in the dark.

Heero's blood ran cold as Relena stiffened in his arms. They both knew that voice. That feline tone...

Dorothy.

Dorothy Catalonia was standing behind them.

Dorothy Catalonia just commented on Relena's pornographic pictures of Heero.

Dorothy may have reformed and become a philanthropist, but she also enjoyed watching cuddly animals get slaughtered by vicious predators on nature documentaries. Heero and Relena slowly turned to gaze upon the intruder.

She grinned at the couple, an amazingly pain-free expression considering the three inch heels that had let her get a good look at the pornographic light in the room. The woman was a walking contradiction. Mercy was just as likely as blackmail.

"Miss Relena," she stated as sweetly as ever, but without a single hint of the malice that could often be found lurking beneath the velvety tone of her voice. "they're expecting you back in the ballroom. Time to blow out your candles."

At that point, Relena certainly looked ready to blow something, just not anything that would be admissible on a birthday cake. On the other hand, Heero looked like he wanted to blow something up.

Relena cobbled together a response as best she could while Heero's hand retreated from beneath her skirt in what he hoped was a discreet way. "Dorothy, I would appreciate it if -"

"If I overlooked this indiscretion?" Dorothy sighed dramatically. "Of course. It's your birthday. On a day like this even I don't have a choice, do I? Well played, Heero. You've given her a gift she can't donate to charity. That trumps the space station I acquired for her. Still, I'm going to take pride in one thing: mine's bigger."

Knowing Dorothy's kindness came with a price, Heero paid her in full with two words.

"I agree."

This was done in collaboration with Omnicat thanks to a particularly boring night and a very silly AMV I made awhile back. You can look it up on YouTube by searching for: [Final Version] Gundam Wing crack!vid - Dirty Picture - Heero/Relena. Anyway, one thing led to another and the weeks passed. Finally, we ended up with this. It was truly a team effort. Got to give Omnicat credit for the awesome ending despite my very bad habit of dragging Dorothy into places where she doesn't belong. Hope you enjoy it!