Chapter 1: The Mix Up

((July 2010: I've decided to rewrite this one. I ended up hating the "female" side of the story. Thus, one half of the story has gone another di-rection. I'm also doing a rewrite of the "male" side, as I feel it bogged down in some significant places.

Summary: Some "Junkfood Fairies" take a hand in Wufei and Duo's relationship. Err.. relationships? What happens when Duo is truly two sides to the same coin?

Warnings: Well, slash, for those who love it.. and for those who hate it, het as well.

I recognize that this can be difficult during the first chapter due to some three dimensions coming together at once. My hope is that you will muddle through and enjoy the ensuing chapters. First chapters have never been my forte.))

Two for Two

by Memme

Chapter One: Mix-Up

"Wufei?" Duo's voice was tense as he slipped in from the hallway.

Wufei turned to look at his partner and raised a brow in confusion. One glance told him that Duo Maxwell's usual calm was shattered. The beautiful man looked terrified; blushing red and paling in turns as he entered their shared office.

"What is it, Maxwell?" Wufei brought himself to his feet, moving closer. He halted however, when Duo began to backpedal at his approach, terror plain on the red head's face. "What happened? Is it Heero?"

"Heero?" Duo's eyes darted around the room as if looking for an escape route before realizing that Wufei had stopped. He attempted a smile, coming about two teeth short of a full one. Problem being, in Duo language, two teeth was a lot. "Oh! No.. no he's just fine. No, everything is fine. I - I just wanted to talk to you."
"I - I just wanted to talk to you..."

"Duo, you're frightening me. For heaven's sake, sit before you fall over." Wufei moved to grasp a chair - and stopped seeing as how Duo looked ready to bolt again.

"No, I don't think I can sit quite yet. I'm not sure – what.. you're going to say. See, I have, I have to say something."

"Go ahead, Duo. Please." Wufei's voice was unusually gentle. As strong as Duo was, he still struggled with some emotional baggage. The last thing Wufei wanted, was to make whatever Duo had to say, harder than it already was. They'd fought in wars together, they lived together (not together, because Heero and Duo were together, but together as in the same living space), and they'd served in the Preventers together for two years now as best friends and great operatives. He'd never seen Duo so frightened except for one other time. When - Duo had chosen to tell Heero how much he loved him.

'Surely though,' Wufei frowned as he thought, staring at his friend, 'that can't be the... Oh - please don't, Duo. Please don't.' In a nervous gesture, Wufei sat back down, picked up a pen, and waited, holding his breath even as he felt his heart sink and his cheeks redden.

No fool, Duo stared at the man sitting across the room for him and sighed deeply. "You know, I can read you like a book. You're more freaked out about what I'm gonna say than - I am. That's sad, yanno? I mean, shit. It's not like I'm gonna friggin' jump ya, man." Duo stared at Wufei, liquid violet eyes showing the hurt they both knew was on the horizon.

"Yes," Wufei's saddened eyes stared up into the glistening violet depths across the room from him. "Yes I suppose I am just as scared as you. But it has to - be said, doesn't it?" His mouth set into a grim line of determination.

"Yeah," Duo hedged haphazardly as he leaned against the door frame. "Guess it does." And like a doomed man, resignation on his features, obliterating the hope he'd felt the night before while talking to Heero, he whispered, "I love you."
"I love you."

"I know."
"I know."

"But you were married.." There was that resignation again. A fact inside a simple statement.
"But you were married.":

"Yes, Duo. I was married. And for what it was worth, I loved her as well. As much as a child was capable of love."
"Yes, Duo. I was married. And for what it was worth, I loved her as well. As much as a child was capable of love.":

"That's what I mean."
"That's what I mean."

Not knowing what else to say, Wufei looked away. "I'm so sorry, Duo. I do love you. Just... "
"I'm so sorry, Duo. I do love you. Just..."

"Just not that way, hunh?"
"Just not that way, hunh?"

Wufei didn't want to see those beautiful eyes filled with tears. He did love Duo. As much as he ever could. But it's not like he could just stop being heterosexual. The idea of making love to a man did nothing to him. Not even someone he loved as deeply as Duo. Hell, if Duo had been a woman - things would have been so different. Why, he'd jump Duo in a moment, never let the braided beauty get away and spend the rest of his life making his partner happy - making his partner his and his alone.

Well, except for the sharing with Heero thing. He'd work that out somehow. Or he would have if things had been anything but what they were.

"No, I guess not." Wufei rubbed his eyes and turned to his desk, letting the pen drop -
letting the pencil drop to the desk. Then listening as the sound of Duo's boots resounded in the hall before the door to their office closed behind. Alone, he sighed deep, lost and broken.

"Dammit, Duo. I'm more sorry than - I could ever tell you. If only things had been different." And feeling a heaviness behind his lids, forcing back the sensation, he pulled a folder from the pile on his desk and flipped it open, beginning his paperwork. Duo would be okay. After a good cry on Heero's neck and a few uncertain days. Things would get back to normal.

He hoped.

~:~

"Well!" a cotton candy like voice tinkled out and up, like watching the bubbles in the champagne glass rise. "I must say, that was an interesting moment. it's rare you see a co-mingling like that happen, to be sure."

"Rrrmmm..." a darker, more Velveeta voice answered the first, this one male, deeper than the first but still higher than any human's. "I think you should leave it be."

"What?" aghast, the cotton candy speaker turned on her companion. "What makes you say that? As if I would go about messing with things that aren't my business! Everyone knows that the world -"

"-Worlds," amended the other.

"-worlds, that is, all are set perfectly in their places. Doesn't it seem strange to you though, that it would be such an easy fix? And isn't it strange that while this may happen only once every eon, we happened to be sitting here, in this very spot where we might overhear it? And with those two holes open into those two places out of all the infitismal places we could have looked, to hear that exact same thing?"

"Oh do come off it now, my dear," rumbled the male, his boredom written all over his diminutive form. He sighed, lounging in the cloud like chair, if a chair it was to begin with. "You know how it is when these lines exist so close to one another. They're almost alike. So what if that were the only difference? This spurning would be a constant, a glue to hold them together or some sort of mumbo jumbo like that. Don't. Go. Messing. About. It's dangerous. Others have been fried for less than that."

"Stick in the mud." Her pretty pout guaranteed to work every time.

"That's unfair," he murmured, glaring at her lips.

"But so very nice of you to fall for it every time."

"I hate you, you understand."

"Of course, darling. You are such a bear."

"Coming from you, I can almost take that as a compliment," he grumbled as he stood up, stretched and moved to begin the preparations. They would so get fried for this - middle name? Toast.

~:~

He was dreaming. It was a strange dream. Considering the uncomfortable cold shoulder he'd gotten the last two weeks, he was due a good strange dream. His internal world needed some straightening out.

Standing before him was himself. "Hmmm..." he murmured in an uncustomary bout of humor, "I've heard of standing outside one's self. But this is a tad ridiculous."

"My thoughts exactly." He laughed, finding his other self chuckling as well. Looking about, he stared at the dreamscape. "Where are we? Or, am I, rather?"

"Good question. Where are.. am... I?" Wufei scratched his head and finding the place barren, one long plain with no end in sight, even with the sense of no horizon, but a foreverness instead, he turned back to himself. "Well now.."

He chuckled. "I suppose we.. I.. wait it out? It's bound to end soon."

"Oh no! Fraid not!" a ruffled voice spoke behind them and turning they found themselves facing a somewhat portly looking bear with a pair of rumpled wings sticking out of his equally rumpled fur. "Or rather, it's bound to begin as she would say." He did not look like a happy Winnie-the-Pooh sort of bear, but more like a bad tempered Paddington, really.

"She? Who?" Wufei asked.

"She? Who?" Wufei asked at the same time. The pair glanced at one another in consternation, hearing their voices in tandem was unsettling to say the least.

"Her, of course," the bear indicated a growing bubble beside him, as if the ground were swelling and ready to pop. Which it did rather suddenly.

Wufei stumbled back, reaching out and finding his hand on the other of himself, or himself, staring at the even smaller and much more appropriately shaped winged creature stepping out of the broken bubble like space on the ground. Her hair a pinkish color and her small face almost the same color of a cream and red rose she was beautiful.

But Wufei knew that look. He'd seen it plenty of times on Duo's face. They were ... he was... in trouble.

"Oh so nice of you both to come!" the fairy gushed, running over to his other self and hugging it before he too, was grabbed about the neck by tiny hands. He couldn't help but wonder when this dream was going to end. It certainly was the strangest dream he'd had in a long while.

"You should look afraid," the bear like creature mumbled to them both before sitting on a tattered seat cushion which appeared on the ground behind him.

"Oh be nice!" the pink creature smacked the bear's nose and then smiled at them both. No - not a rose. Cotton candy. Duo had given him some, once at the fair. There hadn't been enough and Duo had ended up eating almost all of it alone. He'd gotten in a bite or two, enough to know it was all the cotton candy he'd ever want to eat in his entire life. Pure sugar didn't appeal to him like it appealed to Duo's more adventurous, down to earth side.

Thoughts of Duo though, only brought the familiar stab of pain which was sadness. It would have been nice if he could have escaped that reality while asleep. This was a dream after all.

"Now!" she cried and clapped her hands in delight. "We just happened to be spying, which we're not supposed to do of course, and noticed that you both were in something of a plight -"

"More of a soul forming moment, I'd call it," the bear growled low.

"And we thought we might give a hand," the fairy thing crowed. Wufei stiffened at that and looked sidelong at himself who seemed to have had the same reaction and was now looking at him with an identical horrified expression. Somewhere in the background he heard a gruff bear-fairy-like voice mumble something along the lines of "something else we're not to do, of course."

"Must you?" he heard himself echoed.

"Oh pish post!" she laughed gaily. "Of course we must! I don't think that it's possible that there can be that many mix-ups in this universe because the Big Guy Upstairs, you know who I mean, doesn't make mistakes. But then, our overhearing and all, just made me think that of course it wasn't a mix-up. Maybe you were both supposed to be in those places so that you could be moved into another place another time. Because really, you both need to be with the love of your life and it's really so very sad that you can't yet or that you won't or however you want to look at it, so I figured I'd just get in and touch up a few things, just like a new daub on a canvas that is already perfect because there are no mistakes really, but only a simple mix-up that was on purpose to begin with -" here the fairy (though he was wondering that it might not have been some manner of evil imp? Did imps come in cotton candy pink?) had to take a breath and the subsequent pause was enough for the rumped Paddington look alike (did imps come in Paddington form?) to add, "Something else we aren't supposed to do, I might add."

"Well, it's not that I've a problem with whatever you're going to do. It's just that I'm fairly sure that the two of us prefer to be where we are," he squeaked out, staring sidelong at his pale other half. What in the hells was going on here anyway?

He started as the bear snatched a handful of wing and pink cotton candy fluff and the fairy like creature danced in outrage in the cuffed end of a paw, spraying butterfly dust throughout the eternity place. How could there be no horizons? That was strange, really. She was trying to say something, perhaps continue on the rant she was on, madly speaking about things that made absolutely no sense whatsoever other than she intended to do something about it all, whatever it happened to be, which wouldn't have been such a problem if he didn't know what mad creatures who had the evil glint like Duo were capable of.

The bear sighed and shaking her one more time turned a sleepy eye to the two men, or one man as the case may be, though two of the same one were there, in essence. "I'll make it simple. She wants to grant your wish. Or your wishes. So they're granted and you may go to sleep now."

"Wait! Was-"
"Wait! Wasn't I -"
"- I already asl-"
"-sleep?"

And the cry of his own voice pulled him from dreams. Sitting up with a shock, he stared at his room.

What an odd dream. With a small sigh, he fell back into his bed and reaching over, turned on the bedside lamp. It wasn't a nightmare so to speak, but he still felt - off somehow. As if he wasn't entirely in the right place. A frown running across his brow, he sat up and shifted the bedclothes to the side before rising and walking to his desk. Nothing seemed out of place. But he could almost feel it in his bones that something had moved. Was he that obsessive about where things were?

No. No he wasn't.

Wufei knew to attend to his instincts. It was just that something felt off.

Sitting down at his desk, he sighed, picking up a piece of paper. The letter he'd written to Duo. He wasn't so sure what to say or how to say it, but he knew he wanted his friend back. They lived together for heaven's sakes! They should be able to get along.

Sliding a finger along the side of the letter, he folded it and stuffed it into an envelope. Then with a comfortable smile, he tucked the envelope next to the photograph of the gang. All five of them in their flight suits.

-all five of them in their flight suits. With a calm smile, feeling more settled now, he reached up, tracing the edge of the photograph and let his eyes linger on the familiar faces. Quatre, Heero, Du-
Quatre, Heero, Du -

"What the hell?"
"What the hell?"

Trembling, he picked up the picture, bringing it more - fully into the light. There was Quatre. There was Heero. He recognized Duo's eyes, the beautiful smile, but something was -

-wrong. Because Duo wasn't a -
-wrong. Because Duo wasn't a -

"This is a - nightmare. Shit. I need - to go back to bed." Wufei stood, shaking - his head, confusion littering his expression. Whatever it was, this dream or whatever it was could - simply wait. No, it would have to wait. Because he

- still had to wake up.
- still had to wake up.