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"Multi Universes Trifecta"Written By: Kaeru Shisho Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Gundam Wing
or its characters, nor do I make any monetary profit off this story. Rating: NC 17 Warnings: Yaoi, angst, sap Pairings: 1x2, 3x2, 1x2x3 (or combination thereof) A/N: In horse racing terminology, a trifecta is
a bet in which the bettor must predict which horses will finish first,
second, and third in exact order. This is something like that. Without
the horses or the racing or the betting. I'm keeping the" three"
part. In that order, more or less. Thank you, Waterlily, for the fabulous editing
job while you moved across the world. This story is for Snowdragon's birthday. Best
wishes, sweetie! Summary: Duo wakes up to discover he has two boyfriends
living two different lives in two universes at the same time. When
the third one comes around, it's over. "Multi Universes Trifecta " Chapter Three - The weather was never this random Then I was in rushing cold water up to the shoulders. Iron claws seized me around the waist and hauled me through the rushing shallows and out onto a strip of turf beside some rocks. I fell to my knees and stayed there, gasping for breath. Just out of reach stood Heero, barely panting after dragging us both through that deadly current. We were dripping, looking shiny-dark and skinny like weasels, and starting to shiver. "You saved me," I noted when I caught enough breath to talk. "Thanks." I stared behind me at a mighty river where there had been a modern office before. At least it wasn't in the middle of a jungle with animals at the ready to slice and dice or to drain the blood out of a man at every turn. This felt more like Sanc, inland from the coast where my house by the beach stood, but I could easily have guess wrong. It has happened. In spite of our situation, which wasn't good, my mind drifted on to pleasanter topics. My house. In my mind, ownership papers had already been transferred. It was a done deal. "Our backpacks are lost," Heero said mournfully. "My fault?" I guessed. He shook his head. "Heavy rain from the mountains must have flooded the gorge. You saw the rock walls." "Straight sides of basalt." I pictured it perfectly, as if I'd been there. "We had no choice but to-" "Go with the flow?" I said with a smile. Now that I know I wasn't to blame for the current mess we were in, I felt a little better. Cold to the bone, but less guilty. I may have been loving two men at the same time, but, damn, when I was with one of them I could put my all into it, couldn't I? "We need dry things and food," Heero droned in that drab monotone he would fall back into when he turned mission-oriented. He looked across the river, bank to bank. I had already looked and seen enough. "We should stay on this side and head downstream. We'll either end up at the beach or find a settlement. Whatcha think?" "Acceptable." I was about to begin our journey, when I found he'd completely enveloped me in a hug. I felt him tremble and it wasn't all about the cold, because the sun burst past the cloud cover right then and I felt the warming rays on my back immediately. The grass around us looked soft and inviting, so we lay down. I had a moment of misgiving, thinking of all the bugs that might be sharing our love nest, but it was a fleeting thought and the bugs turned into butterflies and flew away. We stripped in tandem, stretching out our clothes atop bushes to dry. "You can top," he said, taking the ground level for his mattress. "I don't mind." Hot damn, Heero was beautiful laying there, his sun-kissed skin glowing, opening to me. He moaned my name with every kiss, a real turn-on, and we came, forcefully, crying out names, mine and his. This time I purposely kept my eyes open. I wasn't ready to give up this Heero in this lovely place only to discover myself catapulted into the next set of dire circumstances. And grim it would be having only nasty, dry rations to eat and no chance of sex in the jungle, if it turned out that Trowa didn't choose to follow my lead elsewhere. I'd fantasized a Heero like this to have and to hold, but never presumed it would ever actually come about. If I had to stay in one place, I would choose this universe. And yet... Trowa had been an amazing lover and so intent on pleasing me. I did love him. I loved Heero, too. Neither universe seemed complete without the other man. How greedy was that? Not one, but two boyfriends were required to complete Duo's happiness! "Hey," Heero bumped my arm. "Our clothes must be dry. We can clean up by the river and get going." "I am hungry." I was starving, actually. Was this how I would end my days? In perpetual hunger? My first memories as a hungry child merging with my last. "It's not much farther to town, if the people back at the wayside were correct about this trail." Wayside. Huh. So we had started out in a car, perhaps and left it back someplace...the wayside? Maybe? "What about the airport?" I asked. Last I remembered that was where Heero and I were headed, hell-bent on saving Trowa. "Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go there, just wondering." "You haven't changed your mind about skipping the airport and just going to the beach house, have you?" About a hundred times since...yesterday? The day before? Lots recently. "Not really." He looked into my eyes and swept back my bangs to look closer. "Not concussed." Not my poor head! Not this again! "When the tree hit the car, I thought you were bumped," he said running fingers over my scalp in search of a lump. "I feel fine; I just have a few missing minutes in there. So a tree fell on our car? Kinda against the odds, right?" "We took the mountain pass from the coast, heading to the airport, when the storm hit and a landslide blocked our road," Heero recited by rote, staring into the far distance for focus. "We had no choice but to go back while we had the chance. We turned around and drove no more than a car length, when a tree toppled onto the roof of the car and we stopped. We walked to a wayside where other cars were collecting and used the restrooms." He paused to meet my eyes. "You wanted a shortcut back and were informed about this trail." "And it followed the river and that's how we ended up half-drowned to this point." I just lived that part, for Gods-sakes, I should remember it! "I was fine," Heero said with a fractional smile. "Only you were drowning." "Heh, like I said-half-drowning, my half!" We laughed a little and by God it felt good to laugh! What this meant was that we were heading down stream toward the mouth of the river, where it met the sea. There was a small harbor and town only a mile from the beach house. "That's exactly the right direction." For a change. When we could, Heero and I walked hand in hand. A blustery wind pushed clouds across the sky, taking the storm inland and northwards. We crossed the green meadow and dipped under a canopy of firs where our shoes crushed tiny needles so many layers thick that we bounced with each step. If it wasn't for my empty stomach growling at me, I would have been perfectly happy. After an hour's easy hike, the trail became more of a rustic gravel road, and I saw the first signs of a town. A shack, tumbling down and moss and fern covered, like the plants were trying to take back the wood it was built from. Heero heard the sound of cars on a road, so we made for that direction and were soon on "G" street. Food! One of the restaurants he and I had frequented while living at the beach house was right around the corner. Heero laughed at my celebration, my leaping and crying: "Mama's Kitchen! Mama Mia!" The miracle here was that we hadn't lost our wallets and our money was dry. I would have been willing to wash dishes stacked a mile high otherwise if there'd been no other form of acceptable payment. I was going to eat and eat my fill. Now. Heero and I chose the outdoor seating, considering the condition of our clothes, but the day was turning out to be pretty nice, and the paving stones under our feet were warm. I ordered eggs, bacon, hash with biscuits and gravy, sausages and a tall stack of blueberry pancakes, dripping with butter and hot maple syrup. Heero had about the same and added two hot chai drinks. "You'll like it." Chai wasn't coffee. It was spicy, sweet, milky tea, and I liked it so much I felt a new addiction coming on. After my splash in the river, I'd had enough plain water for a while. "Nice place," I said when I'd filled myself. This was my favorite time in a meal, where I could pick over bits of what was left, line them up, sort the egg and bacon into pairs to get scooped up with a hunk of syrup-laced pancake. Time to just relax and observe Heero at peace, sitting there like he belonged, lingering over his drink like he wanted nothing more than to be with me. I loved this place like I loved him. Loved Heero. I dawdled. No other word for it. The waitress had cleared away our dishes some time ago and four empty mugs lined up down the center of the table. I wanted but couldn't hold another chai or I'd wash away. I didn't want to disturb our perfect afternoon, but there was unfinished business and my clock in this universe was clicking. "'Ro, so, here's the thing." He leaned forward and placed his hand over mine. His was golden brown and stronger than shit, but it looked so gentle warming mine that way. "The thing?" "We're within a stone's toss of our beach house. My plan is for you to go there and wait for me." "What about Trowa? You can't have forgotten about him?" "Not a bit, believe me. But he's not lost on assignment, he's there or soon to be there, once I light a fire under him." I begged a pen off the waitress as she passed. I wasn't sure I heard Heero properly. "As in auto-de-fe?" he asked. I couldn't tell if he was serious or not and I didn't understand what the hell he meant. "Otto who?" I stole a clean napkin from another table. "It means 'act of faith' as in a public execution held during the Spanish Inquisition. You're lighting a fire under Trowa is like burning him at the stake, which is an example of auto-de-fe." Dear God... "Here, just in case." I jotted a note and handed it to Heero. "I'm to meet you and Trowa at the beach house and stay... pot." "P-U-T. Stay put. Don't leave the minute you get there and don't see us. We will show up. Eventually." "Eventually?" "Duo! Heero!" "Winner and Chang," Heero announced, even though I knew those voices as well as he did. "They shout in harmony, did you hear that?" Heero stood. "Une probably sent them when we missed the plane. I'll be back." "Back?! Where are you-? Oh." Men's room. Guess I couldn't deny him that courtesy. Still. He was wimping out on me here, I just knew it. "Hey!" I greeted my friends. I felt as if I'd just seen them, which I had, but... not. 'This is the Quatre who likes Fei, but this Fei doesn't know shit', I rehearsed in my head. I had to keep the stories straight. "You're all right!" Quatre cried out. "Maxwell! You damned idiot!" Wufei accompanied this insult with a hard yank on my braid. "Why aren't you answering your cellphone?" Wufei shouted. With Quatre huffing over my shoulder and the Fei-man in my face, I wondered why it was I bothered to have friends, annoying as these two were. "Lost it in a tidal wave like thing," I said. I thought that explained the loss of the phone pretty clearly. "A what? Oh, Duo!" Quatre wailed. "When you missed your pickup, and didn't answer your calls, we were sent after you." Wufei poked me in the ribs. "And here you are still vacationing!" "Not exactly. We had the side of a mountain fall on us and destroy my car- we are okay, thanks for asking- and a river tried to wash us away-" "Oh! My!" Quatre wrapped himself around my neck, sobbing. "I was so worried and you really were in trouble. I could feel it. I could feel a lot of other things too..." I'll bet... "Luckily Yuy keeps a tracking beacon in his wallet so we traced you here," Wufei said sounding tired now that all the excitement of finding us had passed. "You appear to be in satisfactory condition now. We have a car and can take you back. You can make the next flight out-" "No can do. I'm sending Heero on ahead to meet up with Trowa." "What? Explain!" came the tandem response. "Listen, I'm sorry I got you worried," I began. "There's something else going on, something you won't believe." "I knew it!" Quatre said. "I kept telling Wufei I felt it here, in my heart that you were going through a very troubling time." "More than you probably think. You see, this isn't the only universe I'm living in. There are three total, but only in this one am I Heero's boyfriend." I tried to ignore their gasps of disbelief. Quatre's sniffles were harder to ignore. I never realized how sensitive he was before. "In one other one, I'm with Trowa." "Dear Lord," Wufei groaned melodramatically. "And in the one I'm most familiar with, I'm with no one. I'd like to be, but they don't know it and I keep it that way so as not to rock the boat. We're all friends, you see, and I can't pick one over the other." "Aren't you the deviant?" Wufei said in his sarcastic manner. Only because I was sitting was it possible for him to look down his nose at me. "I'm just saying." "I don't understand!" Quatre's voice had tightened into a whine, just this side of irritating for me to think him cute. "Trowa loves me and wants me to help him hunt for a missing Heero in some nasty, bug-ridden jungle-that's one universe, get it? You'd better get that one down, because then there's this one where Heero loves me and, you know-" "You and he are under orders to locate Trowa, who is MIA-" "But he's not!" I broke in, knowing that Wufei, regardless of the universe, would rattle off track for miles if I didn't jump in and cut him off at the pass, so to speak. Besides, I owed him an interruption, even if it was in that other universe. Geesh. "He's not missing. Do not ask me how I know. He is on his way to meet up with us at-" Now here is where I had to stop and think. Whose house was the one at the beach? Wufei's? Quat's? "At... what? Where, Duo?" Quatre looked a little brighter now. "At the beach house." There. "Mine?" Quatre asked. "Why?" "Well, I told him to go there to find Heero." "When?" Good question. "Other universe. I told him to meet up at the vacation house. He will." Wufei sighed. "The vacation house? You know, if that Trowa is anything like this Trowa, he'll go to my cabin in the mountains." Quatre moaned. "I am so confused." "I think Quat and I need to take a short walk." I stood and gently shoved Wufei into my chair. "Take a load off and wait here for 'Ro. And don't let him run off." I walked my distraught buddy down a pebbly path into the small herb garden, intended just for soirées like this, well, mostly like this, probably more romantic. "Everything is going to be all right," I told him. I don't know why I felt so completely at ease about my situation. I should have been panicking worse than him. Screaming like a banshee! But I wasn't. There was no guarantee that I could get out of this, and a lifetime of universe hopping was not very attractive. I didn't even like changing time zones on missions. And yet, here I was assuring my sensitive friend that as crazy as I sounded there would be a happy ending to the day. "I'm feeling much better, now, Duo. Thank you. I still don't understand all you're saying and I'm not at all certain how I can help you, but, I'll try." "Thanks." We walked more, stopping to smell the violets. The roses, he informed me, wouldn't bloom for several months yet. They were pretty damn ugly, prickly stems now. My pleasant ruminations were disturbed when Quatre turned abruptly with a hand over his heart. I thought he was about to pledge his faith in humanity or something, but that wasn't it at all. "We must go back now. They need us. I feel it." Okay. So, this Quatre also had a "special gift". I'd heard tell of his "space heart" incident in my universe, but I thought it had been a load of bunk. Maybe not. Wufei and Heero were waiting for us at the garden entrance. "What'sup?" I asked. "I believe you," Heero started off, bracing me for the worst. "That means Wufei doesn't?" I asked. Heero gave me an apologetic smile and Wufei shook his head. "We disagree." Of course you do, 'Fei-bud. No surprise there. This wasn't the dagger-tongued Wufei from Trowa's universe, but he didn't like me very much just the same. "I think you," Wufei's eyes bored into mine to inflict some pain, "are going nuts, but-" "I'm going to the beach house to wait," Heero said like a balm to my soul. He made it clear how much he trusted me, believed in me. God, I loved him for that. "I trust you can do that on your own," Wufei told him. "You certainly don't need my help walking the few miles through town to get there." He then concentrated his beady eyes on me next. "I could accompany you to my cabin, where it's possible that Trowa has gone-improbable, but possible," Wufei said, trying to sound gracious, I suppose. "Not that I believe any of your story, but I would do it to keep you from harm." "Ah, gee, thanks. However that's not the help I was looking for." Or the droid, heh, heh... "Should I go too?" Quatre asked. I remembered from my previous visit to this universe, that this Quat needed grounds to date Wufei; he couldn't just ask the dude, and was willing to sell us his beach house in trade for our help. Clearly, he would see this as our setup to team him with Wufei. I suspected Heero had figured this all out himself, scoped out the situation with Wufei already, and come up with some way to make that happen. He certainly had seemed eager to get that house for us! Sigh. Love Heero. So, I shook my head and gave Heero my go-ahead grin and my best "please, tell him no" look. He did not disappoint. "Tell him your alternative, Chang." "It is my hope that Duo will accompany Heero to the beach house and remain there. Quatre and I shall take your places and follow Une's directives. We have barely enough time to make the flight if we leave immediately." "Great. Do that. Write to us from whatever hell-hole Une sends you to. On the other hand, I propose you re-evaluate your plans and find a way up to that cabin and resolve your...issues." I smiled and tipped my non-existent hat their way as a send-off gesture then turned my attention to Heero. I felt road-weary all of a sudden. "Just in case-" I said. I pulled him into a kiss where I poured my passion into it. A public kiss, but, hey, it wasn't my universe! I closed my eyes, hoping they'd all go away. All but Heero. Too bad my Olympian-level procrastination skills could not prevent another blitzkrieg bounce through the dimensional wonderland. I didn't want to leave him, but another deep-seated need inside me was demanding to be met. I recognized it as my feelings for Trowa. I kicked at the pebbly walkway and felt my foot hit air. TBC
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