Disclaimer: Don't own GW as always...

Pairings: 1x2x1, brief mentions of 1xR, 1xOC and 2xH

Warnings: yaoi, implied m/m sexual relations, language, some angst and some sap

A/N: Inspired by the song Laughter Lines by Bastille and beta'd by ELLE.

Laughter Lines

It was weird to see that despite it being nearly twenty years since Heero had stepped foot at this particular location, not much had changed according to his pristine memories. The fence still surrounded the basketball court and he ran his fingers across the mesh once as he looked in behind the bleachers at the boys playing basketball watched by primly dressed girls in uniform. He felt a smile tug at his lips, relieved that the school no longer seemed to follow the trend for the ridiculous red and white basketball uniforms he remembered wearing at fifteen. He remembered Duo bitching about quite how short the damn shorts were, a few choice cuss words used to describe them that Heero had stoically ignored. Though, he knew at that time, he had been trying so hard to stoically ignore Duo in general and it was just another moment that brought with it an old feeling in his chest.

He continued his walk around the outside of the court as he felt conspicuous now. A man not a boy – old enough technically to be any of those young people's father. The thought was vaguely terrifying as he was not quite damn sure where the time had gone since the wars, that it was drifting closer to twenty years to the anniversary of the first war and that it was so long ago since he'd hidden in these schools, met Relena and more importantly, met Duo.

Heero walked towards the ocean, remembering standing there, sweaty after the basketball game, Duo giving him that little smile and challenging him as they looked out to sea at the large juggernaut class destroyer and he leaned against the railings as he had done then, waiting and looking out at the calm blue.

This time in his life, this school, was a period he looked back at with a mixture of emotions just as he did about any time that revolved around Duo. That this was when things first happened as he remembered Duo standing in the doorway of the dorm room dressed in that priest outfit that got burnt unceremoniously after the first war, a symbolic offering or something that Duo never explained. That it was that night that something long since supressed surfaced and it was a clumsy attempt at intimacy that only two boys pretending to be men could manage. Those images sometimes still haunted his dreams – Duo at fifteen, all deep blue eyes and smirks and the anger that resided underneath that. That fire. It made him wonder if the dorms room were the same – the exclusive school with its heavy emphasis on tradition probably did not change much – and whether he should suggest to Duo that they find out. It had been a long time since they'd been together in any sense. Longer still since they'd had sex – the last time they'd met it had been a shared hurried kiss and mutual masturbation in one of the bathrooms of the Le Meridien Hotel in Brussels that never became anything more than that. That was for the fifteenth anniversary of the end of the first war. That was nearly five years ago.

He felt himself play with his ring finger instinctively, his hands were now even more badly calloused and scraped than they had been at fifteen fighting a war and he still felt for the wedding ring that he had stopped wearing years ago. It had become a nervous tic, one that he never quite got over as twice a wedding band had adorned that hand and twice he had failed to make those marriages work. His first had been a predictable failure – that perhaps, only in hindsight did it become perfectly clear that he and Relena were utterly unsuited. That he could never prescribe to the notion of perfectness that she had wanted from her consort and that he had done as he felt he should – still remembering how Duo had looked when he told him. He'd been blunt and stupid and seventeen. And Duo excused him years later, lying on his naked chest, and told him he was an idiot.

"I coulda told ya it was doomed."

He'd told him he should stop trying to be a damn smart ass all the fucking time and kissed him hard on the lips. It was amazing how he could always give him advice after the fact, always have the right answer only after Heero had done the wrong thing.

The second marriage had been less predictable. And less of a predictable failure. Duo hadn't even attended the wedding, never even acknowledged the invitation though he was aware that he had received it – the electronic trail that Heero followed to assert the fact it had been opened by one D Maxwell currently residing in the L2 colony cluster. She had wanted children and he supposed that was something that he had never contemplated – never thought about as he glanced back towards those boys playing basketball and the girls in flippy skirts and blouses watching on the side lines and in the bleachers. He'd perhaps been naïve of that fact – that he and Relena had married far too young for that to become a consideration but then he'd been twenty six the second time and he supposed, looking back, it was logical that most people moved onto that next step then. He'd seen it happen around him – some called it the consequence of the L3 Revolt, when it looked like war might happen again and the fear drove people together and offspring were produced at an alarming rate.

He never regretted that he'd never been a father or the fact that he couldn't. The medical tests had proven that his genetics, the experimentation of his childhood years and then the extreme radiation he'd undergone meant that it wasn't possible. It never made him feel less like a man, never felt an overwhelming desire to produce a miniature version of himself but it had been the beginning of the end of that marriage. It had been one of those moments in his life that he seemed to come back to time and time again – the concept of letting someone go because he did feel something for them and he wasn't what they needed.

It was what he'd done with Duo. Let him go. Live the life he wanted.

Duo just hadn't seen it that way at seventeen.

It was then he spotted the familiar figure approach, his heart immediately starting to beat faster and a strange constricting feeling in his chest became apparent. He could still see the braid – he was always concerned that one day he'd see Duo and it would be gone. He'd threatened before that he was getting old for it – that last time when they'd had their brief moments alone in the bathroom, he'd wrapped it around his hand like he always had and brought it up to his nose, smelling the shampoo and crystallising a memory for all the lonely hours in the labs and greenhouses of the Mars terra-forming unit.

That somehow, no matter how he began to forget how blue Duo's eyes were due to the years they had spent apart, how his lips curved upwards when he smiled, how the laughter lines had begun to form around his face as they got older – he never forgot how that hair felt against his fingers. Never forgot the disastrous attempt to have it down as they fucked once at seventeen – the eroticism of being surrounded by strands of hair skittering across his skin lost as Duo rode him and the accident of trapping some of it underneath an elbow and having the whole arousing situation ruined by being bitched at for feeling like he was attempting to rip it from his scalp. He still thought about that time, Duo huffily getting off him, leaving him on the bed hard and horny while he secured a hair tie to get it out of the fucking way before they continued.

It was a story they still brought up – still brought up over their yearly communications over vid screens maybe both a little drunk as that's what it had become between them – a vid call every year at Christmas to celebrate the end of the wars, a glass of alcohol raised and vague reminiscing. Or Heero letting Duo do most of that – nodding, smiling, correcting where necessary and raising a glass of whatever alcohol was available on Mars that particular year. He'd never attempted to drink the moonshine that some of the engineers brewed in their quarters – the potent mix and the lack of knowledge of what it contained being more than off-putting.

Duo approached and it was difficult to know how he should react to him physically. Did he expect a hug? That would be a normal response to seeing an old friend after a long time apart – pats on the back, a brief moment of contact then releasing each other. Yet a hug was inadequate between them. When the person in question you were hugging had seen your body so intimately, observed it, admired it, fucked it, then it was so out of step. He remembered how Duo had looked at him, lying in bed as he stood there naked, they must've been in their mid-twenties as it was after Relena but before his second marriage and it would make him feel too damn hot being eye fucked like that. Wanted. Needed. Desired. No one had ever made him anything similar to that – no partner, male or female, neither wife – only Duo had ever made him feel everything so intensely.

His indecisive thoughts of how to react did not reach any conclusion before Duo was there in front of him. Briefly, he thought about leaning in to kiss, him not caring for the proximity of the school and the kids who may make lewd noises at the scene but then he thought that was presumptuous. He'd not spoken to Duo for months. Nearly eight damn months. And this rendezvous had not been discussed – it had been communicated via abrupt emails and decided upon due to the colliding of two separate lives in the same area of the earth sphere. Heero on earth for a conference, to deliver a paper on his research, Duo here to bid for some government contract for the Sweepers – and it had taken someone else to point that out – the guiding hand of a friend who had spent the last twenty years gently trying to coax them together, mainly resulted in them stubbornly drifting further apart.

"Hey," Duo said in greeting – the word casual and Heero found himself wrapped in a hug that he guessed Duo felt he should give. Duo was tactile. Hugged everyone. Kissed women on the cheeks. Gently touched people as he spoke to reiterate the fact he was interested in every word they said.

A part of him wanted to stay like that, smelling his hair, feeling the soft well-worn material of a t-shirt and the heat of skin through it but then the other part of him hated that it was all that Duo could give him. That he could be Quatre. Trowa. Wufei. Any of them. That it was just something he did rather than something he did for him.

"The place hasn't changed, huh?" They'd separated and Duo was gesturing towards the courts. "Though the kids don't have to wear those damn shorts. They need to be fuckin' thankful that fashion changed or somethin'."

"I liked you in those shorts."

It was true – maybe it was the first time he truly noticed Duo in that particular way, athletic though too damn skinny – he'd always been glad that in their late teens Duo had hit a growth spurt after being fed nutritionally balanced meals, being recommended a cocktail of vitamins and hitting the gym more actively – as there had been something far too damn fragile looking about fifteen year old Duo. He'd seen it after his OZ captivity, the way his body was bruised and broken, and he'd remembered how he'd felt back then as he ran his lips over his skin – he'd felt as though he could crush him. It was only after those post war years that Heero had let himself be as rough and passionate as he wanted to be – Duo accepting it, taking it and firing it back in return – they'd never lacked for fire in their twisted relationship.

Duo raised one eyebrow in response and chuckled low. "Damn, I never realised you had a thing for those. Shoulda come into your dorm wearing nothing but 'em, maybe that would've got you interested sooner."

Heero snorted under his breath. "It didn't take long after that anyway."

"Naw, true… just might've prevented some of the excessive use of my right hand after meeting you in those spandex shorts, know what I'm saying?"

He didn't respond beyond a slight quirk of his head. It didn't require an answer. Duo leaned against the railing as he done at fifteen, his eyes studying Heero as they always did – and he wondered if they took in any of the changes he'd started to notice that reaching mid-thirties had done just as he did the same as he looked at Duo. If Heero admitted it, he never thought that he'd survive the war nor did he think he'd survive after the Barton Uprising, the way Wing ZERO had fallen apart around him seeming like his own death knell. Being the age they were now seemed impossible when they'd been fifteen – reckless and ready to die for the colonies. Even though he could hear the sound of the basketball game, the girls' cheers and the boys demanding the ball off each other and shouting instructions on the court – it still seemed a lifetime ago, an experience that had happened to someone else. And though he still felt he could remember every detail, every moment, it was as though he'd seen it in a movie.

"Any mini Yuy's on the way yet?" Duo asked.

"No," he answered and let his eyes drift out to sea. He'd never revealed his own impotence – never seemed an important thing to mention. It didn't matter to Duo as they were never a true couple – had their moments when they were together but never in a long-term functional relationship. It was all brief spells of weeks – months even – that disappeared as quickly as they came. It wasn't like they were ever going to try some convoluted way of bringing a child into the world together.

"Hel's twelve." He brought out a cell phone in some obligatory gesture of fatherhood. "Hates me. Hates her mother more so I kinda win. Though guess that's because she don't have to live with me…"

The picture was on his screen, the image of a girl who looked very much like her father – large blue eyes, heart shaped face, though her hair was darker and kept in a pixie crop. Probably found the braid an embarrassment. Probably wasn't a "dad" thing.

"She looks more like you now."

Duo shrugged. "She'd kinda hate you for saying that." He placed the phone back into his pocket. "Weird thing being a parent when you didn't have 'em yourself, ya know? That I never got to the dramatic storming up the stairs bullshit thing so when she does it to me, I just kinda wanna laugh."

Heero couldn't imagine that – his own parents as vague as Duo's were and Odin could never truly be classed as a parent. Not a "normal" parent who would send him to his room as punishment. He was liable to take punishment seriously – making Heero train harder with weapons, deconstructing and putting them back together under his serious tutelage. It was one of the reasons he had perhaps felt relief in the doctor's office to learn it was an impossibility, unable to comprehend himself as a parent. One of the many reasons he'd let Duo go – Duo had wanted normal, had wanted his dream of family and safety and home. All the things that Heero could never offer him.

There was a silence between them – the years between them, the history looming – it was always as though nothing was simple when it involved the complicated relationships that they had ended up in. Exes, a kid – all too complicated.

"You want me to ask the awkward question?" Duo asked, the words bringing Heero back from memories.

"Which one?"

"Ha. Funny. You really were easier to deal with when you were a no humour zone." He let a small smile cross his face at Duo's ever so slight irritation. Or feigned irritation. "You seeing someone? Got some hottie on Mars?"

"No," he answered decisively. "You?"

"Naw, currently free and single, buddy. I'm kinda a less attractive proposition when people realise I've got a twelve year old kid anyway."

"Try living on Mars."

Duo chuckled. "I thought that more people were living there since the terra-forming was a success."

"Marketing propaganda. No one wants to live on Mars. Too damn far away. Not enough jobs."

"See that's the Heero Yuy I know – gloomy personality an' all intact. Much easier to deal with."

Duo articulated his words with a wink that was so damn familiar and looking back between his face and the sea made Heero feel oddly like the intervening years hadn't taken place from that snapshot in time where they stood in the same spot during the war. He still had the braid, the cocky smirk, those blue eyes even if his skin was more weathered, even if he was a damn lot taller, even if he looked better to Heero now that he had when he'd been a teenager. But then it was probably his perspective. That at fifteen Duo had been everything his raging hormones had wanted, that mixture of toughness and fragility that he hadn't understood at the time.

"How long are you on earth?" Heero asked.

"Three days. Gotta get back to L2 by Friday as I got Hel this weekend and Hilde will kill me if I'm not around."

Heero acknowledged those words with a nod – he had longer, glad of it mainly due to the extended journey that travelling back to Mars entailed.

"Ya really wanna do this again?" Duo asked, his voice oddly strained and Heero met his eyes, pinning him with a stare. "I mean, come on, we've been doing this for damn near twenty years and maybe it's just crazy, 'Ro. We should just move on from each other and forget it. We've never had anything beyond a few weeks or whatever since we were seventeen. The timings sucked and things… things just didn't work out for us. I guess it'd be easier if we just let it go."

"You could come to Mars," he offered knowing that the suggestion was stupid. Years too late – Duo had too many responsibilities now. "They need engineers."

"Seriously? Did you just forget the part where I have a kid? I know the concept's kinda foreign to you but I sure as shit ain't leaving L2 without her."

He supposed he should have anticipated that – yeah, he knew that the kid, Helena, came first even though he had only met her a few times in all the years she had been alive. Remembered holding her after his divorce with Relena and the awkward feeling that had produced, remembered thinking he'd finally seen Duo truly happy and at that point he'd not regretted the decision to leave him. Yet then it had only taken a year or so after that for his relationship with Hilde to crumble, a brief spell where they'd both been unattached that had been good but then Duo had responsibilities and Heero felt like he fucked up the amicable relationship that Duo had managed to establish with Hilde. So he left. Made it easier on both of them.

Duo sighed and turned his attention towards the sea, avoiding his eyes entirely, his body language saying something between just pissed at him to wanting to be left the fuck alone. It was harder to tell now. Not like when they'd been younger. Every emotion had been played out more obviously in Duo's body language but now everything was more muted. Less exaggerated. Older now.

"We have three days," Heero said, breaking the silence.

He saw Duo smile even though he was in profile, his eyes stubbornly forward, leaning against the railings and he then looked down towards the ground. "So we just fuck around for three days like we're teenagers again and forget all the other shit?"

Heero smiled at the bluntness. "If you still want to."

"I'm here, ain't I?"

They both could've not agreed. Both could've decided it was stupid to visit somewhere that had some meaning and meant nothing. They'd been ghosts at this school, a few basketball games, a few pointless classes, a mission to destroy a battleship and one hurried encounter in a dorm room. But it always came back to them. Always came back to Duo for him. Always wondered if things could've been different if he'd not tried to do the right thing as seventeen – whether they wouldn't be standing in a location from their past, discussing whether they should fuck around for a few blissful days, wondered if instead, they'd be together. No exes, no kid, just them, maybe on Mars – Heero working on the studies of plant life as he did and Duo an engineer.

In his head, he'd played through it – sharing one of the quarters for couples, Duo returning from his day's work covered in grease and oil, Heero rubbing a thumb over a smudge on his face to make it worse and Duo smiling, laughing, pulling him in for a kiss and putting grease stained hands all over his face in revenge.

And then he remembered those words at seventeen. "I'm not what you want, Duo."

That maybe if he'd not said them, not gone to Relena, not made Duo go to Hilde, then maybe things would've been different. It wouldn't have been twenty years of stolen moments and meetings, yearly vid calls and damn regrets. It sucked to be older – sucked to have let Duo go – but they had three days and that had to be enough. Even if it never was.

Duo straightened up, standing in front of him so that they were face to face and he no longer fought the urge he had – the kids be damned. Those rich, snooty, aristocratic kids probably weren't the most open minded, raised to be next generation of politicians and politicians' wives. He'd barely been able to stand being around them at fifteen, distancing himself at every available moment and he could hear the sounds of the basketball game, the shouts and cheers as he put his hand to Duo's jaw, holding it in place as he leaned in to kiss him.

If they only had three days, he'd make it count, bringing their lips together in a familiar pattern, Duo's breath whispering across his lips before he joined their mouths, tilting his head automatically as everything around them had been difficult, hard, confusing but they'd always worked on an instinctual level. Duo's mouth tasted like stale coffee, he could feel fingernails in the back of his neck where Duo gripped him hard, pulling him closer, and with the sounds of the school it could almost be twenty years ago. Being quiet in his dorm room, hearing the sounds of the other students through thin walls as they stripped each other for that first time, not thinking they'd survive that mission. The one Heero almost didn't.

"Do you have a hotel room?" Heero asked as they separated reluctantly, glancing towards the courts to see that those kids didn't damn care. The game was still on-going. Points to be scored. All so normal.

"I just got here, 'Ro. All I got is a rental car."

Heero noted the implication. "You can come back with me."

"Gettin' too old for car sex?" Duo teased.

"I prefer a bed."

"Traditionalist."

"Exhibitionist," he shot back instinctively, to which he got a laugh.

"Yeah, you always brought out the kinkier side of me, babe."

There was nothing to answer to that, only a slight shake of his head as a response, and he couldn't resist inching forward for another kiss, Duo's lips parting against his own, re-familiarising, bringing back another hundred times in his mind. Fifteen and inexperienced, seventeen – that last kiss before he left, twenty four and clashing together for a few weeks of sex interrupted by phone calls from Hilde and Duo's fatherly demands, thirty and stealing moments in a bathroom at an event to commemorate the end of the war. They were the memories he lived with on Mars, in his private room, in his labs and in the green houses – now he'd just have another one. Thirty five, three days, kisses near that school that they'd hidden in and forgetting about how they would never get their time.

This time Heero stepped away when their lips parted, feeling the lack of control he'd always felt, the desire beginning to course through his blood – no one had ever made him feel like that and no one ever would. Duo quirked an eyebrow as he began to walk away.

"Hey!"

"You coming?" Heero asked, looking back over his shoulder.

He heard Duo's snickered response and caught up with Heero as they walked back past the basketball court, the game presumably near the end as the cheering was louder, the boys were being more competitive and the shouted orders had become more frequent. Duo didn't bother with an old joke as Heero could hear it in his head – "not yet" or something like "I'm planning to" – but as they walked away he studied Duo, head bowed, the small crinkles, those laughter lines that indicated he'd had good times in his life.

Instinctively, not caring, he reached out for his arm, sliding his fingers down to reach for his hand, twining their fingers together, the callouses and cuts and small indentations that marred them both indicating the sort of lives they'd had. Duo looked between their fingers and then to Heero's eye as they walked.

"Ya ever think we coulda worked?" Duo asked, wistfully.

"If things had been different…" he paused, thinking of those half formed ideas of Duo being on Mars with him. "Yeah."

"Me too. I don't regret shit… I don't regret Hel. I regret you, I guess, that we never really got our time, ya know."

"We have three days."

"It's never enough," he said – melancholy, low.

"It's all we can have."

Duo stopped him, looking at him closely, the temporary moment of seriousness gone and replaced by a smirk. "Then let's have the best three days we fuckin' can."

Duo was right: it was never enough – but three days rolling in sheets, three days of studying the changes in Duo, three days of reliving every memory, telling new stories, feeling alive in ways he'd not felt for years were what they had.

"Yeah," Heero agreed. "The best three fucking days."

It wasn't enough but it was all they could have.