Author's Notes:

"Why don't we do this more often? We should do this more often."

"Honey, in less than eight weeks, we're going to be fathers," Kurt reminded Blaine, long fingers flexing on the steering wheel of their borrowed VW camper.

"Do you think we've wasted time? These past three years, I mean. Could we have made more of it?" Blaine asked, sliding down and turning to lean his cheek against the back of the bench seat. He watched the shifting muscles in his husband's profile as Kurt bit his lip, the late afternoon sun already fading and casting them both in the glow of lingering mid-winter warmth.

"I don't think so," Kurt finally answered, loosely taking Blaine's hand and shooting him a brief smile before returning his eyes to the road. "We've had almost fifteen years together. I think it's time someone else got a turn."

"So, no regrets? No last-minute urges to... I don't know, jump a motorcycle onto a moving train, or spend a year discovering yourself in China, or buy a castle?"

"Dangerous, unnecessary, and too extravagant. Even for moi," Kurt replied succinctly, before continuing, "What about you? Any regrets? You're not getting cold feet now, are you?"

"What? Of course not, don't be--"

At the abrupt pause, Kurt glanced over at Blaine while the engine slowed, the ominous chugging noise growing louder. They were nearly halfway along the I-495, barely past Hicksville, on their way to Montauk for what Blaine suggested as a "full circle trip"--going back to Gin Beach, two and a half years after they wrote the first words of the next chapter in their lives (and, of course, because it was nine years to the day since Blaine finally proposed).

"Kurt, what's that noise?"

"Honey, don't panic," Kurt replied, taking a moment to breathe as he turned the camper onto the shoulder moments before the engine sputtered into silence. "I think the gas gauge is broken. We'll have to call Triple-A, because I know for a fact that I don't have the tools to fix it."

"I thought you checked it over before we borrowed it, though," Blaine said, eyes wide as he glanced out of the window at the cars and trucks passing by. "We can't stop here. It's too close."

"Too close to what?"

"To where they filmed Long Island Medium!" Blaine exclaimed with a shudder.

"Well, unless you want to get out and push us to the next town, we're stuck here for now," Kurt said, pulling out his phone and scrolling through his contacts until he came upon the right number. As he listened to the automated voice talking him through a series of options, he hoped against hope that Blaine wouldn't re-fasten his peacoat, steel his jaw and say "challenge accepted"--they'd been on a How I Met Your Mother kick for the past month, and Blaine had developed a stubborn propensity for proving himself capable of doing "everything a good father should know how to do". It had started with 'fixing' the computer (it had only needed a disk defragmentation, at most, but by the time Blaine was done, they were coughing up for a brand new hard drive), progressed to taking apart the cribs in order to make sure they were free of termites (they were, and it took Kurt less than an hour to put them back together, but that was entirely besides the point), and through various other small household disasters before the new bookshelf nearly collapsed on top of them both. It all culminated in the worst fight they'd had for years, with Blaine breaking down midway through and all but falling into Kurt's arms, confessing his fears that he was never going to be able to find his feet as a father.

The sharp, bitter memory of the abject terror in Blaine's eyes was one of the myriad reasons that Kurt had been grateful for this trip. There was no room for regression, not after he had managed to painstakingly allay Blaine's fears, one by one, and so he kept Blaine's hand clutched tightly in his own while he spoke to the operator.

"How long?" Blaine asked when Kurt hung up and scrubbed a hand over his face.

"A couple hours," Kurt said, shivering as the little heat that remained inside the camper was let out when Blaine abruptly wrenched his door open and jumped out, a gust of cold air rushing in as he slammed it behind him. After zipping his jacket all the way up to his chin, Kurt got out of the camper, burying his hands in the pockets and bumping the door closed with his hip. Blaine came to a stop when Kurt leaned back against the side, watching the first few snowflakes fall and settle on the ground between them before melting into the leftover drizzle from earlier in the day. "What now?"

Blaine simply exhaled sharply, slid open the side door and held out his hand for Kurt to take. Once they were seated on the red vinyl couch, Blaine pulled over his holdall and took out a small vial of sand, uncorked it, and sprinkled it over the floor. Kurt watched silently, brows knitted together. Seemingly satisfied, Blaine then retrieved the glass dish of peach cobbler from inside the tiny stove with one hand, taking two spoons from the outside pocket of his holdall with the other. He set it between them on the seat with a flourish.

"Dig in, husband."

Accepting one of the spoons, Kurt turned it between his fingers and simply stared. "Okay, I concede."

"Concede... what?" Blaine asked slowly, voice muffled through a mouthful of cobbler.

"I have no idea what the sand is for."

"Oh! It's from the beach," Blaine said, as if that explained everything.

"Yes, Blaine, that is generally where sand comes from."

Blaine shook his head with a smile, and set down his spoon. "It's from Gin Beach. I collected it that night, when we were first talking about starting a family."

"And you spread it all over the floor?!" Kurt exclaimed, immediately crouching and fruitlessly attempting to scoop some of it back into the vial.

"Kurt, calm down. I have another one. A bunch, actually," Blaine said, chuckling to himself as he gently pulled Kurt upright and brushed off his knees. "You know how hopeless I am when it comes to losing things, so I collected maybe... six or seven? They're stashed around the house."

"How have I never come across a single one?" Kurt asked, visibly ruffled as he sat back down.

"They're not in places you'd ever think to look."

"Right. So that means you've got one in your sacred bowtie drawer, one in your precious spice rack that I'm not allowed to ever touch," Kurt teased, counting them off on his fingers, "at least one buried in the yard because you're really an overgrown puppy--"

"You don't know me," Blaine grumbled, digging into the cobbler for another bite. "How long has it been?"

"Almost fifteen years."

"I meant since you called Triple-A."

"I know, honey. I simply chose not to answer because that's the grown-up equivalent of 'are we there, yet?'"

Blaine opened his mouth to protest but Kurt silenced him with a kiss, tasting of peaches, pastry, cinnamon and husband. "Grown-ups," he murmured against Kurt's lips, and he could feel it when they quirked ever so slightly upward at the corners. "Grown-ups. With jobs, and a house, and kids. How did we get here, again?"

"Well," Kurt began dramatically, "I think it all began with a terrible spy running into a rockstar on a staircase, somewhere in the deep midwest..."

And so they sat, huddled together against the cold that seeped slowly yet surely inside the camper and taking small, savoring bites of Kurt's peach cobbler while they supplied one another with lines of their shared history. When Kurt saw the first glimmer of yellow flashing lights, he almost wished for more time--time like this, to simply spend reminiscing with Blaine. But back at home, there were two gender-neutral, fully-appointed bedrooms that they had spent months painstakingly furnishing with everything they could possibly need and more. Two rooms that he strolled past every night on the way to his own, doors that he lightly ran his fingertips across with a smile of anticipation. While he was of the slightly Cullen-esque opinion that no measure of time with Blaine would ever be enough, Kurt was more than ready to meet the children that had claimed his heart the first time he felt them kick.

"Kurt? It's time," Blaine said softly, words laced with a deeper meaning than any passerby would ever guess.

"I know," Kurt replied, linking their fingers together and burying them in Blaine's coat pocket just as one of the engineers tapped on the window.