“Honey, can you print the pictures for me?” Kurt asked quietly, focusing his attention on The Book’s next set of blank pages, and mentally cycling through different color schemes. The leaves of the trees in the front garden were already being overtaken by reds, oranges and browns that spread from the center outward to edges that were prematurely curling in on themselves. Fall was approaching, slowly but surely, and for thirty-three years the season had reminded him of thick fingers fumbling with a silk tie, Bruno Mars songs, and vows to love, honor, and cherish.

“Sweetheart, are you alright?” Blaine asked from above him.

“Hmm? I’m fine,” Kurt replied, absently curling his fingers around the warm weight of Blaine’s hand on his shoulder. “I just need a minute.”

A lingering kiss fell upon his hair, along with a whispered, “be right back,” and then Kurt was alone in the library. He breathed deeply, reclined as well as he could in his chair, and glanced up at the shelves above the desk. They were littered with the twins’ creations throughout the years—the smooth, flat pebble Audrey had painted as a ladybug with nail polish at age five; the wooden marionette Oliver had made in the fifth grade that still gave him chills if he looked at it for too long—along with photographs from elementary, middle, and high school graduations. The more time he spent gazing upon the relics of the past eighteen years of his life, the more Kurt expected the fact of the twins’ absence to ache, as it had done all day. Yet somehow, having spent the evening reliving not only the past eighteen years, but almost their entire past as a couple, the knot of emptiness in his stomach had gradually unraveled before dissipating completely. He wasn’t so foolish as to think it was gone forever, but at least for the evening, he felt much less ill at ease.

While he waited for Blaine to return with the photographs, printed on paper so glossy that Kurt would be able to hold it up in front of his face and compare his own features with those of his children (he still maintained that there was at least something of a resemblance between himself and his son), he unlocked the left desk drawer and took out his planner. Listening keenly for sounds of Blaine’s feet padding down the hallway, he rapidly ran through the itinerary for the following day, glancing over the map and making sure that everything was in order. That morning, he had of course confirmed arrangements with everyone involved, but it never hurt to be certain. Everything had to be perfect, and barring fire and flood, everything would be.

Kurt locked his planner away once more just as he heard Blaine returning from his studio, and by the time Blaine plopped back into his seat and dropped the photographs onto the desk, Kurt had busied himself entirely with backing sheets and corners.

*

Thursday 25 August 2044

“Alright, they’re nearly home,” Blaine announced after hanging up the phone. The drapes had all been drawn closed against the light of the approaching evening, and everyone gathered there was sitting silently in wait. “Is everybody ready?”

“Ready,” Bianca, Audrey's best friend, confirmed from her position behind the couch.

Two minutes later, the unnatural silence of the twenty or thirty friends of Audrey and Oliver hunkered down in awkward positions and spread throughout the living room was beginning to get to Blaine, and even he couldn’t help but start tapping his feet impatiently.

On one hand, he couldn’t wait for the twins to be out of the house and off to their respective colleges—their rooms had been emptied of clothes, books, and photographs, and their cars were packed. There was only one night left before Audrey and Oliver would be flying the nest and off to start the degrees that would set them on the individual paths they had chosen to tread. And Blaine was excited for them. He was. He well remembered what it was like to take those first steps out of the house on the morning he left for college. It had been like casting off an iron body suit: suddenly, he was walking taller. He could move his limbs freely and without fear of reprimand. His breath came a little more easily, and all at once he felt like he was living, rather than simply trying to survive those barren and Kurt-less days when even the slightest nod of affirmation and support from his father would have eased his sadness immeasurably. Though he didn’t think Audrey and Oliver felt even a shadow of his own teenage discontent, he could still appreciate their need to spread their wings—there were days when he still felt eighteen himself.

His excitement, however, didn't temper the keen eye he had for the trepidation and anxiety that his children's faces held whenever they thought he and Kurt weren't looking. They were scared, uncertain of the future that was rushing headlong toward them. Audrey and Oliver were not only both leaving home, but also leaving one another—Audrey to Sarah Lawrence in Bronxville, and Oliver to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. They had lived in each other's pockets their whole lives, still sometimes spoke to one another in Twinglish, hadn't ever spent longer than a couple of summer camp weeks apart, and were about to find themselves on opposite ends of a phone or internet connection for the better part of their foreseeable future. While technology had grown and evolved almost impossibly far since the days of simple cell phones and Skype, anyone could attest to the fact that it still wasn't the same as breathing the same air as the person who embodied your single strongest emotional connection.

Their baselines for normal, everyday life were about to be radically redefined, and Blaine knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that both of them were, at least in part, terrified. Which led him and Kurt to make the obvious choice: a surprise going-away party, one last night at home for them to make memories that might offer them a measure of comfort on those days that seemed like wading through an ocean of homesickness.

The low-level whispers and fidgeting that had been building throughout the room suddenly dropped into silence at the sound of the front door being closed, and Blaine's smile grew wide in anticipation.

“Sis, I don’t know how you can still be arguing with me on this one,” Oliver’s voice floated in.

“I can argue with you because sure, Cuomo passed the bill, but he would never have been able to if it weren’t for Obama paving the way in the first place,” Audrey argued back, and Blaine inwardly rolled his eyes. The twins’ debate on which President had been more influential in the passing of the 2020 Nationwide Marriage Equality Act had been going on for weeks, reaching stalemate after stalemate. If there was one thing Blaine could say they both had hardwired from Kurt, it was his stubbornness.

“Kids, why are you still arguing this?” Kurt asked wearily, and Blaine could almost see his husband pinching between his eyes.

“Because it needs to be settled before we leave,” Oliver replied.

“Can’t you just agree to disagree? You’ve both made very valid arguments and frankly, your Dad and I are sick of hearing about it.”

“Papa! How can you be sick of hearing about it? This is your history,” Audrey reminded him, scandalized.

“Exactly. It’s our history, and we lived through it,” Kurt said, “and I know that you’re about to drag us both into it, so can we just go into the living room? I’d at least like to be sitting down for round twenty-seven.”

Without even looking, Blaine felt everyone in the room tense. As soon as he heard Audrey’s heels click onto the wood flooring of the living room, he flicked on the lights.

“Surprise!”

The twins’ faces were a picture of shock and awe as they took in the room, decorated with bright streamers and clusters of balloons, along with a banner hung over the fireplace that read, Good Luck! Blaine flicked his gaze briefly to Kurt, who had left Blaine to put up all of the decorations while distracting the twins with a final round of shopping for college supplies and an afternoon movie, and Kurt nodded with a beatific smile.

“Oh my god, what did you guys do?” Audrey asked as Bianca came forward and swept her into a hug.

“Your dads called me and said they were having a going-away party for you, so I got as many of the group together as I could,” Bianca answered. “We wanted one last chance to see you before you leave tomorrow, so… here we are.”

“And hey, we couldn’t let you leave without doing the Twist one last time,” Tate supplied, nudging Oliver’s shoulder as his group of friends nodded in agreement.

“Come on, guys. You know I only do that when it’s someone’s birthday,” Oliver replied with an easy smile.

“It’s my birthday!” Jenny piped up from the back of the room, and everyone turned to stare at her. Sheepishly, she shrugged. “Okay, fine. It was yesterday. But the Twist is legendary!”

“Maybe,” Oliver said, eyes lingering on her for a moment before he turned back to Blaine and Kurt, who were exchanging a knowing glance. “You guys, this is… The best. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Kurt said, placing his hand on Oliver’s shoulder in such a way that it always reminded Blaine of his father-in-law. “Now, there’s pizza on the way and the money’s on the table. Drinks are in the kitchen, but anyone driving stays sober. Got it?”

Oliver’s eyes widened almost comically. “You’re letting us drink?”

Blaine grinned. “There’s not enough in there to give you all hangovers—“

“—or have you questioning your sexuality for a day or two,” Kurt interrupted with an innocent smile. Audrey dropped her head, shoulders shaking as she pursed her lips and glanced from side to side. Aunt Rachel had delighted in being asked to warn her adopted niece and nephew of the dangers of alcohol, and had done an undeniably good job of both scaring them off for a couple years, and embarrassing the hell out of Kurt and Blaine. “Once upon a time, we were your age. Just be responsible.”

“Thank you,” Audrey said, stepping forward to hug her fathers. Both Kurt and Blaine held on tight, and they would only admit to one another that they probably held on a little too long.

“We’ll be upstairs if you need anything, alright? Don’t have the music too loud,” Blaine told them, sensing everyone in the room growing more and more eager to get the party started. Oliver nodded with one last grateful smile, then turned and crossed the room to dock his iPod. Blaine jerked his head in the direction of the hall, and took Kurt’s hand. “That’s our cue.”

*

“So, when I told them not to have the music too loud…”

“Please, they’re all semi-deaf from their iPods anyway. They can only hear it when it’s loud enough to make the walls bleed.”

Blaine huffed a laugh and sipped at his glass of wine, letting his head tip back so that he could watch the stars beginning to come out. The party had been going for hours with no upstairs appearances from either of the Hummel-Anderson children, and neither Kurt nor Blaine had heard anything aside from music and laughter. They had spent their evening with their own pizza, feeding each other bites like they were teenagers all over again; sitting on blankets on the floor of apartment eighteen because their furniture hadn’t been delivered yet. Kurt had finished reading the latest Kilo Connery novel while Blaine had re-watched Andrew Garfield’s most recent movie, before they moved their quiet party of two onto the balcony to share the relative peace and a bottle of wine.

Abruptly, Kurt stood and moved to lean on the flat wooden railing of the balcony, one foot resting on the bottom slat. Blaine admired the view from his chair, reaching out to let his knuckles brush the back of Kurt’s thigh. Kurt glanced back at his husband with a tight, weary smile before letting out a deep sigh and closing his eyes.

“I hate most music nowadays,” he said sadly. “Where is this generation’s Lady Gaga, or Katy Perry? Where is their Madonna?”

“Don’t get me started,” Blaine replied, shaking his head and joining Kurt at the railing. “I am so beyond sick of working with Tomika at this point. Every single day, it’s ‘more bass, Blaine! The kids want to see me shake it, I need more bass!’ No, Tomika, the kids do not want to see you shake it. The kids are twelve and under.”

“And the TV shows,” Kurt continued, swallowing a large gulp of wine. “What happened to unhealthy, dysfunctional friendships where one character could, I don’t know, pass wind a block away and the other one would know within three seconds or less? Now it’s all increasingly stupid reality shows about increasingly flawed people. Like the fact that they’re unhinged is something to be proud of, not seek professional help for.”

“Sweetheart, where is all this coming from?” Blaine asked gently, taking in the tension woven into the set of Kurt’s shoulders, and the way he held his head perfectly straight. The night lights dotted throughout the back yard were just flickering into life, and the darker blue flecks of Kurt’s eyes seemed illuminated with them, taking on an ethereal luminescence that made them appear caught somewhere between impossible youth and timeless age.

“We’re old, Blaine,” Kurt said, a certain sadness coloring his tone. “We’re being left behind. Tomorrow afternoon, this house will be empty for the first time in eighteen years, and—oh god, I miss my twenties… I—I just don’t know what I’m gonna do.”

Blaine hummed and moved closer, nudging Kurt’s arm with his own. “Just think of all the clean bedrooms,” he began, layering his tone with one of false yet abject disdain. “And the dishes, Kurt. Think of having all the dishes in one place, instead of harboring new and prosperous civilizations underneath Twist’s bed.”

Kurt inclined his head slightly, though his eyes remained fixed on some point in the middle distance. “Go on.”

“No rushing home at the end of the day, no high school drama, no stacks of books in the hallway to trip over,” Blaine listed, his voice dripping with more and more foreboding as he moved closer to Kurt and traced the outer shell of his ear with his fingertips. Between pressing feather-light kisses to Kurt’s neck and the curve of his jaw, he continued, “We’ll be able to have sex wherever and whenever we want… And I guess we’ll just have to do it on the island again. Ugh. The worst.”

“You just had to bring up the island,” Kurt said long-sufferingly. Briefly, he leant into Blaine’s touch. “Okay, so it might not be all bad. But what about Friday Night Dinner, or… Sunday mornings on the deck?”

“Sweetheart, I don’t know how to tell you this, but… We haven’t spent Sunday morning on the deck in at least four years.”

Kurt turned to face the other way, straightening and crossing his arms over his chest. Blaine waited the full and requisite ten seconds before stepping closer and wrapping Kurt in his arms from behind, lips resting lightly on Kurt’s shoulder.

“Blaine, they were… Yesterday, they were babies. You know, they were crawling all over each other and writing on the walls in crayon and dancing on our feet. And now they’re reading about politics and medicine and having debates that go on for weeks, and… And they’re leaving us.”

“Kurt, look at me,” Blaine said firmly, and Kurt’s shoulders dropped as he turned in Blaine’s arms, his eyes brimming. “They’re not leaving us. They’re just leaving here. And here is just a place, Kurt; it could be anywhere.”

“That’s what you told me the day I left for New York,” Kurt replied quietly, a reluctant tumble back into nostalgic fondness clear in his voice.

Inside the doors of Columbus Airport, the morning bustle of businesspeople was long since over, and passengers coming home from late summer vacations were yet to arrive. The only people there were him and the remaining members of New Directions and band, and a few of the airport staff who had agreed to help him out. The automatic doors slowly yawned wide, and in strode Kurt, wiping away tears and turning to wave one last time at Burt. As soon as Kurt turned and caught sight of them gathered together, Blaine took one look at the expression on his face and swept him into the tightest hug he had the strength for.

“Ask me to stay,” Kurt whispered into Blaine’s ear, his voice wavering.

Stepping back, Blaine shook his head. “No, Kurt. This is where you’re going,” he affirmed, flicking at the tickets in Kurt’s hand.

“But I don’t want to leave you.”

“You’re not leaving me. You’re just leaving here,” Blaine corrected. He nodded to Artie, Tina and Joe, who immediately began beating out a rhythm on the empty hard-shell suitcases they’d brought. “And we were afraid that you’d get cold feet at the last minute, so we put together a number for you just in case. No pun intended.”

Kurt laughed, though the sound was thin and stretched and lacking any of its usual musicality.

“’Here’ is just a place, Kurt. It could be anywhere,” Blaine said, before taking in a deep breath and beginning the song. “So this is what you meant when you said that you were spent, and now it’s time to build from the bottom of the pit right to the top. Don’t look back, packing my bags and giving the academy a rain check.”

Blaine knew that the expression on Kurt’s face when the airport staff joined in with his friends after the second verse would stay with him forever: disbelief mingled with awe and a pure, indelible love that showed all of the footprints left on his heart.

“It’s time to begin, isn’t it? I get a little bit bigger but then I’ll admit I’m just the same as I was. Now don’t you understand? I’m never changing who I am.”

As the song ended, Artie, Tina and Joe playing them out with the final beats, Kurt threw his arms around Blaine’s neck and held on so tightly that Blaine felt as if Kurt were trying to fuse them into one being, one single breathing entity. He heard nothing of the applause that Sugar would later rave about, nor did he notice the staff disperse and return to their daily tasks. All he saw, all he felt, all he knew was Kurt.

“I’m never saying goodbye to you,” he whispered into Kurt’s ear, stealing the words for himself. He even managed to laugh when Kurt wryly replied, “That’s my line.”

Blaine smiled at the memory. “That’s right,” he said, “and you didn’t leave me, did you? You just left the place.”

“You’re right,” Kurt sighed, leaning down and burrowing his face into the hollow of Blaine’s neck. “I just wish… I just wish that I knew without doubt that they wouldn’t come back different people.”

“I know. Me too.”

“Daddy?”

Blaine turned in Kurt’s arms and saw Audrey standing in the open doorway, her eyes bright with hope. “Will you play something for us? Everybody’s getting ready to leave, but they wanted to hear you sing one last time, so…”

“What do you think?” he asked Kurt.

“You know what I think,” Kurt answered, and nodded in the direction of the door.

They followed Audrey downstairs, where the volume was turned down, and the music shut off completely when they entered the living room. The half of the group that had been in the kitchen trailed in after them and filled the edges of the living room, most of the cleared floor space already claimed by kids sitting or standing, holding red cups and smiling nostalgically.

“I sang this song to Papa once, when he transferred back to McKinley,” Blaine said, seating himself at the piano and flexing his fingers. “I sang it because I wanted him to know that I understood why he had to leave Dalton, and that I’d still always be there for him. That goes for you kids, too. And we’re going to miss you so much, but you’re going to be amazing. You are amazing.”

“Daddy,” Audrey whispered, her palm pressed against her chest as she tried not to start crying.

Blaine smiled at the twins each in turn, and began playing. As he progressed through the traditional introduction, the one that he always played when performing the song on his own, he was aware of the twins’ friends pairing off and starting to slow dance, and when he turned to look, Oliver was taking Audrey’s hand with a grin.

“I walked across an empty land; I knew the pathway like the back of my hand. I felt the earth beneath my feet; sat by the river and it made me complete. Oh simple thing, where have you gone? I’m getting old and I need something to rely on. So tell me when you’re gonna let me in; I’m getting tired and I need somewhere to begin.”

Feather-light fingers brushed across the line of Blaine’s shoulders and Kurt took a seat to his right at the baby grand, layering his own harmony beneath Blaine’s vocal. Despite the melancholic nature of the song, Blaine couldn’t help but smile at both their shared memories of courtyard serenades, and the fact that Kurt was singing along with him—it was far more rare an occurrence than Blaine would have liked, and one that he treasured whenever Kurt chose to join him, particularly when it was one of the songs he counted as theirs.

As Audrey, Oliver and their friends all swayed around the room, Kurt’s voice grew stronger and stronger, to the point where the song became a duet. When they had reached the end, Blaine let the final keys of the piano fade and they sang the final chorus over again. For themselves and their shared history; for their children and the trials of the present; for their future, the questions and specters of the unknown hanging ahead like a shimmering mirage. They sang for their entire world, the one they had worked for and toiled over and cultivated together, for and because of one another. They had reached the point that an entire eighteen years had been leading towards, and for all the preparations and arrangements they had made for the twins, Kurt and Blaine had neglected to make any for themselves. Regardless, the world was shifting beneath their feet and everything was about to change: as they sang, they thought, lamented, considered, and stepped a degree closer to acceptance.

“And if you have a minute why don’t we go talk about it somewhere only we know? This could be the end of everything, so why don’t we go somewhere only we know? Somewhere only we know.”

*

Friday 26 August 2044

By the time Kurt’s 7:30 a.m. alarm went off on Friday morning, he had already woken up three times.

At 3:55, it was with an ‘oof!’ as Blaine’s arm swung over and landed heavily across Kurt’s stomach.

At 4:20, it was with a soft inhale; evidently, Blaine hadn’t been able to get back to sleep after Kurt had elbowed his side in retaliation, and had decided to apologize with a smattering of light, lingering kisses that tingled across the bare skin of his chest and the summer-freckled hollow of his neck. Leaden-limbed and eyes still closed, Kurt had dragged Blaine back up to face level and matched him kiss for lazy kiss, until he had answered sleep’s beckoning call with his head pillowed on Blaine’s chest and Blaine’s arms wrapped around him.

At 6:16, it was with a start and a sob. His eyes were wet from the tears he’d been crying in his dream as Audrey and Oliver walked out of the front door without so much as a backward glance, pinky fingers linked and laughter pealing behind them. The path to the street had been so, so short. All the twins had had to do was turn a corner and they would have been out of sight completely, and that was exactly what they had done. No goodbye, and Kurt had known beyond all reasonable doubt that he would never see them again. The tears had flowed, and he’d sunk to the top step of the porch, wrapped his arms around his knees and wept.

Rolling onto his back, he grabbed a tissue from the box by the bed and wiped his eyes, then dropped it into the wastebasket and crossed his arms over his chest. Blaine was snoring softly, the cars had already started going by outside, and sunlight was beaming around the edges of the drapes. There was no way he was getting back to sleep.

At 7:30, Kurt opened his eyes. He carefully extracted his arm from beneath Blaine’s neck, where they had somehow in the space of an hour ended up spooning, and switched off the alarm. He slowly swung his legs out from beneath the comforter, slid his feet into his slippers, picked up his robe from the back of his dresser chair. Pulled back the drapes gradually so as not to wake Blaine, tied his robe at the waist, stretched his arms over his head and stood stock still as he waited for the dizziness to subside and his vertebrae to settle. Moved to the bathroom, showered quickly and brushed his teeth. Styled his hair into a sweeping coiffure; something he hadn’t done in years. Dressed in a red shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a heavy black brocade waistcoat and matching tie, fitted black pants and dress shoes.

“What’s the armor for?” Blaine asked, his voice raspy with sleep and his eyes morning-dull. Kurt stifled a grimace and crossed the room to press a kiss to Blaine’s cheek.

“Can you make sure the kids are up? I’m bringing breakfast back.”

“Kurt.”

Blaine’s hand was on Kurt’s wrist, his eyes searching, and since the first time Blaine had broken down Kurt’s barriers in surroundings of mahogany and grandeur, Kurt never had quite been able to keep them up around himself for long.

“I just needed some reinforcements today. That’s all,” he said, grudgingly conceding defeat. Blaine nodded, lips pursed into a thin line of understanding, and Kurt kissed his knuckles before striding from the room, full of purpose and the desperate need for fresh air and caffeine.

Kurt pulled the front door closed behind him and stood for a moment at the top of the stairs, considering his options. Upon waking, he had been in the mood for some of Andrew’s madeleines, but it was a Friday. He had to contend with New York City traffic every day of the week, and he was not about to do it if he absolutely didn’t have to. Descending the steps, he took a right and walked the ten minutes to Bien Cuit, calling in his order as he went.

The detour he took on his way back led him to Cobble Hill Park, past a motley crew of a string quartet practicing in the seclusion before, presumably, heading into the city for the day. As he walked by, taking in the almost balletic quality of the piece they were playing, heavy with drama and story and sadness, he dropped a few bills into one of their open instrument cases. The music followed him to one of the park benches, and his eyes roved over the empty expanse of green before him as he set down his cup tray and pastry box. He took a sip of his iced chai latte and gazed at the sandbox and jungle gym, unwilling to take a seat lest he linger too long and become wrapped up in ghostly images of the past.

The wind was singing through the trees in time with the quartet playing their somber piece into a blossoming crescendo, and as the music reached its peak, Kurt’s breeze-stung eyes filled with tears.

“This is ridiculous, it’s not like they’re going to Timbuktu,” Kurt muttered under his breath, frustrated with himself as he swiped at his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose.

Composing himself, he stood for a moment more to reach out and savor the simple quiet of the neighborhood at 8am before setting his cup back in the tray, retrieving the box, and leaving the park behind.

When he got home, the house seemed to be deserted. Start getting used to it, Kurt thought bitterly, before jumping at the warm hands covering his eyes.

“Good morning, Papa,” Audrey sing-songed, and Kurt relaxed, the sudden tension draining away.

“Morning, Hep,” Kurt replied. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve got a surprise for you. It’s out back, but you have to keep your eyes closed,” she said firmly, removing her hands and taking the box and tray from him. He heard shuffling, probably as she balanced them in one hand.

“Yes, ma’am,” Kurt answered, and then Audrey was leading him by the wrist through the house to the back yard, where the soles of his shoes clicked against the wood of the decking.

“Okay, open your eyes.”

For a moment, Kurt did nothing but blink, only took in Blaine and Oliver sitting on the bench and the stack of plates and the New York Times Sunday Edition folded on the table.

“Dad said you missed Sunday mornings on the deck,” Oliver said, “so we thought, even though it’s Friday… for old time’s sake?”

“You’re all the worst,” Kurt said, covering his face with one hand. “Up until five seconds ago, I was doing a really great job of keeping it together.”

“Papa, come on,” Audrey said, sitting down and gazing at him imploringly as she patted the arm of his chair. Kurt gave them all a watery smile and followed suit, tipping open the lid of the pastry box and busying himself with handing out the chocolate croissants (for Oliver and Blaine) and raspberry Muenster Danish (for Audrey) and setting his own artichoke and goat’s cheese croissant on a plate. The food was passed, Blaine switched on the radio, and Audrey handed him his newspaper already opened to the Style section.

And so they sat, eating their breakfast and sharing one last comfortable morning silence, each knowing that come mid-afternoon, there would be no denying that their time as a unit of four was coming to an end. Audrey and Oliver were as close together as possible, often glancing at one another with a certain tremulous quality to their smiles as they held silent conversations. Blaine watched them, and Kurt watched him, breathing in the fresh morning air as he hung by a thread.

*

“Twist, come on! It’s a long drive to Baltimore; you don’t wanna get there too late!”

“God, Dad, I’m coming!”

Audrey bit her lip in amusement as Blaine tried not to grind his teeth, instead watching Kurt fuss with his daughter’s hair and brush off her shoulders.

“Are you sure you have everything?” Blaine asked, for the third time in as many minutes.

“And are you sure you don’t want us to come with you?” Kurt asked with a searching look. “Because it’s no problem, we can just drive you right up there and—“

“Dad, Papa, I’m sure,” she replied firmly. “Everything’s packed into the car, we’re all going food shopping tomorrow and I’ll get my textbooks at the store on Monday. I’m all set. I even have a playlist set up for the drive that’ll help me decide which song to call in to Live by Request. Be afraid, Dad. Be very afraid.”

“I guess you are all set,” Kurt conceded, and looked as though he was about to say more before becoming distracted by Oliver’s grunts of exertion as he hefted his last suitcase down the stairs.

“I’ve got it,” he managed, and something about the truth behind the statement shot straight to Blaine’s heart. Of course Oliver could handle getting his own suitcase down the stairs. Of course he could—probably better than Blaine would have been able to, given the problems he’d been having with his back as of late (not that he would admit it). That, however, was beside the point. Oliver was still just a kid—his kid—and in about ten minutes time, he would be gone until Thanksgiving. Blaine had to keep himself from reaching out for the suitcase as Oliver strode past where he, Kurt and Audrey stood to take the suitcase down to his car.

“I guess this is what feeling useless is like,” he said, only half-joking.

“Dad, you’ll never be useless. Either of you,” Audrey said, looking between them both, her bottom lip beginning to tremble. “Please don’t ever think that—I mean… We’re coming home, okay? Just because we’re going to college, it doesn’t—it’s not going to be like that. We love you too much. You know Ollie’s not good at the emotional stuff. Remember Jenna? I just feel bad for his roommate the next time he goes through a bad break-up.”

“I won’t miss the loop of the same five sad songs. It reminds me too much of myself before your Dad came to his senses,” Kurt admitted, before hastening to add as Oliver reappeared in the doorway, “I’m going to miss you two so much. You know how proud you’ve made us, right? Every single day.”

Neither of the twins said a word, simply hugged each of their fathers in turn. It was a time neither for words of reassurance nor platitudes, for everything had already been said throughout each college visit, each form being filled in, each warm embrace, each time an acceptance letter had been received, each round of patient listening when decisions had to be made. It was instead a time for quiet, for absorbing the all-encompassing moment of calm stillness before the storm of change, so that each member of the Hummel-Anderson family could take it, hold it, and keep it carefully ensconced in a safe place.

When Audrey and Oliver walked out of the front door, pinky fingers linked as they descended the steps, Blaine took Kurt’s hand and squeezed it lightly, trying to anchor them both in the seas that had already begun to shift. They watched as their children held each other at the bottom of the steps, before each turning to their separate cars with lingering looks at one another.

“Hey, sis!” Oliver called, forearms resting on the top of his open car door. When Audrey turned, the tears in her eyes catching the sunlight, Oliver gave her a small smile and, finally conceding, said, “It was Obama.”

Audrey smiled, and shook her head. “No, it was Cuomo.”

She looked at Kurt and Blaine one last time, her expression equal parts fear and excitement, and then her car door closed. Her windows were rolled down, the engine rumbled into life, and then she was pulling away, up the street and turning the corner, and Audrey was gone.

“I can always come back, right?” Oliver called from inside his car, the sound of his voice pulling both Kurt and Blaine’s attention from watching the end of the street as if Audrey would come back. Blaine heard the sharp intake of breath, almost cried out as Kurt squeezed his hand harder than he had even on their wedding day.

“But you won’t,” Kurt exhaled, his voice full of a terrible sadness that swallowed up every ounce of the self-control he’d been hanging onto all day.

Carefully, watching Oliver clip his seat belt into place and start the engine, Blaine disentangled their fingers and put his arm around his husband, unable to stop himself from clutching at his arm like a lifeline.

“Our daughter’s going to be President some day,” he said quietly, leaning into Kurt but not taking his eyes off Oliver. “And our son’s going to be the best doctor in the whole world. They’re going to be amazing, Kurt, but in order to do that, they have to be set free. You know that, right?”

“Tomorrow, you’re going to tell me that that’s crap, and that you want them to come home,” Kurt replied, schooling his expression as Oliver waved to them one last time, then pulled away and down the street.

In a matter of minutes, the work of eighteen years had culminated. The sudden midday quiet of their neighborhood hit both Kurt and Blaine all at once, and they sat down on the top step, each leaning against opposite sides of the door frame.

“That’s it, then,” Kurt said after a few minutes, head turned to look out at the street. “We’re officially empty-nesters. All that’s left is for us to get fat from sublimating our sorrow with cheesecake, develop an interest in puzzles, and get dogs to act as substitute children.”

“Not that I would say no to the dogs or the cheesecake—especially not the cheesecake right now—but none of that’s going to happen,” Blaine said, nudging at Kurt’s thigh with his foot. “We might be an old married couple—“

“A fabulous old married couple,” Kurt interjected half-heartedly, the words sounding habitual rather than backed by any real desire to correct.

Blaine smiled. “Exactly. We’re not those parents, never have been. We still have a lot to do, you know. What about that plan that we had, to retire to Provincetown? The lighthouse and the artists’ colony? Or we could take that trip to Australia we’ve always thought about.”

“You’ve always thought about,” Kurt corrected him. “And it’ll take a lot more than telling me endless stories about koala bears to make me willing to go to a country located approximately three quarters of a mile from the surface of the sun.”

“But they sleep eighteen hours a day!”

“So do cats, and I could just go to the pet store to see that.”

“Hey,” Blaine said softly, “isn’t it time we had another kitty about the place? Or maybe a pup this time?”

The beginnings of a smile crept onto Kurt’s face, and he glanced back into the house. “Maybe. It’s going to be quiet here, after all,” he said. “Really quiet. Let’s…”

“Let’s what?”

Abruptly, Kurt got to his feet. “Let’s get out to the house tonight. You’ve got that meeting all day tomorrow at the LGBT museum anyway, so why not?”

Blaine glanced up at his husband, the sun silhouetting him, and simply nodded. They didn’t even need to pack—Kurt always made sure to keep the closet in their Southampton home stocked with fashionable, season-appropriate attire, and they were five minutes from Waldbaum’s—they could just grab the car keys and go.

So they did, loosely holding hands over the center console as Kurt drove, both humming along to the radio. Blaine watched the other cars on the freeway, wondering if the people inside were heading home to houses devoid of their own children, whether for the first time or the twentieth. He wondered if they felt the gnawing ache in their chests where half of their heart was somewhere else. If they would wander from room to room expecting to see a young woman with her head buried in a book, or a young man on the phone to his uncle discussing the previous week’s big football games. If they would linger on each and every family portrait as they ascended the stairs, passed the empty bedrooms and the small library…

A smile slowly curved its way along Blaine’s lips. Because somewhere in the library, there was a book. The Book.

*

Saturday 27 August 2044

As Kurt closed the finished Book with a sigh full of wistful nostalgia, Blaine looked down at his watch. “Hey,” he murmured, taking Kurt's hand once more and linking their fingers. “It's after midnight. Happy anniversary, handsome.”

“Twenty-five years married,” Kurt murmured almost disbelievingly, cupping his free hand to Blaine's cheek. “And thirty-three together.”

“Sick of me yet?” he asked.

“Never,” Kurt answered with a brief kiss. “I've told you this; we're getting to our seventy-fifth anniversary and you're buying me raw diamonds and a bar of gold. Since you're the one who insisted on us learning the list, and all.”

“Remind me, will that be our ‘together’ anniversary or our wedding anniversary?”

“Both, if I have anything to say about it,” Kurt said. “Just so you know, we're going to have a new addition to make tomorrow evening.”

“And what would that be, pray tell?” Blaine asked slyly.

“Something exciting and adventurous that I’ve spent weeks painstakingly planning,” Kurt said cryptically, standing up and holding his hand out to Blaine. “Your anniversary gift. The first part of which you’re about to get. You’re not tired, right?”

“I like the sound of that,” Blaine replied, taking Kurt’s hand and letting himself be led from the library. They paused at the door, glancing back at The Book where they had left it on top of the desk. The spine was cracked and worn, the corners weathered around the edges, and the elastic fastening strap had long since been stretched beyond its limit. It was a memoir, full to brimming with a love that had endured, that was modern enough to stand the test of time but old-fashioned enough to last forever. It was them, Kurt and Blaine Hummel-Anderson, and every important moment that had shaped them into the people they had become.

Sharing a silent smile, they switched off the lights, closing the door behind them with a soft click.