Dave packed the last box into the U-Haul and closed the cargo gate. It seemed so strange packing up his things again. He seemed to have more boxes to his name this time around. The last time he did this was just…wait…God? Could it have been that long ago? It felt like yesterday, or a week ago. A few years at the most, but not…

Wow.

Doing the math in his head, putting it into perspective, it almost made him dizzy enough to sit down. But he couldn't. He couldn't let it get to him. Kurt was watching, and he already wasn't taking things well. The last thing he needed was for Dave to have some sort of break down – even a tiny one. Dave would wait until they were on the road, and then…well, he wasn't going to lie. He'd probably bawl.

He clapped his hands together, brushing off the dust. He walked back into the house, mournful blue eyes watching his every step, as he took a last look around.

“That's the last of them,” he declared, coming out through the front door where Adam was waiting for him. Adam handed him a cold bottle of water, and Dave took it with a grateful smile. He bent his neck back to drink it, resting one hand on his hip and rubbing the nape of his stiff neck with the other.

Blaine pulled a bandana out of his pocket and wiped his forehead, catching the sweat that hung heavy on his brow and threatened to drip down into his face.

“Yeah,” he said. “I think you're right.”

“W-wait,” Adam said. “Wait just a minute.” He, too, went in and did a final sweep to make sure nothing got left behind. He didn't know when they'd be back, and they had a long trip ahead of them. He had to make that last walk thru count. And besides, he wanted to quietly say goodbye to the place he had had the honor of calling home, out of the blue, after he fell in love – the one thing he never expected to happen on the day he arrived to that first internship class.

Kurt didn't help with the boxes. He didn't help with anything. He sat on a planter, off to the corner by the front door, surveying the scene in silence. He wasn't staging a protest, he just couldn't be a part of this.

He couldn't have a hand in helping his best friend leave.

“Well, that's definitely it, love,” Adam confirmed, putting an arm around Dave's waist. Dave wrapped his arms around his husband, and they held each other close, beaming at one another with the excitement of a new adventure in their eyes. But still, in the midst of their enthusiasm, they couldn't help feeling that something was missing.

That something, or someone, sat nearby, eyes trained on the ground.

In a house with four children, Kurt never imagined that Dave and Adam would be the last two to move out. After they got married and didn't immediately race off to find a place of their own (which secretly thrilled Kurt), Kurt saw them sticking around with him and Blaine indefinitely. It seemed, however, that that wasn't the case. They were waiting for the last little bird to fly the coop before they started a life of their own.

In his mind, it felt like Finn and Rachel dying all over again. As morbid as the comparison made their leaving sound, Kurt couldn't help making it. That tremendous feeling of loss, that huge hole carving away. It never goes slowly. It weathers, starting from a point the size of a fist, punched out with the first blow, and then becomes larger in the most painful ways imaginable, until the soft heart that once was was replaced with a hard lump, one that didn't beat, or race, or breathe.

Blaine kept trying to cheer Kurt up by making jokes about how they could have sex on all of the furniture in the house, walk around naked from sun up to sun down, move their playroom from Blaine's old place to this one, but any mention of them becoming empty nesters made Kurt excuse himself to his work space so he could cry in private.

“Well,” Dave said, even though he hated to, even though it was obvious that Kurt might still be too heartbroken to be ready. Dave didn't know when that time would be for Kurt, but he knew it had already passed for him and Adam. “Time to add our keys to the bowl.”

Dave glanced at Kurt when he said it, saw his whole body shudder as his breath hitched, but Kurt said nothing. He didn't move. He stared at the ground beneath his feet, trying to blend in to the pottery.

“I'll go get it,” Blaine said solemnly. He almost didn't want to. He didn't like hurting Kurt either.

The bowl had been a tradition that they'd started, something that Kurt's dad had done with him and Finn. Whenever someone moved out, they put their house key in the bowl. Kurt chose the bowl special – a crystal candy bowl that had once belonged to his mother. The bowl stayed on a table in the foyer, right by the front door, that way if anyone wanted to return, their key would be waiting to welcome them home. One by one, Kurt suffered through watching all four of Finn and Rachel's children – his children – put their keys in the bowl, as well as their friends.

Nick and Jeff had a key.

Hunter had a key.

Now Dave and Adam's would be added.

Afterwards, Kurt and Blaine would be the only ones left.

Kurt couldn't look at the bowl anymore. Each key in it hit Kurt like a needle through the heart.

Dave and Adam pulled their keyrings from their pockets and removed their house keys.

“On the count of three,” Dave said. Both men held their keys over the bowl. “One…two…”

“Do you guys really have to go?”

Dave lowered his key into the pile, but Adam, struck by the sadness in Kurt's voice, curled his key back into his palm. It just seemed too cruel.

“Kurt,” Dave said, holding out a hand to his best friend, one that Kurt stood on autopilot to walk over and take, “it's been what? Over twenty years, not counting the time we spent together before you met Blaine and I met Adam? Don't you think it's time?”

“No,” Kurt answered quickly, squeezing Dave's hand. “No, I don't. Because you're my best friend, Dave. You're my best friend, back from a time when things were new and the future was scary and uncertain, but still nowhere near us. Now it feels like it's all over. The kids are gone, and that's…that's fine, but…I never thought I'd have to face the rest of it without you.”

“It's not without me,” Dave said, putting his hands on Kurt's shoulders. “We're going to be out in Minneapolis, with Finn now that I'm managing him. You know, still keeping an eye on our boy.”

“Yeah,” Kurt said with a chuckle that tried for humorous but just came out bitter. “What in the world did you ever do to get so lucky?”

Blaine's expression went blank, but Dave laughed. Blaine might be the love of Kurt's life, but Dave has known him just that little bit longer.

“Kurt” – Dave smiled, trying to be glad enough for the both of them when, inside his chest, his heart was splitting in two – “I know how you feel. It's hard for me to look inside that house, all those rooms, and see it empty, too. But, we did what we were supposed to do. We raised four amazing kids. We have to trust that we did a good job, and that they'll be fine. And, we'll always be around for them when they need us, but now, we get to live for ourselves. And you have to, Kurt. You have to live for yourself.”

“I know, I know, and…I don't mean to whine and sound selfish. I feel a little like Wilbur, you know. Being left behind in the barn. I thought that maybe, just maybe, one of you guys would stay behind. But all of you are going away and finding new homes for yourselves, and I'm happy for you. I really, truly am. I'm just” – Kurt sniffled – “a little sad for me.”

“Kurt, you are the backbone of this family. You always have been. You kept us all together when there were so many times we would have just fallen apart.” Dave kneaded Kurt's shoulders gently, giving him a moment when a tear rolled down his cheek, and he looked to the side to wipe it away. “You are the strongest man I have ever met, the strongest man I have ever known.”

“Same goes for me,” Adam added, giving Kurt a smile.

“And me,” Blaine said, taking Kurt's hand.

“Kurt,” Dave continued, “it didn't matter where we were - this amazing house here, or our crap trailer in San Diego. They would have never been home without you. You're home, Kurt…and you always will be.”

Kurt gasped. He felt lost – lost because Dave was leaving, and lost for any response, knowing that whatever he tried to say would be swallowed by tears anyway.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice barely there, muddied and broken. He opened his arms to both men one last time. “Thank you both so much for being a part of my family.”

Adam patted Kurt's back, but he had to turn away. Ever since the day he'd left his family in Essex to come to the states, he'd never been very good with goodbyes. But Dave stayed longer and squeezed Kurt hard, tempted to pick him up and spin him around, but he didn't want this beautiful moment marred by Kurt slugging him in the arm.

Blaine put an arm around Kurt's shoulder as Dave let go. The two men stood side-by-side in the driveway and watched Dave back the U-Haul out on to the street. Adam drove their Highlander, pulling out after, and following close behind. Dave looked back in the rearview at Kurt, his best friend, and Blaine, his unlikely friend, and the wonderful couple they made. Dave needed to see this. He needed to know Kurt would be okay, that he had someone to take care of him, the way he had taken care of everyone else for so long. He stuck a hand out the window and waved, and Kurt waved back. Kurt's smile wavered, and he brought a hand up to cover it.

Dave sighed. This one road, barely a full city block, would be the hardest drive of his life. He took it slow, almost unnecessarily slow, and as he passed the houses around, he remembered all the times he'd driven up and down this way – the day they moved in, every day to and from college, taking the kids to school, to plays, to concerts, to tournaments, therapy appointments, school dances, the Prom, graduation, and then, one by one, to the airport, the train station, sending the kids off into the world, floating away like dandelion seeds, to build lives of their own.

Dave can remember every drive down this road.

Twenty-three long years.

It went by too fast. He didn't hold on hard enough.

Dave rolled to a stop at the corner at the end of the street. He took a deep breath, took his foot off the brake and pressed down on the gas. He rounded to the right, heading straight for the highway.

Kurt and Blaine watched them until they turned that final corner, the neighborhood getting quieter, the house behind them seeming bigger. Then, with a flick of a signal and the turn of a wheel, just like that, they were gone.