I own this story, but not its characters, universe, or the Glee TV show. Darn.

Wow. This has been quite a ride. Thank you, all of you, so much! This was really a work for the fans; you kept me writing and the creative juices flowing. I seriously couldn't have done it without you! I hope you enjoy this final episode of 'Trust.' I rather liked writing it. : )

"Then what happened, Daddy?" the wide-eyed ten year old asked from her seat on the living room rug.

Dave scooped her up in a hug, tickling her until she laughed. "After a kiss like that, well, let's just say I wasn't hiding anymore."

"They were still talking about it when I started at McKinley the next year." Overhearing Donna's question, Karis came back into the room. She picked up her nephew from the couch and sat in his place, holding the sleeping boy on her lap. "'Epic' pretty much sums it up."

Kurt ruffled the hair of the toddler zooming past, lost in her own world. John, Karis' husband, swept the baby up and headed upstairs, murmuring about bedtime. "Not that it was easy," Kurt commented, eyes following his brother-in-law. "For either of us."

"Mm," Dave agreed, his expression darkening.

"Uncle Finn didn't hurt you, did he?" Donna asked, worried.

"No, sweetheart. Uncle Finn was happy for us." Eventually. He and Kurt exchanged looks, remembering the long, hard road it had been to get both their families to accept the boys' choice for a boyfriend.

"Aw!" the girl grinned, looking between both her daddies. "High school sweethearts!"

"That's not the whole story, is it?" asked eight year old Henry, not looking up from his puzzle. "You went to different colleges, right?"

Once again surprised by her boy's intelligence, Karis watched as Kurt went to sit by her son, picking up a piece and slotting it into place. Henry grinned and shifted the box closer to him.

"Yeah, we lost touch after high school," Kurt took up the tale. "Dave wanted to get as far from Lima as he could," not surprising, "and none of our top choices matched up. I got turned down for Julliard."

"Barely," Dave emphasized from the couch. "And I still say they were fools to reject you."

Kurt grinned; this was an old gripe, but definitely one that he still enjoyed hearing.

"Still," Kurt continued, unperturbed, "I got into a pretty good school. Double-majored in music and biology, kind of by accident. Turns out I had more of a talent for science than I thought. My professor asked me to help out with his study of the effect of music on botanical development, and, well, my interest grew from there."

"He sang to plants," Dave translated for the younger listeners, with a wicked grin at Kurt.

"Daddy, you didn't!" shrieked the girl, and Kurt nodded.

"Sure did, Donna. Every afternoon, singing in the greenhouse. Though considering how much those ferns flourished, I'd say they were the most appreciative audience I've ever had. Well, second-most…" He shot Dave a smoldering look, making the other man choke on his drink. Kurt's eyebrows twitched, and Karis could almost hear him thinking, One point for me, behind his evil grin.

"Got my name in Science magazine as an undergrad – that's good, kids, try to look impressed," he said, dryly, deftly distracting Donna from her puzzled contemplation of the men's nonverbal conversation. "Opened the doors for me in a direction I'd never anticipated. Which was really good, because the economy stank and there was no market for music majors that didn't involve the occasional street corner. Went on to graduate and post graduate courses, got my doctorate, and eventually stumbled into running my own lab." Henry grinned, slotting another piece into place.

"You fibber!" Karis laughed, tossing a pillow at Kurt's head. He caught the missile and deftly returned it, nearly missing her outstretched hand. She saved it before it could smack Seth, asleep in her lap. Plumping the pillow under her arm – which was heavily weighted with little boy – she rolled her eyes. "You sweated more blood for that promotion than you ever did for a show."

"Not so," Dave countered. "I think he sweated plenty of blood when he was practicing for your wedding, Kar'."

She grinned. "You mean the song he sang straight at you?"

"Yep."

"And you with a ring box halfway out of your pocket when he asked?"

"Yep." Dave looked over at Kurt, grinning fondly. "Great minds think alike, don't they?"

"So what happened next, Daddy?" begged Donna, pulling on his sleeve.

"Well, after a suitably long engagement…"

"No! To you! College!"

Karis' eyes sparkled as her brother melted to his daughter's appealing gaze. He always did have that fatal soft-spot for blue eyes.

"I kicked around for a year, taking generals and getting in trouble. Then I took a world literature course that grabbed my attention with both hands and wouldn't let go. I declared my major, got my bachelor's in Literature, and got a job teaching, with some coaching on the side."

"How'd you meet back up with Uncle Kurt?" Henry asked, from where he was head-down in the puzzle-pile, pretending he didn't care about what the adults were saying.

Karis knew her son too well, though. "It was while your dad and I were courting," she told him. "We rented a ski lodge for a week and needed a couple more people to help spread costs around, so we invited Dave."

"Yeah, and then abandoned me," Dave complained good-naturedly. "Can you believe your mom made me ski alone?" Not getting a response from Henry, he turned to Donna. "Can you believe that?"

She giggled and nodded, and Dave threw up his hands. "I get no sympathy."

"How about you, Kurt?" asked John, rejoining them. Karis scooted over so her husband could sit down beside her. "Mandy's asleep," he answered her quiet inquiry. "So how about it, Kurt? How'd you wind up at Vail?"

"Conference," Kurt answered, turning a puzzle piece this way and that, trying to figure out where it fit. "Last-minute thing. I was just an intern at the time and wouldn't have been able to go except that one of the assistants got sick right before they left. Doc said I could have her seat."

"So I'm sitting at this ba- club," Dave said, with a sideways glance at the prepubescent population of the living room, "and there's some bad amateur karaoke happening on stage, so I'm pretty much tuning it out when an angel takes the mike." He and Kurt shared a remembering glance. "He does three songs, and by the time he's through, I'm practically sitting on the stage. We talked until six AM, and by then, I knew he was my One."

"Took a bit longer to convince me," admitted Kurt, ruefully.

John laughed at that. "Can't have taken much longer, since you were proposing at our wedding two months later."

Kurt came to stand behind Dave, hugging him around the shoulders. "Yes, well, no one ever said I was slow once I made up my mind."

"Nope," agreed Dave, tilting his head back for a kiss. Henry groaned and hid his eyes, but stars-in-her-eyes Donna watched with a grin on her face.

"Alright, bedtime, Punkinhead," Dave said, sweeping his giggling daughter up under one arm. Kurt reclaimed four year old Seth from Karis; the sleeping boy woke up just enough to bury his nose in the curve of his daddy's neck, snuggling deeper into sleep.

Karis and John saw them to their car. Pulling her brother aside while Kurt negotiated Seth into his booster seat, Karis kissed his cheek. "You're a great dad, you know that, right?" she said. "Those kids are so lucky to have you and Kurt as their parents."

He watched his family, smiling. Kurt was checking buckles and Donna was nodding off in the backseat, still protesting that she wasn't sleepy. "Yep," he answered. "I don't know what I'd do without them. I love 'em too much." All three of them, was unspoken, but Karis heard it just the same.

"Oh, hey," John suddenly thought of something. "I almost forgot – tell Kurt we've got tickets to his concert opening night."

"And closing night, too," Karis put in. "He puts on the best shows, it's worth seeing twice." She thought for a second. "And it's always great to see you, too, Davey."

"Gee, thanks," he answered, mock-sarcastically. "I'll be sure to tell him. He's been nervous about the choir – third year is always the hardest, he says."

John snorted. "Right. It'll be perfect, as usual. I'm glad he's still singing, though. It'd be a shame to lose all that talent to the scientific world."

Karis gave her husband an odd look.

He shrugged. "What?"

Dave rolled his eyes as Karis replied, "Only you, John…"

"G'night!" Dave called, opening the car door and sliding behind the wheel. Karis and John stood in the doorway, waving their goodbyes, before finally going inside to tuck Henry into bed.

"I don't think I've ever heard your brother be so candid before," John commented that night as he and Karis prepared for bed. "I had no idea how hard it was for him. For them," he amended. "Kurt's had a hell of a time of it, too."

Karis frowned into the darkness. "They didn't tell the half of it. It got… bad, at McKinley. For both of them, but it was worse for Dave. If it hadn't been for Kurt…" she trailed off, thinking of all the dark nights she'd held her brother's hand, and, more often, the nights when he'd cranked his stereo up so loud that no one could hear him.

"Still," John murmured, "There was Robert, in our year." Karis nodded, remembering. Robert was a skinny kid who'd come out in their sophomore year. And, incredibly enough, no one had minded. "Can't say for sure, but I think those two might've done more than they credit themselves for."

Karis rolled her eyes to the dark ceiling and turned over, cuddling him. "And maybe it was just Robert's winning personality that did it. This isn't TV, John, things don't happen that way in real life."

"Sure they do," he replied, hugging her body close to his and stealing a kiss. "We just don't pay enough attention to notice."

Then then he made sure that she was paying attention and noticed everything.

~~~glee~~~

Kurt can Dave crawled into their own bed, having settled both kids into dreamland. "Our family's pretty cool, you know that?" Kurt murmured.

Dave nodded, brushing Kurt's longish hair back behind his ear and kissing him softly. Even after eleven years of marriage, he still loved him as much as the day he'd chosen Kurt above his own petty reputation. "Karis is a treasure. And John's a cool dude, too."

"I'm so lucky," Kurt whispered, his breath hot on Dave's ear.

"No luckier than me," Dave answered, pulling his love into his arms.

~~~glee~~~

The night was dark and the sky cloudy. The country slept.

But on one street, in one house, in one dark room, a quiet murmuring broke the silence.

"I love you."

A hand slid across bare flesh, lips finding their mate in the shadows.

"I love you, too. Forever."