Summary: It's been years since high school graduation, and Kurt and Blaine are living the lives of their dreams in New York City alongside their best friends, Nick and Jeff. Car racing behind them, they're working towards the future - Kurt and Jeff at NYADA, Blaine and Nick at NYU. But soon after moving from their tiny apartments to a bigger loft, bits and pieces of Ohio start to weed their way in to their lives - along with some New York grown angst, causing rifts that hopping behind the wheel of a Mustang might not be able to solve.

"One grande nonfat mocha …"

"That's me!" Kurt called, reaching over the heads in front of him and grabbing his coffee.

"… and a tall black, one cream one sugar, with a blueberry muffin."

"That one's mine." Nick wrenched his arm through the crowd to snag his cup from the barista, along with the small brown paper bag that had his muffin nestled inside. "Ugh! I wish we could find a bigger place!" he complained. His remark received glares from a handful of people who had no investment in what he was saying, but felt offended by his tone of voice. He followed Kurt to an empty table in the corner by the window where they could watch the rain pound the pavement, cleaning away the grime from the glass.

"Unfortunately, most of the coffee shops on this side of town are about this size," Kurt commented, setting his cup down and grabbing an extra chair from a nearby table. "I know it's crowded, but I think we're out of luck."

"I'm not talking about the coffee shop, Kurt!" Nick groaned, putting down his suitcase and landing heavily in his seat. "I'm talking about our apartment! It's tiny! If we had a bigger place, then Jeff could dance at home. We need more space to move around."

"More room to move?" Kurt opened the lid to his coffee and took a deep breath in, sighing in contentment at the sweet scent of chocolate mixed with the strong jolt of Arabica he needed to fuel his day. "So what you're saying is you guys ran out of places to have sex, right?"

Nick threw Kurt a pointed look, glancing nervously around to see if anyone took notice.

"No. I mean we're spending all of our spare time at the dance studio at NYADA. It would be nice to live somewhere with enough floor space where Jeff could practice at home so we're not riding the subway back and forth at one in the morning."

"An apartment with that much space would cost a small fortune. Trust me. The idea has crossed my mind many, MANY times."

"Really?" Nick opened the crinkled top to his brown paper bag, shoved his nose inside, and took a sniff that caved the sides in.

"Yeah. Your place is tiny and you have a corner unit. We don't. Ours is microscopic compared to yours." Kurt opened a browser on his phone and pulled up the classifieds. Space wasn't the only issue for Kurt. After last summer's temperatures hit triple digits and stayed there, Kurt had declared himself done with their apartment. But when several exhaustive searches turned up nothing they could afford, he'd come to the conclusion that finding a new place within their budgets close enough to school to make the commute worthwhile might be a pipe dream.

"I have to admit that it's nice though, hanging out at NYADA after hours. It's quiet, it's air conditioned in the summer, and George the janitor has been helping me with my homework."

Kurt snapped his head up. "Your law homework?"

"Yeah. He majored in criminal law. At one time, he was one of the foremost attorneys in the country! Six figure salary! But he gave it up to be a janitor."

Kurt raised a skeptical eyebrow.

Nick shook his head. "I Googled him. He's legit."

"But why in the world would he do that? Give up a career and all that money to plunge toilets and mop floors?""

"Because he wasn't happy. He didn't want a career in law. His dad wanted him to. He wanted to work in theater, but he said he wasn't any good. Had two left feet and couldn't carry a tune in a bucket – his words. Working at NYADA was the compromise. He says it's like going to the Met every day for free, so the decision was easy."

Kurt laughed and went back to the ads. "Only in New York."

"I guess." Nick stared out the window, focused on the people running back and forth trying to avoid the rain. There were a handful of commuters in dark coats and rain boots speed walking from bus stop to bus stop to subway terminal. But mixed among them were the tourists meandering slowly on their way to wherever, huge smiles on their faces as if getting caught in a New York rainstorm was exactly what they had hoped for. He spotted one couple coming off a bus hand-in-hand, beaming at one another, obviously in love.

Probably honeymooners, he thought, adverting his eyes when they stopped at the curb and started to kiss.

New York was for lovers. It was written everywhere. It was one of the reasons why he fell in love with the city the moment he got there. He and Jeff were so much in love, it hurt. This was definitely where they were meant to be.

Or so he thought …

"Hey. Hey, Nick." Kurt's concerned voice and the touch of his hand pulled Nick's eyes from the window. "What's going on with you? You've been in such a funk lately."

"I … I don't know." Nick looked down into his cooling cup of coffee, avoiding Kurt's eyes. His fears and doubts were stupid. He knew they were. But if he saw Kurt looking at him with worry, he'd unload everything. And there were things going on in his head he wasn't prepared to admit to right now.

Though, if reassurance was something he felt he needed (and it was) there was no better source for that than Kurt, if for no other reason than he and Jeff went to school together.

If there was something Nick didn't know, Kurt would.

"I just think maybe Jeff's getting a little tired of having me hang around all the time, you know? At school?"

Kurt's worried eyes widened with confusion.

"I mean," Nick tried to clarify, "that's kind of his world, and maybe I shouldn't interfere?"

Kurt's eyes became wider until they took up a good portion of his face, and Nick backpedaled.

"I don't know. Forget that. What I mean is, it would be nice to just ... stay in."

"Why in the world do you think Jeff's getting tired of you!?" Kurt barked, attracting the attention from diners at nearby tables that Nick was trying so hard to avoid. "From what we hear through the walls, you guys don't ever get tired!"

Nick's cheeks turned the color of a brand spanking new fire truck, polish and all. "Kurt!"

"And," Kurt continued, "do you know how embarrassing it is to walk to school every day with Jeff and his incredible hard-on!? Seriously, Nick! It's like every morning!"

"Kurt!"

"I'm not kidding! At this rate, you're going to have to buy that thing its own MetroCard!"

"Alright, alright! I get the picture! But, you know, if we're talking about erections, going to school with your boyfriend isn't much better!" Nick argued, leaning across the table and whisper-scolding through clenched teeth, praying he could stop the current discussion before they gathered an actual crowd. "If you guys aren't going to stop with the early morning shower bjs, then you may want to consider asking Blaine to change the cut of his jeans … or start wearing slacks. WITH underwear!"

That worked.

"Touche." Kurt returned to the listings on his phone, scrolling past ads he'd read so many times, he had them memorized. There wasn't going to be anything new, he told himself. Not since last week. Blaine had offered to up his contribution on his portion of the housing costs so they could widen their search parameters, but Kurt refused. He didn't want Blaine carrying the financial weight, regardless of how large his trust fund was, or how much profit he made off selling his house. Besides, Kurt had to be realistic. Considering what the job market was like in the arts, it would be nice to have a hefty nest egg to rely on.

Kurt bit his lip at his own line of thinking - talking about their finances as if they were an old married couple.

As if that nest egg was theirs and not just Blaine's.

Kurt tried not to think of it as theirs, but it got hard when Blaine constantly referred to it like that.

Their savings.

Their money.

Put aside for their life. Their future.

Kurt was a hopeless romantic. Had been all his life. He loved Blaine heart and soul, saw them spending the rest of their lives together. But he wasn't naïve. Unfortunately, things do happen. He didn't think they would happen to them. They were such a clear-headed and balanced couple. But they could. So Kurt started a nest egg of his own, and contributed to their savings as much as he could. He still flipped cars from time to time. He'd made quite a name for himself in Ohio, so when he went back to visit, he had a list of people willing to wait months for him to get their ride up on a lift and give it an overhaul. Plus, he had customers who were loyal to him, who drove up to New York just for an hour of his time. On a good weekend, he could come home from a trip to see his dad with a cool ten grand in his pocket.

Not too shabby for a side gig … a legal one.

He'd almost convinced himself to open up a shop in New York, but even with the high demand, the price of rent and the time commitment didn't outweigh the potential profits.

Besides, he didn't want to be known as an auto tuner.

He wanted to be a Broadway star.

But he didn't hang up his coveralls completely. It was good to have something to fall back on. And with high performance race cars always in demand, he could have a steady source of income. Though, for the price of some of these shoebox apartments, it might be cheaper, and more lucrative, to open up a shop and live above it because damn! How the hell did college kids move to New York and survive without humongous trust funds?

He had no idea. Television definitely didn't prepare him for this.

He was about to exit out of the browser and pull up the Variety! website when he stumbled on an ad tucked at the bitter end that looked interesting. The picture had originally turned him off. He thought it was another bodega for rent. But after a third read, he felt the slow burn of excitement flutter like butterflies all over his entire body.

"Nick, when are you due back at the office?"

"In about …" Nick looked at his own phone clock and sighed the sigh of a man about to surrender himself to a long afternoon of dull research, even duller coffee runs, and chalking it up to experience "… thirty minutes. Then I'm off at four. Why?"

Kurt shared the listing to Nick's phone, then clicked the hyperlink to dial the realtor's number.

"What are your feelings about Bushwick?"

"I don't think I have any." Nick opened the listing Kurt sent him and read through it. His eyes went wide, a smile spreading his lips despite the promise of a painstaking afternoon. "But I'm beginning to have some."

"Bushwick? What the hell's in Bushwick?" Blaine laughed, undoing the buttons on Kurt's jacket and snaking his hand inside. He needed this closeness, needed to feel his boyfriend after a long day without him.

He was also freezing his ass off and hoping he could leech some of Kurt's never-ending warmth so he could feel his fingers again.

Kurt shifted in his seat, moving closer and putting a hand over Blaine's to help keep him toasty. He wasn't a big fan of P.D.A. on the subway, but it was so crowded at this hour, no one was paying any attention.

"A big ass loft, that's what," Kurt said, thrusting his phone into Blaine's view. "Big enough for you, me, our friends, our stuff, your ego …"

"Nonsense. Nothing's that big." Blaine took the phone, the screen loaded to a slideshow of pictures showing every inch of the loft in question, plus a floor plan and a list of amenities. Kurt and Nick had taken the liberty of submitting a pre-qualification application, and with help from Nick's legal and financial expertise, they'd been provisionally approved. All they needed was to tour the place with their boyfriends and get the final okay from the realtor.

But as far as Kurt and Nick were concerned, they were in love.

"That definitely looks big enough for all our stuff. Hell, I could probably park my Mustang in there and we'd never bump into it! But why do we need to move to a new place?" Blaine had no objections to moving. He agreed they needed more space, and yesterday. But he enjoyed giving his excited boyfriend a hard time.

It was like foreplay to him.

"Well, aside from the things I've already mentioned - more space, less per month in rent, our own washer and dryer, living with our best friends in the world - I have two words for you: air conditioning."

"What? You don't like sleeping in the kitchen on hot summer nights with every window in the place open?"

"No."

"Not gonna miss that one little bit?"

"Not a bit."

"Too bad, because that is literally my favorite thing about living in the apartment we have now."

"And yet, I still manage to love you."

"Go figure. Have Nick and Jeff seen it yet?"

"They're supposed to meet us." Kurt scrolled through the text conversation he'd been having with Nick since Nick left his internship to pick up his boyfriend. "The last I heard from him is that he and Jeff had met up and they were heading out."

"Give or take five minutes in the coat closet for a little hanky panky," Blaine joked. "Or should I say an hour? If they find a place with a lock on the door, we might not seem them till midnight!"

Kurt wanted to rebut in defense of his friends, but Blaine was probably right. If there was a couple in this city that had more sex than Kurt and Blaine, it was Nick and Jeff.

Kurt knew because he heard most of it first-hand.

"I thought you guys said this was a loft?" Jeff wandered through the kitchen, opening cabinet doors and peeking inside, looking for what, no one knew. "When does a loft have bedrooms?"

"According to the website, it's a conversion," Kurt replied.

"Meaning?"

"Meaning they had to knock down the wall between a loft and a two bedroom apartment, and since it was too complicated to replace, they just left it. Something about the plumbing. They gutted the extra kitchen, renovated the bathroom and …"

"And created this enormous airplane hangar of an apartment," Blaine finished.

"A-ha. And it's two hundred dollars less a month than both our old apartments combined," Nick said.

"That's because we'll be living in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan," Jeff pointed out.

"But our rent is coming up in a week," Blaine mentioned, circling the place for a second time. At this rate, they won't need gym memberships. Then could just jog around their apartment. "I don't want us all paying double. If we say yes to this place, when would we be able to move in?"

"Like, now," Nick said. "We've been talking to the realtor all afternoon. She has the keys and she's bringing them down."

"I thought you guys said our approval was provisional," Jeff said.

"It took us close to five days to get the keys to our last place. Why are they so eager to rent this place?" Blaine asked.

"Technically, this is a historic building. The owners are filing to make it official, but in the meantime, there's a developer trying to buy it out and turn it into an IHOP or something. They need to have all the apartments filled by the end of the month to make their case that it's still viable as a living space while they wait on certification. They've apparently had tons of nibbles, but no follow throughs."

"And they're desperate. They're trying to fight off gentrification."

"And they're going to do that by renting the biggest space I've ever seen at a steal to four white gay guys?" Jeff asked.

"Hey, I don't make the rules," Kurt said, throwing open the drapes to let the afternoon sunlight in. "I'm just willing to benefit from them … uh … just this once, of course."

"Look at all the room you'll have to dance now, Jeff."

"Yeah," Jeff said, taking a few experimental steps, running the soles of his shoes against the floor one at a time to check the grip of the wood grain. "It's great, but is this really what you want, Nicky?"

"Yes. I mean, you'll be able to practice at home now. No more late night trips back and forth from NYADA."

"Oh, I don't know …" Jeff wrapped his arms around his boyfriend's waist and squeezed, lifting him an inch till their noses touched "... I was starting to enjoy those late night trips. All that alone time together, late nights on the train, catching dinner on the corner … it was kind of romantic."

"But if you practice at home and we don't have to spend time on the train, we'll have more time to do other things late at night."

Jeff frowned, his brow pinched together as he tried to decipher the meaning behind his boyfriend's cryptic words.

"Other romantic things?"

Jeff's brow pinched further, and Nick raised his eyebrows in an attempt to help him. They stood like that, staring at one another, deadlocked and waiting for Jeff to figure it out, until Kurt lost his patience.

"Sex! He means sex, Jeff! If you don't have to travel to NYADA every night, you get to have more sex! Though how that's possible, I have absolutely no damn idea!"

Across the room, Blaine laughed so hard, he stopped breathing.

"Oh!" Jeff smiled like the bear that stole the honey and got away without getting stung. "Okay. I'm sold."

"Great!" Kurt grabbed his phone out of his pocket and looked at the screen. "Oh, that's the realtor. She's on her way up. This is so exciting! I can't wait to start packing up our stuff and moving it in!"

"Hey, would you guys mind if Nicky and I stayed the night?" Jeff asked. "So we can celebrate early?"

"Celebrate?" Kurt shot Blaine a look, but it was no use, as the man had his head in his hands, laughing up a storm. "But there's no electricity! And you guys won't have a bed!"

"Kurt - that is the weirdest thing you have ever said to us."

"Whatever." Kurt pushed open the sliding door. "Just do us a favor and don't baptize our room before we get the chance."

Jeff clapped a hand over his boyfriend's ass, causing him to yelp. Jeff smirked. "We'll do our best."