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It's exciting. New York is exciting.
That's actually the only thing that Kurt can think for the first day that he's at AMDA, because he's bursting with excitement and orientation starts tomorrow and sweet Jesus he is at AMDA. Rachel is roughly seven minutes away at Juilliard, but it's not like that was ever in question. Kurt isn't like Rachel, okay? He's dreamed about New York, but he had never dared to hope about it.
And now he's in New York. He's in New York with one of his best friends and his boyfriend (oh god, he's still not over that. boyfriend!) and, for some reason, Puckerman because he was dating Rachel and he wanted out of Lima and it's kind of weird but Kurt is. He's excited, has he said excited yet? Because he is so excited. New York! Blaine had asked if he was mad about the Juilliard thing, but actually he's not. He thinks that the Musical Theatre program at AMDA will be good for him, plus he gets to go to Los Angeles for a semester so, you know. It's a pretty sweet deal.
Besides, Kurt has pretty much everyone he likes nearby. Mercedes is at the opposite AMDA campus and Kurt misses her like burning, but there's such a thing as Skype and just. Everything is awesome.
It's once they finally get into the swing of things and Kurt and Blaine are seeing each other kind of regularly that Kurt finally feels a little less awestruck about his life. He's making friends and doing good in his classes and Blaine seems happy too. It's just. Well. Kurt's not jealous or anything but.
Ryan Evans, commonly called Ryan by Blaine, has taken Blaine under his wing and—look, fine. Fine, Kurt is jealous because oh man. Rachel gave Kurt the scoop on Ryan and basically he's perfect. Adonis in gay theatre form. Also he's apparently Sam's cousin or something? That's what Blaine said at least, and Sam's never mentioned him but it's not like Kurt ever had a heart-to-heart with Sam about his extended family. He gets Mercedes to ask Sam about Ryan and Sam emails him, telling Kurt that yeah, Ryan is his cousin and Sam can put them in touch if Kurt wants.
Sam is too nice, and Kurt doesn't want that at all. He wants Ryan to stay away from his man and potentially break a leg. Or catch mono.
Except then Blaine brings Ryan over to one of their hang-out sessions with Puck and Rachel and some of the friends they've made and wow. Kurt actually cannot hate him at all. He's nice and funny and gorgeous and impeccably dressed and Kurt maybe has the tiniest crush on him. This is not good. This is really not good, because Blaine is mooning over Ryan too and oh do they have a bad case of crushing. What are you supposed to do when things like this happen? Cosmo doesn't give tips on this.
Kurt doesn't think about it just then, because Ryan is telling Kurt about seeing Wicked in the Gershwin Theatre with Kristen Chenoweth and Idina Menzel and Kurt is actually so jealous he can't even consider having a crush on him. Ryan says that they should get together sometime and talk musicals and Kurt is actually in awe of the way that Ryan is just easy in himself. He actually does not give a fuck about being a stereotype and he behaves like nothing can hurt him. Kurt thinks that if he had to embark into the weird waters of love triangles or whatever, then it would have to be Ryan Evans.
He mulls that over in his mind over the next week of classes and doesn't mention it to Blaine, although they text a lot. Actually he doesn't bring it up at all, Blaine does.
"Hey," Blaine says when Kurt picks up, "Hey, Kurt. You know I love you, right?"
"You transferred to McKinley to be with me, you moved to New York with me. Yes, I know you love me."
"Ok," Blaine lets out a breath, "so you won't be mad when I say I have crush on Ryan Evans?"
There's not really a good answer to that, so Kurt just opens his mouth and then closes it again. He shuts his eyes and swallows.
"Only if you're not mad that I have a crush on him too."
It's whispered, and Kurt's not sure that Blaine's heard until there's a slight shift.
Then, quiet as anything: "I could never be mad at you for that."
Kurt breathes, and remembers that he is madly in love with this boy and nothing could change that ever. He smiles, although Blaine can't see it, and feels a lot better than he has in the past week. He opens his eyes again and shift to lie back on his bed.
"So what do we do about this? Do we just treat it like a celebrity crush?"
On the other end of the line, Blaine hums like he's considering something, and Kurt's heart hammers against his ribs like it does before performances. He's nervous, but exactly what he's nervous about isn't entirely clear. Kurt breathes in and out, trying to get his heart to clam down. It feels like it'll pound right out of his chest.
"Kurt, answer one question for me: is your crush like a celebrity crush, or do you think that you and Ryan could have something?"
"I," Kurt swallows, "I think we could have something, but I would never do that to you."
"What if it was the both of us?"
That's what Kurt's been afraid of, or maybe hoping for. He doesn't know, because suddenly everything feels fragile and small and delicate like glass. Kurt is afraid to breathe, in case he accidentally breaks everything that he has going for him and ruins it all. It's not that he doesn't trust Blaine, doesn't know that what they have is good. He loves Blaine, loves him with everything he has, but suddenly he wants everything he can have and Kurt wonders if that's asking for too much. If it's greedy. He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment before opening them again. Fuck if it's greedy, Kurt deserves it.
"Do you really think we can do this, Blaine?"
"Hey," Blaine says, and Kurt can hear the smile through the phone, "courage."
It makes Kurt laugh, a little hysterical, because this is so different from standing up to some bullies but Kurt supposes that it takes courage too. Whenever something is different it takes courage to do it, and Kurt has that. He and Blaine can take on anything, even this.
"Okay," Kurt laughs, "how are we doing this?"
Blaine gave a delighted whoop and then they're planning how to talk to Ryan, how to make him see that they're serious and they'd like to try this. They both nix the musical idea (partly because the only song about threesomes either of them can come up with is Three-Way) and instead settle on asking him out to dinner and hoping for the best.
The planning session may have involved a frantic call to Santana, who peeled herself away from Brittany for long enough to give them some advice. It also involved a somewhat desperate email to Sam asking what kind of place they (as poor college students) should take Ryan on a date. Sam responded with a email that was mostly full of "wtf you're BOTH trying to woo ryan???" and then sent another an hour later saying that Ryan is cool with anything, cheap or not. He apparently only had expensive taste in cookies.
Armed with all of that, Kurt went over to Juilliard to hang with Blaine and Ryan one night. It was mildly weird, knowing that they were going to ask Ryan out, as a unit and Kurt couldn't stop fidgeting with his scarf. Ryan finally caught on after about twenty minutes and looked between the two of them.
"Am I a third wheel here?"
"No," Kurt shakes his head and glances between them, "It's just that. Blaine and I have something we want to ask you, Ryan."
"Okay," Ryan says, leaning back into his seat, "shoot."
"We," Blaine glances at Kurt, "we'd like to know if you would go out to dinner with us this Saturday. Like, on a date and not as friends."
There's a heavy, long silence after that and Ryan doesn't seem appalled by the idea, just a little shocked. Kurt fidgets with his scarf some more, and then Ryan's lips curve slowly up. He leans forward so he's closer to the both of them and Kurt's heart is trying to pound right out of his chest again.
"I have a better idea, Ryan says cheerfully, "how about I cook the both of you dinner this Saturday? By which I actually mean order a pizza or some Chinese take-out and put it on nice plates to pretend like I can cook. Either way, it'd still be a date. I can even light candles, if you want. What do you say?"
Kurt glances over at Blaine and Blaine glances over at Kurt. They both nods and then look back at Ryan, matching smiles on their faces.
"I think," Kurt says, "that we would both like that very much."