Klaine Advent 2018 Day 9: Incident

Dimension seven: Private detectives

There’s no colour. Blaine looks around and everything is in black and white. He woke up in a small bedroom with only a bed, a desk and a closet in it and the lack of colour freaks Blaine out.

Then he opens the closet and the colour is no longer the most shocking thing. His closet is filled with fedoras. For the first time since the apocalypse, Blaine’s glad Kurt’s not here. The rest of his wardrobe is quite snazzy, if Blaine may say so.

He gets dressed and he puts on a long coat and unfortunately, also a fedora. He grabs his bag and he leaves. Time to figure out where he is.

“Ah, you’re up. Time for another day, right?” Blaine hears. David is standing behind him. David’s dress style is similar to Blaine’s and he has a really weird accent. He sounds like those radio narrators on The Legend of Korra, those old school ones.

Suddenly it all makes sense.

Everything’s black and white, people speak like characters from old TV, Blaine’s wearing a fedora… he must be in one of those old private detective movies, a real noir film.

“We gotta find Gilbert, Blaine, cause if we don’t, then his wife might suspect us as well,” David sighs, “Now, we can’t have that, can we?”

“Of course not.”

But Blaine is not going to find that missing person. He’s going to find Kurt.

Blaine’s always imagined that being a private detective would be hard, and he’s right, but being a private detective in a time before the internet existed makes it all worse. He has no idea how to be a detective, but a part of him wants to start his search on the internet.

But there’s no internet.

Blaine’s phone is in his bag, more useless than ever.

He’s luckily a part of a team of detectives working on this case, so him messing up work goes unnoticed (for now). Of course, the others are all Warblers. No matter what dimension he’s in, the Warblers are with him and the New Directions are with Kurt.

Unfortunately, being part of a team also makes it quite difficult to search for Kurt. The others would notice if he suddenly starts searching for another person, so instead of looking for Kurt, he decides on working on his detective skills for now. The Blaine from this dimension is a well-known private detective, but Blaine is not. Blaine had kind of hoped he’s ‘inherit’ the skills from the other versions, because it’d make dimension hopping a lot easier.

Wes and Jeff are in the middle of a discussion when they all hear a knock on the door.

Cautiously, Nick opens it.

An angry looking Rachel Berry is standing in the doorway.

“Detective Berry,” Nick says, “I’d like to say it’s swell to see you, but we both know I don’t like lying.”

The other Warblers laugh. Usually, David would call it a ‘sick burn’, but they’re not in the 2010s.

“We need to talk, Mr. Duvall,” she pushes Nick aside and she enters the office. She greets everyone with a cold nod. “Mr. Sterling, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Montgomery, Mr. Nixon.” Then she turns to Blaine and her face becomes even graver. “And Mr. Anderson.”

“Hello Ra- Ms. Berry,” Blaine says.

“To what do we owe this displeasure?” Trent asks.

“You fellas fine well know why I am here,” Rachel says shortly.

“Yes, and you obviously know our answer, Ms. Berry,” Wes says, “It is still a no.”

“You give nothing about integrity!” Rachel suddenly starts yelling. It sounds kind of funny with this old accent, but Blaine doesn’t want to give her an impression that he’s laughing at her, even though he’s supposed to despise her in this dimension. “All you care about is publicity. At this rate, my team wouldn’t be surprised if you are the ones behind Gilbert’s disappearance, so that you could save the day and be heroes!”

“How dare you!” Trent slams his fists on the table and it rattles the typewriter.

“How can we be sure that the McKinley team isn’t behind Gilbert’s disappearance?” Jeff challenges her.

McKinley team. Kurt must be there somewhere.

“Because we are not power hungry idiots,” Rachel says back, “Again, I won’t be surprised if you are behind this incident.”

Blaine has a plan. He has to meet the others of the McKinley team. He stands up and it has the desired effect: everyone turns to him. “Let’s settle this, fellas,” Blaine says, “How about I join Ms. Berry to the McKinley office so that we can figure it out.”

“That’s spying!” Rachel claims and Blaine finds it ironic that he’s seen as a spy on McKinley, since Kurt was a spy on Dalton when they first met.

“Ms. Berry, I will not copy any of your hard work. You have my word.”

Rachel narrows her eyes, but she must be looking for answers about this rivalry as well, so she says: “Fine.”

Old New York is beautiful. He can’t let it show, because it would make Rachel suspicious, but it’s very hard too hide the amazement. Blaine only wishes he could see it in colour.

That, and he wishes that all these New Yorkers would stop smoking in his face, but it’s a sign of the times.

They enter a building and Blaine follows Rachel to the third floor. “Here it is,” she says and she stops Blaine from entering the office, “One wrong or suspicious word, and you’re out.”

“Of course, Ms. Berry.”

It’s clear that from all the Warblers, Rachel likes him the least, but she lets him enter the office. His appearance shocks some others.

“Calm down, I can explain!” Rachel yells, “I am here to finally unravel the other mystery: are the Dalton private detectives stealing our cases? In order to figure out, I have brought Mr. Anderson with me.”

“Hello,” Blaine takes off his hat. His eyes scan the room, and as expected, Kurt’s sitting behind a desk in the back. He’s not even trying to hide his excitement.

“And how will we do that, Rachel?” Sam asks.

“I have an idea!” Kurt yells, “But I will have to speak to Bl- Mr. Anderson in person.”

The other New Directions members exchange some worried glares, and Blaine has a strange feeling of déjà vu. It’s as if he’s back on the McKinley Air Craft with a confusingly long number. That feels like ages ago.

Mercedes is the one who breaks the silence. “I trust Kurt.”

“We all do,” Brittany reassures her, “But I do not trust Mr. Anderson.”

Kurt stands up. “I can handle myself.”

“Again, I trust Kurt,” Mercedes says, “I trust him to cut of Mr. Anderson’s balls if necessary.”

The others laugh. Santana waves her hand. “Fine.”

Kurt takes Blaine to another floor. It’s some kind of archive.

“Blaine, I don’t ever want to see you wearing a fedora again,” he says and the two of them laugh.

“I am so glad I found you this early in the day,” Blaine says, “I was racking my brain, trying to figure out how to use my apparent detective skills, when suddenly Rachel barges into our office.”

“Now, we only need to find the book, and I think this archive could help us,” Kurt says and he turns on the light. The archive is huge. There are stacks of papers and there are folders with even more papers in them. There are rows and rows of metallic dressers all ordered in alphabetical order. “I think the book must be hidden here. I was looking for the right time to walk out of the office, but then you and Rachel arrived.”

Blaine whistles. “This is going to take days, if not weeks.”

“We can’t stay too long or the others will come to look for us,” Kurt points out.

“Is there some kind of Restricted Section, like in the Harry Potter setting? The book was practically waiting for us,” Blaine asks.

Kurt shakes his head. “I have no idea. I’ve never been here before. I only knew of it because Mike mentioned it several times.”

“Maybe ask Mike?”

“Yeah, what do I ask Mike. ‘Hey Mike, have you seen a magical book lying around?’ I don’t think that will work.”

Blaine looks around again and the archive is just massive. The two of them will never be able to go through all of this in a short time. He tells Kurt that.

Kurt looks lost in thought.

“What?” Blaine asks.

Kurt starts to smile. “You’re right. The two of us will never be able to go through all of this, but we do have The New Directions downstairs.”

“How will we convince them to help us look for a magical book?”

Kurt’s smile widens.

Blaine’s hidden in the hallway that leads to the archive. As expected, he hears Kurt yell.

“He took something from the archive, guys, quick!” he yells. Then, Blaine can hear a lot of footsteps approaching.

“I knew it!” Rachel spits out, “Mr. Anderson cannot be trusted! All those Dalton private detectives are scumbags.”

“What do we do?” Mike asks.

“I don’t know exactly what he stole,” Kurt lies, “It happened all so fast. I suggest we all skim through the archive to see what is missing.”

“Kurt, that is a long shot,” Puck says.

“What choice do we have, Puckerman?” Rachel says, clearly annoyed.

“Come on guys, we know these archives by heart,” Mercedes says, “We can find a missing file easily.”

Blaine watches all the New Directions enter the archive. Kurt’s the last and he winks to Blaine. The others were too caught up, they didn’t even notice Blaine’s (quite terrible) hiding place. Blaine slowly comes out of hiding and he goes to the bathroom. There, he takes a mirror from the wall. He wants to thank whoever created this dimension of naturally hanging mirrors on the wall, not gluing them against it.

Back in the corridor, he uses the mirror so that he can see what’s happening in the archive. It’s a chaos. All the New Directions members are going through the many stacks and metallic dressers. Kurt’s looking as well.

Blaine really hopes this works. As Puck put it, it is a long shot.

After half an hour of waiting, Blaine sees that Brittany is holding the book. He takes the phone out of his bag. It isn’t useless after all, because Blaine uses it to play his ringtone. In 2014, everyone recognizes the most-used ringtones, but in this time period, only Kurt does. It’s a sign that someone has the book.

“Hey Brittany, can you give me the book?” Blaine hears Kurt. In the reflection he can see that Brittany hands it over without question. They all trust each other here. “Thanks.”

“Kurt, where are you going?” Tina asks.

“I’m going to see if Mr. Anderson is still in the building. You never know.” It technically isn’t a lie.

In the reflection, Tina looks a bit skeptical, but she let’s Kurt go.

Kurt and Blaine return the mirror to the bathroom and they open the book. There are two shapes and Blaine tries not to laugh when he sees that one is shaped like a fedora. “Can’t get rid of this.”

The fedora is bigger than the shape, but Blaine puts it on the page anyway. It shrinks before it disappears.

Kurt’s looking at the shape of his object. “Are you kidding me?”

“You recognise it?”

“Yeah,” Kurt doesn’t elaborate. Instead he motions for Blaine to follow him. They move to the office on the third floor. Kurt goes to his desk and he rummages through some of the drawers. He holds up an expensive looking pen. “Good thing I used it this morning, otherwise I wouldn’t have known this pen.”

“Quick, put it on the page before the others go looking for you,” Blaine says.

“Yeah, yeah…”

Kurt puts the pen on the page. It really is a beautiful pen. It also disappears into the page. By now they know the drill, so they’re not surprised by the new word.

“Artist,” Blaine reads out loud, “That sounds fun.”