Ohio State Penitentiary, 1:30 PM, August 21st.
Blaine was lying on his cot, staring up at the ceiling and just remembering. Kurt hadn't warmed up to him at first, yes, but it had eventually changed. He remembered giggling like a teenager when they cooked dinner together and Kurt threw flour at him. The way Kurt had held Blaine's hands in his and asked him about his childhood dreams, one of his thumbs slowly stroking over Blaine's knuckles. Hell, even the way Puck had yelled at them to 'keep their sappy shit in the bedroom' made him smile.
They hadn't always been like that. There was a start to things of course.
"And that is why I think Lady Gaga is a better artist than Katy Perry," Kurt finished taking another hand of popcorn and popping the pieces into his mouth. They were sitting on the couch watching a movie Blaine hadn't remembered the name of, discussing music and female artists and other general stuff.
Much to their mutual surprise, or Blaine's, because Kurt already knew where Blaine came from due to the background check he'd done, they both grew up in Ohio, not 2 hours away from each other. Kurt seemed amazingly worldly for someone coming from Lima and seemed to dislike the city very much. Blaine was indifferent about Westerville, as he hadn't seen the place in over 10 years.
The movie was playing in the background, long forgotten as their chatter continued.
"We'll agree to disagree then. I prefer Katy, you prefer Gaga," Blaine said and Kurt sighed but nodded, adjusting himself to sink further into Blaine's comfortable dark brown couch. "So, other than your fanaticism about Lady Gaga and healthy cooking, and your fascination with fashion, what is there to know about Kurt Hummel?" Blaine said it teasingly but Kurt looked up sharply, his eyes calculating.
"Why should I tell you?" he spoke and Blaine frowned at the hostile tone, fiddling with the blanket that covered his lap. He felt uneasy at Kurt's reaction.
"You don't have to, but don't you think that it'd help us all get along? We do have to spend at least 4 months together. I'd like us to be a little more than complete strangers. I'm also interested in how you came to be like me." A thief.
An awkward silence followed Blaine's words, only the movie still playing on the TV filling the room with sound. Blaine looked down at his hands, stopping their movements and waiting for Kurt to say something. When he did, it shocked Blaine.
"When I was 16, my dad ended up in the hospital in a coma due to a heart attack," He began. "The medical bills were steep and they kept coming. My mom passed away when I was 8, so I didn't really have anyone to help me. I'd always been good with numbers in school and computers just seemed to like me. It was only a matter of time before I found out ways to hack people and steal from their bank accounts. It was surprisingly easy." Kurt's voice seemed to stutter a little at the end.
"My dad- he passed away in the hospital. He'd gone into cardiac arrest again, shortly after I'd stolen enough money to pay the bills and future bills for medication and the like. I had to spend the money meant for his health, on his funeral."
Blaine felt sick.
"I- I'm sorry," he muttered softly, "I wouldn't have asked if-"
"Stop that right now." Kurt scowled and Blaine met his eyes. They seemed stormy and darker than their usual blue. "You didn't know, you were curious, it happens. After it all went downhill I just kept stealing. It was easier than working. I finished high school while living with my dad's girlfriend and her son and moved to New York right after." He took a sip from his glass of water on the small side table next to the couch. "So how about you Anderson? You got any skeletons in your closet? Except the whole criminal thing?" The silent 'you got anything happen to you, like this?' hung in the air.
Blaine saw the curiosity plain on Kurt's face, but saw the edge of tension in his facial muscles. He accepted the change of focus, unwilling to extend the awkwardness any further and decided not to push for any more info.
For now.
"I got kicked out when I was 15, because my parents couldn't accept my sexuality. My brother took me in." He said bluntly, not planning on telling Kurt everything. Hell, he probably already knew this anyways. "Cooper, is a little eccentric. Or was at least, the last time I saw him was 6 years ago, right before he became a fugitive and left. I was alone after that, decided to become a thief like him."
He hadn't told any of the people who were a part of this heist that he was gay. He'd told them the general 'got kicked out, lived with brother' but he'd never given them the entire story. Kurt didn't seem to care.
The man hummed and let his head fall back, his neck resting on the back of the couch and Blaine gulped at the exposed pale skin. Blaine had carefully observed Kurt, of course. The man bounced around the apartment doing various things and it had disrupted Blaine's concentration multiple times. His eyes had followed Kurt's movements and taken in all that Kurt dared to subconsciously show.
Basically, Blaine checked him out. A lot.
His hands, that seemed so soft yet strong, going through the motions of pouring himself a glass of soymilk. His legs, splayed out on the couch as he read a book, his tongue sticking out a little in concentration. His voice, clear and slightly higher than he was used to, rambling off the security details he'd managed to scavenge from the pictures Blaine had taken of the cameras and equipment. His eyes, as they drifted over Blaine's face before returning to the stove and the vegetables he was cooking.
They were closed now, long eyelashes seemingly dusting his cheeks as he breathed slowly, evenly. The awkward conversation seemed eons ago now, the pleasant silence between them following Blaine's disclosure giving an easy comfortable air. There was a lot Blaine wanted to say. How sorry he was for bringing up Kurt's past, if he still had contact with the people he'd lived with in Lima, if he'd gone to college in New York, if he'd ever been caught. He refrained.
Blaine looked away and relaxed, the tension leaving his shoulders. He hadn't noticed how high sprung he'd been talking to Kurt, asking him things and receiving an answer after the few times they'd actually exchanged words. He leaned back against the couch, mimicking Kurt's movements and closing his eyes, enjoying the low murmur of the TV in the background and the sound of his own breathing.
"I know you were looking."
Blaine immediately tensed up again, sitting up from his slouched position and turning his surprised eyes on the now smirking man beside him.
"I- What?" he feigned innocence and flushed and Kurt cracked an eye open, sweeping it over Blaine, making him squirm.
"Don't act innocent, you're kind of obvious." And with that Kurt opened his eyes fully, got up and walked off towards his room. "I looked back, just so you know." Blaine sat there on the couch, gaping at his retreating frame and scrambling for words. He never got the chance to say anything as the door closed behind Kurt, leaving him to his thoughts.
He looked down at the half empty popcorn bowl and the rapidly cooling spot where Kurt had sat only a few seconds ago. He'd looked back. Kurt had looked back. Blaine's silent observing had been noticed and returned and why was this causing Blaine to feel so thrilled?
He resolved to forget about it for the moment, taking a piece of popcorn and turning to the TV. Someone was kissing someone else on screen and he didn't know their names or really cared that he didn't. The conversation with Kurt was still fresh, the words lingering in the air around him. Kurt had checked him out too.
And maybe, just maybe, Blaine's heart beat a little faster in excitement.
Ohio State Penitentiary, 11:45 PM, August 28th.
The same guard that took him from his cell every week stood impatiently before him, waiting for Blaine to get ready. There wasn't much he could do to do so, but he liked annoying the guards.
His thoughts drifted back to Cooper, who had been in this situation too, years ago. He understood Cooper's need to get away from a place like this. The wall were stifling, the food horrible and the company even worse.
The only thing Blaine had to look forward to was that familiar head of brown hair and the notepad that allowed him to tell about his life story and reminisce about better times.
A smile broke out on his face as the guard roughly put on his cuffs, the cold metal a welcome weight on Blaine's wrists. It kept him grounded, just like the gate that closed behind him every time he returned from the short conversations. It told him that this was what he'd been avoiding. This was his motivation for not getting caught. And even if he was in jail now and he'd have to supposedly stay here for 20 years, he knew he wouldn't be here for long.
The smile turned into a smirk.
They walked down the row of cells, some empty some having one or two people lounging around in it. People kept clear of him when they found out he could defend himself sufficiently. And by sufficiently they meant that they'd found out Blaine liked to work out in his private gym, something he'd built attached to his house in Spain and had been a pretty decent boxer.
The other inmates didn't mess with him after he'd beat up one after they tried to get to him in the showers.
The buzzer above the door sounded and Blaine walked through, the guard cuffing him to the chair before walking off to the coffee machine. This guard, named Will, always got him a coffee and Blaine was grateful of that, even if the coffee in his place was pretty much shit. He appreciated the gesture.
People started streaming into the room as the other inmates were cuffed to their seats, minimizing their movements. Blaine's eyes were trained on the door, waiting for the familiar tall man to walk in with his bag clutched in his arms and his clothes in slight disarray due to the security checks.
He took a sip of the disgusting coffee and cleared his throat, waiting for the arrivals to get seated. They chattered animatedly, joyful sounds filling the room. He breathed deeply as a woman and child entered the room, the child immediately jumping on one of the inmates' laps, hugging him enthusiastically.
"If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why oh why can't I?" he muttered casting his eyes down to gaze at the brown substance in the white cup clutched between his fingers.
"E.Y. Harburg, right?" Blaine didn't look up, just smiled into the cup as he tilted it to his lips, pausing only to affirm the statement. "Then you should know that 'The bluebird carries the sky on it's back.'"
"Thoreau." Blaine looked up at his companion, his eyes dwelling on the familiar face.
"Yes," Carl answered smiling at Blaine's intense stare and the curly haired criminal smiled back. "How has your week been?"
"It's been okay so far," Blaine spoke, setting the cup down and folding his hands on the table. "No inmates have bothered me, the food still sucks and the entertainment is lousy, but I get by." Carl hummed in acknowledgment.
"I got permission to start recording our interview sessions, because my hand keeps cramping so much and I don't want to miss anything." Blaine tilted his head to the side at the unfamiliar item now on the table. "If you're not comfortable with me recording our conversation I'll refrain."
"No, go right ahead. If you can remember my story better with that, I see no problem."
Carl nodded and activated the small recording device, putting it between them at the center of the table, a red light flickering on and off.
Abandoned warehouse, Dijkstraat, Aartselaar, Belgium. 10 miles outside of Antwerp.
"So have you figured out something for the magnetic field behind the gate yet?" Blaine inquired. They were 5 weeks in now, time slowly ticking down to the day they would leave Belgium as multi-millionaires. Blaine had finally understood why Sue had asked him for this job. The others were far more specialized in their craft than Blaine was, but they'd never robbed anything of this scale. Blaine was there because of the experience, his general knowledge and his ability to get in without suspicion.
"I've been toying around with magnetic plates and aluminum but haven't found a definite way to move the field," Puck answered. "The density of the metal is really important, haven't figured out how thick it has to be for me to be able to get it on the other side of the vault."
"And the sensors?"
Puck snorted, "Those are the easiest thing to get rid off. Styrofoam is the way to go man. They keep out the heat pretty good, but we have to be careful with placing them to not trigger the motion sensors."
Blaine made note of it on his list and went to the next item on the carefully penned plan. He'd gone in an out of the vault on a regular basis to get the others information on the devices and security from the eye of a professional bank robber, not a camera or pictures. He'd taken a lot, but sometimes things went unnoticed by a miniscule lens.
He'd focused on the brands of security, code locks and sensors and anything that Sue and her magic vault builder might have missed, hoping either Kurt or Puck would be able to trace them back to their origins and find ways around them. Kurt had been able to track the security cameras to a company called Belseccom, a Belgian security company specialized in surveillance equipment.
Their progress was slow. They didn't have the codes to get into the elevator or vault yet and those were the real challenges. The vault had a code wheel of a hundred numbers, 0 through 99 and it needed a 4 digit code. There were millions of possible combinations so they were stuck for the moment. They'd ruled out drilling through the vault, because of the seismic sensors hidden inside, the slightest tremor and the alarms would go off.
Kurt was sitting on a chair with a laptop perched on his lap, ticking away at high speed, a headset covering his ears. Blaine wondered what he was doing but didn't question it. He'd never been very good with computers other than figuring how to disable them from the outside.
"I found a way to get the code, I just need a camera placed inside the antechamber from the ceiling. The lights would hide it." Kurt placed his laptop on the stuffed table, getting up from the chair and walking over to his bag. He pulled out a deep red binder filled with papers and pulled one out.
Blaine and the others had found out the hard way, that Kurt was very careful with his stuff and appreciated neatness. When Puck had left soda cans and a pizza box on the living room table and didn't see the point in cleaning it up immediately, leaving his half eaten pizza there for a day, Kurt had become livid. He was very orderly and 'liked a clean living space'. The spat had been brief, with Puck cleaning up the apartment's living room with minimal fuss.
"It's actually a pretty good idea, but how will you get the signal? All forms of transmitting are blocked because of the walls on the vault floor." Mike said, bending over the newly revealed pictures on the table.
"I've got a way to transmit from the vault floor, but I need a connection point from inside the building. I've tried hacking into their surveillance network, but they'd notice if a camera was added to it." Kurt looked up from the pictures, catching Blaine's eyes. "Do you have a way?"
The room was silent for a moment, Blaine searching for an answer.
"And then, poof! There it was, the perfect way to get both the key and the code without disturbing the door. A transmitter inside a fire-extinguisher, in the room next to the vault connected to a camera not bigger than my fingertip that we stuck to the ceiling." Blaine talked animatedly while Carl sat back with his arms crossed over his chest, listening carefully to the way Blaine explained what they'd done.
"A fire-extinguisher? How'd you manage to plant it inside a fire-extinguisher?"
Blaine grinned mischievously and swept his eyes to every camera in the room, finally settling on the security guard at the door.
"That my friend, is something I will keep to myself. A magician can't give out all the tricks of the trade, after all." Carl sighed and clucked his tongue in clear annoyance at the words.
"It would have been interesting to know but alas, whatever the Prince wants."
The drive back to the apartment was filled with laughter and relief at their breakthrough. This was one of the parts they'd been struggling since the beginning and Blaine was very happy they now had a way to get the code, even if it was going to be a challenge to get the technology installed on the vault floor without being caught. If they managed to do this undetected, they could cross it of the long list of security measures they still had to disable.
The four robbers had fallen into a routine at Blaine's apartment, adjusting to living with other criminals had been surprisingly easy. Or, at least Blaine thought so.
"So, who wants to go out tonight? I found this pretty awesome bar last week in town with Mike. He never wants to pick up chicks because of Tina. So you up for it, Anderson? Join the Puckasaurus on a quest for ladies?"
Blaine saw Kurt trying to hold in his laughter from the backseat and cleared his throat.
"I.. think that's not going to be very effective." He knew he sounded awkward, but Puck didn't seem to take note of it.
"What do you mean not effective? Have you seen these guns?" Puck flexed his arms and Blaine was trying not to laugh now too, silently cursing himself for not telling their other 2 accomplices that he was gay. "The women always fall all over themselves to get with me, I'm sure we can find someone for you too."
Kurt burst out laughing from the backseat, unable to hold it in any longer, while Blaine suppressed his own laughter and indignation. He knew he was attractive enough. It wasn't like he had to fight for attention or affection. Puck looked over his shoulder at the back seat in confusion before seemingly chalking it up to 'Kurt being Kurt', as he'd dubbed it. It was something he'd said to Blaine after the clean living room incident and it had stuck since then. Every time something happened with Kurt being either really angry or showing a 'weird' habit: 'Kurt being Kurt.'
"Not gonna work Puck. Not interested in that kind of thing," Blaine said and mentally applauded himself for keeping his own voice from quivering. Puck snorted.
"Awww, come on Blaine, live a little! I'm sure we can find a pretty blonde chick, or a brunette? What do you like better?"
Kurt's laughter was reaching a crescendo now, bordering on hysterics, and Blaine couldn't keep the grin off his face. This was the first time he'd ever seen Kurt show so much emotion other than anger. They'd flirted in the past few weeks, but Kurt had always seemed closed off somehow. This, Kurt laughing himself silly, made him more approachable. More human.
"What the fuck man! Why are you laughing so hard?" Puck starting to grow confused now, never having seen Kurt like this either. Mike just ignored his surroundings, his phone seemingly more interesting than the ongoing conversation in the car. 'Probably texting Tina.' Blaine decided to put Puck out of his misery.
"It's not going to work because I'm very, very gay," he spoke slowly and Kurt stopped laughing, taking in big gulps of air to calm his heaving chest. The car was completely silent until the words registered with Puck, who hesitated only briefly before breaking the silence.
"Sorry man, didn't know you were gay. Maybe we can find you a dude, yeah?" Blaine was struggling for what to say as Kurt laughed himself in a stupor once again.
"I decline, Puck. Not really that keen on parties and I might be recognized here if I pick up a guy." The bigger man sighed in annoyance kicking the dashboard.
"Whatever man, more for me."
Blaine kept his mouth shut, even though he grinned helplessly for a moment. Puck didn't even realize what he'd said. Kurt pointed it out in between bouts of laughter.
"You hitting on guys too, Puck?" he asked and Blaine was really struggling now, trying to keep his laughter to a minimum. 'Concentrate on the road, concentrate on the road.'
"Huh? No way."
"You said 'more for me', as if Blaine was going to take one of the girls when we just established that he's gay. You kind of unwittingly said that you go for guys too."
"Well, no I don't! I'm not gay! Fucking don't take everything I say seriously."
"Believe me, we don't." Mike chimed in, eyes never leaving the tiny screen of his smartphone. "We figured out that you're full of crap in the first week. Still love you man. No homo."
Blaine couldn't hold it in anymore. Clutching the steering wheel, his shoulders shook with the laughter he'd been trying to hold in the last couple of minutes. He relinquished his carefully kept control and heard the others (minus Puck) join in.
Shaking with laughter he drove down the road.
I will be updating every Wednesday from now on.
R&R and tell me what you think.
Xoxo
Barista
