Author's Note: This is a prologue/teaser chapter. The story will be long. It will be dark and angsty and have some adult themes. Consider yourself warned. Also, spoilers up to and including 3.01 – The Purple Piano Project. Goes AU from there.

Disclaimer: None of the characters are mine. I'm only borrowing them for a little while.

Running to Stand Still – Prologue

February 2012

It's quiet.

It was loud for a while.

Sirens. Yelling. Questions.

The clink of handcuffs that barely even registered against his skin. Car doors slamming. Building doors slamming.

More yelling. More questions. So many questions.

Then, the loudest sound yet. The crash of metal on metal. Iron bars locking into place. That sound echoed for a while.

But now it's quiet.

So quiet that he can hear the drip of a leaky pipe in the corner. So quiet that the snoring from down the hall sounds close. So quiet that he can hear each one of his breaths and every heartbeat.

He stands there for a while. He's not sure how long because his watch and his cell phone are gone.

Everything's gone.

After another while, his heart starts to race. He sweats and shivers. He aches in a way that he can't quite place.

Nausea hurtles at him full force and he vomits all over his feet. He collapses to the cement floor that's just as cold and hard as it looks.

The vomiting stops, but the shaking and sweating don't. His heart pounds. He's too exhausted to close his eyes. His skin is crawling and he has to get out of here but he can't move and even if he could he wouldn't have anywhere to go.

It's so quiet.

It hurts.

He tries to remember the last time he was happy, and all he can picture is red piping on a navy blue blazer.

Blaine never would have thought that taking off that blazer would be the beginning of the end.