October
1989

As realisation dawned on them, panic seized the two boys. Fear and anxiety and terror filled the air as they stared at the dead man, bathed in blood, eyes icy and frozen. The knife was discarded on the floor, dripping in sticky crimson liquid, still fresh and hot.

Peter couldn't breathe. His lungs were shrinking, his throat closing up, everything fading in and out of darkness. He tried to gasp for breath, but it was no use. He felt dizzy and sick and injured, and all he wanted was for it to be over. To rewind the clock by a couple of hours, back to being in his trailer, holding Hannah in his arms while Jenifer napped and Danny made breakfast with Scott.

"Peter." Danny reached out, tugging at Peter's arms, pulling him towards him, "Peter, hey, listen, it's okay." His voice was panicked and breathless and scared. "It's okay, you're okay. Breathe. Just breathe. You need to-"

Peter collapsed into Danny's lap, arms flung around his shoulders, face buried in his chest. And he cried and cried and cried. He still couldn't breathe, but it didn't matter, because Danny was holding him and as long as Danny was holding him, nothing bad could happen. He was sure of it. He was safe here. He was safe with Danny. Nothing bad could happen.

"You need to breathe." Danny told him firmly, though he couldn't help squeezing him tighter, "You need to breathe, Peter, please. Please, just breathe."

He tried. He tried so hard, but nothing happened. His throat continued to tighten, air getting caught in his mouth, vision blurring around the edges. He panicked, vaguely wondering if he was about to pass out, but as the dizziness grew worse, his thoughts dimmed, and nothing seemed to make sense anymore. Everything was just a series of colours and shapes and sounds. Red. Red, red, red.

Danny grabbed his shoulders, pushing him away from his chest, but keeping him close, "Okay, c'mon, Pete, in through your nose, out through your mouth, you got this. You're okay. In - one, two, three, four, five. Now out - one, two three, four, five. Okay, c'mon, that's it, you're okay. You're okay. Let's go again, alright?" He did this over and over again, eyes fixed on Peter's, rooting him down to Earth as he tried to keep him steady.

Eventually, the dizziness subsided, and Peter could breathe again, if not a little shakily. He hesitantly turned his attention to the dead man, face paling, eyes glassy, "W-What are we g-going to do?" He sobbed.

We. They were in this together. Danny drove the knife through his chest, but Peter had taken it out. They had killed him together, as far as Peter was concerned. They were just as guilty as each other.

Danny didn't seem to have the answers Peter was looking for, "I-I don't know."

"You have to know." Peter cried, grabbing onto a fistful of Danny's shirt in desperation, "You have to know, Danny, because I don't. I-I don't know, so you have to!"

Danny's eyes softened when he looked at Peter, nodding in acknowledgment, "Okay, Pete." He murmured softly, "Okay, it's okay. We'll be okay. I'll sort this out, alright? We're gonna be fine."

Peter shook his head manically, "How?" He demanded, voice shaking, "We killed someone." The sentence burnt his lips.

Danny shook his head, "You didn't do anything. I killed him-"

"You only stabbed him because he was attacking me!" Peter's eyes were wide and terrified, "A-And I killed him, I-I took the knife out. H-He bled out, that's-that's my fault. That's my... I killed him, Danny. Oh my god." He ran his fingers through his hair, inadvertently pulling streaks of sticky blood through his soft brown curls, "Oh my god, I killed him. I killed him."

There was something in Danny's expression which Peter had never seen before. Something dark and a little twisted. In a flash, it was gone again, replaced with concern, "It's okay." He said again, pulling Peter into his side, "It's gonna be okay-"

"Stop saying that." Peter snapped.

Danny sighed, eyes cast to the dead man. He knew that he had killed him. No matter what twisted logic Peter used, Danny knew that it was him. He had driven the knife through the man's chest, he had drawn blood, all of it, until he had bled to death in his own kitchen. Peter wasn't guilty - he was. "Let's leave."

Peter's eyes continued to widen, "Leave?"

"Let's go home." Danny said plainly, "Let the police find him. We were never here, alright?"

Peter shook his head quickly, "We need to confess, we need to-"

"We need to go home." Danny interjected sharply, "We need to be with our family. With Scott and Jen and Hannah."

Peter only continued to shake his head, "W-We're minors, we're not... They can't..." He fumbled clumsily, "We can't go to prison-"

"Yes, we can." Danny tried to keep his voice gentle but that was proving to be impossible, "We murdered someone." And that was a lie, because Danny had murdered someone, and Peter, with his golden heart full of compassion, had only tried to save him.

"B-But-"

"We're leaving, Peter." Danny pulled his sleeve down past his fingertips and carefully picked up the knife, slipping it into one of the side pockets of the bags full of Jenifer's clothes, "Let's go."

Peter stayed on the floor, shoulders slouched, face twisted up in agony, refusing to take his eyes off the dead body. Peter was covered in blood, red droplets splattering his face, streaked through his hair, staining his shirt and jeans. He didn't move for a moment, wondering whether he could stay here forever and nothing bad would ever happen, so long as he didn't move. Didn't abandon the crime scene.

Danny sighed in frustration, hooking an arm around Peter's and dragging him to his feet. Peter whimpered in pain and stumbled back unsteadily - Danny remembering far too late that he was injured, "I'm sorry." He said quickly, trying to scrub his brain of the image of Peter curled up on the floor, crying out in agony as Jenifer's stepdad attacked him mercilessly. "I'm sorry." He said again because once wasn't enough, "Are you okay?"

Peter wrapped his arms around his body protectively, lashes shielding the terror in his eyes, "I'm okay." He winced, though his chest burnt and he wondered if he had broken a rib.

Danny watched him uneasily, "Are you sure?" He pressed, "He was hitting you really hard-"

"I'm okay." Peter repeated, sparing one last look at the damage they had caused, before fleeing from the room, certain that those unmoving eyes would haunt him for the rest of his life.

It was dark and they took the long route home, through the forest, their bloody clothes hidden by the shadows. They dumped the bags of Jenifer's clothes behind a bush, deciding that they would pretend they had never been anywhere near her house, and had gone for a walk around the lake instead. Before they abandoned the bags, Danny wrapped the knife in one of Jenifer's shirts and stuffed it into his back pocket, the metal weighing him down for the rest of their walk home.

When they got back to the trailer Susie and Scott were at work and Jenifer and Hannah were asleep. Peter quickly dashed into the bathroom to shower and Danny waited for him impatiently, eager to scrub the blood from his own skin.

As Danny paced around the living room, his gaze found a letter on the coffee table addressed to him. He frowned - he wasn't used to receiving mail. And he had only listed this as his address once before. He gulped when he realised the only people who knew to find him here were the casting team from his audition. He reached for the letter and tore it open with shaking hands, ignoring the blood beneath his fingernails.

'Congratulations!'

He felt his world get a little smaller.

He had gotten the part.