There was blood on Danny's shirt.
Just a couple of drops, spattered on the lower right front, but he couldn't stop looking at them. There was human blood on Danny's shirt, and Danny had watched somebody die tonight. He needed to move, get off the stage, find Ethan - he had promised - but he couldn't. He thought that he was probably in shock, and really, he had an excuse for that. There was human blood staining his shirt.
Half of the auditorium had already cleared out in a panic by the time somebody came up to see if he was okay. He shook his head slightly, trumpet still half-raised to play on. He wasn't okay. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't think. He couldn't look anywhere other than the red on his shirt.
A warm hand touched the side of his face. "Danny?"
Ethan.
"Danny, look at me. Please?"
Danny turned his face towards Ethan - mercifully, away from the body. Ethan looked worried as he put his other hand over Danny's.
"Put down the trumpet, okay, Danny?"
Danny half-shook his head again. They hadn't- It wasn't time-
"The recital's over, Danny. You can put the trumpet down."
Slowly, painstakingly, Danny released his grip on the instrument. Ethan took it from him and put it on the next chair - empty now, not that Danny had noticed the rest of his section leaving. He leaned closer then, less invading Danny's space and more melting into it.
"Did you know?" Danny's voice startled them both. The room wasn't quiet, of course, not with officers taking statements and recording the crime scene. Still, they froze for a moment, as if they were unsure if the sound that had broken their silence was predator or prey. Danny pushed on first. "You- you said that if, if something happened, I..." He swallowed. "Did you know that this was going to happen?"
"No, no- I didn't kn-"
"You knew something was going to happen, goddamnit!"
He didn't shout it. He should have - the whisper was almost more harsh. He looked away. His gaze caught again on the human blood staining his white concert shirt.
"I'm sorry."
They sat in silence for a while, until the silence broke again - Ethan, this time.
"It's okay."
"No it's not."
"It's going to be."
And that was all that needed to be said. Danny wanted to protest when his parents came over to bring him home and Ethan backed off, but he couldn't. Of course he couldn't. And he'd see Ethan at school - it would be okay - Ethan had promised. Danny walked out of the auditorium hardly even shaking, although he kept looking straight ahead so that he wouldn't see the body of his teacher, or Ethan conversing with his brother and vanishing, or the blood on his own shirt.