Chapter Text
The first time Stu catches Billy Loomis watching him is in junior high, while a group of them are playing some dumb tag variant that has caught on in the courtyard this week during lunch break. The goal is to reach base first, and Stu has just won his third straight game after Sierra Harris tripped over her own feet in the final stretch. When he looks back, he catches sight of the boy on the bench, staring intensely. He’s not quite smiling, but there’s something bright in his dark eyes. He raises his eyebrows, like he’d noticed the way that Stu’s left leg had very deliberately collided with Sierra’s ankle to send her crashing into the pavement, like he was impressed by it or something.
He has never really interacted with Billy before—Billy’s always been a hard kid to get a read on, quiet but never shy, just a touch too intense for the schoolyard. He and Stu are a bit like oil and water—not enemies by any means, but so different that they can never sit together for longer than a few minutes before Stu does something that seems to annoy him, usually saying something loud and dumb, and then Stu gets annoyed right back at Billy for acting too cool to laugh about it. He’s always reading too, books way too thick for his age level, and he never answers when Stu asks him what he’s reading.
Something changes that day. Billy doesn’t say anything about it, doesn’t confront Stu directly, but he appears at the end of Stu’s usual table the next day at lunch, reading his stupidly thick book and eating what looks like a much better boxed lunch than Stu’s mom ever packs. He doesn’t speak, but when Randy Meeks offers to swap his fruit-by-the-foot for Stu’s KitKat, he offers Randy a pudding cup instead and snatches away his prize before Stu can respond.
He keeps sitting there, too, every day after that. Stu isn’t sure if Billy had even had any friends before that, but he suddenly seems determined to wedge himself into Stu and Randy’s friendship with a kind of singleminded intensity that Stu doesn’t entirely mind—Randy is fun, but he’s weird, which is definitely hurting Stu’s social status, and Billy may be a bit odd, but he’s unquestionably fucking cool as hell with his whole weird mysterious loner thing he’s got going on. He’s even started half-smiling at some of Stu’s jokes now, even if he always turns his face away before it’s too obvious. Stu notices, though.
Randy thinks Billy’s creepy, tells Stu that he thinks he’s bad news as if he’s some dad from the 1960s, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from trading his snacks for Billy’s pudding cups every lunch or from engaging him animatedly on the bus home about the weird science fiction crap they both seem to read. H. P. Lovecraft is Billy’s favorite, Stu can tell, because sometimes he gets that same kind of bright hunger in his eyes when he talks about At the Mountains of Madness, like how he’d looked watching Stu trip Sierra. Stu even gets a genuine smile once when he lends Billy his walkman to play him Ride the Lightning. “Call of Ktulu” doesn’t even have any lyrics about that stuff, but he makes sure Billy looks at the tracklist first so he can watch his face light up when he sees the name.
It takes some convincing, but finally Randy agrees to start inviting Billy to hang out with them after school too. Stu suspects his reasoning probably has something to do with the fact that Randy’s longtime crush, Sidney Prescott, seems to drift over to their lunch table more often now that Billy’s sitting there. It’s not just Sidney either: it seems like plenty of girls take notice of Billy in a way they never have of Randy or Stu, and Stu certainly isn’t going to complain if Karen Aldridge is going to keep leaning over him to steal potato chips off his plate. Who cares if it’s Billy making the difference—Billy barely seems to notice all the attention, and Stu is funny enough that he gets Karen laughing at least once a week now that she’s finally noticed he exists, which counts as a win in his book.
“So, uh, Randy and I do sleepovers on Fridays?” Stu tells Billy on the bus home one Thursday. Billy has his nose buried in a book as usual, but Stu sees the moment his eyes stop moving.
“His mom doesn’t give a shit, so she rents us all the good stuff at the Blockbuster,” Stu adds. “I think I saw my first pair of tits at Randy’s house when I was, like, eight. And all the gory shit too.”
Billy doesn’t say anything, but Stu can see the way his hands twitch at that, like he kind of wants to put the book down and say something. Stu doesn’t understand why he doesn’t just let himself be a normal kid and actually act excited about stuff. It’s like he’s auditioning to be James Dean or some shit—because, yeah, Stu has watched all the classic movies too, his and Randy’s sleepovers aren’t just tits and gore.
He plucks the book out of Billy’s hands and turns it around to look at it. It’s a battered copy, like someone has read it over and over again, and the front cover is almost entirely hanging off.
“Rage,” he reads, staring at the cover. On it, a young man is sitting on top of a desk, staring forward with the kind of intensity that Stu has come to associate with Billy. “ ‘His twisted mind turned a quiet classroom into a dangerous world of terror…’ You’re a real basket case, you know that, Loomis?”
Billy glares at him. “It’s fiction, Macher. You’d understand that if you could read.”
“Wow, watch out everyone, the quiet boy’s got a bite!” Stu says in delight. He taps the cover of the book again, right over the boy’s face. “Should we all be worried, Jeremy? You gonna speak in class someday?”
Billy tugs the book back out of Stu’s hand, but doesn’t go back to reading it. “I’m not gonna shoot myself,” he says and, yeah, so maybe Stu’s reference could have used a little work. “I don’t like guns.”
“Me neither,” Stu says, though it’s half a lie. His uncle takes him hunting sometimes and he doesn’t dislike the feeling of pulling the trigger or anything. But that’s not why he goes hunting. He lowers his voice a bit before saying, “Too impersonal. I’m a knife man, myself.”
Billy gets that strange look in his eye again, but just shakes his head like Stu is being an idiot and raises the book again, flipping the pages aggressively to get back to his place. Stu is about to write the whole thing off, but when the bus turns toward Stu’s stop, Billy says, still hidden behind Rage, “What time on Friday?”
“Oh, uh, six? We order pizza.”
“Cool,” Billy says, and Stu can’t stop grinning for his whole walk home.
*
Billy never says it’s about Stu—he never says anything, just shrugs forcefully when Randy opens the door at 6 pm on the dot the next day to find him standing there, backpack slung over one shoulder and a VHS copy of The Night God Screamed in the other hand. Randy seems to forget he’s bad news the second he sees the tape, because he’s a huge fucking nerd who’s watched everything available from the horror section at Blockbuster and knows from whatever shitty horror magazine subscriptions he’s always spending all his money on exactly which tapes are the hardest to get your hands on.
Billy becomes a regular presence after that. He doesn’t join them every Friday, but he shows up more often than not, usually with some weird fucking horror shit he’s managed to scrounge up to appease Randy. Stu likes them too, but he’s a simple man, really—he’s never pretended to be a cinephile, and he’d be just as happy watching Nightmare on Elm Street for the dozenth time than the weird, low budget stuff that Billy and Randy get so excited about.
It doesn’t matter, though, because more than anything, he likes having Billy here, sitting across the couch from him as they pass the bowl of popcorn back and forth. Sometimes, he’ll glance over and catch Billy staring at him instead of the screen, and he can’t help the way that his stomach seems to squirm whenever it happens. He always flashes a quick grin at him, and he doesn’t know quite why it feels like a secret. Billy never smiles back, but he doesn’t seem embarrassed to be caught out or anything—it’s like he’s trying to puzzle Stu out, which is weird because Stu is about as much of an open book as he could possibly be, but who knows. Billy Loomis is a weird kid.
*
They become inseparable over the next few years. Stu has never met anyone like Billy before, has never felt like he had a friend who is on exactly the same wavelength all the time. They like similar music and hate the same kids in their grade, but mostly it’s about the movies—they watch them voraciously, and Billy isn’t annoying about it like fucking Randy is, with his constant stream of production facts and genre-awareness. Instead, Billy is down to sit back and take it all in, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in Stu’s bedroom, passing back and forth a joint or a beer or whatever else they can get their hands on, and letting all the violence wash over them.
Stu hits his growth spurt the summer before freshman year and, suddenly, it’s not just Billy that all the girls are coming over to talk to. He likes the attention, can’t help it—who knew that all you need to start going out with the hottest girls in their year is an extra foot of height and a few dumb jokes in homeroom? Karen Aldridge lasts for a few weeks before Tally Cantwell lets him get to third base at a party, and then Stu dates Tally for a whole month before he realizes she’s kind of boring when she isn’t drunk on shitty beer and, besides, Izzy Phelps has way nicer tits and also hinted she would like to go to Jason Goes to Hell for their first date.
And it isn’t that Stu doesn’t like the girls, because the ones he dates are all hot and fun and just the right amount of slutty, but half the time he’s out with them, he’s counting the minutes until he gets to drop them off back home and then bike over to the Loomis place and throw a movie on the little old TV in the corner of Billy’s bedroom. It’s not weird or anything, because girls are girls but Billy is Billy, and he’s a hundred times cooler than any girl, even the ones like Izzy who have the best racks and don’t close their eyes at the gory parts of the movies.
The best thing about it is that Billy’s always there, waiting for him. He doesn’t care about Stu dating, doesn’t bitch about Stu missing their Friday night sleepovers like Randy does, because he’s not a jealous little bitch—he doesn’t need to be, because he’s got a face that belongs on a fucking movie poster, one of the dumb chick flicks that are always set up at the Blockbuster under the ‘Date Night’ display, and he could be getting laid more than Stu if he wanted to. The difference is that he’s holding out for the right girl or whatever, which is fine even though Stu can’t think of a single girl at their school who could even begin to be right for Billy, not even the really hot ones like Casey Becker or Tatum Riley. Stu isn’t complaining though, because Billy’s pickiness means that it doesn’t matter what hour it is, Billy will be there to open his bedroom window for him and hand him a stolen beer.
*
The first time they talk about it—not it properly, not the way they’ll talk later when Maureen’s on the table as the first victim and they have to put together a proper plan—is at another one of their sleepovers, while watching Mardi Gras Massacre. Now that they’re in high school, Stu’s Friday nights are usually booked up for dates or, due to his serially negligent parents, full scale parties in his empty house. Randy finally gives up bitching about it, mostly because Stu’s parties are the only time girls get trashed enough to actually talk to him, so he’s the one to suggest pushing movie night to Sunday. It means they usually show up to school late on Monday morning, often nursing hangovers, but whatever, it’s not like Stu was ever going to Harvard or anything.
Stu is technically grounded, because he hadn’t cleaned up the evidence of the latest Friday night rager quite well enough before his dad’s plane had gotten in, but after the shouting ended, grounding is only ever a formality. He hadn’t even had to sneak out the window, had just walked straight out the front door while his mom watched Barbara Walters. His mom is cool like that—he wonders if she would even have given him alcohol if he asked, but he doesn’t want to risk it after the Saturday morning explosion. Instead, he grabs her keys and drives her car to the shady liquor store at the other end of town, the one where they absolutely know his ID is a fake but sell to him anyway.
‘Distribution of labor,’ Billy calls it. Stu’s got the fake because he’s the tallest and he can grow a wispy goatee if he needs to, so he’s the designated liquor provider, while Randy buys the best weed off one of his Blockbuster coworkers, and Billy brings them whatever fucked-up shit on VHS he finds God-knows-where. Stu thinks it’s probably from some weird internet forum—he’s had a computer in his room forever, way before the rest of their friends, and he’s always been cagey about what he uses it for. It would be like Billy to ignore the whole world of internet pornography in favor of some niche ass sites trafficking in the most realistic gore he can get his hands on.
They’re sitting on Randy’s ratty couch, passing a joint back and forth and watching this low budget shit about a serial killer stalking prostitutes. Randy and Billy’s latest obsession is with the video nasties list, a bunch of banned horror from a decade ago that’s supposed to have all the most disturbing stuff. Some of them are pretty decent, but most of them are kind of boring and, honestly, Stu would still prefer to watch something actually good like Halloween or Nightmare on Elm Street. He likes watching Billy watch them though, enjoys the way his eyes light up when there’s a particularly creative kill on screen. It’s a bit like watching the cat when she catches sight of a bird in the backyard.
This one is pretty good, comparatively speaking. It’s only been a few minutes and there’s already a naked chick splayed out on the killer’s weird sacrificial altar, and she’s pretty hot, hot enough that Stu is bending his knee to try to make his boner less obvious. If he were alone, he’d probably be jerking off right now, but instead he’s with fucking Randy, who can’t shut up.
“That would never work in real life. No one’s dumb enough to lie down on a fucking creepy ass altar in a strange man’s house, not for $200.”
Stu is annoyed, because the movie is just getting good and Randy’s voice is grating as hell, but Billy seems interested. He snags the joint out of Randy’s hand and says, “What about, like, Ted Bundy? Girls got into his car all the time.”
“A car is different,” Randy says. “This is a whole torture room, and it’s so obviously evil.”
“She’s a hooker, dude,” Stu says. The killer is covering her in oil now and she’s moaning, which would be hot if Randy hadn’t completely killed the mood. “She’d do whatever he asked for $200.”
“Hookers are people too, they have brains,” Randy says, like he’s some kind of feminist all of a sudden.
“Then how come serial killers are always killing them first?” Billy asks, laughing. He passes Stu the joint. “She’s a whore, man, guys pay $200 to tie her up all the time. If she had brains, she wouldn’t be a whore.”
Stu takes a hit and, yeah, this is good weed. It’s probably the only reason they keep Randy around at this point. On screen, the killer has just started cutting into the chick, and the blood looks pretty bad but the cuts look real as hell, enough that Billy is suddenly doing his cat-like staring thing.
“Anyway, isn’t this your whole fucking thing?” Stu asks Randy. “It’s what you’re always saying: rules for surviving a horror movie, right? She’s evil, evil equals sin, and sin makes you dumb as shit.”
Randy nods, looking at the screen thoughtfully. “Yeah, you have a point. I still think it’s risky though—you bring the wrong girl back, she sees your creepy altar, bolts, and then the police are at your door instantly. I’d at least drug her at the club first.”
Billy snorts. “Drug a lot of girls, do you, Meeks?” he asks, snagging the weed back from Stu. He always looks so cool when he smokes, holding the joint like he’s fucking Marlon Brando or some shit. “You can’t drug her at the club, man, it’s a fucking brothel. They’ve got people on staff looking out for that shit.”
“Been to a lot of brothels, have you, Loomis?”
Billy rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying, you’d get your ass kicked by a three hundred pound bouncer if you tried it your way.”
“Okay, smart guy, how would you do it then?”
Finally, Randy’s asking an interesting question. Stu leans forward a little, twisting to watch Billy speak.
Billy closes his eyes for a second, as if he’s picturing it. He looks blissed out, and there’s no way this is the first time he’s had this thought. “Just like he does, man. Invite her back to my place, have a few drinks there, loosen her up. I wouldn’t tie her up though—I’d just let her feel real fucking comfortable. Then when she’s least expecting it, I’d lean in close and tell her to run.”
His voice drops on the last word, suddenly all low and dangerous, and Stu is about a second away from popping another boner.
“The most dangerous game,” he says, nodding, and Billy grins at him, because of course he does. Billy gets it.
“Why would you want her to run?” Randy asks. He sounds irritated now, like he does whenever a movie has an obvious plot hole. “That just makes it harder for you. At least he’s got her tied down at least when he starts cutting.”
“Nah, that’s boring,” Stu says. He’s still watching Billy, and Billy is watching him right back, like he can see right through his skull directly into the fucked-up little part of Stu’s brain that lights up whenever he’s thinking about this shit. “Thrill of the hunt, y’know? You plan out beforehand so there’s nowhere for her to run, but then you take your time with it. Really draw it out.”
“Yeah, let her think she’s gonna make it out alive,” Billy adds, and Stu is pretty sure the glassy look in his eyes isn’t from the weed. “Let her find your weird altar on her own and then, just when she’s trying to sneak out, come up from behind and take a knife…”
Stu mimes cutting into the air, twisting the knife and dragging it up through someone’s sternum. “Game over.”
Billy is still staring at him, and his smile has faded into a strange, blank expression. If Stu didn’t know better, he’d call it hunger.
Randy ruins it, because of course he does. “Are you two done bogarting, or what?”
Billy blinks and suddenly the odd sharpness has gone from his eyes and he’s leaning around Stu to pass Randy the joint like nothing had happened. Maybe it hadn’t.
“Besides,” Randy says, lighting up, “the killer isn’t even doing it to have fun. He’s doing it to sacrifice her to the goddess of evil.”
“Shit, man, I missed all of that,” Stu says, though he hadn’t. He’d liked the knife, though, and her organs had looked really real. “Let’s go back.”
Billy winks at him, actually fucking winks, like he knows exactly what Stu is doing, but he says, “Yeah, man, me too. Don’t talk through it this time, fuckweed.”
*
Billy always wakes up first. He usually leaves before Stu has even gotten up, but the morning after Mardi Gras Massacre, Stu finds him upstairs sitting at Randy’s kitchen table, drinking a cup of black coffee and leafing through one of Randy’s copies of Fangoria. He looks up when Stu opens the basement door and nods over at a second mug that he’s set out.
“Milk and sugar,” he says, which is a fucking miracle because Stu hates it black and his head is fuzzy as hell from all the weed.
“You are an angel sent from fucking heaven,” Stu tells him, and Billy cocks his head slightly at that, smiling faintly like Stu doesn’t get the joke.
Stu is still revelling in the coffee when Billy says, out of nowhere, “We should make a movie.”
“What?”
Billy holds up the magazine to show Stu a picture spread—it’s Kubrick, standing behind the bar in The Shining, pointing his camera at Jack Torrance as he drinks.
“Like we talked about last night, you know? Bet our kills would be way better than any of the slop you get these days. I’m talking fucking instant classic.”
“For sure, man,” Stu agrees.
“Would you do it?”
He’s looking at Stu really intensely again, and Stu gets the sense he’s being asked to do something more complicated than just renting some old film equipment and convincing Izzy or whoever to dress slutty and splatter herself with corn syrup.
“Make a shitty B-movie, you mean? Or, uh, a real movie?” Stu asks, feeling dumb.
Billy understands him, though. He always does. He grins widely at Stu, and it feels dangerous.. “You feel me, Macher. I like you.”
*
They don’t talk about it again, not immediately, but Billy is weird around him after that night. He gets really intense sometimes, just all quiet and stiff, like he’s waiting for Stu to say or do something. Stu doesn’t, though, because how the fuck do you ask your best friend whether or not the two of you had kind of, sort of, once agreed that you were going to murder a prostitute or whatever? It’s not exactly the kind of thing that comes up frequently in conversation, not even in Billy and Stu’s fucked up kind of conversations.
Stu tries to shrug it off—if Billy wants something, he can ask for it, because he’s always seemed like he can read Stu’s every thought and Stu has no idea what is ever going on in Billy’s fucked up little head. So he lets the tension between them lie there, simmering, and does his best to move on with his life.
It gets easier around New Year’s, when Casey Becker finally gives in and lets him tongue her at midnight. She’s one of the more popular girls in school, but Stu is pretty well-liked too at this point and it helps that he’s pretty sure the rumor mill has been kind enough to him, because he’s the kind of goofy guy that’s fun to be around for a bit, but none of his exes had been in love with him or anything. Hell, Izzy still partners with him in Chemistry and makes dumb Re-Animator jokes with the test tubes, even after he’d dumped her over the phone.
The first week after break, Casey lets him take her out to dinner and a movie, which winds up being In-N-Out and Halloween rented from Blockbuster, and it’s fucking awesome. She’s absolutely wild in bed—flexible from two years on the cheer squad, and always eager to try new things. Plus, she’s happy to rewatch Halloween and Friday the 13th over and over, even if her opinions about them are never as interesting as Billy’s. She makes up for it though because, unlike Billy, she gets down on her knees halfway through the third act and then lets him fuck her through the climax.
Casey’s parents are out almost as much as Stu’s, so instead of dropping her off at night, Stu has started to crash at her place or else bring her back to his. He may be neglecting Billy a little bit, but he’s pretty sure Billy would understand if he saw the kind of shit Casey wants to do together. Besides, she’s as interested in horror movies as the rest of them, so he brings her along to Randy’s on Sunday and has a blast watching Billy glares daggers at her throughout The Driller Killer. Stu keeps catching Billy’s eyes and sticking his tongue out, which clearly doesn’t help Billy’s mood at all, but is pretty funny all the same.
Stu is pretty sure that it’s not that Billy is jealous about Casey, because he’s made it pretty fucking clear he thinks she’s a complete waste of space, but maybe he’s finally starting to get jealous of Stu for having someone better than Randy to watch all this shit with. It’s probably the sex thing—Billy’s the only person in the world who seems to really get the connection between sex and violence like Stu does, and he’d understand exactly how fucking incredible it is to have a girl who lets him fuck doggy-style during the meathook scene in Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
*
It’s his first night at Billy’s place since he and Casey had first started hooking up, and he and Billy are sitting on his bed together watching The Omen and smoking a joint out the window. Or rather, Stu is smoking a joint out the window and Billy is acting weird and fidgety, constantly crossing and uncrossing his legs and shifting closer and further away on the bed. Stu is about ready to roll over and just pin him still, because his twitchiness is kind of ruining Stu’s high, but then Billy sits up straight, pauses the movie, and says, out of absolutely nowhere, “I’m thinking of asking Sid out.”
“Uh, what?”
“Sidney Prescott? You know her, man, we have History together.”
“Yeah, no shit, I know her. Randy’s had a crush on her since fucking kindergarten. And she’s best friends with, like, the hottest girl in school,” Stu says. “Are you sure you mean Sidney?”
“Yeah,” Billy says. “She’s hot enough and she’s, like, interesting, okay? A whole lot smarter than the rest of them.”
Stu holds up his hands. “Okay, man, I get it, you like ‘em nerdy.”
“I don’t like them nerdy,” Billy says. “I like them, like, witty. Sid’s funny. And she punched that Deacon kid in the face back in eighth grade.”
“You want a girlfriend who’ll beat you up?” Stu asks, laughing, but something dark flickers in Billy’s expression that shuts him up.
“I want a girlfriend who’ll beat someone up,” Billy says. “So, do you think I should go for it?”
He’s watching Stu again, with that same intense kind of interest he sometimes gets during horror movies. It feels like this is some kind of test, but the problem is that Stu has no idea what he’s being tested on and hasn’t studied at all, and so he’s definitely about to flunk.
“Hell yeah, dude,” he says, and Billy’s expression shutters.
“Okay,” he says, and his voice is flatter than usual. “I’m gonna.”
He turns back to the television and hits play, and Stu supposes that’s that. He doesn’t know what Billy had been looking for—the last time Billy had looked at him like that, he’d been talking about making their own movie, whatever that had meant. He wonders if that had been the right answer, if Billy had wanted him to agree that Sidney Prescott would be the perfect leading lady. He wouldn’t have been lying if he’d said it—Sidney has this quiet intensity that sort of matches Billy’s, now that Stu is thinking about it, and she’s really pretty when she cries. He remembers her getting hit in the nose once during dodgeball, a few years ago, and tears had been pouring down her face but she’d clenched her jaw all determined and marched right up to the line and drilled Nathan Kane straight in the balls. She’d won the game too, which is kind of funny, because Stu thinks that had counted as her being the final girl of sorts.
Do you want to kill her? Stu almost asks out loud, because he’s kind of high and in his own head, and imagining pretty, serious Sidney Prescott crying while she runs away from, like, Michael Myers. He can’t do it, though, can’t make his mouth form the words. Not when Billy isn’t looking at him, because surely Billy knows about Stu by now, right? He’s got to, because he’s smart as hell and Stu isn’t exactly subtle and everything about him is practically screaming that he wants to do it, every furtive glance during their movie nights or gruesome joke that goes on a bit too long combining to say, I mean it, for real.
He doesn’t say anything. Billy doesn’t ask him anything else either, which is fine, even if Stu kind of wants to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and demand, How fucking high do you want me to jump?
*
He drags Stu along with him when he does ask Sidney out, so Stu has to watch Sidney’s cheeks turn pink while she stutters out a yes. She’s not nearly as pretty when she isn’t crying, Stu thinks, she’s actually pretty fucking annoying. She keeps biting her lip, like she thinks it’s cute or sexy or whatever, and Billy seems to be eating it up, leaning against her locker all casual because he knows it makes him look cool.
At least Stu doesn’t seem to be the only one bothered by the whole thing. Sidney’s friend Tatum is standing a few paces away with her arms folded across her chest. She looks like she’s just swallowed something sour, and Stu can fucking relate. He saunters over to her, partly because she’s hot and sad and he loves making hot chicks laugh, but also so that he has an excuse to stop looking at Billy with Sidney fucking Prescott.
“Sooooo… we’re best friends-in-law now,” he tells Tatum, holding out a bag of Twizzlers for her. “Does that make it incest if I tell you that skirt makes your butt look hot?”
She rolls her eyes at him. “My butt looks hot in everything,” she says, but at least she’s smiling a little when she takes a Twizzler. “Thanks, Macher.”
“Billy’s, like, a really great guy. If you’re worried about your friend, I mean. He’s not a pervert like me or anything.”
Tatum’s eyebrows jump, like she’s surprised Stu had clocked her skepticism. She ignores the pervert line, though, which is too bad, because Stu had thought it was a good one.
“Yeah, I know that. Sid’s just—she hasn’t really dated before.”
“You’re protective. I dig it. Billy hasn’t either, though—so, y’know, I feel the same way. Hey, what if it turns out that Sidney’s the pervert, and she tries to pressure Billy to do something before he’s ready?” He lowers his voice and stage-whispers, “He’s still a virgin, you know.”
Tatum finally laughs. “Okay, okay, point taken. I’ll back off and give your dumb friend a chance.”
“Hey, I’m the dumb friend. He’s the smart, sensitive one.”
“So you’re the dumb one and the pervert, huh?” she asks, sticking the Twizzler in her mouth. Stu might be an idiot, but he knows when he’s being flirted with, at least when a girl is doing it obviously enough that she’s sucking on something vaguely dick-shaped while asking if he’s a pervert.
He flashes her his brightest smile, the one that’s just slightly verging on suggestive. It always makes girls laugh, which sometimes means they’ll let him stick his hand down their shirts. “Sure am. What about you two? I mean, Sidney sure seems pretty smart and sensitive, so what does that make you?”
“Guess you’ll have to find out,” she says but, before he can say anything else, Sidney pops up next to her and tells Tatum it’s time to go to English. Her cheeks are still a bit red from talking to Billy, which would be sweet if the whole thing didn’t leave Stu feeling kind of like his chest cavity has been emptied out.
*
Sid, it turns out, is just as boring as Stu had feared. She doesn’t like horror movies, calls them boring and predictable like she’s too fucking good for them, even though her favorite movie is When Harry Met Sally and Stu’s pretty sure just from the title alone he can predict that Harry and Sally get married at the end. Billy drags her along to Randy’s that Sunday and she sneers throughout A Bay of Blood, even though she buries her face in Billy’s shoulder anytime there’s a particularly gruesome kill on screen and turns pink whenever any of the girls’ tops come off.
That’s another thing that makes her boring—according to Billy, she’s a total fucking prude who has some kind of holy underwear rule that stops Billy from even getting to second base properly. She isn’t super Christian or whatever either, she’s just fucking shy or something. Maybe she thinks not putting out will keep Billy interested for longer, but Stu can’t help but think that, sooner or later, Billy is going to do something about the way Vicki Mason flashes her cleavage at him if Sid isn’t giving him any distractions in that department.
The only benefit to Sid and Billy’s very tender and PG-rated romance, it turns out, is Tatum Riley. Stu had noticed her before—it’s hard not to, when she’s got a rack like that and a face to match, not to mention the very interesting ways she can bend when she’s cheerleading—but he had written her off as another one of the giggling blondes on the cheer squad. She’s so much more than that, though; turns out that, along with being a total smokeshow, Tatum is actually fucking cool as hell. She’s as dismissive of some of the more eclectic movies that Randy and Billy like, but her favorite movie is The Shining and she can quote Silence of the Lambs and, from what Vanderpool has been bragging about in the locker room for about two years, she puts out too, so Stu has no idea what Billy’s doing wasting his time with Sid when a chick like Tatum is still somehow fucking single.
He flirts with her whenever they hang out together, even though she winds up kind of shoved together with Randy as the two singles in their friend group, but he’s not going to dump Casey for her, because Casey may be a bit of a spacecase but she has a mouth like a fucking vaccuum cleaner and lets him try things that he hadn’t even thought were possible outside of hardcore porn. This is the thing Billy doesn’t seem to understand with his whole thing with Sid—girls shouldn’t need to be about compatibility or any of that crap, because no matter what Casey thinks about Nightmare on Elm Street 2, he always has Billy to agree it’s better than the original.
It turns out not to matter what he thinks about Casey, though, because she throws a party to celebrate the basketball team winning some rivalry game and all the jocks show up, which means she spends the whole night fluttering her eyelashes at them until Steve Ochs, a dumbfuck linebacker from the football team, finally makes a move on her. It would be funny if it weren’t so embarassing to be standing in the middle of a room full of drunk teenagers and informed, in no uncertain terms, that his relationship is completely and totally over now that some fucking meathead wants Casey to wear his letterman jacket.
He shouldn’t be so upset about it, because he didn’t even like Casey with her clothes on, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fucking humiliating. He steals three bottles of the nice whiskey that her parents keep locked away, because that shit is like $100 per bottle and hopefully they’ll blame her for it, and then he catches Billy on his way into the kitchen. Billy doesn’t ask questions, just lets Stu pull him out of the house so they can go back to Stu’s place to drink his misery away.
Sid wasn’t at the party—she isn’t allowed out past 9 pm, because her parents have a strict curfew and an open bedroom door policy, like they’re some kind of cliche Brady Bunch ass family, even though Stu has overheard his mom talking on the phone more than once about the fact that, whenever Sid’s dad is away, her mom is actually slutting it up all over town. It doesn’t seem to have rubbed off on her daughter, though, because she never even tries to sneak out the window.
And so Stu may not understand Billy’s weird fixation on the girl, but he can’t complain, because Billy’s mom lets him sleep over with friends on the weekends and, without Sid, he has nowhere better to be than Stu’s bedroom, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder on the bed and chugging a bottle of 30-year-old whiskey.
It’s so much easier to drink than the shit Stu usually buys for $4.99 a bottle down at the shady liquor store, and they kill the first bottle in no time. Stu’s head is swimming pleasantly by the time he gets up for a piss, and when he gets back, Billy is rooting around in his backpack for a joint.
“I still can’t fucking believe she cheated on me,” Stu says.
Billy drops his pack, looking bored. He’s not exactly a guy you go to for sympathy, even if Stu is pretty confident at this point that Billy doesn’t like anyone in the world as much as he likes Stu, not even Sidney Prescott.
“I can’t fucking believe you care, dude. She was a fucking bitch.”
Stu shrugs. “Demon in the sack, though.”
“Yeah, no shit. Because she’s been fucking around since we were in elementary school and she kissed Jimmy Nelson with tongue. You get what you paid for.”
“Fuck you, man. I’m heartbroken here.”
Billy rolls his eyes and cracks the bougie wax seal on the second bottle. “No you aren’t. You’re just embarrassed you got dumped for some dumb fucking jock.” He takes a long swig before saying, “You worried he’s got a bigger dick?”
Stu snorts at that, because he’s not even the slightest bit worried that’s true.
Billy raises his eyebrows. “You’re that confident?”
“Let’s just say I’ve always got a backup career if college doesn’t work out.”
“Really, Macher? You think you’ve got a fucking porn star dick?”
“I know I’ve got a porn star dick,” Stu says. He doesn’t usually talk like this—he’s learned from observation that the only guys who ever mention their size are working with some seriously faulty equipment, and besides, he’s always thought talking about dicks is pretty fucking gay. There’s something about the way Billy’s looking at him now though, his brow quirked like he’s daring Stu to keep going, that has a pleasant warmth settling in Stu’s chest. He’s not really thinking when he hears himself adding, “Like, we’re talking nine inches easy.”
That’s a lie, but it’s close enough to the truth if he gets himself painfully hard and holds the ruler down hard enough that it digs all the way into his pelvis and bends back just a bit. It’s not like Billy’s about to pull out a ruler.
“Bullshit,” Billy says, rolling his eyes. “You can’t even count to nine, probably went something like ‘one, two, five, nine’ and let Casey pretend you were such a big boy.”
He’s goading Stu, which is interesting. He’s smarter than Stu by miles, can usually predict his every word, which means he’s absolutely got to understand that he can’t keep talking like this without Stu having to whip out his dick. Just to prove he’s not bullshitting. It’s not gay or anything, not when it’s a matter of fucking pride.
Stu would put the whole thing down to Billy bullshitting to call his bluff, but his eyes are… not doing that. Instead, they’ve gone razor-sharp again, like they had during Mardi Gras Massacre.
“I don’t care if you believe me.”
“Good, ‘cuz I fucking don’t.”
“Mm-hmm. Seems kinda gay to ask me to show you my dick.”
“No shit, that’s why I’m not asking to see your tiny little dick, dude. I’m just telling you it’s not fuckin’ nine inches.”
“Yeah, okay, do you want me to prove it?”
“Yeah, man. Prove it.”
They stare at each other for a second, like they’re each waiting for the other to start laughing or else call the whole thing queer as shit, but neither one of them does. Billy passes him the bottle again, and his expression is still doing that weird intense thing, so Stu takes a swig of whiskey and then reaches down and slowly unzips his fly.
“No, wait, hold on a sec,” Billy says, and holy shit, he sounds completely serious. They’re doing this for real, and Stu is already starting to chub up, because Billy’s interest is kind of getting him hot.
Billy grabs his pack off the floor and pulls a tape out, which is awesome because it means Stu is finally about to learn something about Billy’s porn taste and he’s wondered about that for years. Stu is just about to make fun of Billy for bringing a porno to a party, but he bites his tongue because instead of some hardcore bondage shit or whatever, Billy holds up one of the movies they’d watched with Randy a few weeks ago.
“Not like you can prove anything soft,” Billy says, shrugging, which might have been a perfectly good explanation for him playing a porno, but is a pretty fucking weird thing to say about Make Them Die Slowly. He’s still staring at Stu, like he’s daring him to say something, but Stu doesn’t know if he’s supposed to say What the fuck man, I don’t get off on that shit—something both he and Billy know is a lie—or No need, I’ve had a semi since you started looking at me like that while talking about my dick—which is true, but fucking gay as hell. He wonders if Billy already knows that, if he’d clocked the way Stu had bent one knee up to cover his crotch and is just giving him an easy excuse. Knowing Billy, probably.
“Well?” Billy says, once he’s put in the tape and hit play. He sits back down on the bed and turns to face Stu, one eyebrow raised. “Are you gonna do something about it?”
On screen, the titles play over a long shot of the New York skyline. Stu rolls his eyes because yeah, he’s a healthy teenager with the sex drive to match, but he’s not so fucking horned up he’s about to start jerking off to the World Trade Center.
“You at least gotta fast forward to the good stuff,” he says, partly because, yeah, he wants to jerk off, but also because he’s dying to see if Billy knows what he means by the good stuff.
He does. Of course he does. He fast forwards through all the establishing dialogue and the calm, pretty rainforest scenery and then plays it starting from the scene where the group comes across at the first body, lying splayed out on the muddy ground.
“C’mon, man, you gotta do better than that,” Stu says, rolling his eyes. “You think I’m getting my dick out for some red fuckin’ paint?”
“Okay, fucker,” Billy says and raises the remote again. His tongue is poking out of the corner of his mouth, like he’s concentrating super hard, which is fair because he fucking nails it, hitting play perfectly in time for the group on screen to stumble into the village with the charred corpse staked in the middle.
The thing about Make Them Die Slowly is that it’s inconsistent. Some of the acting is worse than most pornos Stu has seen and some of the bodies look so fake it’s laughable, but others look really fucked up, like properly messed up shit done to actual meat and bones. The body Billy has stopped on is completely skinless and covered in maggots, which shouldn’t be the kind of thing that gets him hard at all, but Stu remembers when they’d watched this scene the first time at Randy’s. He’d been really into the image then, lost in thought imagining what it would feel like to get a knife all up under a person’s skin and then just tear it all away, like his dad had taught him to do with a deer’s hide.
Billy looks smug again, staring at Stu like he knows exactly what’s going through his head.
“Is this ‘the good stuff’ yet?” Billy asks.
“Do you want to keep fucking around or do you want to see my fucking dick?” Stu asks, because sure, maybe this stuff does it for him, but he’s not gonna let Billy make him say that out loud.
Billy laughs, sharp and mean, because he absolutely knows Stu is lying, but then he skips ahead a few minutes to the sex scene and drops the remote on the bed next to him.
The chick onscreen isn’t even that hot, because she’s barely got A-cups, but at least Stu finally has something that he can pretend to get his dick out about that isn’t either a flayed corpse or, worse still, Billy and the way his eyes have gone all cold and dark while he watches Stu. He reaches down and undoes his zipper, pretending for all the world that the nudity is doing it for him. The dialogue is pretty flat, too, even more than the blonde’s chest, but at least Stu’s drunk enough he can filter it out and focus on the feeling of his hand sliding over his dick and on the knowledge that Billy is right there, next to him, watching with that same sharp gaze.
Billy reaches over to Stu’s bedside drawer and pulls out a tube of lotion, which he hands to Stu without looking at him. Stu wonders how he’d known it was there but, well, Billy’s got a dick, there’s no way he doesn’t have lotion and tissues stashed around his room too. He glances at Billy again, but he’s still staring straight ahead. It’s pretty funny how he’s doing that, because this whole thing was supposed to be about showing Billy he wasn’t lying, but now Billy is just staring determinedly at the screen while Stu fists his cock to pretty godawful porn.
Billy picks up the whiskey bottle again and takes a long pull, and now Stu is much more interested in watching the muscles of Billy’s throat work as he swallows than he is in the blonde girl Pat and her nonexistent tits. He’s definitely pretty drunk, because he’s never noticed Billy’s neck like this before but now he can’t stop staring, to the point that he almost misses it when Billy speaks.
“Would you eat a person?”
“Are you seriously fucking asking me that while I’ve got my dick in my hand, dude?”
“I’m just talking about the movie, what you do with your dick is your problem.” He still isn’t looking at Stu, just focusing intensely on the soft blue light of the television. “I’d definitely do it. I’d want to know what it tastes like.”
It should probably be enough to have him going soft, but unfortunately there’s something deeply wrong with Stu’s brain and so it’s having the opposite effect—if Billy doesn’t shut up soon, Stu is pretty sure he’s gonna cum way before they get to any of the good stuff. “All right, Hannibal Lecter, settle down,” he says, and his voice comes out rougher than usual. He’s stopped stroking himself, but now he’s stuck in a weird situation, just squeezing his hand around the base of his rock hard dick while Billy’s eyes stay trained on the screen.
“I’m not the one getting off to torture porn right now,” Billy says, which is ridiculous because he’s the one who’d wanted to see Stu’s dick in the first place, he’s the one who’d chosen the tape, and now he’s acting like Stu had whipped it out during any old movie night.
“You’re just as into this as I am, don’t even lie,” Stu bites back. Sober Stu would never do anything so fucking dumb let alone so fucking gay, but he’s still riding the buzz from the whiskey and the screams coming from the screen and he’s horny as shit, so he lets himself be dumber than usual and reaches over to grab Billy’s dick through his jeans.
He’s half-braced for a blow, but Billy doesn’t shove him away or call him a fag or whatever. Instead, he lets out this little groan and spreads his legs wider to give Stu better access. He’s not as hard as Stu is, but he’s definitely getting there. Stu starts laughing even as he’s fumbling at Billy’s fly, because Billy can’t even lie anymore, he’s every bit as into this as Stu is no matter what he says, and also, for all his teasing, his cock is distinctly smaller than Stu’s, so he can fuck right off.
“I’m the one getting off to it, huh?”
“Just shut the fuck up and watch the movie,” Billy says, but he shifts his hips back so that Stu’s hand can slip under his briefs.
Stu does as he’s told, sliding his palm up and down Billy’s hardening cock while he stares at the screen. The couple is now high out of their heads on coke and Mike, the crazy one, is giving his chick a knife and urging her to kill one of the village girls. His eyes are wide and crazed as he explains that the girl’s a virgin so she’s perfect.
Stu can’t help his mouth running, asks, “Is that what you want with Sid?”
“To watch her kill or get killed?”
“Whatever. Do you care?”
“Yeah,” Billy says, and maybe he’s drunker than he’d seemed at first, because his voice is suddenly thick and he’s saying, “She’s even a virgin. Works for the narrative. Would you be Pat? If I asked?”
It’s exhilarating, feeling the way Billy’s cock jumps in his hands as he talks.
“Not sure I’ve got the right parts for all that,” Stu snickers. He watches her fumbling with the knife the guy had given her, hesitating to strike. “I’d stab the shit out of that girl if you told me to, though, wouldn’t pussy out like she does.”
“I know you fucking wouldn’t,” Billy says, and he’s laughing, just on the edge of manic, and then, fuck, he’s reaching over and pumping the lotion onto his hand and then wrapping his fingers around Stu’s dick. “I wouldn’t even need to convince you. You’d gut her like a fucking fish.”
“Are we– are we still talkin’ about Sid here?” Stu asks, tongue tripping over the words. Billy’s hand feels so fucking good, like a hundred times better than any handjob he’s ever had before. It makes sense—Billy has a cock and a girlfriend who won’t put out, of course he’s gonna be the fucking king of masturbation.
“Sid, Casey, whoever the fuck you want,” Billy says, matching his strokes to his slow, dark tone. “Tatum Riley thinks you’re hot. Sid told me. You wanna go for Tatum, Stu?”
“I– fuck, man, I can’t tell if you’re trying to get me laid or trying to convince me to fuckin’–fucking slice up your girlfriend’s best friend.”
“Like I said, it’s whatever you fucking want,” Billy says. He’s scooted over so he’s sitting closer to Stu, their thighs pressed together, and his breath tickles Stu’s ear when he speaks next. “Bet you wanna do Casey most, though. Show her what she gets for humiliating you.”
Stu hears himself moan, which would be embarrassing if Billy weren’t still pumping his dick while he mumbles absolute filth into Stu’s ear. His hips are moving up of their own accord, thrusting into Billy’s fist, and Billy uses his left hand to shove Stu back down and hold him still, hissing, “Don’t fucking move unless I tell you to.”
Stu freezes, biting his lip with the effort to hold his hips still. He can barely manage to keep moving his hand on Billy and he must be doing a pretty shit job of it, but Billy doesn’t seem to mind if the slickness starting to leak from the head is any indication. Stu swipes his thumb over it and Billy groans, just a soft little thing that Stu barely catches, but it’s the single best sound he’s ever heard in his life.
Billy pulls his hand away, and Stu lets out a sound of protest, his own hand fumbling on Billy’s dick, but Billy is just grabbing for the remote to fast forward through all the dialogue to the next death. He tosses it aside again and reaches back for Stu’s dick, seemingly satisfied with the man being gutted on screen.
“You know how to hunt, don’t you?” Billy asks into his ear, still in that same sexy voice, like he’s fucking Lauren Bacall or something. “You know your way around a knife. You’d know how to cut her open real slow and painful, keep her alive long enough to feel your hands as you open her up and pull her guts out.”
It’s fucked up. Objectively. Stu should probably be scared right now, but he can’t even pretend to care because he’s more turned on than he’s ever been in his life. He’s definitely doing a terrible job jerking Billy off, because Billy keeps twisting his hand perfectly and making Stu lose his rhythm, but Billy doesn’t seem to mind, just keeps talking while he pumps Stu’s dick. Stu can barely think, can’t see the screen anymore. He’s just squirming and whining and the only thing that exists in the world is Billy and his perfect hands and his sultry voice in Stu’s ear, whispering, “Bet it’d feel so fucking good, getting your knife real deep inside her. So fucking hot and wet, squirting all over you…”
Stu whites out.
He’s not sure how long he lies there, blinking stars out of his eyes and trying to will his limbs to move. Billy is staring at him, expression unreadable as always.
“Gimme a sec and I can, uh, keep going?”
Billy snorts, wiping his sticky hand on the shoulder of Stu’s t-shirt and tucking his own dick back into his briefs. “I’m not gonna make you give me a reacharound, man, don’t be a fucking queer about it. You made your point. Congrats, you’ve got a big dick.”
And then leans forward, takes another long sip of whiskey, and turns his attention back to the cannibals on the screen.
*
Stu wakes up the next day, lying on his bedroom floor with a raging hangover. Billy is still asleep on his bed, splayed out like a fucking Calvin Klein model or some shit—shirt off, jeans still halfway open, hair flopping into his eyes. He looks completely fucking ridiculous. It’s probably the hottest thing Stu has ever seen.
Stu barely makes it into the bathroom before he’s got his hand back on his dick, and he doesn’t want to think about Billy but his head is filled with the words so fucking hot and wet whispered into his ear before he cums in about a record thirty seconds. He runs the shower cold, because he has to get his shit together and the icy water distracts him from the memory of Billy’s voice curling into his ear, spilling out all the things he wants to do to Casey.
When he gets out of the shower, Billy isn’t in his room anymore, so he just assumes he has pulled one of his morning disappearing acts. He’s surprised when he comes downstairs to find Billy sitting on one of the kitchen stools, wearing one of Stu’s old band t-shirts and talking politely to Stu’s mom. It’s surreal to see him here, putting on the good boy act while Stu’s mom pours him a bowl of cheerios and asks how Mrs. Loomis is doing, whether she’s going to make it to book club this week, and whether Billy’s still going out with that Sidney, who seems like a nice girl despite what they say about her mother.
“Hey, man,” is all he says when Stu walks in, and he’s smiling casually like he hadn’t spend the previous night explicitly describing brutal torture fantasies about Stu’s ex while giving him the best orgasm of his life.
“Uh, yeah, hi,” Stu replies, stumbling over the words. He can’t look at Billy, but also he can’t stop looking at him. He feels like he did back in the seventh grade when Karen Aldridge had first smiled at him, but it’s so much more than that because this time it’s Billy, and he’s been Stu’s best friend since Junior High but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s got a face that belongs on the cover of some teen chicks’ fantasy magazine and a mind that belongs in an institution. Stu’s completely terrified of him, and also might be a little obsessed.
“Stuart, honey, are you going to give Billy a ride home?” His mom asks, as if Stu is acting at all normal and cool about things. That’s good, maybe that means he is.
“Uh, yeah, sure, man,” Stu says, staring at a beam of sunlight hitting the wallpaper just above Billy’s shoulder instead of making eye contact. “You heading to your place?”
“Nah, I promised Sid I’d meet her at the mall,” Billy says, and he’s talking like he’s some perfect model of a boyfriend. Like he actually gives a fuck about Sid and hadn’t basically told Stu that he wouldn’t mind watching him carve her organs out one by one. “Tatum’s going to be there too, if you want to crash.”
“Is that the Riley girl?” Stu’s mom asks, because she’s always trying to get involved in Stu’s romantic life. She acts like it makes up for the fact that she’s never there for any of the actual parenting shit and cooks maybe one meal a week. “I like the Rileys, Frances and I sometimes play doubles at the club. Are you sweet on her?”
Stu rolls his eyes. “I’m not fucking proposing, mom.”
His mom cringes at the word, and Billy lets out a little huff of laughter. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that at the breakfast table.”
“Fine. I’m not freaking proposing, happy?” He grabs a piece of toast, shoving it into his mouth. “C’mon then, dude, let’s head out.”
“Thank you so much for breakfast, Mrs. Macher,” Billy says, because he’s a suck-up with grown ups. They all fucking love him because of it. Stu is pretty sure Randy’s mom is half in love with him by now, and even Sid’s mom seems pretty charmed—if the rumors are true, though, she’s probably more interested in his body than the fact he always says ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’
*
They don’t talk on the way to the mall, but it doesn’t feel as awkward as Stu had feared. He lets Billy pick the station, meaning it’s the alt one that always plays Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots and shit, which isn’t Stu’s favorite, but it’s fine. He likes watching Billy listen to it, likes peeking at him out of the corner of his eye while his mouth moves along with the lyrics.
Billy’s smiling by the time they pull into the parking lot, and shit, Stu totally gets why all the girls hang out around their lunch table giggling.
“You coming in, man?”
“Nah, I’m still kinda hungover,” Stu says. He pulls up in front of the entrance, waiting for Billy to get out, but Billy isn’t moving, just staring Stu down.
“I meant what I said last night,” Billy says.
“Uh… which part?” Stu asks, though he kind of wants to say, me too, I meant it all, I’d do all of it with you.
“That Tatum’s got a thing for you,” Billy says, but it still isn’t what his eyes are saying. “So fuck Casey, you should do it. Obviously.”
“Obviously.”
Billy grins. “Cool. See you around, man.”
He turns toward the door, going for the handle, and Stu shifts back into drive before he can stop himself. “Hold on,” he says. He hadn’t expected the chill he had felt when Billy turned away, like he was a flower or some shit and had just lost the full force of the sun. “I’ll find a space and come talk to Tatum.”
*
Part of him hadn’t believed Billy when he’d said Tatum was interested, despite all her flirting, because she’s actually cool, definitely way too cool for Stu, but she blushes as soon as he pulls her aside and lets him buy her a pretzel from the food court while Billy and Sid disappear into their cloying little world as usual. She doesn’t seem to expect that kind of sappy romantic stuff from him, either—she throws a piece of her pretzel at him and calls him an idiot when he puts on a voice and asks if she wants to go steady, which he takes as a yes.
Tatum is awesome. She’s hot and funny and a little bit mean, which unfortunately seems to be Stu’s type, and she doesn’t sweet talk him when they make out in the back of her car, instead bosses him around and rolls her eyes and calls him stupid for failing to find her clit on the first go, even though he lets her move his hand almost immediately and has her eyes rolling back in her head by the time it’s time to drop her back off at home.
His parents are leaving again for some conference on Friday, which would usually be time for a rager, but Tatum’s mom is weird about her having boys over and her dumb cop brother lives at home, meaning Stu hasn’t had a second with her and a bed yet, so he tells Nathan that nah, his parents are in town after all, maybe next week. He has plans for Tatum, because she’s a class fucking act who deserves better than thirty minutes in the backseat of a car and she knows it, which is why she never lets Stu get further than third base in her little red coup. He’d gotten Randy to hold a copy of Silence of the Lambs for him, though, because it’s one of Tatum’s favorites, and he’s meeting her at Shelly’s Diner after her soccer practice gets out so that he can give her a proper date like Billy’s always having with Sid. Even though she’d rolled her eyes and said, “Okay, Archie Andrews,” she’d looked pretty pleased about the whole thing.
He’s grinning the whole way home from school. They drop Sid off first, because her father is weird about her even getting a ride home with a boy, and Billy kisses her tenderly before turning back to Stu and rolling his eyes.
“Wanna hit up Blockbuster?” Billy asks. “Randy says they’ve got the new releases in.”
“Can’t, my parents are out of town and I’m having Tate over.” He wiggles his eyebrows. “First real date, think she’s gonna let me go all the way?”
“You’re such a fucktard,” Billy says, glaring at him. “If you want to waste your time with another dumb slut, that’s fine by me.”
“You wouldn’t call it a waste of time if you saw what she did to me on Wednesday,” Stu says, sticking his tongue out. “She’s a fucking freak, dude, and I say that with love.”
“Whatever. I don’t need the play-by-play. Just drop me off at the Blockbuster.”
He’s still glaring, and he’s got his arms folded across his chest. Stu kind of can’t believe it, because he’s trying to think of any other explanation for this kind of pissy outburst but he can’t, not unless Billy has done a really fucking incredible job hiding a crush on Tatum Riley. And like, sure, Billy probably wouldn’t be half as angry if Sid let him past her immaculate underwear or whatever, but that’s not the only thing going on here—it’s not that Billy can’t get his dick wet, it’s that he wants to get Stu’s dick wet, he wants to be the one pressed together on the couch with Stu watching Silence of the Lambs and touching each other.
Stu feels a little like he’s gotten his on the head with a brick, doesn’t even notice he’s pulled up to Blockbuster because Billy Loomis wants to touch his dick. He should probably be more disgusted by the queer shit, but it’s not like he’s jerking it to the oily men in the magazines his sister used to keep stashed in her underwear drawer, it’s Billy and the stuff they want to do isn’t queer it’s, like, primal.
“I dunno, man, it just seems a little bit hypocritical.”
“Wow, big fucking word there, Macher,” Billy says, practically through gritted teeth.
“I mean, if you’re allowed to go with Sid, I don’t see why I shouldn’t go with Tatum.”
“What the fuck has any of this got to do with Sid?”
Stu stares at him. He likes to act dumb, but he’s not, not really, not when it comes to Billy at least. He reaches into his pocket and holds up his cell, wiggling it in front of Billy. “Here’s a deal: I’ll call Tatum up right now and dump her over the phone if you can tell me why you want me to so bad.”
Billy stares back, not blinking. “I told you already, she’s a dumb slut and I don’t like having her around.”
“She’s not, though. Casey was a dumb slut, and you never said shit about her. Tatum’s smart, and she’s not even that slutty. Why don’t you want me going with her?”
“This isn’t about whatever the fuck you think is going on here,” Billy says, and he practically throws himself out of the car, slamming the door behind him.
“You keep telling yourself that,” Stu calls after him, and then he goes to meet Tatum at Shelly’s.
*
Tatum asks him what has him in such a good mood, but it’s easy enough to pretend he’s just looking forward to their night together. It’s not like it isn’t fun, especially not once Tatum introduces a kind of stripping game where a piece of clothing comes off for every jumpscare, but it isn’t Tatum Stu is thinking about when he finally pushes into her while Hannibal Lecter rips apart an ambulance crew on screen.
She sleeps over and then stays over all day on Saturday and they spend most of the day in Stu’s bed before ordering a pizza, which they eat with a pack of Miller Lite while watching X-Files reruns. It’s one of the better days Stu has had in a while, even if Billy isn’t answering his calls. He’s not with Sidney, at least, according to Tatum, which probably means he’s just sulking alone in his room thinking about Stu and Tatum together. If anything, the thought improves Stu’s mood even further.
On Sunday, Stu’s mom gets back from wherever she’d been, which means she gets to pretend they’re a nice happy family in front of Tatum just like she’d done with Billy the week before. She teases him about dating Tatum, says she’d known he was ‘sweet on her,’ and it pisses Stu off—she’s only acting like she knows him so well because she’d heard Billy talking about it, the only person who actually fucking understands him, except now Billy is pulling this whole moody bullshit because he doesn’t want to admit he wants to get Stu’s hand back on his dick.
He winds up inviting Tatum to Randy’s—partly because his mom had brought it up, but mostly because he knows it will piss Billy off and he wants to see how far he can push before Billy finally snaps. It doesn’t end up mattering though, because Billy still isn’t picking up the phone and, when he calls Randy, Randy tells him that Billy had called earlier to say he has a date night with Sid and can’t make it.
He can’t help but be a little pissed about it. He’s even more pissed when they finally get to Randy’s house and Randy says, “Hey, Macher, thought you were bringing your girlfriend? I don’t see Loomis anywhere.” He punches Randy though and it’s fine in the end, because Tatum and Randy actually get along pretty well and it turns out she’s never seen Videodrome, which is way better than Billy’s weird banned shit anyway.
He’s expecting a cold shoulder from Billy at school on Monday, but Billy has clearly decided to take a different tack because he’s suddenly weirdly friendly, throwing an arm around Stu’s shoulder on the way to homeroom and talking enthusiastically about his date with Sidney the previous night. If he’s trying to wind Stu up, it isn’t going to work, because Stu knows from Tatum that Billy had been all surly and pissed off for their whole date night and had needed to stop and buy Sid a fuck-ugly little pink beanie baby on his way to school as some kind of penance.
Still, Stu humors him, pretends to make a sour face about the whole thing because that’s what he knows Billy wants and there’s only so long Stu can ever deny him anything.
*
“Soooo are we finally doing video nasties again this weekend?”
It’s Thursday, and Randy has just wedged himself between Billy and Sid at their usual table, helping himself to an Oreo from Billy’s plate. He crunches it obnoxiously as he speaks.
Stu feels his stomach lurch. They haven’t picked up on their marathon lately, not since he and Tatum started dating and, more importantly, not since he and Billy went back to Make Them Die Slowly on their own.
“What’s a video nasty?” Tatum asks, from where she’s sitting between Stu’s legs. “Are you just trying to say porno?”
“Yup,” Stu says, to be a dick. “Me, Billy, ‘n’ Randy get together every Sunday night for a little circlejerk.”
Billy’s head jerks around to glare at him, but Stu just flashes him a big dumb grin, as if his insides don’t currently feel like they’re on fire.
Sid makes a disgruntled noise. “It’s not porn, Tatum, it’s so much more gross. It’s just where they get together and watch all these banned movies because they think it makes them cool or edgy or whatever. They’re all bad and they’re boring too, unless you’re some kind of sick freak.”
Stu laughs. “Well, call the nurse, baby, because I’ve got a fever.”
Sid kicks him in the thigh, but she’s laughing too. “Tate, seriously, they’re so, so bad. It’s all just naked girls covered in red paint.”
“That’s utterly ridiculous,” Randy says, and now he’s adopting the whole fake-teacher persona he sometimes does when he wants to show off. It’s probably for Sid, which is fucking hysterical to watch. “Sure, SS Experiment Camp and Gestapo’s Last Orgy may tend towards the grotesque for the sake of shock value, but you can’t say that The Last House on the Left isn’t a genre-defining directorial debut.”
“‘Genre-defining directorial debu’t? Shut the fuck up, man, you watch them for the tits and the blood same as the rest of us,” Stu says, because it’s fun to rile him up and watch him flush angrily.
“I can see plenty of tits in other movies, thank you very much,” Randy says. “I watch the video nasties because their censorship is an important part of cinema history.”
“Well, I can see plenty of tits in real life, whenever I want, because I’m not a nerdy virgin like you,” Stu says, and Tatum punches him in the balls. It fucking hurts like hell, but he’s also kind of getting hard about it, which is a whole new can of worms he’s not sure he wants to open.
“Yeah, Stu watches them for the blood for sure,” Billy says, his eyes bright. “That’s what really gets him going.” He’s doing that deep, sexy voice again, which the rest of them probably think is some kind of joke, but it isn’t, especially not when Billy leans in close to him and says, “He just loves watching it gush out, all hot and thick and wet…”
It should be stupid, because it absolutely is fucking stupid, but Billy’s voice is filthy as hell, like full on NC-17 shit and great, now Stu’s getting hard for real. He’s almost grateful Tatum had slugged him so hard, because at least now he has an excuse to keep his legs squeezed shut.
“Fuck off,” he says, hoping they all chalk down the way his voice cracks to Tatum’s punch.
“Gross,” Sid says, wrinkling her nose. “Well, you boys can have your boring tits and blood fest and Tatum and I can go to the new Keanu instead.”
The conversation moves on to a debate about Point Break that Stu can’t quite get into, not when he keeps thinking about Billy’s fucking voice, which then becomes an image of Billy leaning over Casey and sliding a knife across her throat, talking in that same stupid sexy voice about how nice and wet she’s getting for him. He totally misses the bell ringing until Tatum flicks his ear and tells him to get his ass to Trig.
Billy leans close to him, pretending to zip up his backpack, and hisses, “Nice boner, asshole.”
“Shut the fuck up, douchebag.”
Billy shrugs, shouldering his pack. “Okay, I’ll shut up. If you want help though, meet me in the third floor handicapped bathroom in five.”
And then he walks away, leaving Stu gaping at his back as he disappears into the crowd.
*
If Stu were smarter, he’d probably think better of this, but he thinks he might actually be dying of blue balls and so he doesn’t even care if it’s all some elaborate prank or some way for Billy to call him a fag in front of the whole school. He walks right past his Trig classroom and takes the stairs to the third floor two at a time, where he finds the single-used handicapped bathroom mercifully empty. He locks the door behind him and slumps against it. It’s taking all of his willpower not to just jerk off right now, but he’s pretty sure that Billy would be pissed as hell if he comes in here to find Stu with his hand on his dick, so he presses his palms flat against the floor, grits his teeth, and waits.
It’s at least ten minutes before anyone comes and Stu is growing more and more certain that Billy is just playing a joke on him, that his absence from Trig itself is going to be humiliating confirmation that he’s fucking drooling over the thought of Billy’s cock, but he can’t make himself care, not when there’s the chance that Billy’s serious.
Finally, there’s a soft knock on the door and Billy’s voice is asking, “Anyone there?”
Stu has never opened a door so quickly in his life.
Billy laughs, because Stu must look like an absolute mess, only he doesn’t care because holy fucking shit, Billy is actually here for real and he doesn’t have a camera and he hasn’t brought Tatum or Sid or anything else he could use to humiliate Stu, which means he really has just come to help or whatever he said. If he weren’t sure it would get him decked, Stu would kiss him on the mouth right here and now.
Billy’s eyes flick down to Stu’s crotch and back, clocking the damp spot in the front of his jeans, and he’s still laughing when he says, “Jesus, dude, you’re fucking insane.”
“You like it.”
Billy doesn’t agree but he doesn’t disagree either, which Stu is counting as a win, and then he steps forward to shove Stu back against the wall, and he’s counting that as even more of a win. Stu doesn’t know what to do with his hands, but it turns out that doesn’t matter, because Billy catches his wrists and pin them against the cold tile at his side and leans forward. For a second, Stu almost thinks he really is going to kiss him, because his eyes seem to flicker to Stu’s mouth, but then he’s wedging his knee between Stu’s legs, pressing it right against his hard cock and smirking.
“Well?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow. “Go ahead.”
“You seriously want me to rub off on your leg right now?”
“I said I’d help,” Billy says. “I didn’t say I’d do all the work.”
Stu stares at him, because it definitely seems like he would be losing some sort of game to take Billy up on his offer but, at the same time, his thigh is providing almost the right amount of friction against Stu’s dick and he really, really wants to get off right now.
Billy rolls his eyes. “Do I need to talk?”
“What?”
“Do you need me to fucking talk? I can talk. I can tell you what I used to think about whenever I’d see you with that dumb whore Casey.”
Stu makes a noise—he doesn’t mean to, but it comes out anyway, this little pathetic whine that’s like nothing he’s ever sounded like before.
Billy laughs again. “Oh yeah, that gets you going? Hearing about how I used to think about you wrapping your hands around her throat? Bet she’d have been real into it. She’d have thought it was fun at first, but then you’d keep going and her eyes would get all wide and scared because she’d realized she’s completely and totally fucked.”
Stu’s hips are moving now, grinding against Billy’s thigh, because he’s only fucking human and how is he supposed to act when Billy sounds like that?
“You gonna cum in your pants imagining choking your ex? Or, I don’t know, from the way you go all pathetic and whiny for me, maybe Steve Ochs is more your style. Wanna hear how I think you should do him?”
Stu hears himself whine again, and Billy’s eyes spark.
“I knew you were fucking queer, man, look at you fucking drooling over the thought of getting the hunky football jock underneath you. You said you were a knife man, yeah? Good at carving up animals like him. I’ll bet you’d get Steve strung up and then make him fucking take it. You’d shove it into him and—”
It’s not as violent as it was last time, but Stu still sees fucking stars as he cums. They’re sharp and bright and red as blood against the inside of his eyelids, and he can’t blink away their imprints at the edges of his vision.
Billy pulls his leg away, making a face. Stu has never been hit by a car before, but he imagines it feels something like Billy Loomis shoving his thigh between your legs and dirty talking you to climax like some fucking phone sex-line. One marketed towards the most certifiable kind of perverts, anyway.
“Clean the fucking cum out of your pants before History,” Billy says, his lip curled. “You’re a fucking mess.”
“Do you, uh—?”
“I’m not the one who can’t control my fucking dick in the middle of the fucking courtyard,” Billy says, which is a little rich coming from the guy who had put on his fucking sex voice during lunch and had looked at Stu like he was ready to eat him alive.
“But I never let my girl walk away unsatisfied,” Stu says, which he knows is the wrong thing to say even before he says it. It’s kind of fun, though, winding Billy up just to watch him go all rigid, like it’s taking all his willpower not to lash out. “Ask Tatum. Ask Casey.”
“I don’t know, Macher, you’re oh-for-two with me,” Billy replies, stepping back out of his reach. “Better step up your game.”
*
It’s not like Stu is a total homo or anything, because no matter what Billy may have said about knives and ropes, it’s not like Stu has any interest whatsoever in Steve Ochs or any of his other meathead friends outside of the occasional murder fantasy, and it’s not like that’s some kind of subliminal sex fantasy, because he has murder fantasies about Casey too and he’d actually wanted to fuck her. But Billy is different—Billy has always been different, because he’s Billy and he’s inside Stu’s fucking head, understanding him better than he understands himself, which makes the things they do together kind of like masturbation. If masturbation were a thousand times better than sex with the hottest girl on the cheer team, anyway.
He’d tell Billy as much, but Billy is back to running hot and cold again after their encounter in the bathroom. He keeps looking at Stu when they’re out with the others, flashing him these little we know something they don’t know smiles and kicking him under the table, but when they’re alone, he sits as far as he can from Stu. It’s driving him absolutely nuts, because he doesn’t have a clue what Billy wants from him but, at the same time, he’s sure Billy is waiting for something he can’t figure out.
He turns Tatum down for another Friday date night and takes Billy to Blockbuster instead. He’s not sure what he’s hoping for, but it definitely involves Billy’s hand on his dick, so it’s not exactly a promising sign when Billy walks past all the Jamie Lee flicks to grab two from the black-and-white shelf. He lets Stu pick between them when they get back to his place: Shadow of a Doubt and Strangers on a Train, because Billy’s always been a crazy Hitchcock fanboy. Stu shrugs, so Billy sticks Strangers on a Train in and flops down on the bed, an arms-length away from Stu.
Stu scoots closer to him and does the yawn move to drape an arm over his shoulder, exaggerating it enough so it’s just a joke, just Stu being an idiot as usual, but also so that it’s not really, because no matter how much he’d been joking, his arm is now comfortably wrapped around Billy.
Billy lets him keep it there for a long moment, and Stu holds his breath, waiting to see if this is really going to fucking work, but then Billy is twisting around and kicking him hard, so that he tumbles off the bed onto the floor.
“I’m not a girl,” Billy says sharply.
“I know that,” Stu replies, flopping back down next to him, and he reaches over to grab his crotch to prove it. He’s not hard, but he’s sure as fuck not entirely soft either.
“I’m not a fag either,” Billy says, slapping his hand away. “Just watch the fucking movie, asswipe.”
Stu wonders if this is what Billy’s date nights with Sid are like—him reaching for her, her coyly batting him away even though they both fucking know she wants it. Her forcing him to watch a boring ass movie from the years before they were allowed to show any of the good stuff on screen.
Stu starts laughing. He can’t help it, even though he knows it’s pissing Billy off, because it’s fucking hysterical to imagine Billy wearing this one baggy pink sweater of Sid’s, strictly enforcing that stupid underwear rule while Stu tries to stick his hand down his pants.
“What’s so fucking funny?”
“Just never had to deal with a frigid girlfriend before,” Stu says. “If Sid’s half as much of a fucking prude as you are, no wonder you’re always walking around with blue balls.”
“Stop saying shit like that.”
“What, that you’re my girlfriend?” Stu asks, watching Billy tense up. “I’m just teasing you, man, you gotta stop taking everything so seriously.”
“You sound like a fucking homo.”
“Yeah, sure, buddy. I sound like the homo here.” Stu leans forward a little. “You know, because I’ve been the one talking about thrusting knives into men’s holes or whatever. You grabbed my fucking dick, man.”
“You liked it.”
“Yeah, no shit, I did,” Stu says, because that’s the point he’s been trying to make this whole time.
“Just watch the fucking movie, man,” Billy says again, and he suddenly sounds fucking exhausted, like he can’t muster the energy to fight back any longer. Stu wonders if he could push him just an inch further, what he’d look like if he finally cracked… But something about the set of Billy’s shoulders stops him, so he leaves it alone and settles back to watch the movie.
“ We could swap murders,” Billy says casually, about half an hour in. “I could do Casey.”
Stu laughs. “We’re not strangers, dude. It doesn’t work if everyone knows you’re friends.”
“Still, though,” Billy says, and now he’s doing that thing where he gets really focused and intense and Stu can’t tell if he’s fucking around. “There wouldn’t be a real connection or anything. I may know Casey, but what has she ever done to make me murder her?”
“Cheat on your best friend?” Stu says. It still smarts a bit, using the words cheated on, even if he hadn’t really cared about her one way or the other and, besides, he’s happier with Tatum anyway. She’s happier with Steve too, and that isn’t fair at all, because the cheater is definitely supposed to suffer for it.
Billy snorts. “Yeah, no offense, man, but that’s a pretty shit motive.”
“ ‘Sides, who would you even want killed?” Stu asks. “No one’s ever cheated on you.”
Billy grimaces, no doubt taking it as a dig at his virginity. Stu doesn’t correct him, because what’s he gonna say, ‘you’re a fucking catch and no girl would ever cheat on a face like that’? No way in hell he doesn’t sound like a massive fucking homo explaining that, so he accepts sharp kick Billy gives him to the shin.
“Fuck you, man,” Billy says, kicking at him again, and that’s just not something Stu can take lying down, so he lunges. Billy rolls off the bed, tucks his arms in as they crash onto the carpet, and then he’s on Stu like a fucking wildcat, clawing and kicking at every part of him he can reach.
Billy’s good at this, because he’s always been too full of rage and conviction not to be, but eventually the reality of the situation always wins out—Stu is bigger and stronger than him and all he needs to do is wait for Billy to tire himself out and then pin him down. All it ever takes is an arm hooked around his neck, and then Billy would have to tap out. He always taps out eventually, and then he spends the rest of the night with his face all red and furious.
Stu thinks about it now—imagines what it’s like to have Billy pinned under him, body twisting and writhing to no avail. They’ve both made a silent agreement since fucking middle school not to talk about any boners that might occur during shit like this, and Stu has kept to that, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t notice that Billy gets rock hard every time they’re pressed together, every time Stu gets him trapped underneath him. He’s pretty sure that, even now, if he reached down and squeezed his dick, Billy would cum in about two seconds flat. He’d hate Stu, possibly forever, but he’d cum all the same.
He can’t do it though. In the end, he’s all about what Billy wants and he always is. He could never push him like that, never lash out with the kind of cruelty Billy is capable of. If their positions were reversed, Stu doubts Billy would hesitate—he’d just go ahead and take what he wanted from Stu no matter how much he begged, and that’s completely fucked up but also it’s pretty fucking hot to think about.
Fuck it, it’s not like any of Stu’s other strategies have ended with him getting off. It couldn’t hurt to try, right? Stu extends his arm like he’s trying for a pin, slower than he usually does, and acts like he’s caught off guard when Billy gets it twisted around under him. Stu kicks out, but it’s not nearly enough to hit Billy, not when he’s moving with so much caged fury. He twists Stu’s free hand down too and then swings his knees up, so that he’s kneeling down on Stu’s chest, panting heavily. His face is flushed and he looks—beautiful. Stu has never had trouble talking to even the hottest girls in their school but here on Billy’s bedroom floor, he’s struck completely dumb.
He stares up at Billy, waiting.
Billy snorts and rolls his eyes, like he knows exactly what Stu’s thinking, and then he climbs off of him. Stu takes a moment, trying to catch his breath, but then he pushes himself up and sits back down on the bed. Billy sits closer to him after that, at least, while he rewinds the movie back to where they’d been before they started talking.
“I think my dad’s having an affair.”
It’s out of the blue, and Stu is a little distracted, so he’s not exactly following the conversation.
“Uh, okay?”
“I mean it. He’s never around anymore, and I caught him sneaking out of the house at, like, 5 am the other day.”
“What did he say?”
Billy rolls his eyes. “Work stuff. He was lying though, I can tell.”
“Shit, man. That sucks.”
“Yeah. So that’s my answer.”
“What answer?”
Billy looks at him like he’s stupid. “You asked me who I’d want to kill—I’d wanna kill whoever the fuck my dad was sneaking out to meet at 5 in the goddamn morning while my mom was still in bed.”
*
And then Billy finds out it’s Maureen Prescott.