When The House Goes Up In Flames

This is the part where they win. And what comes next? Rewind the tape and script the sequel. They’re after the fade to black, deep in the unmapped dark — maybe one of them will write a book. The Woodsboro mass murders are on every news network, every channel there is, period — one of their own is in the morgue and the press are losing their shit. The news outlets are in a real hurry to nail a halo on Gale Weathers after the fact.

Motive, bullshit. Let the cops sort it out, wade through the blood and the corn syrup and look for a manifesto, sift through the splattered remains of Mr. Prescott looking for a brain tumor or something — they’re not going to find it when the evidence is all right there, pops went psycho and chopped up a couple nubile teens on his way to the grand prize. Think of it psychologically — he looked at her and he always saw Maureen, Billy can say from his hospital bed to a cop taking notes seated in a folding chair, and he’ll be believed. Which is bullshit, by the way, Sid was a much hotter piece than her slutty mother and nobody, nobody needs to know it’s Billy who looked in her pretty brown eyes and saw good old mom.

Stu doesn’t know. Stu will never know. Just that little ace in the hole.

There’s a picture of them on every front page, the morning after — the two of them, Stu getting loaded into an ambulance on a gurney and Billy next to him, shirt blackened with blood. They’re embracing through the crazy pain, the picture of delirious grief, two regular American boys shell shocked beyond belief — and beneath Stu’s shirt Billy’s fingers are finding the gash he cut himself, pressing into the wound. Breathing into Stu’s ear, stay with me, buddy, okay and surging with a giddy feeling of ownership. He did this. He did this. They did this.

You won’t see that in a photograph. Stu is the only person who could ever love him after what Billy’s done. The two of them are America’s sweethearts.

“We go on tomorrow. The host’s going to toss us a couple softballs and we get to look pretty on TV.” People will be watching across America — not watching the carnage but watching them.

The hospital bed sinks a little under Billy’s weight as he settles in alongside. The plastic frame rattles. Stu makes a smarmy grin. “We better get some practice in. What does left for dead look like?”

Left for dead. His fingers trace Stu’s stitches through his shirt, and Stu swears with a desperate kind of good humor — the cops say he got the worst of it, but Billy still remembers how it felt to stick him.

There’s nothing to get in their way any more, nothing to impede them. They’re famous. Sole survivors. Everybody likes the sound of sole survivors, except the tricky part is the sole part. This was a joint effort.

“I can’t believe it, man.”

“Didn’t I tell you?”

“It’s fucking crazy. We lived it.”

It’s one thing to have a bloody little fantasy about bringing the movies to life, and another to live it. And with a special effects budget of next to nothing — a couple Halloween costumes and a stolen cell phone and some corn syrup. Even Texas Chainsaw couldn’t cut that kind of a margin.

The occasion calls for more than a couple of brewskis — but they’re not about to get wasted. They’re not about to tempt fate. There’s rules about this stuff.

One bottle, two glasses lined up on the little plastic table, two survivors of the Woodsboro massacre. The antiseptic burn makes his mouth ache. Smuggling a bottle of bourbon in was a bitch and a half. The nurses all look at him like he might break in half any minute now, because they know where he’s been. Stu keeps looking at him like a movie star.

Stu’s a little sick. They both are. But he followed him this far, Billy’s got him by the heart and by the balls — that’s got to count for something. Call it the buddy system. There’s more blood on their hands than anyone would believe, whole Olympic swimming pools full of the red stuff, whole oceans of blood —

How often do the bad guys get to win? Well, Rosemary’s Baby, but that’s not fair. You can’t pick a fight with Satan himself and win. Phantasm, kind of. And franchises are all about the bad guys coming back. They take a hit, they drop, but they always come back. There’s got to be some way to franchise this.

Billy kisses him, muttering against his mouth don’t move and Stu doesn’t — his mouth is warm and his chin is smooth. Thank fuck they’ve let him change out of those flimsy little backless gowns or it’d be a real boner-killer, what Billy is about to do. His undershirt smells like detergent, like back-home.

He starts at the soft part of his neck and moves downward from there, leaving a big show-off hickey on his collarbone. All that blood, so close to the surface. Stu makes an indignant protesting noise, and it’s sort of sexy, all by itself. Billy moves down, down Stu’s chest, down the quaking slope of his soft-skinned stomach to the soft track of hair you only get to see in gym classes and locker rooms and oh yeah, just like this, right like this between the two of them.

His hands track up Stu’s legs at the same time and Stu’s touch ghosts over him, his biceps, his back. There’s no hesitation, no teasing.

Billy takes him in his mouth, as gently as he’s capable of. It’s an act of love, just as much as any of this is — Stu trusts him to use his mouth and not to hurt him, when Billy’s mouth is the only thing that makes Stu feel worthwhile any more.

There’s no way to lose. They got away with it — the cops are so wrapped up in the fantasy of motive that they won’t ever see it, and if they do, who gives a shit? They’ll go down in history.

Stu’s hand works in the hair on the nape of Billy’s neck — Billy makes an impatient noise deep in his throat and presses down deeper, swallowing him up. Not so gentle now, but ready to get it over with. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am.

“Wait, wait, wait,” Stu says, plaintive. Billy raises his head with eyes blazing, dragging his tongue up the shaft of Stu’s dick as he goes, and Stu yanks him up by the arm — his fingers grip Billy’s bicep hard enough to bruise and that’s the Stu he knows, not the one who was scared of getting handled like he might explode but the one who always liked it rough. They tangle together on the bed, Billy falls in alongside him with the faint taste of cum still in his mouth and Stu takes himself in his hand.

Billy’s hard too, agonizingly hard. Stu grabs his dick through his jeans and makes him groan.

“This isn’t about you doing me. It’s about us.”

Tangled together in mirror symmetry — maybe this was how it was the first time, back then, his hands circling Stu’s cock and Stu jerking him off, both of them watching. Back then they were timid. Now they’re hungry. Hungry kisses and no denial

Being with Sidney was never about Sid — but being with Stu has never been anything else, not an image problem, not a power play. Stu would be just as loyal if it were just the tease and not the full delivery — just the subtext, not the text. Stu might be the only person who’s ever loved him for what he is. Assuming love is what this is. Lust, certainly.

Getting away with it. It’s all about getting away with it. Billy is getting away with this, and he’s been getting away with it for a good long while. The way they feel about each other is magnetic, it’s just a natural match — like two halves of the same person. Billy knows what Stu wants. He knows what he’s about to do — he knows all his moves.

All this is a game. It’s supposed to be fun. And haven’t they been having fun?

Stu can play the grieving boyfriend and Billy can be the faithful friend. Then when they’re done they can switch places. What does guilt look like? It looks like the shadows chasing Stu’s face — and that’s a good touch, Stu looking fucked-up and haunted, Billy’s been milking the battered heartthrob look for as much as it’ll give him but Stu looks like a little kid who fell off his bike. Surprised, confused, all fucked up. Like this isn’t what he wanted it to be. It’s everything Billy wanted it to be and more.

Stu’s losing it. If this brings him back in line, then good. Count this as their celebratory first time since what happened in Woodsboro — what happened in Woodsboro was all according to plan, and here they are, finally out from under supervision. It’s been a bumpy ride all the way from Cotton Weary to this, but now: plan the sequel. Deranged copycat starts picking off the survivors of the Woodsboro massacre, one after another — but killing off two guys doesn’t make for good thriller material, so they’ll start at a distance and work their way in.

Stu bites the dust, again, and Billy stands in the wreckage. Alone. Sole survivor. He’s going to miss him. Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way — maybe someone else will take the hit and they can go on being two halves of the same organism together.

That’s enough of that. Billy swings his legs over the side of the hospital bed, wiping off his hands on the sheets.

“So anyway, taping starts early tomorrow.”

Billy takes a drink from his glass to wash out the swimming-pool taste, then leans back and breathes real close to Stu’s ear. Hoping Stu can feel the burn and bite as acutely as he can.

It’s easy for Stu to sound comically flippant, even with Billy so close he can see all the acting that goes into it. It can’t be easy. “So?”

Billy rubs his knuckles down the side of Stu’s throat, making him shiver. He’ll do the voice. Stu’s always been crazy about the voice. “So let’s practice.”