you're too young & eager to love

I’m over analyzing films again. Scream! How I love you. I don’t even care if most people hate you. You’re so fun.

Stu seems very physically affectionate with Billy. He leans on him a lot and gives him crazy, lusty eyes. He also, very obviously, follows Billy’s lead and doesn’t seem like the more capable of the two. During the kitchen showdown scene with Sidney, Billy hands Stu the gun and Stu presents Billy with the knife …. Which makes me think that Billy is the better knife-wielder. And maybe the one who most directly killed the people?

And Stu says “baby” a lot. Which makes me grin.

Billy’s just hot. In a completely way-too-obviously psychotic way.

Here we go!




“You take a knife…” Stu said, his slyness fading into something more sinister as his fingers plucked at the hem of Tatum’s shirt. “And you cut them from groin to sternum.”




They started with pigs.

It had been Billy’s idea, of course, with his grease-stained hands and raw-bitten nails. Billy knew all types of useful information, but not all of it came from horror movies, as it turned out. He learned how to skin and butcher animals from his father, long before Hank started fucking Sidney’s mother and returning home at odd hours. In a way, it made sense that Billy had known how to use a knife for a long time. He had that look about him.

Stu didn’t. He was too tall and too funny. He’d been the class clown since third grade, and humor rarely required knife work. He was queasy in the woods, nervous, laughter breaking through his chattering teeth, and he still didn’t know where Billy had found a pig to begin with. It was smaller than what he had been expecting, a squirming bundle of pink skin in Billy’s arms. Its nose was wet and its eyes large. It didn’t run when Billy put it down but buried its nose into the dark dirt, content to sniff and push at the worms beneath their feet, the sound of it down there like the sound of a woman being snuffed.

“Shit, man, Billy … I don’t know. I’m feeling a little bit sick over here, man.” Stu runs his sleeve under his nose, trying to be funny but he’s sniveling a bit instead, and he’s reminded of being six and crying over the death of his dog. Dogs and pigs don’t look anything alike, but he thinks it has something to do with the eyes.

Billy’s gaze goes dark, like it sometimes does when he’s angry or frustrated about Sidney blue-balling him or needy for Stu’s mouth around his cock, and the glint of the blade in his right hand is bright in comparison. The pig doesn’t see it, but Stu does. “From groin to sternum, right?”

Stu grins, a wide sloppy, manic expression. He still feels sick but Billy’s hair is falling into his wolf eyes as he twirls six inches of a butcher knife between his fingers and now his dick is a little hard.

It happens fast. It happens before Stu can stop smiling. Billy’s strong hands grab the pig at his feet, one of his fists hitting its head but it’s not nearly hard enough because he doesn’t have a hammer and he isn’t a butcher who really cares about stunning the kill in the first place. The pig is screaming and Stu’s never heard that sound before and its high pitched terror, terror like lightning, and he just wishes it would shut the fuck up because the noise is definitely making him feel worse, his stomach all tangled and knotted, and the thing still screams, screams for its life even as Billy slits its throat in one clean motion, and suddenly Stu gets what Clarice was trying to explain to Hannibal about the lambs.




Billy is not some pansy-ass momma’s boy faggot. He isn’t Norman Bates either, but he does appreciate the sentiment Bates establishes: we all do go a little mad sometimes. And maybe this is just madness too, because the blood on his hands sure as shit isn’t corn syrup, and he can taste copper in his throat when he catches Stu by the back of his neck and kisses him with more teeth than tongue.

Woodsboro is a small town with big morals covering deep lies, and this type of behavior between two boys would be just as bad as a psychotic slasher spree. But just like murder, it feels good. And Billy always does what feels good, trying to sooth that black hole inside of him, the one full of spite and hot anger. He’s taken charge of his own narrative, and it’s the millennium – sexual orientation is on the downward spiral and hedonism is making a come back.

As for Stu, he gives in to pressure easily. He hardly puts up a fight.

It all starts feeling like madness, and maybe what Billy said about mommy issues being passé is true, because motives really are incidental, but the truth is he doesn’t really know what he’s doing or why he’s doing it. He lets Billy guide and mold him, takes the back seat to his direction and steady gaze. Billy, who’s been his best friend since kindergarten, who actually fucking cried in front of him the day his mother split, who said he only liked Sid because he got hard thinking about a knife in her belly and remembering her mother’s screams. Stu knows that means something, but he’s not entirely sure what.

Either way, even the woods and the pigs become normal after a while.

He eventually figures out how to gut them, but his grip always feels a little clumsy on the blade no matter how dull the screams become or how hot Billy’s mouth is on his neck afterwards.