The Devils Bargain | stuilly | billyxstu | stuxbilly

Chapter 3

Okay so. Billy may have miscalculated slightly. His earlier statement that Sid wouldn't move far was, for all intents and purposes, wrong. She had moved to Ohio. Billy hadn't quite realised how far that was until his ass started hurting and eventually went numb, and Stu began leaning all over the place.

Sure, they had breaks, and in those breaks, he often had to do a full stretch routine to allow blood to flow back into his legs. It was his fault for not listening in geography, but well, he was being punished harshly for it, so I guess Mr. Johnson won.

The two-day ride was spent mainly planning his horror sequel. Stu had begun joining in once fighting with those teenagers became boring, though his input was born out of boredom, so he didn't have much to give beyond his imaginative ability to picture the best possible kills. Either way, planning was nearly impossible when he didn't know the layout of the college or Sid's life situation. He was working on nothing.

If Billy wasn't 'planning', he was sleeping. Though he wasn't really tired, he would rather be unconscious than deal with Stu's boredom. There was a point in the ride where Stu fell next to him while he slept. The bus was dark, the curtains pulled back, and the other passengers were sleeping in their own little piece of cheap bus ride heaven.

And Stu's head was leaning into his shoulder. It almost felt nice. Billy hadn't felt so absolutely warm in forever. The last time he felt so safe and comfortable was when his mom would come up and read him a bedtime story as he fell asleep. The warmth of his cheeks next to his, the sound of his soft sleeping breaths. The skin-to-skin contact comes from their faces touching. Billy likes to believe he let himself melt into the embrace because he was tired and out of his mind from the bus ride.

He didn't understand why he felt this way about Stu. He didn't want to know why. In fact, he was quite intent on not figuring that out. He found himself forgetting why he kept Stu around far too often. He wasn't anything—nothing but a pet, a means to an end. That's what he told himself in moments like these. Anything else would just be wrong.

When Billy began feeling too comfortable, too perfect, That familiar feeling of disgust crawled up his throat, burning his face and body from the inside out. He wanted to claw his skin off as his brain denounced himself. Self-hatred, hatred for the way he was feeling, hatred for Stu and his stupid, warm body. It was all bullshit.

He pushed Stu off, throwing some half-arsed insult as he repositioned himself so Stu couldn't do it again, and Billy went back to sleep, ignoring the way that he now felt cold and lonely.

The next time he woke up, Billy was being jabbed, rather rudely, by Stu. "We're here, man!"

Stu gave him another tap, like the first jab wasn't a fucking nuff, as he stood up, high-fiving the group of teenagers he was earlier arguing with as they left.

Billy groaned, cracking his eyes open as he peeled off the window. His cheek was red, and there was an imprint of the side of his face on the window. It was slightly embarrassing, so Billy rubbed the mark away as best he could before getting up himself. It was still bright out; most likely, it just hit late lunchtime. Feeling strangely refreshed. ( and it's not because of STU ) Billy followed Stu out of the bus after they both grabbed their bags, his legs needing some time to wake up as well. He groaned with each step, every body part feeling like it was all waking up one by one.

When he looked, he found that they were in the middle of a campus. Older students walked through the open field. Some groups were just talking, and some were having a makeshift picnic. It was all you'd expect from a college campus.

What really caught his attention as Stu jumped off the bus to gawk at the scenery was a policeman standing on a pedestal.

There was obviously some sort of police interview. What it was most likely about was fairly obvious. Billy couldn't see any reason not to get a sneak peek to see if they had any new information. Priorities and all that. Though he had the urge to completely ditch the side plot and move on to the main event, you don't make a good movie by running headfirst into the ending.