It has Skeet Ulrich and Matthew Lillard's seal of approval! The whole final act is ridiculous in the best way. They reveal they’ve been doing the killings together, they’re finishing each other’s thoughts, they’re getting way too excited about the plan, and then they start stabbing each other as part of the cover story. Stu is bleeding out and still looking to Billy like, hey, how are we doing? Billy is the one with the revenge motive, but Stu is right there committing fully to the entire thing. Stu feels like someone who would follow Billy anywhere, partly because he thinks it’s fun and partly because Billy clearly has a hold on him. Billy is colder and more controlled, but he still chooses Stu as the person beside him for the whole plan. It’s awful, but it’s also very compelling. The queer reading has been sitting there for decades. The actors enjoy it. Fans see it. Just let the original Ghostface murder boyfriends be exactly what they already look like.
I'm not sure if this will count because there is a line in a spin-off game MAYBE vaguely implying they could be together? Balthier says something about how he can woo people and Fran says "it worked on me". But it's not clear and they're not together in the main game most people have played. But ugh. They're met as a unit and treated as a unit the whole game. Fran can read this man by his eyes - in one scene she immediately knows something is up with him because "You've let your eyes betray your heart". Balthier can tell when she’s about to snap before anyone else catches up. They trust each other with the Strahl, with their lives, with the parts of themselves they don’t really hand to anyone else. And that one scene where Balthier rescues Fran from the rubble and carries her bridal style <3
