Domestic Do-over

by Kate McMurray

  “Then let’s not think about it.”

  Brandon looked up and met Travis’s gaze.

  Travis stood. He held out his hand. When Brandon took it, Travis helped him up and led him to the bedroom. They would forget about everything tonight except each other, if Travis had anything to say about it. They’d make love—as gross as Travis felt about that phrase, it was the best description of what he knew was about to happen—and lose themselves in each other. They’d worry about the rest of it when they woke up.

  They’d been together long enough that Travis knew Brandon’s body. He knew the shape of it, the contours of it, the way Brandon smelled, the noises he made. He got Brandon out of his clothes quickly and wriggled out of his own, until it was just the two of them, naked, on the bed.

  Travis licked Brandon’s neck, loving the rough texture of day-old beard and the salty taste of Brandon’s skin. Then he trailed kisses along Brandon’s shoulder to his armpit. Brandon wore some kind of woodsy/minty deodorant, but Travis would have much preferred him to go without. Travis loved the scent of sweaty man, probably some kind of locker room impression from his formative years as a gay teenager at a public high school in Queens, but he loved Brandon’s weird affectations too. Brandon wasn’t a cologne wearer, but he seemed to like aftershaves and lotions with aggressively masculine scents.

  Travis trailed kisses along the center of Brandon’s chest, which was like a blank canvas—no scars or tattoos, just a little dusting of hair that was a shade darker than the blondish hair on his head. Brandon’s gym-sculpted body was something to behold, strong and masculine, with defined pecs and a six-pack. Travis ran his tongue over the bumps and grooves of Brandon’s torso, and Brandon hissed in response. Then he groaned as Travis’s body brushed over his hard cock. Travis smiled to himself, satisfied that he was making Brandon feel.

  Brandon shifted his hips up. “God, suck me.”

  But Travis enjoyed torturing Brandon too much. He pressed his face into the space between Brandon’s cock and the top of his thigh and inhaled. This was where Brandon smelled the most like himself. No minty soap or woodsy deodorant here, just sweaty man, and Travis reveled in it. He licked Brandon’s skin, then turned his head and darted his tongue out to trace the side of Brandon’s cock.

  “Oh my God,” Brandon grunted. “Stop teasing.”

  Travis propped himself up with a hand on either side of Brandon’s hips. “Did you want something?”

  “You bastard.”

  Travis laughed. Then he dove and swallowed Brandon’s cock. Brandon moaned.

  There wasn’t enough space to do this well on the bed, so Travis knelt at the foot of it and yanked Brandon’s body to the edge so his feet dangled on either side of Travis. Then Travis got back to work, worshipping Brandon’s cock, touching it reverentially, kissing and licking it as though it would help him find religion.

  “That’s too good,” Brandon said. “Get back up here.”

  But Travis kept at it until he could sense Brandon was getting very close. He reluctantly leaned away and crawled up on the bed beside Brandon. But before he could settle, Brandon practically jumped at him and took Travis’s cock into his mouth.

  “Jesus,” said Travis.

  “I’ll make you see Jesus.”

  Travis wanted to laugh, but his body wouldn’t form anything but a grunt as his cock was enveloped in the wet heat of Brandon’s mouth. Brandon rubbed Travis’s balls with the heel of his hand and started probing behind them with his fingers. Travis thrust forward, loving this attention, wanting more of it.

  But he wanted Brandon too, so he shifted his weight so that Brandon still had access to the goods but Travis could continue to touch and taste Brandon’s cock. This 69 position was suddenly the best of everything. Travis inhaled Brandon’s sweaty scent and licked and stroked that big cock, loving the feel and taste of it, while Brandon made him feel like his whole body was pulsing. It was overwhelming, it was amazing, and it was about to get messy.

  Brandon was really fucking good at sucking cock for a guy who had been in the closet until recently. Good Lord.

  Travis thrust his hips, trying to encourage Brandon to speed up, and Travis rubbed Brandon harder, stroking that big cock with gusto. Brandon mumbled some blasphemies and started stroking Travis hard and a bit roughly, exactly the way Travis liked it.

  “I’m gonna come on your face,” Travis threatened, because suddenly he was right there.

  “I’ll come on yours first,” Brandon said breathlessly.

  Brandon won the race, coming with a long moan and pumping into Travis’s mouth. Travis took it all, letting the metallic taste sit on his tongue before swallowing. But he could barely do that, because his body was falling apart, every bit of pleasure pooling near his cock, and then suddenly Brandon’s mouth covered him again and he was coming.

  He came back to himself slowly and realized he was staring at Brandon’s hairy thighs. Laughing softly, Travis shifted around again so that he could lay his head on a pillow.

  “I feel sometimes,” Brandon said, “that sex with you is like the sex I should have been having in my twenties. It’s intense, sometimes it’s fast, and I always go off like a rocket.”

  “I’ve got skills.”

  Brandon smiled and ran a hand down Travis’s chest. “You do.” Brandon closed his eyes for a long moment. He looked content and satisfied. When he opened his eyes again, he met Travis’s gaze. “I forgot all about drywall and paint for a minute there.”

  “When I can get it up again, I’ll have to fuck you silly. It’s not enough for you to forget drywall—I want you to forget your name.”

  Brandon laughed. “I bet you could do it.” He sighed. “I have to pee, but my body is made of Jell-O.”

  Travis rolled onto his side and put an arm around Brandon. “Don’t get up just yet.” He kissed Brandon softly, a deep sleepiness and contentment starting to settle into his body. “Maybe we can get up tomorrow and everything will be the same.”

  “I don’t think we’ll be that lucky, but I’m willing to go along with it for now.

  “Good.” Travis yawned. He lifted his arm. “You can get up now. I’m gonna go to sleep.”

  “Is that how it is?”

  “You may feel like you’re in your twenties when we’re having sex, but I’m definitely in my thirties, and I need some recovery time. I might as well get some shut-eye while my body recharges. That way, when we both wake up at three because we’re worried about tomorrow, I can roll you over and—”

  “I get it.” Brandon got out of bed, laughing.

  Chapter Eighteen

  BRANDON’S HEART was in his throat. It took everything he had in him not to vomit on the elevator up to the Restoration Channel offices.

  That morning, Travis had kissed him and told him everything would work out, but that was clearly a lie. And then Travis had gone off to work on the house and here Brandon was, losing his shit in an elevator.

  The receptionist hopped out of her chair when Brandon walked up to the front desk. “Ms. Frank is expecting you, Brandon,” she said. “I can call you Brandon, right? You just seem so down-to-earth on TV.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. Which office is Virginia’s again?”

  “I’m so excited about the new show. And I got to meet Jessica Benton the other day. She’s gorgeous. You must be stoked to be working with her.”

  “I am.” God, Brandon was nauseous. “Can I see Virginia now?”

  “Oh, sure. I’ll take you back.”

  Brandon followed the receptionist to Virginia’s office. He knew it was melodramatic, but it felt like he was dead man walking.

  Virginia was sitting at her desk when Brandon appeared in the doorway. She smiled brightly, which might or might not have been a good sign.

  “Thanks, Hayley,” she said. “Brandon, come in and close the door.”

  Shit.

  The receptionist disappeared back down the hall, so Brandon shut the door and sat in one of the guest c
hairs.

  “So, I received some news last night that was a bit surprising,” Virginia said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You all right, Brandon? You look like you’re about to throw up.”

  “I’ve been better.” Brandon grabbed a tissue from the box on Virginia’s desk and wiped the sweat off his forehead. “It’s bad news, isn’t it?”

  “No, I don’t think so. I needed a little time to process it, but I have a great idea for how we should deal with it now.”

  “Okay.” Brandon was dying. Why was she stalling?

  “Let me cut to the chase. Erik called me last night to say he’d overheard a conversation between you and Travis that seemed to, er, strongly indicate that the two of you are… involved.”

  So they had been discovered. Brandon leaned forward and rested his head in his hands.

  “I take it from your reaction that it’s true. You and Travis are… doing something… together.”

  “Virginia, I’m so sorry. I—”

  “Don’t apologize. There’s no law against it. Technically, Travis works for me, not for you.” Virginia grabbed a notepad from the edge of her desk. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I—” Brandon couldn’t figure out what to say. Perhaps this was not the worst it could be. Virginia had a plan to deal with this, which implied the show wasn’t canceled.

  “You’re not in trouble, I should state.”

  “I… I don’t even know how to explain it. Travis is gay. Did you know that?”

  “No, but I had a hunch. It’s illegal for me to ask him, just as it’s illegal for me to ask you. But two people who work for me having an affair with each other has the potential to affect the show I produce.”

  Brandon didn’t know how much to confess. “I know. We weren’t going to let it affect the show—not when we hadn’t defined what was going on with us. You want to know what happened, honestly? Maybe two weeks into filming, we realized we were attracted to each other and we acted on it. Is it a capital-R relationship? I don’t know. We’ve been discussing it but haven’t decided anything for sure. We have feelings for each other. That’s all I know. You satisfied now?”

  Virginia grinned giddily, which was not the reaction Brandon expected.

  “I will admit that having two people who work on the same show entangled romantically is not ideal if they did not have a previous relationship, because if you break up, that’s bad news for my show. But if you are together, and it’s working out, that’s a different situation. We love couples, as you know.”

  “Are you kidding me right now?”

  “Not at all.”

  Brandon couldn’t make sense of this. “But I thought… that is, you don’t have any gay hosts on any of your shows. Restoration Channel has always been pretty aggressively heterosexual. You canceled Country Creatives because the hosts were gay.”

  “I didn’t cancel the show. My old boss did. Garrett Harwood is trying to change that. We’ve been testing out the audience by featuring gay couples on Home Finders. It hasn’t affected ratings at all. I didn’t think it would, not with our largely female demographic. Garrett and I have actually been in talks with this openly gay interior designer for a new show. He works with Oprah and has a line of home decorations for one of the big box stores. Nolan Hamlin. You know him?”

  “Name is familiar.”

  “Well, cone of silence anyway, because that’s not a done deal yet. He still hasn’t signed the contract. But in the meantime, we have you.”

  “You don’t… I mean, that’s not really….”

  “If Kayla hadn’t so publicly cheated on you, I’d have a new theory about why your marriage ended.”

  Brandon didn’t want to gossip. And although some of the tension had left his shoulders, his stomach still churned. He wanted to run out of here as fast as he could. “You said you had a plan for how to deal with this?”

  “Oh! Yes. So, we’ve done some market research. We know our audience is largely female. We also know that our largely female audience is totally on board with having more gay men on the Restoration Channel. They like the idea of a gay man being their shopping buddy, even if it’s for home goods.”

  Brandon bristled. “I’m a little offended by that.”

  “I’m not endorsing the opinion, just explaining what our research shows. I think there’s also a bit of a stereotype about anyone involved in something like design. Even a few of our hosts who are most assuredly straight are assumed to be gay. The designer on Down to the Studs?”

  “He’s straight? Really?” Brandon had always thought that guy was deep in the closet.

  “Banging his female assistant.”

  Brandon shook his head. “So what are you saying? That Travis and I should go public?”

  “Here was my thought. You keep saying that you feel like you need a cohost, right? Well, what if Travis was your cohost? We could show you together the same way we would any other couple. We’d edit the pilot to show more of the two of you talking, or we could bring him in more gradually, eventually introducing him as your romantic partner as well as your partner in house flipping.”

  This… was not what Brandon had expected. Part of him loved the idea. But on the other hand…. “I’m not sure Travis would be on board for that. I’ll have to talk to him.”

  “This could work out really well for all of us. I could sense the chemistry between the two of you immediately. I’m not really that surprised things turned out this way. And I think a show that features a gay couple could be something special.”

  “It also means more tabloid attention. If Travis and I go public with our relationship, which I’m not even sure we want to do at this point, all those trashy magazines that ran stories about me and Kayla will be all over this.”

  “All publicity is good publicity.”

  Brandon sighed and rubbed his head. “Come on, Virginia. This is my life. It’s not just the TV show.”

  Virginia schooled her features. “I know that.”

  “Let me talk this over with Travis. Who else knows?”

  “Erik, who I swore to secrecy, and me. That’s it. I haven’t even told Garrett.”

  “Okay.” Lord, what a mess. Brandon couldn’t predict Travis’s reaction. Would Travis want to cohost? Unlikely. He seemed barely able to stand being on camera. “Is there any way we can go back to pretending you don’t know about this?”

  “Do you not want Travis to be your cohost?”

  Well. Brandon did, actually. The two of them, as a couple, hosting a show and making over old houses in Brooklyn? That sounded pretty perfect, actually. But…. “I’m not the only variable in this equation. A lot depends on what Travis thinks. I’m surprised you didn’t call us both down here.”

  Virginia shrugged. “You’re the star.”

  It was his show, in other words. Something about her tone told Brandon that she assumed Travis would go along with it because Travis had to be into Brandon because he was famous. Of course, that was gross and, Brandon knew, not true.

  “Let me talk to Travis, all right? I’ll call you after we’ve had a chance to talk it over.”

  “Okay. Before we meet at Jessica Benton’s place on Monday, all right? I want to make decisions before we start filming there. We can loop in Garrett for the final discussion.”

  “I can do that.”

  Because truth be told, Travis would either be on board or he’d tell Brandon to fuck off. And Travis breaking up with Brandon was not outside of the realm of possibility if all of this was not what he wanted. Travis didn’t like bullshit and wouldn’t put up with things that didn’t make him happy. It was something that Brandon really admired about him.

  Brandon left the Restoration offices twenty minutes later, wondering how the hell he’d gotten into this mess.

  TRAVIS FOUND it suspicious that Brandon had been at the house for nearly five hours and Travis had only seen him in passing.

  Clearly the show hadn’t been canceled, but that might ha
ve been the only good news to come from Brandon’s meeting with Virginia.

  Erik wrapped a little early. On his way out, he walked through the kitchen, where Travis and Mike were screwing in the last of the upper cabinets. Erik said, “I’m gonna walk over to the Benton house and scope out the best places to put the cameras. I got some good footage of the cabinets going in here today already.”

  “Counters go in tomorrow,” Mike said. “Hopefully before four o’clock, because my daughter has a recital and I promised I’d be there.”

  Right. People who weren’t Travis had a life outside this house. Travis cleared his throat. “Stone’s already cut, so I don’t see that being a problem.”

  “Cool,” said Erik. “I want film of the counters going in, so I’ll be here in the morning. Later, guys.”

  Once everyone left the room, Travis touched a cabinet door. They were in the homestretch on this project, and Travis couldn’t help but feel preemptively nostalgic. It seemed odd to him that a house he’d sunk so much of himself into, one that had so many memories of himself and Brandon embedded in it, would soon be sold to some family who had no idea that anything had ever happened here. It would just be a house. A nice house. A clean slate in which to build something. It was sad, in a way, to be losing something that Travis had come to feel a great deal of fondness for, although he understood that this was how the industry worked. He just normally didn’t feel this invested in his projects.

  He opened a cabinet door, closed it, and tried to shake it off.

  About five minutes after Travis heard the front door shut, Brandon finally appeared. At the same moment, Mike climbed down off the ladder. “And that’s it for the cabinets.”

  “Looks good,” said Brandon. “Did the backsplash tiles get delivered yet?”

  “No,” said Travis. “I called the store. They told me Monday.”

  “Okay. I want to put in the tile. That’s a pretty easy thing Erik can film me doing.”

  “Sure.”

  Mike put his drill on a nearby sawhorse. “Is that it for today? I think Sandy’s overseeing the last of the bathroom stuff, but we can’t put in sinks or anything until the counters are done.”