Renovation

Billie stood in the middle of the empty room, fanning himself with his hand and frowning. The walls were a dingy white, and the polished hardwood floor beneath his feet was scratched and dented, as if the previous owners of the house hadn’t really been careful lugging their furniture out.

He sighed heavily and turned around as Tre entered the room, exasperation heavy across his face.

“Big job, huh?” Billie said as Tre surveyed the walls and the ceiling and made a high pitched voice in his throat, one of extreme displeasure.

“Do we have to? I mean… white’s a good… color…” he trailed off as Billie narrowed his eyes at him, hands on his hips. Tre knew his argument was weak, and a little part of him wanted the room done anyway.

They had just bought the bungalow last week. For the past days they’d been sleeping on an air mattress in the also sparsely furnished living room, procrastinating the start of all the renovations the house needed.

“Tre. I did not leave my mother’s house and three square meals a day to live in a house with one chair, an air mattress, and a cupboard full of ramen. In fact, I don’t know why I left my mother’s house at all!” Billie fumed, sounding way too feminine for his own good. Tre wanted to laugh, but he knew that would just piss him off more.

“Uh… for one, you’re 23 years old and Mommy can’t take care of you for all of your life,” Billie sputtered in protest but Tre thrust his ring finger in the air to silence him, the gold band wrapped around it sparking in the sunlight filtering through the dusty windows. “And for two… you promised me a life together, bitch, furniture and food or not.”

Billie smiled, frustration forgotten, walking over to Tre and linking their hands, their matching golden promise rings clinking together.

---

“This is fucking hopeless!” Tre exclaimed as he wiped his dripping forehead with the back of his paint splattered hand.

Billie looked up at him from his squatting position on the floor. “You’re telling me. We are not cut out for physical labor.”

There were open paint cans and lids scattered around what was supposed to be their bedroom, and so far they had managed to get more paint on the floor than on the walls… they couldn’t quite figure out how to exactly to use the blue painter’s tape, or how to set the tarp down and not slip and fall face forward on it… they were just two scrawny gay men with soft hands, trying to accomplish something that was way beyond their capacity.

“Why is it so fucking hot?” Tre exclaimed again, tearing his shirt off in a quick fit of frustration. The June air wafted in through the open windows, the late afternoon summer sun hot and cruel, stifling the air that Billie and Tre were sharing.

“It is the summertime, you know,” Billie said teasingly - his eyes were tracing up Tre’s spine, which was beaded with sweat.

“I give up,” Tre said dramatically, flouncing face forward onto the slippery tarp. “The paint has declared a vendetta against us, Billie.”

Billie looked at Tre’s sweaty back and felt the temperature rise even higher. He tried to keep his libido at bay by focusing on the pathetically bare wall.

“Get up. We have to do this,” he walked over to Tre’s still form and kicked him half heartedly in the ribs, earning a small grunt from his beached whale of a boyfriend for all his trouble. Billie cast one last hopeless look around the room before going on his knees and laying back on the tarp, the plastic cool for just a moment before his body heat warmed it up. “Too hot,” he muttered.

Tre flipped over and turned on his side, eyeing Billie up and down. There were sweat stains underneath his armpits and he could see the shiny sweat dripping down Billie’s forehead. He leaned over and pulled the gray fabric off the older man’s sweaty torso.

“Maybe you should take this off,” he said suggestively, wiggling his eyebrows up and down, half comically, half sensually. Billie just smiled and pulled the shirt over his head, leaning on his own side so he was fully facing Tre.

“Didn’t help much,” Billie said, glancing out the open window into the 99 degree weather outside. “We need air conditioning, and soon.”

“Ice baths are cheaper.”

“Fuck off. It’s too hot for humor.”

“You’re too hot for humor,” Tre said, and his laughter rang with Billie’s at his own lame line. Billie swatted at Tre’s chest in the middle of his hearty laugh, and Tre caught his wrist with two fingers. Their laughter died off and there was a cosmic moment when their eyes met and they somehow communicated, and as if they had spoken plainly, Tre leant back and spread his legs at the exact moment Billie jumped over and fit himself into them.

Billie started to lean down to kiss Tre.

“Eurgh! You just dripped sweat on me!” Billie opened his eyes and scowled, looking down at Tre, who had apparently lost the heat of the moment in his indignation of having sweat drip onto his chest.

“You’re such a fucker,” Billie rolled off Tre and groaned loudly into the floor. “We have to do this, Tre. Like… have to.”

Tre sighed. “I know, I know. I just don’t wanna, Billie, it’s too damn hot.”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed.”

“Shut up.”

“Sorry. But until I get paid and we can find an air conditioner, you’re going to have to just strip or something to keep from overheating,” Billie meant it as a joke but he knew as soon as Tre’s face lit up that he probably shouldn’t have said anything.

“Stripping. I didn’t really think of that,” his eyes looked down at his own bare chest. “Good idea.”

Eyebrows wiggling again, Tre jumped up to his feet, energy apparently renewed, and started to shimmy out of his shorts.

“Uh, Tre?”

“What? I know, I know, I’m getting to the boxers -”

“No, not that. You think maybe we should like, close the windows or something? If we’re gonna be dangling, I don’t really want to give it out for free, y’know?” Billie said, not quite believing that he had just sort of agreed to renovating their house in the nude.

Tre leapt over and kissed Billie square on the mouth. “You’re such a fucking genius, know that?”

---

It had worked pretty well to start out with. They had closed the windows and suffered through the stuffy air until Tre realized that the power company had granted them the gift of electricity and the ceiling fan was working. So the fan set to work on high speed, mixing around hot air and kicking up dust mites.

Cheered by the new turn in the atmosphere, Billie and Tre managed to get one wall done.

“We fucking rule,” Tre exclaimed, hugging Billie and staring over at the wet wall like it was their firstborn son. Billie was fully aware of Tre’s dick rubbing up against his thigh, but he didn’t say anything, just smiled and kissed him on the cheek.

“We do indeed,” he agreed, putting one palm flat over Tre’s chest, just in a gesture they were both comfortable with. But the squelching noise made when his palm made contact with his chest made them both look away from the wall and down at the middle of Tre’s chest. Slowly, Billie pulled his hand away.

Somehow, some way, Billie had managed to get paint - thickly - across his palm, and now that paint was in a half handprint on Tre’s chest. The deep red they had decided on for their bedroom walls was smearing and slightly disturbed by sweat.

“You did not.” Tre said incredulously, his gaze jumping from his massacred chest to Billie’s face to Billie’s red hand and back to the wall, as if he wasn’t sure which he wanted to focus on.

“I’m sorry, baby, really…” But at this point Billie had finally given way to the giggles that were threatening to destroy him, laughing hysterically at both the look on Tre’s face and the somehow comical way the red was smeared on Tre’s pale chest. He doubled over, his deep laugh obnoxious to even his own ears, but he couldn’t bring himself to care - couldn’t bring himself to care, at least, until Tre had grabbed Billie’s dick in one hand, his palm absolutely dripping with thick red paint.

All his mirth evaporated and he wasn’t even sure how to react. Looking up, he saw Tre’s self satisfied face and didn’t know whether to kiss or kill him, settling for something somewhere in between. Kissing Tre, biting his tongue and lips, he palmed his own dick and transferred paint all over Tre’s member, an act of vengeance. But Billie sort of forgot himself halfway through his revenge and instead of just wiping paint on Tre, he started to stroke him firmly and wetly, the squelching noise from the paint bringing a smile to both of their faces.

“You know,” Tre panted, leaning into Billie’s ear. “We should really… ah… take a shower. Get all this paint off us.”

Billie seized Tre by the hips and pulled him closer, smearing paint everywhere. “Yeah?” he said as his eyes sparkled with excitement.

Tre pushed him away and started to run downstairs, Billie close on his heels. And as squeals and moans came floating up from the basement shower, the paint on the walls finally started to dry.