Looks Can Be Deceiving

Brian and Justin had just settled down in front of the fake fireplace. Neither of them spoke for a while. Justin had an odd smile on his face. Brian noticed it but did not react.

Finally, Justin opened the conversation. "What do you want to tell me?" he asked the surprised Brian.

"Why do you think I want to tell you something?" Brian replied, somewhat taken aback.

"That's easy, Bri," Justin told him. "You have that 'I want to tell Justin something' look on your face."

"I have an 'I want to tell Justin something' look on my face?" Brian wondered. "Which you in your know-it-all-ness can see?"

"Yep," Justin affirmed.

"Well I guess I'll have to wear a hood when I have something that I want to tell you that I don't really want to tell you," Brian conjectured.

"That won't work either, Honey," Justin confided in the dumbfounded Brian. "I'd still know from your 'I want to tell Justin something' slouch. Why don't you just tell me whatever it is you want to tell me?"

"Suppose I don't have anything at all I want to tell you?" Brian protested.

"Then I'd be wrong and I'm not usually wrong," Justin insisted. "So you do have something to tell me. I'm sure you do."

"OK, you win," Brian surrendered. "Again! I was thinking we ought to move out of this loft and get a house. I think you'd be happier in a house. I talked it over with your mother and she thought so too. We've even looked at a couple together, but I want it to be your decision which one. What do you think?"

Now it was Justin's turn to be surprised. "A house," he stammered.

"Yeah," Brian confirmed. "In the suburbs - with a lawn and a picket fence too if you want one. Mikey and Ben have a house and the munchers have a house so I want you to have a house too."

"But I love this loft," Justin responded. "So much of our history is here. It's the first place we ever made love."

"That wasn't love," Brian faked a smirk. "I just …."

"Cut it out, Kinney," Justin broke in. "It was too love - even if you were too dumb to know it then. But you know it now, and I know you know it."

"By the ' I know now that it was love' look on my face, I guess," Brian taunted.

"Maybe," Justin conceded nothing. "But by a lot more than that too, so you can forget about being the old Brian Kinney around me. Any Brian Kinney who's talking about buying a house knows love when he sees it."

"You know, Taylor," Brian riposted," You have that 'I think I'll change the subject' look on your face - and it's not going to work this time. We are going to talk about what I want to talk about this time around."

"And that would be a house?" Justin concluded.

"That would be a house," Brian agreed. "That would be a house. I know I'm stuck with you for the rest of my life and I want to give you a real home."

"Brian Kinney, sometimes you're just a bit clueless," Justin informed him. "A house is not necessarily a home. For me home is anywhere you are - here, in some house in the suburbs, in a tent in the woods or anywhere else. I don't need a house to have a home. I just need you."

"Damned if you aren't changing the subject and getting away with it?" Brian marveled.

"Yeah," Justin laughed. "I'm pretty sure I could get away with it but if you want to talk about a house, that's what we'll talk about. What do you really want, Brian?"

"Whatever you want, Baby." Brian admitted. "I just want you to be happy."

"I'm happy here," Justin told him. "I just want you. You're all I want. Maybe we should take some more time to think about moving - if that's all right with you."

"OK," Brian agreed. "Whatever you want. I'll stop by your mother's office tomorrow morning and tell her the house plans are on hold. And I'll do you a favor too. You know those things you've been talking about taking to your mother for the last month or so and keep forgetting. I'll take them along with me and save you a trip. Get them for me now so I won't forget them in the morning."

"No need, Honey," Justin told him. "I dropped them off this afternoon.."

"At her office?" Brian wondered.

"Yeah," Justin acknowledged. "Why do you ask?"

"And you talked to gabby Phyllis at the reception desk?" Brian wanted to know.

"We exchanged a few words," Justin began to see a problem.

"And she told you about the house?" Brian challenged.

"No, she didn't," Justin insisted. "She never mentioned the house."

"Get that 'Change the subject' look off your face, Twink," Brian ordered. "I want to know exactly what she said to you and I want to know now, and I'm going to find out."

"She asked me if you had told me yet," Justin muttered.

"But she didn't tell you what I was supposed to tell you?" Brian pushed on.

"No, she didn't," Justin maintained. "When she figured you hadn't told me, she just said 'Never mind' and clammed up."

Brian had to smile. "I'd like to see gabby Phyllis clam up," he allowed. "That should be a sight worth seeing. So then, I guess, you decided to trick me into telling you whatever it was with some crap about an 'I want to tell Justin something' look on my face?"

"Not trick you, Brian. That hurts my feelings," Justin defended himself. "More like I wanted to help you to tell me whatever you wanted to tell me anyway."

"Well there's something I want to tell you now," Brian gritted his teeth. "Do I have that 'I want to tell Justin something' look on my face? Maybe you want to guess what it is that I want to tell you?"

"Maybe that you'd like to kill me?" Justin ventured.

"Pretty close," Brian admitted.

"But maybe you'd just like to tell me that you love me?" Justin added with an "I want to change the subject" look on his face?"

"That too," Brian also admitted.

The later wish superceded the former. Brian picked up the twink and carried him toward the bedroom. They forgot to turn off the fake fireplace and the fire burned all night.

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