Brian’s higher than he’s been in months. After dealing with the clients from hell all morning, getting ink on his favorite Prada suit just before lunch and having a huge account slip through his fingers right before the end of the day, by the time he gets home he needs to just completely check out.

He’s too stressed out to even get his dick sucked, although he would never admit it to anyone out loud.

He walks through the door of the loft and makes a beeline for the drugs. If he’s being honest, he has no clue what he was even on, but he feels fucking fabulous.

He feels like rearranging some furniture. Literally.

He decides right away that the sofa has to go. It just has to fucking go. It’s too big. It’s too beige. Why the fuck does he have a beige sofa? White. It needs to be white. Tomorrow he’s buying a white one.

He shoves the sofa, that is now beyond offensive to his very stoned, very discerning eye, into the hall outside the loft. If anyone needs to get to the door, they’re going to have to just figure it out on their own.

He leaves the door wide open behind him, shoving his desk chair out to join the sofa. It digs into his lower back and he should have replaced it months ago. Another task for tomorrow.

He starts to move the desk but thinks better of it once he realizes he’s likely going to destroy something important in the process. He may be stoned, but he’s not completely mindless. He makes a mental note to buy a new one tomorrow as well.

Something about the desk is off. Something isn’t flowing right. The lamp is just all wrong. It’s one of the first things he ever bought when he moved into the loft, but suddenly he realizes that it’s clashing with the hardware on the desk. He can’t bear to throw it out. It has to be relocated.

The problem, he finds, is that the lamp doesn’t quite look right anywhere else either. He’s got plenty of other lamps, he could probably just toss this one and it wouldn’t make much of a difference in the overall scheme of things, but he’s become somewhat attached to it at this point.

Suddenly it dawns on him. The refrigerator. He’ll put the lamp on top of the refrigerator. That corner of the loft has always been too dark anyways.

Brian Kinney is an interior design genius.

—

The lamp is at home there for many months. No one seems to notice until he comes along.

Justin first mentions the lamp about four months after they meet.

“Brian, why do you have a table lamp on top of your refrigerator?”

“Why the fuck do you care?” Brian tries to act nonchalant, but inside he’s slightly offended at the question.

As far as he’s concerned, the question should not be why does he have a lamp on top of his refrigerator, but rather why does the rest of the world insist on not putting lamps on top of theirs? He blames the heterosexuals.

Justin makes snide remarks about his lamp every now and then, and Brian just rolls his eyes. That lamp looks fucking amazing up there.

After Justin is bashed, when Brian finally leaves the hospital after those terrible first three days, he does everything he can to keep himself occupied.

When he’s not out getting his dick sucked, he’s grief rearranging the loft. It’s oddly therapeutic. The lamp is the thing he finds himself moving around most often.

He puts it in the back corner of the fridge, then brings it to the front, and then to the back again before finally deciding the lamp’s home for now should be the front right corner. It’s where it casts the best ambient light in his opinion.

Together, he and the lamp make it through Justin’s recovery and when he finally comes back to live with Brian, the snide comments continue.

“Seriously, Brian, that lamp looks ridiculous up there,” Justin says one evening. “Let’s get a pendant light, something more modern and practical.”

“Fuck off,” Brian says as they head out to Babylon. “And leave the lamp on so I don’t bust my ass in the dark when we come in.”

Justin does not, in fact, leave the fridge lamp on and when they get home, incredibly drunk and incredibly horny, they both nearly break their necks tripping around in the dark all wrapped up in each other.

From that point on, Justin never doubts the power of the fridge lamp again.

In a way, the lamp becomes a symbol of their lives together, always there illuminating the quiet moments and the not-so-quiet-fucking-like-animals moments. The lamp is there, too, when they spend their last night together before Justin decides to leave Brian for Ethan.

When Brian gets home that night, he smashes the lamp against the floor and drinks himself into unconsciousness.

He misses the lamp like crazy, but in the end, it would have only served to remind him of all of those nights with Justin by his side. He considers buying a new lamp, something just as aesthetically pleasing that will serve the same purpose but decides against it in the end.

Months later, when Justin returns to Brian’s life, he comments on how much he misses the lamp.

Brian doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

—

He doesn’t think about the lamp much after that, not until years later when Justin is living in New York. A package shows up at the loft one day, and when he opens it a lamp is inside along with a note from his beloved:

Brian,

Saw this lamp and thought of you. It looks just like the old one you used to keep on top of the fridge like a freak. Keep it on while I’m away. I’ll be home soon.

Love,

Justin

It is remarkable how much this new lamp looks so much like the old one, and Brian turns it on as soon as it’s securely in place in it’s new home atop the fridge.

It’s perfect.

The shining light stands as a reminder of lamps long gone and lovers soon to return. It will never truly replace the old fridge lamp, which will forever remain in Brian’s heart, but he thinks of Justin every time he sees it. For now, that is enough.