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There was still hot sauce waiting, and two intended victims, but—
"I'm gonna go in and do the last round," Barry said. It was completely stupid, and absolutely not the plan, but frankly if he had to look at the film of pale sweat droplets glistening at the hinges of Ben's jaw much longer, he might go mad.
It was ridiculous. It was one thing to think, abstractly, that your friend was attractive. Barry's friends were all attractive blokes, in their ways. But it was another thing entirely to look at one of them and suddenly want, to see the flush on his neck and wish you'd been the one to put it there. To see his parted lips as he sucked in desperate breaths and think about all the ways you could have made him feel desperate – ways that didn't involve making him eat potatoes covered in hot sauce in front of cameras. Ben had always been beautiful and he had always sweated like mad, but somehow it was only now, twenty years into the friendship, that Barry was discovering that he wanted to put his face in that smooth-skinned neck, lick the salt off it, suck on it.
Insanity.
"How about you two take bets on how long I last?" he added. "That will decide the winner." And giving himself a goal would be a distraction from looking at the pulse thudding in Ben's throat. He just had to last. He just had to get through this. The chicken wings and whatever was inflaming his brain. Just get through it, keep his poker face, and definitely not tell anyone.
"I'm so stupid," Barry moaned, banging his palms on his forehead. "How did I do this to myself?" He lifted his head just enough to take another gulp of his pint and then went back to thumping his face. It was a week after the recording and though his taste buds had returned to normal, his brain had not.
"I'm sorry, mate," said Jamie.
"He's so pretty," Barry wailed softly. The pub was dark and they were at a back table, but he still didn't want to be overheard. "How did I never notice that?" Thump. Thump.
Between thumps he could see Jamie rolling his eyes. "No idea," Jamie said.
Barry ignored him. "And he's—" Thump. "I just want to—"
"No details, please," said Jamie hurriedly, holding up a hand. Barry sighed.
"I'm so stupid," he said again. Jamie dropped his hand. "You’re not supposed to want to sleep with your friends. It’s a terrible idea! Is this a permanent condition, d'you think?"
"The stupidity part is," Jamie said. "The rest, I'm not sure. Have you considered the idea before?"
"No," Barry said, lifting his head, and then, "well, yes, of course, but not seriously, not like I was really thinking about it, not fantasizing. But he was always so… I knew he was unique from the very first moment, didn't you? So of course I thought about it then. And in the way you think about things like that, over the years. Wondering. But not thinking about it."
Jamie looked at him for a long moment. Barry wasn't entirely sure what was behind the expression on his face, but he knew he looked pitiful (he felt pitiful) which was probably enough to account for it. "Okay, yes," Jamie said at last. He shook his head. "You are stupid. Just unbelievably, unbelievably stupid."
For a week he tried not to think about it. Tried to keep his mind focused on work, and when he had to think about Ben at all he tried to remember the irritating things, his fifty seven spreadsheets and the bragging about his herb garden.
But at night he couldn't help himself, and on Friday morning he woke up hard and aching, fresh from a dream about Ben naked beneath him on a huge expanse of dark sheets. In the dream Ben had been face down so that Barry could spread his hands across the smooth skin of his back, and now Barry thought about licking the nape of his neck, down the length of his spine, hot and sweating and even wetter where Barry's spit trailed after his mouth, Ben arching into the touch, first begging, "please, Barry, please," and then demanding, "fuck, Baz, hurry up, I want your tongue."
"Bossy," Barry would murmur, but he'd be spreading his Ben's cheeks open with his thumbs and breathing in the scent of sweat and musk, leaning down— and non-dreaming Barry ground against the mattress and came with Ben's name on his lips, the thought of Ben's voice in his ears.
"Shit," he said, when he could breathe again. "This is impossible."
When he made it to the studio that morning there was almost no one around but the man himself. Ebbers was in the back kitchen, working out a recipe, humming as he chopped some fresh, bright carrots. He didn't often hum – only when he was particularly at ease. Barry would happily have stood in the doorway and watched him, but he was well aware that it would look creepy as hell if Ben looked up or if someone else came in. Instead he began whistling Freebird as loudly as he could. Ben left off humming to sigh over-dramatically.
"Morning, Baz," he said, mouth curving into a smile. His cheek formed its little – it wasn't a dimple, not quite, but a little indentation that could have been a dimple if one were inclined to use the word.
Barry's mind went blank and he walked straight into the edge of the counter, caught himself in a particularly delicate location, and doubled over. He heard himself make an unintelligible noise.
"Are you all right?" Ben's concern was audible.
"Yeah," Barry wheezed. "Just hit myself in the plums."
"You might want those at some point in the future," Ben said. Barry could tell he was smirking more by sound than eye. "Plums have got a lovely flavor profile." But he didn't go back to what he was doing until Barry straightened up.
"You really all right?"
"Yeah. Just need to breathe for a moment."
"Well if you're going to idle about doing things like breathing, you'll be put to work," said Ben. He rapped the chopping board with his knuckles. "Dice. Thumbnail sized."
"Yes, chef."
Barry stepped over, still wincing a little, and then slid into place beside Ben, taking over the knife and the carrots. Their fingers brushed. He didn't let himself twitch.
"What are you making?" he asked.
"We are making a peanut stew for the app," said Ben. "I'm not certain about the dicing size on the root veg, though, given the mid-week time constraint."
"You want it to be chunky enough to stand out, but also small enough to cook through and not be crunchy."
"Exactly."
The pride in Ben's voice made Barry's shoulders straighten. He went at the carrots with immense attention to detail. "How was the mushroom festival last weekend?"
"Oh, it was fascinating!" said Ben. "I met someone from this company that will sell you a kit with reclaimed lumber and spores and built-in water measuring tools – don't worry, I didn't buy one, although I was quite tempted. But the woman at the booth, Sophie, told me about how she started the company because her niece was interested in mushrooms but couldn't go wild foraging due to mobility restrictions, and—"
I love you, Barry thought. Luckily, he was still looking directly at the knife and the carrots, so he managed not to cut any of his fingers off when the words hit. No, he told himself. Absolutely not. Absolutely fucking not.
Thankfully, Ben was still talking. "They salvage the boards that are least likely to make for good building material, which means they can get them before they're chemically treated. And the spores—"
Carrots, Barry thought desperately. Thumbnail sized. Ben was working his way through his second onion as he described mushroom fertilization, hands swift and confident. Barry wanted to kiss his fingertips, his palms. Instead he finished the last carrot and cleared his throat. "Tomatoes?" They were on the counter, so it was a safe bet.
"Large chunks," said Ben, passing several over.
"Is there a danger in importing the spores?" Barry asked, beginning to cut the tomatoes. "Like, invasive species or whatever?" He had to get himself back on safer ground. Had to.
"I did ask about that," Ben said, beaming at him. The safer ground crumbled under the force of that smile.
He's your friend, Barry told himself. You like to see him happy. And okay yes, you want to fuck him, but nothing more than that.
"Sophie said that there's already so much crossover between here and the continent because of the air currents that it's not policed unless you're shipping in from somewhere more distant."
Ben turned on the hob and pulled over the pot, then put in his usual splash of oil. Barry watched him organize the rest of his mise en place – the chopped veg, spices, a jar of peanut butter – and felt something thick and heavy take up root in his chest.
"I want to hear more about the festival," he said, "but I just realized I have to talk to Jay about something. Is he here?" He thought his voice came out steady enough – at least, Ben didn't comment.
"He's in his office," he said. "He said he wanted to do more research on that possible sponsor."
"Ah, good," Barry said. "I'll go talk to him and then come back and we can work up something else. Not warm salad."
"Who do you think I am?" Ben said, with mock outrage.
Barry didn't run to Jamie's office, but he certainly moved more quickly than he might have usually done. He didn't bother to knock, just hurried inside and pulled the door shut behind himself.
"Jay," he said.
Jamie held up a hand and Barry waited, leg jiggling desperately, until Jamie had finished whatever he was typing. "All right," he said at last. "What?"
"I'm so stupid," Barry said.
Jamie gave him a long, slow blink. "I thought we'd established that," he said.
Barry would have objected to that if he wasn't panicking. "I think I might be in love with him."
"I thought we'd established that as well."
"We had not established that bit!" said Barry. "We'd established that I definitely want to do things with him that by request I'm not giving you any details about, but the other thing?"
Jamie squeezed the bridge of his nose. "Barry, think about it. He's one of your best friends. You've been imagining getting his pants off for literally years. You bullied him into starting a business together. You only ever pretend you're not listening even when some of us, and I feel quite bad about it, genuinely aren't listening. Of course you're in love with him."
Barry stared at Jamie as each of those arrows hit its mark. "… oh." He could see it now, in all its horrifying technicolor glory. Missing Ben desperately when he'd been away at uni; telling him how great he'd be on youtube; fighting the low curl of dislike at any of Ben's boyfriends and telling himself it was just because they were all a bit prissy, then overcompensating with fake friendliness and worrying that everyone could see right through it; the constant jostling and elbow nudges; bringing Ben soup when he was ill and telling himself it was to prove his cooking skills. "Oh, shit. Shit, shit, shit. Oh god, Jay, I'm in love with him and I'm so stupid."
"Baz." Jamie got up and came over to put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't panic."
"Don't panic?! It's a disaster."
"It's not so bad as all that."
"I can't let on. I absolutely cannot let on. God, if only I was even remotely sophisticated… but I'm just me. He couldn't possibly. He'd be so nice and so awkward when he told me he doesn't feel the same, and I'd have to go hide in a hole forever."
Jamie opened his mouth, closed it again, and then sighed. "I am about to commit an enormous friendship foul," he said, "and I hope you understand that I don't do it lightly, but I'm doing it for your sake, and his, and mine, and literally everyone in this company, come to think of it," he said.
"What?"
Jamie grabbed Barry by the chin and made sure that Barry was looking directly into his eyes. "He is not," Jamie said, "going to tell you he doesn't feel the same."
"Wh–" Barry said, and then, "wait, really?"
"I have been sitting on this for the last week and a half, waiting for you to get your head on straight and make a move," said Jamie, giving Barry's face a shake and then letting go. "I thought, 'surely Barry is going to reevaluate his feelings and actions in a mature manner, and perhaps now that he's had a chance to think about all that he'll be able to look at how Ebbers operates with fresh eyes,' and instead what you've done is go into denial and then panic, which is what I actually should've expected."
"But he—" Barry couldn't wrap his head around the idea. He was nothing like any of the smooth and intelligent boyfriends Ben had brought 'round that Barry had hated so much. He wasn't a journalist, or a soil professor, or a fucking cheese consultant, or any of the others. He was a scruffy, tee-shirt-wearing, crude little gremlin who after all these years still didn't know anything about wine. Why the hell would Ben want him?
"He thinks all your ideas are fantastic," said Jamie, "even the stupid ones. He asks you to help prep for recipes even though James said your knife skills were beyond saving. He'll do endless absurd things to make you smile. He ate fermented herring for you."
"But–"
"And he definitely stares at your arse when you're not looking."
Barry felt himself go red. "Really?"
"Really. Even Mike noticed a couple of times."
"Fuck." Barry ran a hand through his hair. "I'd no idea."
"Well then," said Jamie. "He's done a smashing job of keeping things friendly and not weird, which is great. But it would be ridiculous to have you both doing that, so can you please go say something romantic and give him a big smoochy smooch and do stuff you absolutely don't tell me about later?"
Barry's heart thundered. "Are you sure?" he choked out. "I mean, Jay, are you really, really sure?"
"I talked to him about it once," Jamie said, sobering. "It was a mortifying conversation that I never want to have ever again. So yes, I'm sure."
Barry scrubbed his hands over his face. "Christ," he said. "All right, I'm going. Before I lose my nerve."
He slipped back out of the office and into the kitchen where Ben was clearly just finishing a bit of washing up, drying the knives and sliding them back into their places in the knife blocks.
"You're back!" Ben said, looking up at the sound of Barry's footfalls. He had that smile again. "I thought you'd be stuck talking business for hours."
"Thank god, no," said Barry. His mouth was dry as he walked over. "Ebbers, I–" He laughed shakily. "Can you put the knife down before I tell you something?"
Ben snorted. "Sure." He put the knife he was holding into its slot. "What is it?" The smile was fading.
"I'm crazy about you," Barry blurted. "I can't believe it's taken me so long to realize it. I want to see you smiling all the fucking time. I want to kiss you. I want you to— okay, maybe I shouldn't get into that level of detail when I'm making a dramatic confession. But I've only just realized all this and I have no idea how to handle it. Jamie said you weren't going to turn me down."
"Oh he did, did he?" Ben murmured. His eyes were locked on Barry's face.
"To be fair, I was panicking," Barry said. He reached out a hand to touch Ben's shoulder, his face, his anything, then drew it back. "Please say something. Or at least if you're going to pick up the knife again, give me ten seconds warning."
Ben burst into laughter. "I'm not going to stab you, you idiot," he said. "You absolute sodding fool." He grabbed Barry's hand and held it tightly in his own. "I've been in love with you for half my life, I'm hardly going to kill you now." He pulled Barry towards him and leaned in.
Barry thought, in that split second before they connected, that it would be a soft kiss: something gentle, tender. But Ben seemed to know what he wanted – and why shouldn't he, if he'd been thinking about this for half his bloody life? – so he had Barry pulled against him immediately, kissing him in a way that felt exactly like that beautiful smile. Barry reached up with his free hand to cup Ben's jaw, to draw his thumb across the place that had caught his attention just a few weeks ago when it was dappled with sweat. Ben moaned, lips parted, and Barry kissed the heated breath right out of his mouth.