Lex turned to Barnaby, who was already bending to pick up both baskets, stacking Lex’s on top of his own and carrying them towards the till.
“Oi,” Lex said. “What are you doing?”
“Paying.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I am.”
“Barns—”
“You’ve just been punched in the head for twelve minutes straight,” Barnaby said, not turning around. “You can barely close your right hand. You’ve posed for photographs with every person in this shop. I am buying the snacks for tonight.”
Lex looked at him. Barnaby was already at the counter, setting both baskets down and pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He was braced for a fight. Lex could see it in the way his fingers tightened on his wallet. He was ready for the polite back-and-forth, theoh no, I couldn’t, the three rounds of performative refusal that Lex imagined constituted the upper-class protocol for settling a bill.
“Yeah, alright,” Lex said.
Barnaby turned. His eyebrows shifted a fraction upward.
“Go on, then,” Lex said, leaning against the end of the aisle and crossing his arms, which hurt, but looked good. “Treat me, MarquessCashworth.”
Barnaby stared at him for a beat, visibly recalibrating. Then he turned back to the cashier. It went badly almost immediately. He put the first basket on the counter whole, like he was handing luggage to a bellhop. The cashier stared at it. Barnaby stared at the cashier. There was an excruciating standoff before Barnaby clued in that he was supposed to take the items out himself, and began removing them one at a time.
Finally the woman clocked that she was dealing with a noob here, and she began to help. She took over the scanning, gently extracted the second basket from his grip, and pointed to the small tray on the counter where payment was supposed to go. Barnaby placed his yen notes in the tray with a nod that conveyed both gratitude and the firm intention to never go through this ordeal again.
Fucking cute, Lex thought, and pressed his tongue against his split lip to feel the sting of it.
He loved keeping Barns on the back foot. He loved the fraction of a second where Barnaby’s careful choreography stumbled, when the script he was running in his head didn’t match the line Lex had just delivered, and his composure flickered before it reset. He loved being the thing Barnaby Fitznorman-Bicester couldn’t predict.
Barnaby paid. He collected the bags, two of them, and walked past Lex towards the door without making eye contact.
“You’re welcome,” Barnaby said.
Lex pushed off the aisle and followed him out into the warm Tokyo night, grinning so hard his lip split open for the third time, and he couldn’t have cared less about the pain.
Chapter Eight
Barnabywas absolutelyfamished. He hadn’t eaten since half one. The British equestrian team had booked a restaurant in Ginza for the evening, somewhere with a tasting menu and a sommelier; the sort of place that Barnaby would normally have found deeply appealing. He’d told Wes’s groom he’d meet them there, and then he’d walked to Ryogoku Kokugikan instead, and sat in an arena full of screaming strangers for two and a half hours. Now it was nearly midnight, and the last thing he’d consumed was a protein bar that had tasted like compressed sawdust made edible only by the faintest hint of chocolate.
He rearranged the convenience store bags, pushing the handles up to the crook of his elbow so that both hands were free, and fished the red packet of FIRE TASTE EXPLOSION RICE SNACKS from the top of the nearest bag. He tore it open with his teeth, tipped a handful into his palm, and shoved them into his mouth.
The heat bloomed across his tongue. He chewed fast, swallowed, and immediately tipped more into his hand.
Lex was watching him sideways. “Fucking hell.”
“What.”
“You’re inhaling those. You look like a squirrel that’s found a bird feeder. A posh squirrel. One that lives in the grounds of a stately home.”
Barnaby ate another handful. “I missed dinner.”
“You missed dinner?”
“The team had a booking in Ginza. Fancy steak place. I didn’t go.”
Lex’s stride slowed by a fraction. Barnaby could feel the shift in his attention. He kept his eyes fixed on the pavement ahead because he knew exactly what was coming and he was not going to give Lex the reaction that he wanted.
“You missed dinner,” Lex said, and the delight in his voice was positively indecent, “so you could come and watchme.”
