Chapter 6 #3
He’s confident, for the first three-quarters of the walk.
He’s feeling good. He’s riding on some nice liquid courage; he’s met an incredible number of fascinating, influential people; he’s not dressed wildly incorrectly for the circumstances.
Everything is coming up Ben, and that means it’s the perfect time to say hi to Pete, be calm and witty and not at all awkward or weird, and then leave before his atypically successful impression of human socialization can crumble.
That way, he can leave the best possible impression behind, as people always want to do with their friends, acquaintances, colleagues, business associates, and other contacts about whom they have absolutely no romantic feelings at all.
But when he’s nearly reached Pete—when it’s already too late to turn back without being spotted in the middle of a crouching, awkward retreat—Ben stops, frozen, a deer convinced that if it blinks hard enough, it will stop seeing the headlights.
But, in spite of enough attempts that his eyes go a little dry, the vision before him simply does not clear.
Ben is dressed as ketchup; Pete is dressed as a hot dog.
There is a long, cringing moment in which Ben has seen Pete, but Pete has not seen Ben, in which Ben experiences a series of emotions he most closely associates with middle school.
Panic and embarrassment vie for first spot, but hot on their heels is the deranged but undeniable spike of terror that somehow everyone at this party, Pete included, will take a look at their unintentional matching outfits and decide, through some power of collective consciousness that everyone but Ben possesses, that Ben’s costume choice is in fact a frightening, stalker-esque declaration of affection.
He thinks, for an unsettling but very real second, that he might scream from the sheer stress, which would add to the overall Halloween vibes.
But then Pete turns his head and catches sight of Ben.
He’s already starting to smile even as he meets Ben’s gaze, but when his eyes flick down over the ketchup outfit, they widen, then crinkle decidedly at the corners.
He laughs, shaking his head, and then says, “Well, we gotta find mustard, I think. Start a band.”
“If you have musical talents you haven’t shared with me, now is the time,” Ben’s mouth says, while Ben’s brain is still busy trying to veer off the expressway to Panic Town.
“Given the givens of Miranda, it might genuinely save my job at some point if I can throw you in front of the camera and make you play ‘Wonderwall.’”
Pete grins, rolling his eyes. “Well, it’s me, so if I did have any musical talent, I’m sure I’d lose track of it the minute we started rolling. But no, no skills to think of; I just think it would be funny to be in a band called the Hot Dogs.”
“Oh, and now you’re headlining,” Ben says, tutting in a mocking impression of annoyance. “Didn’t even ask about it or anything; I see how it is. The fame’s gone to your head… We’re all second banana to you now, is that it?”
“You’re the one who decided to be a condiment,” Pete says loftily.
“It’s not my fault you’re not reaching for your true potential—oh, Chris, hey.
” This last is in a slightly different tone, mellower, less amused, to someone approaching from the left, blocked from Ben’s view by someone unhelpfully tall.
“I thought the drink line would take longer than that to get through.”
“Oh, I cut to the front,” says—well, the muscular, tanned, bleached-blond vision of a man who steps out from behind a cluster of people has got to be Chris.
Ben blinks, taking in his costume: a seventies-style disco outfit fully done in gold lamé, a pair of chunky platform heels, and absolutely no shirt.
He’s pulling it off, which is actually the worst thing about it, and Ben’s trying to bite down on a queasy smile before he fully processes what’s making his stomach flip.
Then Chris passes Pete his drink and throws an easy arm over his shoulder, and: Oh. Suddenly, Ben’s processing.
“You know you shouldn’t do that kind of thing,” Pete says, frowning. “It’s rude, for one thing, and—”
“Yes, yes, and it’ll make you look bad, and I get you into trouble whenever you take me out, I know,” Chris says, rolling his eyes. “Stop nagging—you’re the one who’s being rude. You haven’t even introduced me yet. Who is… this?”
He inclines his head pointedly at Ben, the expression on his face suggesting he’d rather be looking at a pile of elephant dung, or a moldy slice of cheesecake. Pete seems to shake himself slightly, says, “Oh, right, sorry. This is Ben Blumenthal, the amazing video editor I’ve been working with—”
“On those viral videos, you mean?” Chris says. He raises an eyebrow at Ben, his gaze cool, assessing. “Those are… fine, I guess. And the costume that matches Pete’s—did you plan that, or are you just a creepy stalker? Maybe not so great with the old appropriate boundaries?”
“Chris!” Pete snaps, flushing bright red and breaking out from under his arm to glare at him. “Of course he’s not a stalker. We were literally, one second ago, addressing you being rude. They’re just costumes! I’m wearing this because it’s the only costume I own, and I’m sure Ben didn’t plan to—”
“You’re not such a good judge of these things, though, are you?” Chris says, reaching out to tap very lightly on Pete’s temple. “You have a blind spot for—”
“I have a blind spot for you,” Pete growls, visibly uncomfortable now. Ben can relate. “Because if I was smart, I wouldn’t take you anywhere, because then you couldn’t embarrass me—”
“Keep an eye on you—”
“In front of my coworkers—”
“Oh my God, Pete, come on, just look at him. It’s so obvious that he’s—”
“Will you shut up!” Pete nearly snarls this, so emphatic and freaked out that Ben all but physically jumps.
Chris, too, seems taken aback, his eyes widening before he narrows them, crossing his arms over his chest. Whoever he is to Pete—though Ben thinks, grimly, that the answer there is looking increasingly likely to be “boyfriend”—he obviously didn’t care for that at all, and his voice is very cold when he says, “Fine, then. I will. I’m going to go enjoy the party on my own, if that’s the way you’re going to be, but we will be discussing this later.
I’ll try not to ruin your reputation in the meantime.
” He rolls his eyes on this bitterly sarcastic last, and then, managing to imbue the word with a vast reserve of icy bitchiness that Ben both fears and respects, he adds, “Blumenthal,” before he turns and walks off.
Ben doesn’t quite know what to make of it, but he knows he doesn’t like it.
But before he can ask, he and Pete are being approached by a little knot of people with a certain—energy.
Ben has encountered this a few times in the last month or so, only ever when he’s out with Pete; now and then, they’re starting to get recognized.
Or, well, Pete is starting to get recognized, anyway.
But sometimes, if Ben is with him, a particularly eagle-eyed fan will realize who Ben is, either from his voice or from the wacky credit sequence featuring embarrassing photos of everyone who worked on the episode.
Ben had started slapping that in at the end of every edit after the first video, and he hasn’t had any cause to regret it until now.
Well, okay, last week someone did approach them and ask for both of their autographs while they were having lunch in the Formica cafeteria.
That had been a completely wild experience, although Ben thinks he handled it better than Pete did.
Ben, at least, had responded with some recognizable words in the English language; Pete had said something that sounded to Ben like, “Squirgle,” and then, “Whoop!” and then hared off out of the room, leaving his lunch behind.
When Ben had texted him, ???? Pete had not replied for hours, and then only said, sorry, think i ate a weird breakfast burrito or something, which was so obviously a lie that Ben could not think of a polite way to call him out on it.
It does suggest that whatever is about to happen is not going to go well, and Ben finds himself half reaching for Pete’s arm before he corrects the impulse sharply. After all, his boyfriend, or whatever Chris is, probably wouldn’t like it.
“It’s them!” someone in the group hisses excitably; someone else gasps, “You have to show them!” and then, before Ben can begin to brace himself properly, the gaggle seems to spit out two young men, dressed in familiar clothes.
It takes Ben a second to place the outfits.
The shorter guy, in the dark, curly wig, is wearing a black-and-gray flannel shirt that looks a lot like the one Ben himself wears three times a week and holding a fake prop computer; the taller man is dressed head to toe in the kitchen blacks Ben has been insisting Pete film in since the Heaps for Dinner video, with a comically large splatter of fake sauce laid across the top.
“They’re… us,” Ben says, blankly. Then, because even having one of the most surreal moments of his entire life, he doesn’t want to risk looking like a total idiot, he adds, “I mean—aren’t you?”
“Yeah,” the taller guy says sheepishly; the shorter one, the one dressed as Ben, is blushing crimson and staring at the floor.
Ben thinks vaguely that maybe he’s method acting, and if so, that he deserves the Halloween Oscar—that is more or less exactly what he, himself, would like to be doing right now.
He can’t bear to look at Pete as his be-sauced doppelganger continues, “We love the videos, guys, and imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, right?”
“I’ve heard that.” Pete sounds like he’s containing hysteria, but whether positive or negative Ben is not at all sure. “So I guess. Thank you?”
“Anytime,” says Not Pete. “Can we get a photo?”