Making product variation without multiple variations

Is there a way for me to ship two production variations to amazon and list it under the same ASIN, without actually creating a child variation? I have two production, one of which is just very slightly different from the other, so not different enough to be a “different” variation, but different enough that I can’t sell it under the same thing. And I don’t want to give the user two options because that just adds friction.

Would I need a different barcode? I want the first variation to sell out first and then have the second variation naturally replace it.