Despite it having been several weeks since they began dating, they had yet to see the other's apartment. Charlie often got picked up from in front of his apartment building if he didn't meet Burn at his office or at Paddy's but he always waived off any suggestions Burn had of going up to wait for him. Burn wasn't entirely sure what that was about, though he had a few theories, and so he had decided for the time being not to make Charlie not wanting him to come to his place less noticeable by not bringing his apartment into the mix either.

Instead, they agreed to have a picnic in the park. Charlie was in charge of the drinks and brought a bottle of wine from Paddy's as well as a few water bottles.

Burn was in charge of the food and he had perhaps gone a little overboard. But he didn't see how anyone could possibly blame him for that.

"Huh, you brought a whole cooler, huh?" Charlie asked. "We should probably put, like, the wine in there or something."

"If you like," Burn said. "Though I don't mind either way."

Charlie laughed. "Doc, how are you so bad at alcohol?"

"Not minding warm wine doesn't make me bad at alcohol," Burn said. "Especially because after wine is initially chilled it's rarely put back in the fridge so it often becomes room temperature by the end of a night anyway. And not liking beer is a perfectly reasonable personal preference."

"Sure," Charlie said, nodding. "If you suck at alcohol."

Burn gave a long-suffering sigh but then he laughed. "As for what I brought...well, I was thinking about what we talked about last week."

"Dude, you'll have to be more specific," Charlie said. "We talk about, like, all the things."

"Well about the fruit," Burn clarified.

"Oh, that," Charlie said, rolling his eyes tolerantly. "Why is everyone so concerned that I don't eat a lot of fruit?"

"Well you said you were in your late twenties before you'd ever eaten a pear," Burn pointed out. "And that you hadn't had a lot of other fruit as well."

"But, like, why is this a thing people care about?" Charlie asked again. "Like when Mac found out we derailed our road trip to go...well do a couple things, actually, one of them being finding me some fruit. That road trip did not end well."

"What happened?"

"Well I changed my mind about going and got dropped back off at the bar and the rest of the gang was hanging out in the trailer in the back and the car got stolen," Charlie said. "Dee got it back and all but it was not really what any of us were expecting."

"I can imagine," Burn said. The very idea of getting carjacked was terrifying. He knew that Charlie's friends didn't always engage in the safest of behaviors but that sort of thing really could happen to anyone. Well, anyone with a car.

"And you practically threw a strawberry at me when you did it," Charlie continued.

Burn laughed. "I did not! I merely…insistently held it out to you until you ate it. I was expecting you to take it and eat it, not just bite it when it was in my hand."

Charlie adopted an expression of supreme innocence, something he was quite good at. It usually meant, Burn had learned, that either he was very misinformed about something or he was completely full of shit. "It just looked sticky and I didn't want to get my hands messy. Yours already were."

"You and my hand made it to first base," Burn said dryly.

Charlie just smirked. "Yeah we did."

"So that's why for lunch today I decided to do something a little bit different," Burn said.

Charlie's hand itched stealthily towards the cooler.

Burn laughed. "Go ahead and open it."

Charlie didn't need to be told twice and quickly tore the lid off the cooler. "Is that…damn that is a lot of fruit."

"It is," Burn said. He wet his lips. "So what do you think?"

"I think I'm going to die of fruit poisoning," Charlie said but he was grinning.

"That's not a thing."

"It could be a thing."

"I mean, I read somewhere that if you chew on somewhere from 150 to several thousand apple seeds you would die of cyanide poisoning but if that's even true and not just conventional wisdom that seems like something you'd have to do quite on purpose."

"Well, as a budding scientist, I feel I should test this theory and eat all this fruit," Charlie said. "Or, well, whichever ones you're not eating."

Burn smiled at him. "As much as I admire the scientific appreciation in that, I feel I would be remiss not to tell you that it is never a good idea to experiment on yourself and certainly not when it could potentially be harmful."

"Huh? Why not?" Charlie asked. "I mean, I guess I get where you shouldn't do an experiment that could kill you unless, like, you're really sure it would work or it's really important."

"No, you really never should. It's terribly impractical in case it actually does kill you and no ethical standard would support this sort of thing."

"But what if, like, it's an emergency and you need to save lives and there's no other option?" Charlie pressed.

"Well, first of all, we don't live in a movie," Burn said. "So that wouldn't happen. And secondly, there's all sorts of fictional examples of things going wrong! Bruce Banner becomes the Hulk. Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde and kills people. The Green Goblin. The Lizard! Essentially anyone whose research is too dangerous to test on other people and who no one will support has it end horribly."

"Well but what's wrong with experimenting on yourself if it's not super dangerous?" Charlie pressed.

"What's the point in that?" Burn countered. "If it's not dangerous you can find other people. If you're part of the experiment, you can't be objective. Just being a part of it taints your perception and your mindset and priorities are very different depending on what part of the experiment you play."

Charlie thought about that before nodding slowly. "Okay. But that's just for like, real official research, right? Like how you couldn't test that pill on yourself because you knew the point was to pretend it made people smarter to see if it did. But if the goal was to see what happened if you only ate orange food for a month – you turn a little orange, by the way, Dennis did that once for some weird diet – then what's the harm?"

"Well as long as it's unofficial I guess there's no problem with it," Burn conceded. "As long as, again, you're being safe."

Charlie rolled his eyes playfully. "You are so worried about safety, Doc. It's amazing you manage to walk out the door in the morning."

"Not everyone has your, uh, survival skills, Charlie," Burn replied. "And I really don't like thinking about you pushing your luck on that front."

"Oh, don't worry, I don't tell you the really upsetting stories," Charlie said.

Burn, who had heard many really upsetting stories about Charlie taking his life in his hands, really hoped that wasn't true or else he might never sleep again.

He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Let's start with some of the fruit you're probably familiar with, whether you've eaten it or not. The really common stuff. I didn't bring a whole fruit of every item because that would be far too much but we should be able to get a good taste for everything."

He and Charlie worked their way through the apples, bananas, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, grapes, grapefruit, lemons, limes, melons (cantaloupe, honeydew, and watermelon), oranges, peach, pears, plums, pineapples, raspberries, and strawberries.

"This stuff is all so sweet!" Charlie marveled. "Well, not the grapefruit. But other than that."

"You know, Charlie, some people consider fruit to be dessert," Burn told him.

Charlie laughed. "Nice try, Doc, but I can tell when people are fucking with me."

"Sometimes they'll put sugar on it," Burn continued. "But usually not."

Charlie's jaw dropped and a look of horror crossed his face. "Oh my God, you're serious."

"Afraid so. Once when a friend of mine from France came to visit, I showed her some Chocolate Pop-Tarts and she tried half of one and said it was a very rich dessert."

Charlie made an incredulous noise. "That's ridiculous. Pop-Tarts are breakfast food."

Burn shrugged. "So I tried to tell her. And I pulled up a commercial on YouTube. But I don't think she ever did believe me. Or maybe she just didn't want to."

"I mean, if you don't want to eat dessert that's one thing," Charlie said. "Dennis and Dee and Mac have all been on weird diets. But at least be honest about it. You want to deny yourself dessert, don't be a coward and lie to yourself. Just admit you don't eat dessert and instead eat a lot of fruit."

"I don't disagree with you, Charlie," Burn said. "Perhaps it's because fruit is usually sweet, even if it is far too healthy to fit my definition of dessert. It's likely a cultural thing."

"Well then it's a wrong culture," Charlie declared.

Burn concentrated on not reacting.

"Doc."

"I didn't say anything."

"You didn't have to. That's one of those not very nice things I'm not supposed to say, isn't it?" Charlie asked.

"You are a grown man, Charlie. It is not my place to tell you what you should or should not say."

"But you don't like that kind of thing," Charlie pressed.

"Well, no. From my perspective, unless people are being hurt by an aspect of a culture – such as in the book the Giver where the weaker of every set of twins was killed as an infant – then you cannot really say the culture is wrong. And oftentimes that is more complicated than you'd think," Burn said. He considered. "Or perhaps if it is factually inaccurate? Like if a culture were to believe, I don't know, that instead of water you need eight glasses of beer a day to survive and be healthy."

Charlie snorted. "Sounds like my kind of culture."

"But incorrect just the same. And that might dip back into the people getting hurt point. If no one was, maybe it doesn't matter they believe that."

"Why are you always so concerned about not saying things that could be upsetting for people who aren't even hear and you might not even know?" Charlie asked curiously.

Burn had been asked that before and he had an answer but somehow he doubted Charlie would be impressed by all the high-minded rhetoric he usually used to explain his position. Eventually, he settled on, "I don't want to be an asshole."

Charlie let out a startled laugh. "Well if you're going to just state it bluntly like that! I really don't mind being an asshole for the most part. Maybe sometimes I feel I went too far but other than that…"

"And I suppose that's one of the reasons you don't worry about these things so much," Burn said. "Though it is very kind of you to modify your language as to not upset me."

"Well, yeah, but Doc you're my…we're…it'd be a total dick move to not care about things like that."

Idly, Burn wondered if there was a difference between being an asshole and engaging in a dick move.

Charlie coughed loudly. "So, uh, what else do we have?"

"These are some fruit that you may be familiar with but maybe not as they're less common," Burn replied.

He started with the apricot and moved on to the Boysenberry. It took some persuading to convince Charlie they weren't just blackberries or raspberries again, especially given that they were created from a mix of those two fruits and a few others. Burn wasn't quite sure why Charlie thought he was trying to trick him but eventually decided it was just because he found what Burn was saying to be so unbelievable. He introduced Charlie to the date and the fig, the kiwi and the kumquat. Charlie tried the mango and the mulberry as well as the nectarine, the papaya, and the pomegranate.

He had wanted to introduce Charlie to the blackcurrant but it was tragically banned in the United States.

"Fruit banned?" Charlie repeated skeptically when Burn said as much to him. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard of. Why would a fruit be banned? If is like an evil fruit or something?"

"No, nothing quite so dramatic," Burn said. "I looked that up when I was planning this. I love blackcurrant. It was apparently a carrier for a fungus that people were afraid would hurt the logging industry. Many states have since legalized it again but it's very difficult to find."

"Is that, like, all the fruit that there is?" Charlie asked. "Because that was a lot of kinds of fruit."

Burn chuckled. "Oh, no. I couldn't possibly find all the fruit in the world! I'm actually not sure if we've even discovered all of it because there's areas that no human has ever been to, or at least has never come back and shared the information with the rest of the world."

"So what fruit did you bring?"

"I decided to go with the fruit with the most interesting names," Burn said. "Just for fun."

"If you think about it, all words are interesting," Charlie said. "Like take banana. So much fun to say and it sounds like that old Batman theme, you know? Nothing rhymes with orange which makes it a pretty weird world. I was listening to this drunk guy the other day and, if he was right, strawberries aren't berries but watermelons are."

"That is actually true," Burn said. "Weird as that is. As are bananas. Tomatoes. Some kinds of nuts."

Charlie held up his hand to stop him. "Woah, woah, woah. Berries are officially cancelled. I can't even."

Burn smiled. "Fair enough."

Charlie grinned in anticipation. "So what kind of cool fruit did you bring me? Besides, well, all the ones we already had."

Burn pulled out a rich yellow fruit that looked kind of like a bunch of carrots growing from one carrot top.

"What's the weird feather duster fruit?" Charlie asked, fascinated. He reached out to touch it.

Burn broke off a piece and gave it to him. "This is the Buddha's hand. It has another name, obviously, but that's not nearly as interesting. It's called that because, well, people believe it resembles the fingers seen on status of the Buddha. It's supposed to have a mild and non-bitter taste. No juice or pulp so eating it shouldn't be messy."

Charlie sniffed it. "Smells like lemon."

"This is a cloudberry," Burn said, holding a few out for Charlie to observe. He rather thought they looked like raspberries but with less lobes as they were larger.

"It's like red-orange gushers," Charlie declared.

"I've never had a gusher."

"I can fix that," Charlie assured him.

"This is a delicacy and mostly a wild plant. I didn't buy very much because they're a bit rare. Lots of vitamin C. They're supposed to have a distinctive tart taste though if I'd let them get overripe they supposedly taste sweet and have the texture of yogurt."

"Huh. That's weird," Charlie said. He grabbed one of the cloudberries and popped it into his mouth.

"This one is the miracle fruit," Burn said, holding up what appeared to be a scarlet tomato.

"Huh. Bold claim," Charlie said. "Why is it called that?"

"Take a bite and you'll see," Burn told him.

Charlie did and looked unimpressed. "It's a little sweet but that's it."

Burn handed him a leftover slice of lemon. "Now try this."

Charlie frowned in confusion but did as he was told. He laughed abruptly. "Holy shit, there's something wrong with this lemon, man. It's all sweet!"

"It's not the lemon," Burn explained. "It's the miracle fruit. There's a chemical in the fruit that attaches to the taste buds and causes sour things to taste sweet."

"How long does this last?" Charlie asked excitedly.

"It varies," Burn said. "It is eventually washed away by saliva so it depends how much saliva you are producing. I've read it can take up to an hour but that likely means it will be less."

"An hour, huh?" Charlie asked, grinning. "Hand me another lemon, would you?"

Eventually the miraculin wore off and Burn was ready with the next fruit. "This is, uh, passionfruit." The purple outside sort of resembled the outside of an onion and there was yellow-green gook inside of it.

Charlie smiled brightly at Burn. "Passionfruit, huh? Sounds great."

Burn swallowed hard. "It's supposed to be tart and sweet."

Without breaking eye contact, Charlie took the fruit from Burn's hand and took a big bite out of it. Burn attempted to convince himself he wasn't being affected by that but it was obviously a lost cause. Charlie looked like he was enjoying the way Burn was looking at him. And why not?

It took them a few minutes to get back on track after that.

"This is salmonberry," Burn said, holding up a fruit that looked remarkably like maraschino cherries.

"You sure those aren't just ice cream cherries?" Charlie asked, clearly thinking the same thing.

"Positive."

Charlie still made no move for them. "Why are they called salmonberries? Like, I like salmon, don't get me wrong but I don't think they have any business being fruit."

"I actually wasn't sure about that either. And I don't think they physically resemble salmon scales and it would be strange to name them that for that reason if they did. But then, constellations almost never look like what they are named for to me so it might be something like that. I did look it up and apparently salmonberries are usually eaten with salmon so that might be it."

Charlie laughed incredulously. "That's it? You eat it with salmon so you put salmon in front of the name."

"People are not always so creative about naming things," Burn pointed out. "How many places are there that have the name of an old place but with a 'new' in front of it? And how many Main Streets have you seen? Or streets named after geographical landmarks."

"Yeah, that's true, I guess," Charlie said. "If I were in charge of things, I'd give them way cooler names!"

"I'm sure you would," Burn agreed. "Another interesting fact about salmonberries is that they're part of the rose family."

Charlie stared at him. "These are roses."

"A little perhaps? Or weeds. It's complicated with plants sometimes."

Charlie merely shook his head and popped the fruit into his mouth. "Huh. Tastes…weird. Kind of sour? But kind of sweet, too. Berries are weird, man. Assuming these are actually berries and not more fake berries."

"I can't disagree with you there," Burn said. "I think you'll really like this next one. It's called a starfruit."

Charlie's eyes widened and he grinned. "Those look like little stars!"

"At least with this one we don't have any doubt as to the meaning behind the name," Burn agreed. They were a strange yellow-brown color and the slices of it did resemble star-shaped flower petals.

"I want it," Charlie declared, holding out his hand expectantly. "Do you eat it in like one bite or more than one? Because, like, it would be cool to eat it all together but on the other it might be kind of big."

Burn placed one of the slices into Charlie's hand. "Please don't risk choking."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Charlie said. He took a giant bite out of his piece and juice gushed everywhere. "Mm! Sweet! Kind of like…I don't know. But I'm making a mess."

"Here, take this," Burn said, handing Charlie a paper napkin.

"You came prepared," Charlie noted.

"I should hope so," Burn said. "But I am always ready with napkins. I tend to grab way too many when I go out to eat and then take them with me so as not to be wasteful. I haven't actually had to buy a napkin in several years now."

"People buy napkins?" Charlie asked, surprised. "Huh."

"Not so much these days," Burn replied. "Restaurants napkins and paper towels are all the rage."

"I mean, we don't even buy napkins and we're a bar," Charlie said. "Maybe we should but people seem to get along just fine without them."

"Here we've got an Ugli fruit," Burn said, taking the next fruit out of the cooler.

Charlie laughed. "Oh, man, yeah, that is pretty ugly! What's it called?"

"An Ugli. Presumably because of how ugly it is."

Charlie frowned. "Well that's just mean."

"I don't suppose the fruit minds," Burn said. "But you're right. It's never nice to call someone or something ugly."

"Something this ugly must taste pretty good or no one would want to eat it," Charlie reasoned.

"I'll let you decide for yourself," Burn said, passing a slice over to him. "I understand it's a hybrid of a grapefruit and an orange. Those fruits are similar but the taste could be…interesting."

Charlie made a considering face. "It's good. More like an orange than a grapefruit but sourer."

"Well I'm glad not to have to subject you to another grapefruit! Those can be a lot," Burn said.

"Yeah, they don't seem to realize fruit is supposed to be sweet. Do you think weird French people would eat grapefruit for dessert?" Charlie asked.

"Not without sugar," Burn said. "But it's not just French people and just because we might find the practice unusual doesn't mean the people who do it are weird."

"I mean, people who do weird things are weird," Charlie argued.

"I would posit that everyone does weird things," Burn said. "Literally everybody. So we would have to say that everyone is weird. And then, to borrow from the wisdom of the Incredibles, that means no one is."

"I don't know, Doc," Charlie said slowly. "I've seen some pretty weird people. I'm pretty weird."

"You're pretty wonderful."

Charlie let out a surprised smile. "Flatterer."

"It's not flattery if it's true."

Charlie bit his lip and Burn wasn't sure what to do with the way he was suddenly looking at him so he cleared his throat and pulled out his final fruit.

"I saved the best for last," he said softly. "Or at least I thought it was the best. Hopefully you'll agree. Or at least really like it."

"I'm sure I will," Charlie answered, his voice just as soft.

Wordlessly, Burn pulled out a large spiky pink fruit with light green on the tip of the spikes. On the inside it was white with black specks.

"Woah," Charlie said, his eyes shining. "What's that?"

Burn grinned, feeling a little smug. "Dragon fruit."

"Drag-" Charlie broke off. "Dragon fruit? Are you serious?"

"Deadly."

"Is it called that because dragons eat them?" Charlie asked hopefully.

"Not that I'm aware of," Burn said. "Though we both know my tenuous relationship with the existence of dragons. It's called that because the plant that grows it resembles a dragon's neck and head. He carefully handed Charlie one half of the fruit and a spoon. "The skin isn't edible."

Charlie took a bite and his eyes fluttered close. He made a happy noise. "This is so good! It's like really sweet!"

"It's really good for you as well," Burn said. "It's a super-food."

Charlie opened one eye. "A what now?"

Burn waved a hand idly. "You know, one of those foods that are ridiculously good for you."

"Well I love it. This is my new favorite fruit!" Charlie declared. "And that may not sound like much because I had barely tried any fruit before today but now I've tried like all the fruit all at once and this is my favorite!"

Burn smiled warmly at him. "I'm so glad to hear it."

The two of them ate in silence for a while, just enjoying the day and the food and each other's company.

"Hey, Doc?" Charlie asked suddenly, staring resolutely down at the fruit in his hands.

"Yes, Charlie?"

"This whole thing…it must have taken you awhile to pull all this together, right? I mean, some of these foods you clearly never expected me to have even heard of and you looked them up and everything and you don't have to do that with, like, normal food even if I haven't heard of them before. Like that one time we were on that show Dennis knew all about Cottage Cheese even if I hadn't."

Burn could feel his face growing hot. "Yes, well, it did take a bit of coordinating to find where some of these could be located and arranging to get them all at the same time. But I was happy to do it. If I wasn't, I wouldn't have. It's not like you were expecting it. But it wasn't too much work and a little planning was worth it to do this for you today."

Charlie glanced briefly up at him then back down to his hands. "I think maybe…no, that's not it. I'm sure of it. I was thinking about it for a little bit and then I wasn't sure so I forgot about it but then this happens and suddenly I know. And I think this is always the kind of thing you should let someone know right away, no matter how mad they might get to hear it."

At that, Burn grew slightly alarmed. "Charlie, don't think you have to tell me anything that you think might cause problems. You know that you don't have to-"

Charlie finally met his eye and gave him a fond smile. "No, it's nothing like that. But I appreciate it. I just wanted to let you know that I love you."

Burn's mouth went dry and he felt his heart stop. "Oh."

"You're taking this way better than she ever did," Charlie said.

And maybe it wasn't really the done thing to bring up previous partners – not that the woman Burn was sure Charlie was talking about had ever been that – but somehow he didn't mind.

Charlie was watching him but he didn't seem to be expecting anything one way or the other.

That was the problem with the first time someone said I love you. Saying it back seemed trite and kind of obligated. Not saying it back made it seem like the two were at very different places in their conception of the relationship and put an unspoken pressure on the other to hurry up and catch deeper feelings.

Charlie smiled at him. "You're overthinking this, Doc, I can tell. I just wanted you to know and, you know, not pepper spray me or anything."

"I'd never pepper spray you, Charlie."

"See? You're taking this way better."

Don't overthink it. Don't overthink it.

Easier said than done.

Don't overthink it.

Don't think.

Where did that leave him?

James Earl Jones' voice was suddenly in his head.

"Search your feelings."

He closed his eyes and just focused on breathing.

Charlie was a comforting presence beside him.

He didn't know how long it was before his eyes flew open again.

He was sure.

"Charlie, I love you."

Charlie's face lit up in pure joy and Burn had never seen a more beautiful sight in his life.