Fruits

by Dime

A man stood in front of a stall in the Borough Market, gazing in mild disbelief at a mushroom larger than his head. "Giant puffball"…? Right. He snorted in amusement, then outright laughed when his eyes moved on to the next box which had a sign helpfully labelling the contents as "Shittake Mushroom".

He slowly wandered past the weird assortment of mushrooms and over to the fruits. He was in luck and his favourites were still in season. Carefully, he tested a particularly promising specimen with his gloved fingers, then raised it to his nose to take in a deep lungful of fruit-scented river air. "Mmmh."

Three minutes later, the man was sitting peacefully on a balustrade overlooking the river with a bag full of beautiful, ripe plums. He was torn between the desire to have his plums and eat them when he was distracted by another man sitting down only a few feet from him with a suspiciously familiar bag and a satisfied "Ah."

The first man watched, half annoyed and half intrigued, as his fellow fruit aficionado opened up his bag, stuck his nose in and took a deep, obviously satisfying breath. Then a slender, pale hand was extracted from its elegant glove and inserted in the mouth of the paper bag. It came back out holding a shiny, perfect green apple.

From where he was sitting, the man with his plums could both smell and hear every detail of the other man biting into his apple. The scent of the bitten apple was crisp and fresh, but the sounds accompanying the act were downright indecent. There was the expected initial crunch of teeth ripping into tart, taut skin and flesh as the aroma unfolded. But then! Following on the heels of that first bite was a moan straight out of a not-so-straight man's fantasies, then a few chewing sounds and lastly, Jesus wept, a quick, juicy slurp catching some apple juice that had tried to escape down the man's pointy chin.

The man found himself outright staring. "Enjoy that apple much, kid?"

Far from being self-conscious about his molestation of that apple, the younger man turned around with a haughty, disdainful look and calmly said: "Apples are obviously the crown jewel of the fruit chain."

Amused rather than offended, the first man retrieved a plum from his bag and replied: "I have to disagree with you there. Nothing, and I repeat: nothing beats the taste of a ripe, sun-warmed plum." He proceeded to demonstrate by biting the top off his plum, checking for worms, then quickly stripping the rest of the fruit off the stone and tossing the stone aside.

He almost forgot about his companion when the sweet, sticky juice hit his tongue. "Mmmh!"

A quiet gasp reminded him that he had an audience and eyes that had fallen shut in bliss reopened just a slit. They opened wider as they beheld the young man with his apple clutched in an iron grip in a hand that had otherwise sunk limply into the man's lap. Silver-blue eyes were staring at the man in open fascination. "Mate, I've never seen anyone enjoy a plum the way you do."

"I suppose we both have been denied nice things for much too long," the first man proposed.

"Truer words have never been spoken," his companion said with feeling. Pursing his lips in thought, he eventually took another bite of his apple. "Draco Malfoy," he said abruptly, holding out his hand to shake.

"Bucky," the other man replied, "Bucky Barnes." They shook, then separated again.

Draco and Bucky stared at each other for a moment, fruits forgotten as each pondered exactly how ridiculous his companion's name sounded to their ears.

"Alright then," Bucky decided and returned his full attention to his bag of plums. He carefully selected another one and gave himself over to the bliss of tasting the perfect fruit on his tongue, having the most blissful mixture of soft and smooth and wet on his lips and between his teeth and oh, the heavenly scent!

Meanwhile, Draco took another bite of his apple. He ran his hands absent-mindedly over the smooth surface of the apple's rounded cheeks. But even as he all but shivered with bliss, he did not stop stealing little glances at Bucky.

Bucky knew, because he was doing the same.

"I hadn't had plums in years," Bucky confided. "Then I finally had the chance to buy them again, but I was interrupted by an emergency and had to leave my plums behind." The memory alone was enough to make him feel his stomach dropping into his feet again as the bottom suddenly dropped out of the secure little world he had been building for himself.

"Mate," the younger man said, wide-eyed with sympathy, "that's terrible!"

They were both quiet for a bit, commiserating in the drama of being brutally torn from one's favourite fruit. Then Draco decided to return the favour and talk more of his own fruit of choice. "I've always had apples. When I was little and my father scolded me, my mother would give me an apple to make me feel better. When I had to stand strong and pretend to be unaffected in the face of terrible danger at school, it was an apple that helped me put a brave face on it. And when…" Stormclouds covered the handsome, young face. "And when my parents were sentenced to a lifetime in prison, I knew that at least my apples would not be taken from me."

Bucky shivered at the idea of anyone spending a lifetime in prison. "Nobody should be locked away like that," he opined.

Draco huffed out a long, sorrowful breath. "They did have it coming."

"I don't know their story, nor yours, but still. Prison is terrible."

"You have no idea," Draco ground out.

That made Bucky's face sour in turn. "Some," he disagreed.

"It's not exactly a normal prison," Draco ventured, sounding hesitant. "Where they went. It's… torture, in a way."

"As I said," Bucky maintained, mien growing darker still, "I do have some idea what that's like." His gloved left hand was clenching around the top of his paper bag and he forced himself to relax lest he damage his precious plums. It only worked as far as his plums were concerned.

Draco's nostrils flared, but then he, too, visibly forced down his agitation. "I meant no offense," he said stiffly, meeting the other man's eyes.

Bucky returned his reserved gaze with a murderous look of his own. All of a sudden, it occurred to Draco to wonder what this particular man might have done to deserve being locked away and tortured.

But before Draco could do something stupid that might threaten his own parole, Bucky dropped his gaze back to his plums. He opened up his bag again, picked out his next target and proceeded to demolish it with extreme prejudice. Ruefully, he then looked at the plum juice sticking to his fingers. "Sorry. You did not deserve that."

Draco was under no illusions that the stranger meant him.

"Did you know about… your parents?" Bucky asked, curious despite himself. Apple boy next to him did not seem like the type to have been raised by the mob.

"Oh, I knew." Bitter self-loathing laced the blond man's next words. "I knew, but I was raised on their philosophy of blood superiority and I blindly followed along until it nearly got me killed."

"Blood superiority." Any empathy was suddenly gone from Bucky's voice. "You were a fascist?"

"Kind of?" Draco was too lost in his own thoughts to notice the impending doom solidifying on the river bank next to him. "I mean, I never personally killed anyone, but I…" He dropped his apple into his lap and toyed with the stalk. "I did spout some hateful propaganda and I hurt a lot of people."

He looked up in shock when a large shadow fell on him. It was Bucky, standing there with his plums abandoned where he'd been sitting and both fists clenched at his side so hard they were trembling. "Hydra?" he growled.

Draco, instinctively leaning back from the danger, nearly fell off the balustrade as he shook his head, hard. "Heard of them, but no. Different group of asshole supremacists."

"There's too many of those around," Bucky rasped. But Draco's words appeared to have been the right ones: He turned and walked back to his seat with decidedly less vigour. In another man, the retreat, with the angry energy so suddenly gone out of their figure, might have been done with shoulders slumped or dragging feet; but for this particular apex predator, even turning around in a funk still looked graceful and dangerous.

Retrieving another plum from the bag he had quickly reclaimed, Bucky asked: "What brought about your change of heart?"

Seeing how touchy the subject was for the other man, Draco gave the question due consideration.

"Several things," he eventually settled on. "One," he held up the hand that wasn't currently holding the apple and extended his thumb, "my parents and their associates tried to kill some kids I was going to school with. I may not have particularly liked said kids, but even so…"

He took a bite out of his apple to soothe his nerves. "Two," his index finger went up, "their leader ordered me to kill my headmaster and made it clear failure was not an option. My godfather did that instead, to protect me, and everything went to the dogs from there."

Bucky whistled appreciatively. For a school kid, that was a lot of pressure and trauma, alright.

"And three," Draco finished, adding his middle finger to the other two, "the kid I loved to blame for all of my misfortune and whom I had actively tried to hurt on numerous occasions thanks to my dad's propaganda - he rescued me from the middle of a raging fire. Kind of tends to put things into perspective."

"That it does," Bucky replied, thoughts trailing back to his own experiences of escaping a raging inferno with a broad back leading the way.

"You have experience with that, too?" Draco asked archly.

Bucky smirked at him. "Some."

"I am curious about your story," Draco said slowly, "but somehow, I'm a little afraid to ask."

"Wise man," Bucky said sombrely. "Keep it that way."

"Aw, come on, I just bared my heart to you! You have to give me something." If asked, Draco would deny to anyone that he ever whined. He could not have currently named any defining feature of his tone that would have made it not-a-whine, though.

Surprisingly, Bucky obliged him. "Long story short: I was captured by surpremacist assholes a long time ago, brainwashed and sent out to slaughter innocent people. I nearly killed my best friend even as he was trying to save me, who had-" despite the dark subject matter, he managed a sarcastic grin at Draco – "rescued me from a bad situation before and led the way out through a fire."

Draco groaned. Of course Bucky would one-up him again. Though he doubted Bucky's rescue had been as spectacular as his own. After all, how could a muggle possibly compete with a broom ride on the back of the Wizarding World's Saviour's very own broom? Not that Draco was allowed to talk about any of that. It was so unfair.

Unaware of Draco's entirely internal pout, Bucky continued. "And now I'm on the run from the authorities, because I recently got framed for yet another murder, and not everyone believes that I did not become the prime assassin for a group of supremacist assholes by choice."

Draco had a fair complexion to begin with, but at these words the penny finally dropped and he blanched. "You're the Winter Soldier."

"I am," Bucky confirmed calmly. He did not worry about betraying his identity like that. He'd be leaving London that evening anyway, and somehow he did not feel that this man would betray him. They were kindred spirits. Slowly singling out another plum, Bucky took his time probing it for imperfections or worms before chewing down on it with relish.

Draco took a deep breath, visibly calming himself, then picked up his apple again to take a fortifying mouthful of his own. "You know," he said, uncertainly finding his way through the turmoil in his head, "if you've been denied a life for as long as the m- the media say, you ought to try new things."

Balancing the bag on his legs, Draco stuck his free hand in there and came up with another shiny, perfect green apple. He extended it to Bucky.

All anger forgotten, Bucky looked at the generous offering. He had seen how valuable apples were to this man and appreciated the spirit of the offer. Gently accepting the apple with his cupped left hand, Bucky sat for a moment just holding it. It was very pretty.

Reluctantly, he finally dove into his own bag to retrieve a plum for Draco in exchange.

"You don't have to," Draco immediately fended him of, but Bucky was undeterred.

Extending the plum to his companion, he replied: "I know. But as you said, I should try new things." When Draco merely cocked a questioning eyebrow at him, Bucky explained with a sad smile: "All I've been doing for the past seventy years is bring death to people. Giving them nice things, instead, that's… new. A good new."

"But do I deserve to have nice things?" The question should have been ridiculous, but somehow in that moment on the banks of the Thames, with apples and plums in their laps and a wagonload of trauma shared between the two of them, it wasn't.

Bucky pushed the plum firmly at Draco. "I want to believe that we do."

Draco's hand closed gently around the plum. It was warm, and soft, and perfect.

A/N: As always, constructive criticism and positive feedback are very welcome! : )