October, 2014. 

Oslo, Norway. 

It was the sun that woke me up most mornings. Bucky and I had the luxury of lazy mornings, what with neither of us having found a job in nearly a month. The picture windows were in the perfect place to catch the rising sun, but black out curtains covered most of them. The single inch of glass not covered let in a blinding beam of light, and it hit my face dead on. 

I squinted at the window, letting my eyes adjust to the light until I scooted farther under the blankets and deeper into mine and Bucky's connected sleeping bags. The windows were fogged over, but I was more interested in the glass of water on the floor next to my pillow. The top inch of the water was frozen into an ice frisbee. It didn't surprise me. Three and a half weeks of intermittent electrical heat had toughened me up, but I was barely cold nonetheless. And that was weird. 

I ignored my thoughts and decided to go back to sleep, cuddling back into the sleeping bag. There was a pillow behind me, keeping me from getting comfortable. I reached back and tried to grab the pillow, but I ended up slapping Bucky in the shoulder. 

"I don't have to be up yet. Let me sleep," he groaned. It wasn't a pillow against my back, and that suddenly made a lot of sense. I forced myself not to freeze or tense up. 

The first week in Norway, Bucky had reinstated his night watch. Then he settled for sleeping with his back to me, facing the door. Waking to him spooning me was surprising, to say the least. But it was warm. 

"Sorry. I didn't think that was you," I whispered. 

"Who else would it be?"

"A pillow," I admitted. His arm was curled around me, and I assumed his hand was under my pillow. Even our legs were tangled together, one of his in front of mine and the other behind. He stretched without letting go, and I felt his toes flex against my calves. 

"Gee thanks," he muttered. As if it was reflex, he tightened his arms around me. I was as frozen as my glass of water. "Do you want to go back to sleep or do you want me to get up and turn on the hotplate? It'll put off some heat if I move it over here."

"Go ahead and sleep," I told him. He groaned, right in my ear. He was still half-asleep. 

"Are you warm enough? I'll go find another blanket if you want," he offered. 

"We could get naked. That would warm us up," I joked dryly. 

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" he asked in the very same tone. That actually surprised me a little, and I couldn't help laughing. 

"I guess that depends on if you're in good shape or not," I replied. Bucky loosened his grip on me, and I worried if I had offended him. He had thick skin and had been dealing with me for months now. 

Buck completely removed his arms and legs from me, leaving me notably colder. He rolled around in his half of the jumbo sleeping bag, and the movement sucked in a breeze of frigid air, right down my back. 

"Give me a little warning next time," I whisper shouted at him. I rolled over in time to see him peeling off his shirt and tossing it at his backpack. "What are you doing?"

"Taking my shirt off," he answered somewhat drowsily. I already knew he wasn't wearing pants. Flannel pajamas hadn't been on his packing list. "It'd be warmer if you did too."

The same pamphlet I had remembered when Buck gave me the knitted hat popped up into my memory again. Heat transfer over bare skin is much more efficient than through layers of clothing. 

"Buck, I'll be honest with you. I'm not wearing a bra, and I'll be damned if you see me, or feel me, half naked," I told him, starting to laugh awkwardly. 

"I've already seen you naked, Gail. Scotland, remember?" he pointed out. He found his way back to me, taking up nearly the same position we had started from. It was like moving out of the shade and stepping out into the sun. Without a second thought, I scooted back against his chest as he maneuvered his free hand under my shirt. 

I shouldn't have moved closer, and I knew that. There was some line in the sand that Bucky and I had tacitly drawn at some point down the line. And we had crossed it, albeit when we were asleep. I could feel Bucky breathing deeper against my back, falling back to sleep as if his hand wasn't pressed against my stomach. 

~

"We need to leave Oslo," Bucky announced as he came into the apartment and shut the door. He grabbed a chair he had found in the lobby of the building and shoved it under the door handle. 

"What happened? Why do we need to leave?" I asked. He stepped around me and up to the kitchen counter. I watched him lay the back of his metal hand over the saucepan I had used to make coffee, checking the temperature. It was obviously good enough for him, as he lifted the pan and drank straight from it. We had collected one mug and one transparent drinking glass, but the pan obviously worked just as well. 

"It's too damn cold to stay somewhere that doesn't have fully functioning heat or a fire place at the very least. No radiator, no stove. No way to keep warm," he muttered. He made eye contact with me then stared at the floor, his cheeks nearly as red as his shirt. "Besides getting half naked and bear hugging you. I'm sorry about that, by the way."

When Bucky had fully woken up, nearly two hours after I smacked him in the shoulder, he was quite embarrassed to be dressed in only his underwear and nearly feeling me up. Now, he was finding it hard to look at me for longer than point-two seconds without blushing. 

"And neither of us have found a job. We still have your money, but even a crap apartment will blow through it too fast for my comfort," he continued after another sip of coffee. "We need to go somewhere else."

"We could just end up squatting again," I reminded him. 

"We've been here nearly a month. Chances of finding steady money have got to be better anywhere else," he said. I nodded and crossed my arms. Working around my cup of coffee was a little awkward, but I made it work as smoothly as I could. 

"Where are you thinking?" I asked. 

"South. Copenhagen is on the way to mainland Europe. We can stop there, see if it's worth putting down roots. If it is, then we stay. If not, we move on," he brain-stormed. I nodded along with him. 

"I can go to that internet café a few blocks from here and find transportation. I don't want to call in a favor if I don't have to," I told him. He put down the pot and reached for the back pocket of his pants. He showed me a map, and it took me a second to mentally translate one of the Scandinavian languages printed on the front. They all ran together in my mind and were so similar. 

"Which is more suspicious? Driving or finding a train?"

"Buck, we don't have any sort of car. We have to find a train or a bus or something like that," I reminded him. He took a deep breath and crossed his arms, crumpling the map in the bend of his elbow. 

"I've let you do all the illegal stuff up to this point. I think it's my turn," he said cryptically. He moved seamlessly from standing in the kitchen nook to kneeling in front of his backpack and stack of folded clothes. "Pack up. How much food do we have?"

"We're running on empty. We could probably last through breakfast, the day after tomorrow. Why?"

"Then we leave the day after tomorrow. Don't worry about finding a train or anything. I've got it handled," he explained. I watched him completely empty his backpack and begin organizing the entirety of his worldly possessions. Then I joined him.