March, 2015.

Gdansk, Poland.

Milk, bread, eggs, butter (the smallest container they have), coffee, peanut butter (crunchy), bacon, pancake mix (if you can find it), green beans, oranges, plums (if they have them). And for God's sake, please don't get any potatoes.

I looked at Bucky's additions to the grocery list and reread them. Standing in the middle of a Polish grocery store, I realized my Polish language skills were rougher than I thought.

"Peanut butter. Crunchy peanut butter," I muttered. The shelves on either side of me were filled with plastic and glass jars of everything from jellies and Nutella to olives pickled garlic. And yet I couldn't find peanut butter. "Forget it. It can wait."

Grocery shopping at three o'clock in the morning garnered its fair share of attention, but most of my friendly co-shoppers looked as surly as myself. Somehow, I doubted that I was the only one buying things to fit a list that could have come straight out of 1945 if you ignored the requests for out of season fruits and pancake mix instead of flour and sugar.

Bakeries were a dime a dozen in Gdansk, but bars were more accommodating to my request to be paid under the table. I put my fond memories of googling cocktail recipes at the Academy to work alongside a newly googled vocabulary of flirty Polish phrases and a low-cut thrifted shirt. And Bucky, ever the saint, found a matching job as a bouncer outside the door. He kept his left hand in his pocket the entire time, but his super soldier right arm was more than enough to turn people away.

I left the aisle of jars and began walking past the refrigerated section. Milk and butter were easy to find. So was bacon. Everybody loved butter and bacon. They went into the basket I was balancing on my hip, and I walked into the produce section. I threw a few oranges into the basket and started the search for plums. Bucky had found a few at a smaller corner store early one morning and later said they reminded him of summers in New York.

"No plums," I whispered. But they had cherries, and I knew Buck could eat a pound of them in a single sitting if he was distracted enough.

When all was said and done, the basket was overflowing, and I was standing in front of a bakery display case that was filled with 'must sell' cakes and pastries. I tilted my head while I examined my choices. Bucky and I both had a wicked sweet tooth and had been treating ourselves with sugary things and strong coffee since we started working long nights together.

My eyes began to wander around the back corner of the grocery store. There were scales to weigh out ingredients and tubs of icing. It made me miss the bakery in Copenhagen for a split second until I remembered how much I preferred late nights over early mornings. A late shift employee came walking past and stopped at a calendar to rip a page off. Weary-eyed, I read the date. March 10th. Bucky's birthday.

"Did you need any help?" she asked. I stepped closer to the display case to try my hand at reading the labels. Turned out, my Polish reading comprehension was also lacking. 

"This one? What is it?" I replied, pointing to something filled with a reddish-purple jam.

"Plum," she answered in English. I made a note to work on my accent once I was home.

"Two please," I told her. She packaged them up in a plain white box, stuck a price sticker on the top, and handed them to me. I added them to the basket and thanked her before walking away. I had crossed off everything on Bucky's list aside from the peanut butter.

It was a short trip through the aisles and back to the tills, but I decided to take the longer route past a couple shelves I hadn't looked over. As if God himself wanted it, I stumbled across the International sections and a collection of sugared up, highly processed American delicacies. Including, but not limited to, a jar of Jif crunchy peanut butter. I couldn't hold back my smirk as I picked up the biggest jar they had.

~

"I hope you know how much this makes us stand out," I teased when I showed Buck the peanut butter. I tossed it to him where he sat on the bed and sat the other grocery bags on the kitchen counter.

"It's peanut butter," he retorted. He unscrewed the lid and stuck his finger into the jar. He had quickly realized her shouldn't use his metal hand to scoop out the stuff after only one instance of me having to disassemble his hand to clean out the peanut butter that got stuck in the crevices.

"That I found in the American section of a grocery store. Try to ration that out," I requested. He stuck his peanut butter-covered fingers into his mouth and nodded. I began to unpack the groceries, leaving most of the haul on the counter. Bucky joined me after washing his hand off and started putting things away in the cabinets and fridge.

"What's this?" Bucky asked excitedly when he found the box of plum desserts. He started to rip through the price sticker, but I reached out to pop the back of his hand.

"They're a combination of payback and birthday present," I answered. "Something to look forward to before we go to work tonight."

"How many did you get?"

"Just two. One for each of us, but you can have both of them if you wanted to," I offered. He silently shook his head and sat the box on top of the fridge.

"Did you want anything to eat before bed?" he asked. He hated going to bed on an empty stomach, whereas I was usually out before I hit the mattress. Between the two sleeping bags we'd been carrying since Norway and the small pile of blankets we had found in the upstairs portion of our new apartment, the bed was always soft and welcoming.

"I'm fine. Just make sure the coffee is set up for in the morning," I said. I sat down on the bed and began untying my shoes. They had been thrifted too, right before I had gotten my bartending shift. Scuffed up Converse were far less suspicious than well-worn boots.

"Noon doesn't count as morning," Bucky pointed out. I laughed with him while I started to undress for bed. After almost a year of traveling together and sharing close quarters, neither of us were bothered by each other's nudity. I tossed my shirt and pants on top of the chest-of-drawers and found one of Bucky's shirts to wear instead.

"It's our version of morning. If we work from eight to two overnight, noon counts as very early morning," I retorted. "And very early morning necessitates coffee."

"Strong coffee," Bucky agreed. He set a few pieces of bacon into a frying pan and went through the motions of prepping the coffee maker for later in the day. "Sure you don't want anything?"

"I'll just steal some bacon from you," I told him. I retreated to the bathroom and washed my face, brushed my teeth, and let my hair down while Bucky finished making his breakfast. When I came back to bed, he handed me a piece of freshly burnt bacon with a sly smile. "What'd you do? Drop it?"

"Of course not," he promised. We both sat down on the bed, and held out a plate stacked high with buttered toast and bacon.

"You're going to get heart disease one of these days, old man," I teased, bumping my shoulder into his. We both took a piece of toast and bit into it.

"Jesus Christ, I am old. I'm 98 years old today," he said, sounding as if he had just realized that fact.

"You sure are," I chuckled. "God, I'd kill to know what my parents would say if I told them I was on the run with a master assassin three times my age."

"At least I don't look 98," he said. "Right?"

"No, you dork. You don't look nearly as old as you actually are," I assured him. I finished my toast and scooted to the head of the bed. I crawled under the top layers of blankets and got comfortable while Bucky finished his late breakfast and then put away the dishes. He joined me in bed soon after, slipping out of his pants and long-sleeve shirt and under the blankets with me. "Do you remember Ian?"

He seemed surprised to hear the name; he turned his head to face me as he lay flat on his back. "Yeah, the Canadian. Got us to Aberdeen."

"He's coming to Warsaw in a week or two. Offered to get us a couple Polish passports while he's here," I announced.

"What exactly does Ian want in return for the passports? He's in the shadows. He has to want something," Buck said.

"I thought the same thing, but he only wanted a place to stay and a few meals here in Gdansk on his way out of the country," I told him. "I think we can handle that."

"Polish passports carry some weight. They'll be worth it," he agreed. "Where's he going to sleep?"

"He's old military. We can just give him a sleeping bag and a spot in the floor. He'll be fine," I said. "Don't worry, I won't give him your place in the bed."

"Damn right, you won't," Bucky laughed. He rolled to face the door, turning his back to me. I was just glad he still slept through the night instead of standing guard in each new apartment. "Good night, Gail. See you in the not-really-morning."

*

Author's Note:

Another chapter should be up right after this one!