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Published:
2024-05-30
Updated:
2025-04-21
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1,958
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4/?
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One Bar

Summary:

Set roughly between Acts 1 and 2. As Phil nears the end of his rope, he discovers the one time and place in Punxsutawney that consistently gets reception.

----

(Multimedia fic: mix of comic pages and written prose. Make sure you're not on mobile data!)

Chapter 1: Saturday, 8.37 am

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

February 2nd. Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The snowy streets are packed with people chanting 'Phil! Phil! Phil!'. As the camera pans down, the chants grow more concerned. 'Phil? Phil? Where are you, Phil?' Rita Hanson stops a man on the sidewalk. 'Excuse me sir,' she says. 'Have you seen Phil Connors around here? From Channel 5? Tall, black hair?' The man shrugs. 'Sorry, lady. In this crowd? Wouldn't know.' Rita winces. 'Shit. Thanks anyway.'
'God, where is he?' Rita mumbles. She pulls out her phone to check the time - it's 8.37am. 'Still no signal... we're going to be so late.
CRASH. Something shatters off screen. Somebody yells 'Hey, watch it!' Rita turns to look.
Someone has dropped a bottle off a roof. It lays shattered by the feet of a very angry passerby. The passerby points angrily towards the rooftop and yells 'You almost killed me with that, asshole!' Someone leans over the side of the building to glare down at him. 'Oh, shut UP, Eric.' Phil Connors replies from his perch. 'All the roads are closed, the hotel's already given your room away to a couple from Iowa, and in 3 hours you're gonna lose control ice skating, slam into a lamp post and break your nose. It's not like you'd miss anything GOOD.' Rita watches the exchange from across the street. 'What the hell?' she mutters. Rita calls out to her coworker. 'Phil? Is that you? What are you doing up there?!' Phil drags a hand down his face. 'Oh for f--' He mutters to himself. 'Great! You ratted me out! Asshole, Eric!' Rita composes herself and tries again. 'Phil, I'm Rita. I'm--' Phil turns away. 'Just leave me alone.' He says, turning away.
Rita frowns, equal parts confused, concerned, and annoyed.
'Friggin' drunk,' Eric mutters as he walks away. 'I'm the BEST skater. I could go OLYMPIC.' Rita ignores him. She's spotted a fire escape ladder that leads up to the roof.

Notes:

This fic started life as an idea for an ask blog, but then I realized I already have a lot of ideas and also I'm allergic to being known. Oh well. Still theoretically open to questions/suggestions for chapter ideas, but I want to get through this little introduction first.

At the time of writing the images in this fic are not being hosted by AO3. If anything breaks, you can find a mirror of it over on tumblr.

Chapter 2: Saturday, 8.43 am

Notes:

Some images from this chapter onward are being used as dividers. If no image description is provided, it contains nothing relevant to the story.

Chapter Text

There are 26 rungs on the ladder leading onto the roof of Punxsutawney Flannel & Flowers. It's the only way up, and short of dashing his brains on the pavement Phil won't have another way down for another seventeen minutes. His fate is sealed. His day, ruined. Phil cracks the top off his spare bottle and wonders if he can chug it before Rita catches up.

Behind him, he hears Rita's boots clunk against the rungs.

One, two, three, four.

Fucking Eric. Phil can't believe he let this happen. He's never this sloppy.

Phil had Rita's "panicked producer" schedule etched into his brain by now. Barring disruptions, it went park, main street, Lancaster's, main street, diner, bar, Lancaster's again, bar again, half an hour arguing with Larry, bar a third time because 'trust me, Rita, where else would he be', and then finally the police. From there, chaos he did his best to ignore.

The concern Rita had towards his 'disappearances' would be touching, if it weren't constantly interrupting his attempts to turn his brain off. Or if her worry ever lasted more than five minutes in actual proximity of Phil.

Go figure Rita was more concerned with losing her weatherman than losing a person.

Five, six, seven, eight.

...No, that wasn't fair.

It's not Rita's fault he's so chronologically, fundamentally broken. And there was no hiding it from her, no matter how hard he tried.

Nine, ten, eleven, twelve.

Maybe he could still salvage this morning. For her sake. Come on, Phil, straighten up. Make yourself presentable. Brush the snow from your hair, zip up your fly...

Did he brush his teeth today? Phil cups a gloved hand to his mouth and checks his breath.

...

Oof. Never mind. Today's ruined.

One, two, three, four...

Brace for impact.

As the clunking of the ladder grows louder, Phil scowls and mutters under his breath. 'Phil, hi, I'm Rita I'm producing this what happened are you okay.' He flaps the fingers of his free hand, mimicking someone talking.

Rita reaches the top of the ladder and calls out to Phil. 'Phil? Hi! I'm producing-' Phil cuts her off with a blunt 'I KNOW.'

Rita hauls herself up onto the roof next to him and starts rubbing her hands together. Phil's impressed she didn't rip her skin off climbing a metal ladder without gloves. Miracle of science, this woman. Maybe it's an associate producer thing.

"What's going on, Phil? Are you okay?"
"Oh, sure. Now you care."
"Who was that before? Jeez, why are you even--"

A gust of wind rattles the branches of a nearby tree and flicks Rita's hair straight into her mouth. Rita splutters and spits it out, before pulling her coat tighter around herself.

"OhhhmyGod that's cold." Wow. Phil can actually hear her teeth chattering. She sounds like a Looney Toon. "Phil- why are you on a roof?"
"View's nice."
"So? You're going to freeze to death up here!"
"Am I? Great. That'll be something different."

Rita peers at the bottle. '...Are you drinking?' She asks. Phil says 'Yup. Care to join me?'

Phil flashes a smile that wouldn't look out of place on a Picasso.

"No thank you. I have to drive back."
"Relax, they closed down the highway."
"No they-"
"Give it time." Phil pats the snow next to him. "C'mon, pull up a seat! There's a great view of the marching band from here. You don't wanna miss the trombonist, he's about to smack a little kid in the face with the slide. It never gets old."

He sloshes the bottle vaguely in Rita's direction. Shockingly, she is not tempted by the cocktail of whiskey and spit.

"Phil, it's 8 in the morning."
"8.43," he corrects. "But suit yourself."

He watches Rita sneak a glance at her phone. Her stunned expression tells Phil nothing he doesn't already know.

"Okay," Rita says, struggling to keep this conversation on track. "Let's start over. Phil - what happened?"
"Nothing happened."
"Nice try. You drove eighty miles for work then skipped it so you could sit on a roof and drink. Why?"
"Why? Look around, Rita! It's a party!"

Phil sweeps his arm out over the side of the balcony. About a block away, Robert the trombonist turns a little too quick and clocks little Mary Abbott in the head. She cries. Rita must've missed it, because she doesn't laugh.

Eh. Her loss.

"Besides," Phil says, "it's Saturday. Remember those? Saturdays are great."

Rita doesn't bother hiding her phone from him this time.

Rita stares at Phil, then at her phone. Her expression falls flat as she says 'Phil, today's Friday.''

"Ah, now that? Rookie mistake." Phil wags a finger as he attempts to condense his vast understanding of the space-time continuum down to something mere mortals can understand. "You see, Rita - you are wrong."

Nailed it.

"Nope. It's Friday. It's February 2nd."
"Noooooooooooooo." Phil slaps a hand against his cheek in mock horror. "Is it Groundhog Day?!"
"- which is a Friday." Each word is perfectly enunciated. It's impressive Rita's never tried to kill him. "You expect me to believe you skipped work because you- you- what, you forgot what day it is? Phil, you missed the ceremony -"
"- six more weeks of winter - "
"- and you missed the report! I had to -"
"I KNOW."

The outburst takes both of them by surprise. Rita takes a step back, but Phil won't ease up. He needs her to understand, he needs anyone to understand.

"I know it's Friday. I know what day it is. It's always February 2nd, it's always six more weeks of winter, and I've already covered that stupid fucking Groundhog!" He jabs a finger at her. "Saturday is what happens when you work five days! Saturday is the play between all work so you don't channel Jack Torrance every Monday. I did the report. I've done it five times in a row. So today is Saturday. Got it?"

Rita goes quiet. He can see the wheels turn in her head as she tries to follow his ever-so-eloquent explanation to the end. Come on, Rita. You're smart. Smarter than him. You can do it, please, please give him this one thing--

"I thought this was your fourth year in Punxsutawney?"

Fuck his life.

"I lost count." Phil slumps back against the railing of the balcony. "Gotta be twenty, maybe thirty by now?"
"There's no way it's been that many."
"Rita, I've been here so long I've started teaching myself how to rollerskate." He says, in lieu of any better metric for measuring time. "Not ice. Roller. I want you to think about that for a second."

Rita does.

Rita: 'Phil... exactly how much have you had today?' Phil: 'Almost enough.' Rita: 'Okay. Uh. I so do not have time to unpack that just yet.'

Rita mutters that last part to herself, but in that special loud kind of way. Like she knows it'd be wrong to be rude, no matter how badly she wants to be. That was fine. On the flowchart that covered every single way he could possibly ruin their conversations, this was one endpoint that didn't feature Phil getting kicked in the dick again.

Rita forces a smile onto her face in an attempt to regain some of the camaraderie the conversation never had.

"How about you finish that off downstairs? Might make you feel better. You shouldn't spend the whole festival sulking on a rooftop."
"Excuse you." Phil sluggishly points at his face. "When you're this attractive, it's called brooding."
"Do it indoors." Rita deadpans, before she catches herself. "And- away from the ledge. Just come down? Please? The heater's on in the van. It'll be nice and warm, and we can take you back to-"
"Roaaaaaaaaaaaaad's clooooooooooooosed." A sing-songy reminder.
"The diner, then!"

If she tries to talk him down one more time by bringing up the sticky buns, so help him God-

Wait. No. Hold on. Rita never plays along with a morning traffic report. What is this?

"Or the park! Somewhere nice and on the ground."

Ah.

"Rita, relax. I'm not going to throw myself off a building." He glances down. "Not in front of all these people."
"I never said you were going to." Rita's expression slowly morphs from cautious to horrified. "Is that- something you're thinking about?"

...Oh. She'd been worried about him slipping. In the snow. Because snow is wet, and he is sitting in a lot of it, and he's perhaps not currently qualified to recite the alphabet backwards.

"Phil?"
"That was a joke."
"I'm not laughing."
"Yeah, your sense of humor's always sucked."

Something changes in Rita's eyes. Phil's not sure what, he's not sure why, only that it's not the usual disappointment. Whatever it is he just broke has taken the fight straight out of her. She raises her hands - the only physical distance she can put between herself and this conversation.

'Okay, I'm sorry,' says Rita. 'You clearly don't want to talk about... whatever this is. I'm gonna go grab Larry, and when you're ready, we can--' she's cut off by her phone, which makes a ba-DING noise. Phil turns to look, suddenly alert. 'What was that?' he asks.

"I said, I'll give you space, and when you're ready to talk--"
"Nononono no, no no no." Phil tries to get up, gets caught up in his own coattails and scarf and promptly eats shit. "Ow. Your phone. It made a noise."

"Huh?" Rita checks the screen. "Oh, yeah. It's just Kenny."
Phil gawks. "What?"
"Mm. Says he tried your phone but got nothing. He wants to know if we're still on track to be back by 10. Which... we are not. Is it all right if I take this? It'll just be a second. My signal's been kinda spotty all day, and I don't want to leave the station hanging..."

Whatever it is Rita's saying turns to static. Phil frantically checks the pockets of his coat. Empty. He checks the pockets of his pants. Empty. He checks the pockets of his jacket, empt-- oh, nope, there's his Xanax. But no phone. Why would there be? What point was there in carrying around an $800 brick?

Fine, then. Plan B.

"...can wait, of course. Sounds like he's happy to fill in for-- Hey! PHIL!"

Rita tries to snatch her phone back from him, but Phil raises it above his head to study the screen. There, in the top right, a sight he thought he'd never see again - one bar. One whole bar. Cell service. Text messages. Phone calls. The internet. People. One bar wasn't a lot to work with, but it was real. Phil could call for help, he could get answers, he could...

An all-too-familiar x reappears.

Phil's mind goes blank.

"It lost connection again." His own voice sounds distant. "I- I had it, and then I lost it. You- you never get a signal out here."
"Probably just a blip in the weather, Phil." Rita makes another grab for her phone, which he sidesteps. "- Dammit. Who do you need to call? We can do it out on the highway-"

A blip in the weather. A fluke. Complete chance. Entirely unrepeatable.

Unless you're him, of course.

Phil takes a step forward.

Phil looks dazed as he hands Rita's phone back to her. 'I gotta go.' He says. 'Go where?' Rita looks confused. 'I need my phone back.' Phil grabs the border of the panel and puts his foot onto it, getting ready to jump out of it. Rita looks terrified. 'What are you doing?!' Phil: 'I'll see you tomorrow.' Rita: 'Phil, get away from the ledge!' Phil: 'Bye, Rita.' Phil jumps off the roof- and out of the panel. Rita screams his name and tries to grab him, but as the reader scrolls the page, Phil falls with it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Punxsutawney Hotel was unable to offer a full range of continental breakfast options to its guests this morning for one tragic reason: they had run out of bread. On a typical day the truck would arrive at 4AM, ready for the kitchen staff at 5. But unexpected weather had closed down its usual route, forcing the driver to go cross-country and just barely squeeze into town ahead of a storm that was never supposed to be there. Then there was the festival, and the crowds, and of course it all stacks up so nothing gets unloaded until 6 AM.

 

Unbeknownst to the staff, the driver, and the rest of Punxsutawney, this made the bread delivery truck the last vehicle to enter town on February 2nd. With its cargo dropped off, the driver would spend the rest of the morning listlessly circling the town in search of a way out, before discovering the task was futile. With that, he was resigned to a day full of fun and festivities.

 

You might be thinking to yourself that this passage is terribly uninteresting, and you'd be right.

 

There's no point to this story. It's white space filling the void of one moment and another. You might wonder why this was included at all, given the amount of other much more important things that could be going on elsewhere at this very moment. But Phil got bored enough to learn its schedule, and now you have too.

 

You're welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phil lands inside a different comic panel, and on top of a bread truck that was driving past. He is completely unharmed by the fall.

 

 

Phil sits down as the truck drives away. Back on the rooftop, Rita watches him ride off with an expression that can only be described as 'what the FUCK did I just watch.'

 

If nothing else, it made getting out of conversations easier.

Chapter 3: Saturday, 10.33am

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

On a rooftop in Punxsutawney, Phil holds his phone up to the sky. No reception.

He waggles his phone elsewhere. Nada.

He's up in a tree somewhere. Zilch.

Phil gives up and stalks across the top of the comic page, scowling to himself. Inside the page, we cut to two people talking. 'He jumped off a building?!' 'I wish I was joking, Larry!'
Larry and Rita are down by the creek. It's frozen over; people skate by in the background. Neither of them give two shits about the scenery - Rita's pulling at her hair and Larry's leaning in like that'll somehow help him hear better. 'And then when I found him at the B&B,' Rita continues, 'He said not now! And climbed out the window!' Larry frowns. 'We're still talking about Phil, right? Phil. The guy who calls National Walk to Work day a scam to sell more shoes.'
Rita looks at him. 'You tell me! Is this just a thing he does?' Larry shrugs. 'It wouldn't be the first time he's been drunk on camera. But he'd have to be, you know, ON CAMERA. Not playing in traffic. ...On traffic? Whatever. It's weird.'
Rita swivels to face Larry better. 'And he hasn't said anything to you? No dying relatives? Alimony payments? ...Secret midlife crisis parkour lessons?' Larry shakes his head. 'No. He seemed fine yesterday in the van. IN the van.' Larry gestures downwards with both fingers, really emphasizing his point. 'In.' A thought occurs to him, and he goes still. '...Maybe I shouldn't have said I'd tie him to the roof rack?'
Rita groans in frustration - a full body groan, hands on face affair that startles Larry. He puts a hand on her shoulder in a comforting manner. 'Hey. I know you're stressed, but if you think I'm chasing him down, you're nuts. Why don't you take five? Check out some of the stalls? He'll come around. Maybe.' Rita snorts, amused. 'Very convincing, Larry.' Larry shrugs. 'Yeah, yeah, I'm hungry. Coming?'

Notes:

Bonus warm-up doodle.
(A not insubstantial amount of time was spent trying to draw Larry's dorky haircut from blurry reference pictures. Anyway, this segment was getting pretty long so I'm splitting it in half.)

Chapter 4: Saturday, 11.44am

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

As the morning wears on, the festival shows no sign of stopping. Tourists dart between stalls. A woman in a groundhog-knit beanie takes a selfie with the man in the mascot costume. The pink tourist from Cleveland barters with a local. "So..." says Larry, carefully. "Is this your first time on Connors cleanup duty?" "Don't tell me the station has a name for it." Rita snorts. "Just us techs. Don't tell Gil." "Ha." Somewhere, Jonathan buys popcorn from a local vendor. A woman tries to steal food from her girlfriend, but is swatted away. The chili cookoff serves a line of hungry customers. Rita pays none of it any attention. "I guess," she says. "He was fine last time. Smug, but--" "--But it's different when he's right in your face." Larry finishes.
Larry takes a bite out of a wrap. "Don't take it personally, Rita. Phil's got this condition where if he doesn't yell at everyone nearby, he forgets who they are." Rita rolls her eyes. "Wow. He ever get a doctor's note for that?" "Dunno." Larry shrugs. "Just a theory. He took a week off in May. Came back in a great mood. Took one look at me and said 'Hey, Jim.' My cat's got better object permanence." Rita tries not to laugh. "Maybe we should just leave him. See if he remembers how to get home." Then, under her breath, she quietly adds "...If I wasn't so worried about him snapping his neck." "Oh, I didn't tell you?" Larry says between bites. "They closed down the highway. Punx is a parking lot." Rita's eyes widen.
There seem to be a million thoughts going through Rita's head right now. None are going through Larry's. "This wrap kinda sucks." he says, suddenly. "You decided what you want yet?" "Huh?" Rita blinks. "Uh... I was thinking flapjacks." "Cool."
Larry chucks his wrap on top of an already full trashcan. Rita composes herself. "Hey." Larry taps Rita on the shoulder. "There's a free table. Grab it and I'll grab food?" "Got it. Thanks, Lar."
Rita slides into a seat. While she waits for Larry, she pulls out her phone and starts fiddling with it. Something down by the creek catches her attention. A familiar man is making his way off the ice, clutching his nose. A woman runs over to help him. Rita's eyes widen. There is blood running down Erik's face. His nose is broken.
"Okay," Larry says. He's balancing a cup of coffee in one hand and setting Rita's hotcakes down with the other. "I'm glad the broadcast from hell's got an all day breakfast." "Larry, it's gotten weirder." Rita says. "What? How? ...Tell me he didn't text you a picture of his--" "No!" Rita cuts him off. "God no. Look- what if he's not JUST being an asshole? Everything's off. I... think he's right. Something's wrong here.." "Like what?" Rita takes a breath in, but no words come out. She shrugs, and gestures vaguely in frustration. "...Uh-huh." Larry says. He squints at her, clearly having a hard time picturing how she said the morning began. "Look, if you're still worried about him later, how about we corner him when they clear the roads? You've got your keys, I've got the van. Phil can't get out of Punx without talking to us. Probably." Rita frowns. "Do you think it can wait that long?" "Probably. Can he make this any dumber?"


Across town, Phil balances upon a massive cutout of Punxsutawney Phil. No reception. Phil balances upon the top of the hotel. No reception. Phil climbs a telephone pole. No reception-- "Son, get off of that thing." warns the Sheriff. "How about YOU get off of my DICK--" says Phil. He is immediately thrown in jail.


Rita gives Larry a look. "That's fair." says Larry. Rita shakes her head and starts picking away at her lunch. "Fine. First thing tomorrow, then. "Yeah." Larry agrees.




Back in jail. Phil stares blankly ahead.


He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath in...


...And wakes up in the bed and breakfast.


"First thing tomorrow."

Notes:

Keen-eyed readers may notice there are streets and geographical features in this fic that don't match the real Punxsutawney. Don't worry about it. It felt weird drawing real people's homes as a backdrop for a fanfic, so I made things stupider.

Big thanks to the friend who helped me get this chapter unstuck. You know who you are.