Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sarah gets woken up at six o’nine her alarm ringing earlier than usual to give her extra time to get to work. The night before, the newscaster reported a large snowstorm coming through the area, but they get snowstorms all the time, the city is known for the amount of snow they get. Out of any city, they’re prepared for the snow, so she doesn’t think it’s a big deal, but it seems like she’s not going to work at all. 

The snow doesn’t look so bad outside, but the city’s snow plowers had piled up the fallen snow high against their front door. Even though she was able to open the door to the building, there was no way she could get past the staircase without possibly injuring herself. 

Sarah heads back inside her apartment and settles down in her living room, turning on the TV to watch the news. She finds out she’s in the travel ban area, just barely, but she’s in there. She prepares for a day inside, making herself a cup of coffee and changing out of her work clothes into something comfortable. 

Hours later she goes back downstairs to watch the snow continuously fall at a rapid pace from the building lobby. She smiles politely at a few of the apartment occupants who have also gathered downstairs. Walking to the front door she sees the amount of snow that has only amassed higher in only a few hours. She gets lured in by the blizzard through the glass door hitting the city and doesn’t notice his presence beside her until he calls her by name. She turns her head and sees her neighbor, Bucky, with who she’s had polite conversations since he moved in years ago, but not much more than hellos and goodbyes.

————————————————————————

Bucky wakes up at nine forty-three. He spends the morning with his neighbor Yori and his cat Alpine and then goes downstairs around lunch with the intention of playing a round of cards in the lobby with Isaiah. When he gets down the stairs his eyes linger on Sarah’s shape huddled in a blanket by the front door.

Out of everyone in the building, he remembers her the most from before, from the todays and the days before today a long time ago. He leaves her alone most days, but today instead of playing cards he walks up to her in hopes of starting a conversation. She says nothing at first, and he notices that her eyes are glazed over and probably doesn’t realize he’s there.

He calls out her name, “Sarah?”

She blinks a few times, coming out of her stupor, and turns to him.

“Hi, Sarah.”

“Hi, Bucky. How are you?”

“Good,” he says stuffing his hands in her pockets. He’s talked to her thousands of times and she still makes him nervous.

————————————————————————

She has dinner at the Walkers on the sixth floor. Her neighbor from across the hall, Lemar, was also there, along with Bucky and three women she’s seen in passing Sharon, Leah, and Karli. Sarah invites them all back to her apartment for drinks to be polite, not expecting them all, except for John, to take her up on her offer.

Olivia leaves after one glass and Lemar and Leah are saying goodbye soon after, together heading across the hall to Lemar’s apartment.

She’s left with Karli, Sharon, and Bucky. She and Karli munch on some popcorn standing by her kitchen island while they watch Sharon attempt to flirt with Bucky. Karli gives her a pointed look before rolling her eyes and turning around. 

“You got any board games around here?”

They play two rounds of battleship, Karli winning both games before she peaces out. Sarah tries to convince her to stay as Sharon is still making eyes at Bucky, but Karli says she can’t hang. 

Thankfully when she says goodbye loudly, Sharon gets the hint and gets up from the couch. As Sharon slinks her way toward Sarah’s door to leave, she tries to entice Bucky to leave with her, lingering until she realizes he’s not going to budge. She huffs and says goodbye and Sarah waits for him to get up now the coast is clear, but instead he tracks her with his eyes as she grabs some of the lingering glasses off her table.

“I wanted to keep talking to you if that’s okay,” he says grabbing his glass before she can take it away.

“Keep talking to me? You’ve barely said a word to me all day.”

“We haven’t been alone.”

“You wanted to talk to me in private about something?”

“I wanted to get your advice on something. You mind if I finish this?” He says lifting a nearly empty bottle from the table.

“Go ahead.”

————————————————————————

She sits on the opposite side of the couch as him, tucking her feet underneath her. He spots movement by her door and sees Yori’s nearly three-foot-long white Maine Coon cat Alpine. He seems to fly into her apartment in a white flash, launching himself on her couch between the two of them.

“Hey,” Bucky says pre-cautiously knowing how finicky the cat could be. “Be nice, Alpine.”

“I know Alpine, he’s a sweetheart.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

But Bucky watches with interest as Sarah reaches out her hand letting Alpine inspect it before he pushes his head against her hand and she scratches him under his chin. Alpine’s eyes watch her, until he leans into it further, closing his eyes and stretching his neck to the areas he wants her to scratch.

He gulps down the remainder of the wine in his cup and stands up, “I’m gonna need some more wine to get this out.”

He feels her eyes on him, but he focuses on getting this next bottle of wine open. By the time it’s open, she’s sat up straight looking at him strangely with the familiarity he has of her apartment. 

They’ve had this conversation before, he’s had this conversation with everyone in the building, his friends, his family, but she’s the only one who provides solace instead of distress when he tells her.

He’s been stuck inside this day November seventeenth about twenty-five thousand times, seventy years give or take a year. He’s done almost everything he could think of only to wake up in the same day.

He tells her about the conversations they’ve had, and that he’s had with other people. How he’s not sure if he’s remembering things about them from before or things he learned about them during the loop. How people tend to get freaked out when he slips up and reveals something about them that they don’t remember telling him, even if they’ve told him hundreds of times. So he’s tended to become quieter, intently listening to people’s stories, hoping for some clue as to how to get out of his predicament.

Bucky tells her the things he doesn’t remember, what the streets of the city look like, what sushi tastes like, what it’s like to drive his car on the open road, what the warmth of the sun feels like on his skin.

————————————————————————

She’s drunk so she’s not sure she’s keeping up as he’s speaking in riddles she can’t decipher. But he’s also drinking nearly an entire bottle of her wine by himself as he continues babbling so he’s probably drunk and not making sense. He walks back in forth with the bottle in his hand, not drinking from a glass anymore and she just sits on her couch trying to understand his tirade while petting the enormous cat laying beside her.

“Seventy years is a long time,” she blurts out, interrupting his mumbling. “Is this what you wanted advice on? I’m not a physicist.”

He smiles at her. “I know, I just like your ideas.”

“I haven’t told you my ideas.”

“You have, plenty of times. What’s the first thing you’re thinking of now?”

“About you reliving the same day twenty-five thousand times?”

“Yes.”

“That it’s ironically a day where it’s snowed so hard you can’t go anywhere, so not only can you not leave today, but you also can’t leave the building. You’re doubly stuck.”

“Yes,” he says closing his eyes, pressing down on his sockets with the pads of his pointer and thumb finger.

Alpine gets up, putting his two front paws on her lap, and gets weirdly close to her face, his long tail swishing away behind him. She boops him on the nose a few times, but all he does is blink at her.

“But maybe that’s a good thing because then that means the answer’s in the building, right?” She says off-handedly before giving Alpine one more boop before he begins to knead dough out of her thighs. 

“Ow, Alpine.”

She’s attempting to get the cat away from her, but he’s being very affectionate toward her now.

“What did you say?”

Bucky’s staring at with a bit of a squint, his head tilted in confusion.

“I said that the answer’s in the building. The key to getting out of your loop wouldn’t be halfway across the world, or even across the street. If you’re confined to this building, the way to get out has to be in the building…Unless you’ve done something really bad and this is some sort of punishment in hell for you.”

————————————————————————

She yawns. He’s overstayed his welcome.

“I should go.”

“Okay.”

“My time’s almost up anyway.”

————————————————————————

She’s not sure what he means by that but doesn’t question it as it’s been a long day and she’s tired and drunk and one hundred percent ready to fall into her bed.

She gives Alpine one more scratch under her chin before Bucky lifts him off her lap with some maneuvering to detach his claws from her sweatpants. She’ll deal with the white fur sticking to her couch in the morning.

Chapter Text

ii. i’m trapped in this body and can't get out

Bucky’s woken up at nine forty-three over twenty-five thousand times, but today he awakes to a banging on his door. The date on his phone still reads November seventeenth, but he’s gained three more hours. He throws a sweater on and throws open the door to see Sarah standing at his door. Before he can say anything she’s yelling at him.

“What did you do to me?”

“What?” He’s still waking up.

“It’s the seventeenth again.”

He blinks at her.

“What did you do to me?!”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“You sucked me into your Groundhog Day world, I don’t want any part of it, put me back.”

“I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Do you really think if I had found out a way to escape this I wouldn’t have done it by now?”

———————————————

He’s explaining things to her, but his words go in one ear and out the other. She can’t believe this is happening, can’t believe his babbling from last night wasn’t a drunk rant, but instead the truthful thoughts of a desperate man.

Eventually, she gets up while he’s still talking and shakes his hand off of her arm as he tries to stop her from leaving his apartment.

“I need time to process this on my own.”

She walks away without looking back at him and goes back to her apartment, holing herself in, googling and reading physics and time continuum theories that are way over her head. He gives her time, a week by her count until he’s knocking on her door to check on her, but it takes her nearly a month of her own explorations with little success to go back to him

She knocks on his door, but they sit outside in the hallway on opposite walls not saying a word for minutes, legs outstretched, but not touching each other.

He breaks the silence asking her about the things she’s tried in their time apart, but she admits she hasn’t done anything fun with the loop.

———————————————

He doesn’t share with her everything he’s done, mostly because he doesn’t remember, but also because he doesn’t want the darkness to get to her. If she falls down that rabbit hole he’d be there for her, but he wasn’t going to introduce her to that. Instead, he introduces her to the schedule of neighbors, the decent ones anyway. Breakfast with Yori, cards with Isaiah, dinner with the Walkers, karaoke with Ayo and Aneka, and Donya’s motherly and nurturing spirit.

Alpine makes himself known, strutting down the hallway before rubbing himself along Sarah’s leg.

“And Alpine… I think Alpine’s in it with us. I’m not sure of course, but sometimes he looks at me like he knows what I’m going through. But that could be me losing my mind and placing significance on a look that means nothing.”

———————————————

She’s in the middle of telling him a story when she notices his eyes glaze over.

“I’ve told you this story before haven’t I?” He nods. “Maybe it’ll be easier for you to tell me what you know about me and then we’ll go from there.”

Bucky spends the better part of two hours going over things he remembers about her, but it continues for weeks later, him randomly bringing up a story she told him once before in a previous loop.

Some of the stories are her go-to's, things she would tell any stranger she just met at a party, but some of them are embarrassing, personal, things some of her own closest friends don’t know about. He says he’s admitted personal things to her too, but she obviously doesn’t remember. She wonders about their relationship, questions him about it, but he swears all they’ve done is talk.

————————————————————————

He realizes that for the first time in a long time his actions have consequences. 

———————————————

Bucky tells her he wakes up every day at nine forty-three hungover and freezing.

Sarah tells him she wakes up at six o’nine panicked and gasping for breath.

“Have you ever had those dreams where you’re not in school anymore, but you feel like you’ve missed the bus and you haven’t studied for the test and you’re not going to graduate. It’s that sort of panic, where I wake up aware it’s an irrational feeling, but that doesn’t stop my heart from feeling like it’s going to beat out of my chest.”

———————————————

Sarah asks a lot of questions, he almost wishes he was back in this situation on his own. But he’d be lying if he said she didn’t keep him smiling and that she made each day a little easier. But he also had that creeping feeling gnawing in the back of his head wondering for how long it would take for her to retreat back into her own space. How long it’d take for her to get sick of him and create loops of her own that he had no involvement in.

———————————————

Sarah calls her friend Natasha late in the evening as she has so many times in her loops. She has to get something off her chest and she knows Natasha is the woman who will tell it to her straight.

“There’s a guy in my building. We’ve been sort of hitting it off.”

“Damn, I’ve been binging movies all day and you’ve met a guy? Is he cute?”

“Yes, he’s cute. Like I said he lives in my building so I know who he is, we’ve talked before, but-”

“You’re stuck inside your building and probably will be for the next day or so, and you’re thinking about hooking up with your neighbor?”

As always, Natasha hits it right on the head, saying the thing Sarah’s been afraid to admit to herself.

———————————————

Steve and Sam video call at two thirty-four in the afternoon to check up on him. Sarah’s not with him today, so he’s more open with his conversation with them this time around. Steve’s got his eight-month-year-old baby Ellie with him in the frame and seeing her never getting any older tugs at his heart.

“I met someone,” he tells them. 

“How did you meet someone in the middle of the storm?” Steve asks bouncing Ellie on his knee

“She lives here.”

“Man, that’s a recipe for disaster,” Sam declares 

But Bucky doesn’t think being in a relationship with Sarah would be any more of a disaster than the one he’s already in.

———————————————

They haven’t talked about how they’ve started to sit a little closer together with knees bumping each other, dance together a little closer, eyes linger a little longer. One night she’s hit a particularly low slump of trying and failing, and she just wants to be held. He’s sitting legs wide on her couch, engrossed in some movie she put on her TV. She doesn’t even think as she slides into his lap, wrapping her arms around his body, burying her head in his neck. Bucky doesn’t seem to mind, doesn’t tense up but instead wraps an arm around her and strokes her back. The gesture is so small, so simple, but overwhelming. He doesn’t mention when her tears soak through his shirt.

———————————————

He takes a picture of her asleep on his chest with his phone. It’s gone by morning.

———————————————

She misses the feeling of waking up next to someone. She can get up and knock on his door and crawl into bed with him, but it’s not the same as waking up next to him.

———————————————

The days were passing faster with her, losing hours with her in bed. He desperately clings onto the last few minutes with her before midnight.

———————————————

Sometimes she wishes she could wake up with the ache between her thighs from the previous night, but it never lingers. Her feelings do though, and they linger and they grow and she tries to suppress them, but they find their way up, winding around her heart. 

———————————————

“I’m… I love her,” he admits to Steve and Sam knowing how ridiculous it sounds to them.

“What?” Sam exclaims.

“Bucky,” Steve starts, his voice laced with concern

“What kinda spell did that woman put you under?”

“No spell. I’ve known her a long time and we’ve been getting closer.”

“You’ve never mentioned her before Buck.”

He has, multiple times, and every time they’re shocked, but they eventually warm up to the idea of her. But he’s never admitted to being in love with her before to them or out loud to himself.

———————————————

They’re sharing a chocolate soufflé she managed to bake after figuring that the both of them combined had the right ingredients to make one. She’s putting a spoonful into her mouth when she makes eye contact with him over the ramekin.

“What are you doing?” She laughs covering her mouth.

“Watching you.”

“Stop.” She places her hand in front of his eyes playfully, but he grabs it and locks his fingers with hers.

“Is it bad that I’m glad you’re here with me?”

“No. As long as you’re not getting too comfortable.”

“What does that mean?”

“That this honeymoon phase of our relationship shouldn’t stop us from trying to figure out how to get out of this.”

He nods and brings her hand up to kiss the back of it, “It’s hard not to get comfortable here with you.”

“You can’t become complacent. ”

“It doesn’t help that I like you more than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

She rolls her eyes, “Quit being dramatic.” 

“I’m serious,” he says with a smile before it fades. She drops her spoon on the table and grabs onto his other hand as well. He clears his throat and squeezes her hands in his. “Sarah, I-“

He freezes with his mouth open and eyes sparkling as they flit around her face. 

And then she wakes up in a panic.

“No,” is the first thing she lets out. She immediately rushes out of bed and to his door furiously knocking.

He opens the door to let her in like he does most mornings and she knows he’s expecting to  crawl right back into bed, but not today.

“What were you going to say?”

“What?”

“Last night, what were you going to say?”

She sees him searching his mind in confusion until the clarity in his eyes comes through just a moment before he suppresses it. “I don’t know.”

He closes the door behind her and pulls her drags his feet to his bedroom

“You’re lying.”

“That was hours ago.”

“That was five minutes ago.”

“I don’t… it doesn’t work like that.”

“It’s awfully convenient that things suddenly ‘don’t work like that’ when you don’t want them to. You remember.”

He tries to go back to his bedroom, but she doesn’t let him so he instead lays down on his couch with his eyes closed.

“Bucky.”

“C’mere,” he says holding a hand out to her. She grabs it and he maneuvers her to lay on top of him with her head on his chest.

———————————————

He's afraid to tell her because of his daydreaming. He used to daydream about his past life, his memories overflowing in his mind of days spent with his friends and family. He’s daydreamed in the present, the different ways to get out of the loop, his mind running wild going through different scenarios. But as of late, he daydreams about what their life would be like together outside of November seventeenth. He dreams of places he’d like to take her, her moving into his place or vice versa or finding a new place altogether, their friends and families intermingling, their wedding day, the way she would look bearing his children. The more he daydreams about their future down the line, the more those dreams turn into nightmares. Nightmares, because he knows that it’s a future they will never have together. So that’s why he’s so afraid to say it out loud to her because it will unlock another step toward a future they don’t have.

———————————————

She melts into him, breathing in rhythm with him as he plays with her braids.

“I think we both know what I was going to say,” he says after a long time. “But I’m scared of it.”

“Me too,” she admits.

“What are you scared of?”

She leans up on her elbows to look at him, “I’m afraid I’ll figure out how to get out of the loop without you and I’ll go to November eighteenth and you won’t be there, or it’ll be a different version of you that doesn’t remember me. I’m afraid that I’ll leave you by accident, that’s why I stay so close to you every day. I can’t imagine getting out of here without you and then I also have this thought in the back of my head that tells me that we’re only together because we’re stuck together. That once you have your freedom again you’ll leave me behind.”

“I’m afraid of the same, and more. But I’d never leave you behind, ‘cause I love you, Sarah.”

Chapter Text

Sarah’s hoarse and happy after karaoke with Ayo and Aneka and had every intention of going back to her place for the night for a big cup of tea and a bath. But she’s currently curled up under Bucky’s comforter on his couch while he airs out his apartment. He got her back to his apartment with the promise of oatmeal cookies, but they got distracted by wandering hands and the cookies burned. Thankfully the building’s alarm didn’t go off but Bucky had to crack open his apartment windows to let out the smoke and smell.

He’s got music playing so she’s not sure the first time she hears it, the meowing. But in conjunction with the scratching noises, she knows Alpine is on the other side of his door. Sarah looks Bucky’s way to see his ear also trained to the door, but he makes no moves to let Alpine in. She sighs and is about to get up from her cocoon when the unlocked door swings open.

She’s impressed, but Bucky appears to be unfazed. “You knew he could do that?”

“How else do you think he gets around the building?”

“I assumed Yuri let him out sometimes. I didn’t think about it too hard.”

Alpine patters his way toward her, brushing his body against her legs peeking out from the comforter. She unwraps herself to give him a little scratch under the chin which he takes as an invitation to jump onto her lap. His tail swishes in her face several times before he gets comfortable in a loaf position. She half drapes the comforter over him and her legs again, content for about five minutes until the kneading begins against her pant leg. She’s able to tolerate it for a few moments before a nail catches particularly deep in her thigh. 

———————————————

Bucky watches Sarah struggle with Alpine while he attempts to scrape off the charred bottoms of three cookies that hadn’t completely burned. 

“Alpine, geez,” Sarah complains trying to declaw him from her pants and her skin.

Bucky places the cookie down and intervenes, swooping Alpine by the stomach before plopping him down on the floor. Alpine stays by her, looking like he’s ready to pounce again, but Sarah wraps his comforter around her body again so there’s no lap for him to jump onto.

He continues to meow and Sarah continues to respond to him as if they’re having an actual conversation. 

“I know you just want to be cuddled, but you’ve gotta learn to control your tail and your nails, Alpine.”

A strong wind blows into his apartment and he’s reminded that the windows are still open. The lingering smoke and smell are gone so Bucky goes to close his windows, but when he goes to close the second one, Alpine hops up on the window sill. Alpine starts chattering through the window, his eyes fixated on something Bucky can’t see. Bucky reaches out to close the window again, but Alpine lets out a deep loud yowl, making Bucky take a step back, surprised by the noise he’s never heard the cat make.

———————————————

Sarah turns to the sound, “That’s new.”

“Yeah,” Bucky lets out slowly, tilting his head in confusion before taking a cautionary step back towards the cat.

Alpine ignores the both of them, continuing to stare out the window at something. He’s purring loudly, abnormally so, that Sarah can hear him from where she’s sitting. They both watch Alpine stick a paw out through the crack in the window as if he’s testing out the weather before he fully sticks his head out.

Bucky lets Alpine get halfway out the window until he reaches his arm through to hold onto Alpine underneath his belly, trying to pull him back inside.

“What are you doing, Alpine?” Sarah asks getting up from her spot on the couch.

———————————————

Alpine doesn’t appear to be scared of being perched on an inch of space five stories up. In fact, he seems annoyed with Bucky trying to pull him back inside. Alpine’s a big cat and with the back half of his body along with Bucky’s forearm through the window, it’s a tight squeeze.

“C’mon buddy, what are you doing?”

He and Alpine do a dance of pulling against each other until Alpine hisses, turning to Bucky with pupils wide and ears back which Bucky takes as a warning, but not enough to make him let go. Not until Alpine turns around on the ledge enough to give Bucky three long streaks of scratches down his forearm.

“Ah, fuck,” Bucky yelps, hitting his elbow on the window as he pulls his arm back in.

Bucky makes eye contact with Alpine for a second before he jumps with limbs splayed out. Bucky hears Sarah gasp, and within seconds they’re both at the window trying their best to see where the cat has landed.

He doesn’t see anything for a while until Sarah points at movement in the snow, Alpine’s white coat camouflaging him with the snowy conditions outside. He’s not dead, thankfully, but a jump from a height like that he assumes Alpine’s got to be injured.

———————————————

Alpine is long gone. They’ve been looking out the now closed window in silence until she notices the long set of scratches down his forearm have started to swell up and redden further.

He has virtually no first aid supplies so she has to improvise by cleaning his wound with vodka and adorning his arm with a series of smaller adhesive bandages. He doesn’t understand why she wants to go through with it, saying that they’ll be gone by morning, but it makes her feel useful for a moment.

But once he’s bandaged up, Sarah can’t get rid of the feeling gnawing away at her.

Bucky seems so unfazed by what happens, she feels silly confessing her worries. Alpine’s a cat, not even her cat, but she’s built a weird relationship with him over the days she’s been in the loop. She’s enjoyed his cuddles, the one-sided conversations, and his overall presence. Bucky tries to soothe her by saying Alpine will wake up whenever and wherever he wakes up every day.

But Sarah has a feeling.

She continues to look out the window though there’s not much she can see in the dark with all the snow, but she still has hope that she’ll somehow see Alpine making his way back to the apartment building. Bucky wraps his uninjured arm around her frame and places a steaming cup of tea in front of her on the window’s ledge. 

She’s halfway through the cup when he takes hold of her hand.

“You’re still cold,” he voices, bringing her out of her stupor. “Let me warm you up.”

She rolls her eyes, but can’t help but smile and allows him to pull her into his bedroom.

———————————————

Bucky wakes up warm on his side with sunlight pouring directly on his face. He rolls onto his back and raises his hand to block the light when he sees the bandages lined up across his arm. It takes his brain a few moments to catch up, but he freezes at the realization. Before getting too optimistic, he reaches for his phone the same way he always does in the morning, but it’s not where it usually is when he wakes up. Instead, his hand touches skin and it hits him that Sarah is in his bed alongside him.

He completely rolls over to face her, but she’s turned away from him. That doesn’t stop him from staring at her figure and the way the sunlight previously in his eyes lights her bare back.

He wants to stay in the bed with her, but he has to know for sure, has to find his phone. He gets out of bed in search of his phone, finding it still on the kitchen counter where he was reading the cookie instructions from. He hits the power button, the battery indicator reading red when it’s normally half full. His eyes gaze toward the time, seven fifty-seven. The date underneath reads the eighteenth. 

Chapter Text

Sarah wakes up not to the sound of her alarm and her heart beating out of her chest, but from kisses being placed along her spine. Her toes wiggle awake first, and then her back unconsciously arches against a kiss that’s particularly low on her back. Her eyes flutter open and she takes in her surroundings,  aware that she’s not in her bedroom. It alarms her, knowing what it means, the feeling she had bubbling in her stomach last night only proving to be reasonable and true, but she doesn’t feel panicked like she expected. Instead, she focuses on the kisses from his lips on her back, the grip his hands have on her waist.

She turns around, wanting to see him but sunlight blinds her. She squints against the light, bringing her hand up to block her eyes, but Bucky props himself up on his elbow moving enough that he’s shading her.

They’ve spent plenty of mornings together, with either of them trekking to the others’ apartment in the morning, but it’s different waking up with him already there, lying beside her in their collective body warmth. His eyes are still sleepy and half-lidded as he looks down at his fingers tracing lines on her bare skin. She shivers when he brushes along a particularly erogenous zone and pulls him down for a kiss, smiling against his lips at the new sensation.

It’s only been one night, a few hours, but she swears there’s more hair along his jaw, his stubble finally being allowed to grow out. She scratches at the stubble with her nails softly and proceeds to kiss him alongside his jaw down to the side of his neck and to the scarred skin along his shoulder

———————————————

Bucky had every intention of letting Sarah in on the date and their new circumstance as soon as she woke up although he was worried about how she would react. But with every kiss she gives to him, his worries melt away. He suspects she’s figured out, with her waking up in his bed, but she’s smiling and he doesn’t want to ruin the moment by talking.

He doesn’t get a chance to think about anything much longer before she’s slipping her hand under the waistband of his briefs. He groans into her neck and says her name like a threat, but it doesn’t deter her hand from going from where it wants to go.

———————————————

Showers are strictly for showering to Sarah so she’s thankful when he doesn’t attempt at anything more than a few kisses while they’re cleaning up together. Her eyes land on the bandages she put on his arm, half falling off because they’re not waterproof. She presses the once sticky material to his skin, but it flops away anyway. He slowly peels away at the bandages barely holding onto his skin and opens the shower door to throw them away when her stomach rumbles loudly enough to be heard over the falling water.

“Guess I’ll make some food then,” he says stepping fully out of the shower and wrapping a towel around his waist, leaving her to continue washing up on her own.

Without him there to distract her, her mind starts wandering and the warmth of the water spraying her lulls her into her own thoughts. They had been inside of their own literal bubble for the last two years according to his counting and that bubble has just popped. It had only been maybe an hour since she’s woken up and she’s warring with herself whether to analyze what the hell just happened, or whether to move on from it and live her life out the way it was intended. There’s no logical answer to why and how they were stuck, nor why and how they were out now. She thinks about Alpine again from the night before and shakes her head not quite comprehending the role the cat had in the change of events.

Sarah sighs and turns off the shower, grabbing another towel from his wall. She still hasn’t seen the date for herself, hasn’t confirmed it with her own eyes and Bucky hasn’t mentioned it, but the series of events since she woke up has led her to conclude that it’s no longer the seventeenth of November.

———————————————

Sarah joins him minutes later wearing her sweatpants from the night before and the sweater that she so often stole from him. They eat quickly and in silence, half-listening to the news playing softly in the background.

a snowstorm for the ages

When she’s done, his eyes linger on her as she gets up and starts looking around his apartment. “Have you seen my phone?”

struggling to recover today with at least eleven people dead

He hadn’t been looking for it, but he hadn’t seen it. 

“Can you call me?”

triggered a state of emergency

He gets up and grabs his phone from his bedroom again. He’s walking back to her, scrolling through his contacts when he realizes the only Sarah in his phone is Steve’s mother.

“Uh,” he rubs at the back of his neck. “I don’t… have your number.”

She rambles off the numbers while he inputs it into his phone and presses call, her phone buzzing alive between the cushions of his sofa. He saves the number in his phone and texts her as well. They had no need to exchange numbers before as the numbers would be wiped with each new morning and they always knew where to find each other, but Bucky shakes his head at the ridiculousness of it.

———————————————

They’re both standing at the same window they stood the previous night, the same window Alpine had jumped out of only a few hours prior. Sarah’s leaning against Bucky with her eyes closed and head tilted back, enjoying the sun coming through.

“So…” she starts, keeping her eyes closed. “Are we gonna talk about it?”

“I don’t know where to start. How’re you feeling?”

“Full, clean, warm… confused, elated, thankful. How about you?”

There’s a beat before he admits, “Scared.”

“Yeah, that too,” she says. “But you’re happy?”

“Ecstatic, but now that the day is here, I feel like I don’t know what to do with myself.”

———————————————

Sarah has a list of things she wants to do that don’t involve him so she doesn’t stay in his apartment for much longer. He had his own list in his head, had thought about the numerous things he wanted to do when this day came, but most aren’t possible with the amount of snow outside and the rest don’t seem as pressing. 

By noon though, he’s antsy and desperate to explore the world outside the apartment building for the first time in a long time. He gets dressed in his warmest clothes and braces the snow and cold. He doesn’t make it far, stopping when he sees an older man attempting to shovel out a pathway in front of the bar on the next corner. Bucky offers to clear the pathway for him, glad to make use of his muscles. His fingers are frozen and he’s breathing heavily from the lifting, but he feels productive and gratified. When he’s done, the man who he learns is the owner offers him a free beer. He sits and chats for a while, anxiety bleeding away as he talks with the first person outside his building in ages.

———————————————

Her day goes by quickly by taking her braids out, calling various family members and friends, spending way too long scrolling through her social media and online shopping. The trouble came the first night when she has a hard time falling asleep, afraid that at some point the day would turn out to be a cruel joke and that she’d be put back in a loop. She watched as the clock turned into a new date, the nineteenth, but she still couldn’t find rest and resorted to distracting herself with more news, social media, and movies until she finally crashes around noon. The nineteenth comes and goes with her sleeping most of the day when it comes. The twentieth is better as she has to go back to work which distracts her from any heavy thinking for most of the day. On the twenty-first, she goes over to Natasha’s place after work and it feels like her life is slowly putting itself back in order.

———————————————

Bucky’s driving her to Steve’s place for Thanksgiving the following week when he gets lost on the way there, the visual cues not triggering his memory on how to get there. Luckily Steve’s address is saved in his phone and Sarah sets up for the directions to be read out loud, but he feels her staring at him as he keeps his eyes on the road ahead of him.

She pats his thigh at a red light and he squeezes her hand before picking it up to kiss her softly on the backs of her fingers.

“It’ll take a while for things to come back, but they will,” she says reassuringly.

“I know,” he says with a half-smile, tapping his fingers along the steering wheel, second-guessing for a moment whether or not he should open up before quickly deciding to say it. “I’ve started to look for a therapist. I think I need some professional help to, I don’t know, cope?”

The light turns green and he drives off. She doesn’t say anything for a moment, just squeezes her hand in his some more.

“That’s good,” she eventually says. “That you’re looking at getting help. I was thinking about it too, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin where I wouldn’t sound out of my goddamn mind.”

He nods, having thought about that too, figuring he would have to talk about it in some round-about way. But they had been in a purgatory-like time loop somehow manipulated by a cat, and while Sarah was there for him, he didn’t want to constantly dump his angst and anxiety onto her. He’d rather get help professionally and have them get on with their lives and their relationship without the shared pain clouding over them.

———————————————

Sarah’s always considered herself to be good at first impressions, but it helped that Bucky’s friends were also very welcoming toward her. Peggy, Steve’s wife, told her not to worry about helping out with the cooking, but when Sarah saw Peggy taking out a packet of Velvetta for the mac and cheese, she nearly had a heart attack. Thankfully Sam snatched the packet away and put it back in its box.

“I know ya’ll have cheddar cheese, Peggy.”

“I don’t feel like grating it, Sam,” Peggy replies exasperatedly.

He sucks his teeth, “If getting good mac and cheese only comes down to grating the cheese then I’ll grate the damn cheese.”

Sarah can’t help but let out a hearty laugh and ends up helping Sam by doing the bare minimum, rummaging around the cabinets and pulling out the different herbs and spices he requested. 

More people come over time, a woman named Wanda comes first, then a couple Sersi and Dane. Another woman Jennifer comes later, followed by Luke and Jessica and their five-year-old Dani. She’s having a hard time remembering names as it is when another couple Maria and Carol come along profusely apologizing for being late, placing blame on their adorable two-year-old daughter Monica. Soon after they come, the food keeping warm in the oven is taken out and they all gather around a series of smaller tables put together to accommodate the number of people in the dining room slash kitchen area.

She’s sat between Bucky and Carol with baby Monica on her lap making chit-chat with her throughout dinner when the subject of her and Bucky come up.

“How long have you two been seeing each other?”

It’s a simple question, but due to their circumstance, she doesn’t know how to answer. Technically they’ve been together for years, but in reality, it’s only been a little over a week. 

When she takes her time to form an answer, Maria leans over Carol’s shoulder and half-whispers, “Just tell her to mind her own business.”

“You know you were wondering the same thing.”

“Was not.”

“Of course not, because your ears didn’t magically perk up into our conversation until I asked about their dating life,” she teases Maria lightly. “But she’s right, just tell me to mind my business if I get too intrusive.”

At that moment, Bucky’s arm comes around the back of her chair, hand draping slightly on her shoulder, thumb giving her soothing strokes. She tilts her head to him with a quirked eyebrow at the timing of it all, but all he does is give her a wink before getting back to his own conversation with Luke across the table from them.

———————————————

Catching up with his friends, listening to them tell stories about him to Sarah reminds Bucky of pieces of himself that he’s forgotten all these years. They unlock memories tucked deep away in his brain and remind him of how much he feels like he’s changed. He smiles remembering most of the stories, but some of the memories have completely faded away, they could be completely made up for all he knows.

He and Sarah make eye contact with one another when Steve shows concern that Bucky doesn’t seem to remember the details of a drunken college story.

Bucky tries to wave it off, “Steve, I was drunk, I barely remember.”

“Bucky, you tell this story all the time,” but Steve is a good friend and knows when to drop it, continuing to entertain Sarah with the story.

Watching Sarah blend in easily with his friend group comforts him. She seems to enjoy Sam’s animated spirit while they make mac and cheese and responds with her own witty retort when Sam asks why the hell she’s dating Bucky. Carol keeps her attention throughout most of dinner and even little Monica is intrigued by Sarah, clambering into her lap at some point to play with the dangly earrings Sarah’s wearing.

He finds himself happier and especially thankful this holiday being surrounded by his friends like this, especially when he sees their children and realizes he’ll finally get to watch them grow up. Bucky feels like he’s already lived a lifetime, but he’s glad he gets the time to actually live it and not just merely exist within it.

They’re back at her apartment, splayed out on her bed not touching and barely moving, tired and stuffed with food when he gets a text from Steve. It’s a picture he must have sneakily taken of the two of them at some point in the night. He and Sarah are standing in the kitchen with his hands on her waist and smile wide, while her head was thrown back in laughter. He rolls over and shows it to her before making it his phone background. This time it doesn’t disappear in the morning.

———————————————

Bucky takes her out on a proper date the weekend following Thanksgiving.

Just before Christmas, she introduces Bucky to her parents and it goes badly, her mother doubling down on her criticisms of both Sarah and Bucky individually as well as a couple. Bucky thankfully waits until they’re alone to voice his opinions, but it gets nasty quickly and she says something about his relationship with his parents that she knows crosses the line. She apologizes, but he leaves the next day to get on a plane to visit his sister for the holiday and by the time he comes back, there’s still some tension.

They go to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for New Year's Eve, a last-minute trip they booked at the beginning of the month. They arrive late in the evening, but they have a spectacular view of the falls at night from the suite they splurged on. The first night is still a little awkward during a late dinner, but she eventually gets him to chuckle and the next morning he grabs her hand as they walk through the crowds. The tension slowly eases and their walls come down enough for them to enjoy the fireworks show together through the window of their suite with glasses of Prosecco in hand and a series of progressively deepening kisses to start off the new year.

———————————————

Alpine does come back, months later on the first day of summer. It’s a warm and sunny Sunday afternoon and Sarah’s just come back from a bottomless brunch with her friends when she spots him lying by the front door of the apartment building. She thinks she’s hallucinating, but as she gets closer he straightens up and meows at her.

“Hey Al,” she says softly, sitting down on the top step of the staircase.

He brushes past her arm several times, and she hesitantly scratches him under his chin like she used to, since the last time she had seen him, he’d given Bucky a nasty set of scratches on his arm, that seemingly weren’t deep but left scars.

She digs her phone out of her bag and snaps a picture of him before sending it off to Bucky with no words. He comes downstairs minutes later, standing in the doorway staring at both of them in shock.

“Well, shit.”

Alpine moves his attention toward Bucky, slithering back and forth between his legs before getting on his hind legs and wrapping his paws around his leg.

“Ah, alright buddy, hey.” Bucky manages to pick him up and cradle him to his chest. “Are we taking this as a good sign or a bad one?”

Her gut instinct isn’t telling her anything, maybe because there’s nothing to worry about, or maybe because she’s three glasses deep in sangria and doesn’t want anything to ruin her buzz. They try to get him into the building, but Alpine refuses, meowing at them and weaving through their legs with finality.

Sarah crouches down and boops him on his wet nose, “Thank you, you little monster. Whatever you did, thank you.”

When she stands up straight, he trots away without looking back at them. They wait by the door, Bucky’s arm wrapped around her until they can’t see him anymore. She knew they were probably never going to figure out the cause of what happened to them or what Alpine did to ultimately release them from limbo. She turns around to head into the building when he pulls back softly at her arm, stopping her from walking any further. Her eyebrows raise in confusion, but all he does is look her up and down before twirling her around.

“You look so hot.”

She cackled, not expecting that reaction from him. They were going to be okay.