Story Notes:
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Nothing's mine! I hope you enjoy these five instances of teapot demolition. I now present....number one:
ONE:
She feels like it’s a sign. Like it’s some kind of signaling of the apocalypse or something, because really? It’s so goddamn pitiful, crumbled around bubble wrap at the bottom of a box labeled “Kitchenware”, and it basically just sucks. It was like her last real tangible memory of him, really, and it just sits there in millions of tiny, jagged pieces.
And it’s so typical that this would happen, just when she’s getting her life together after he shattered it. She’s seriously so over it because she was moving in to her new apartment with it’s soon-to-be creamy walls of ivory and eggshell—blank slates she could fill with watercolors and oil paintings (some hers, some not). And now her light wood floors are dusty with terra-cotta after she tried to salvage some of it, any of it from that goddamn box of “Kitchenware”. Sea foam and meaningful, crumbled around bubble wrap that she’d so cautiously stuffed in the belly of the pot, in the stem, lid taped carefully with her thumb and forefinger two nights before.
Really, it’s just so typical.
So she goes to Crate & Barrel that weekend and buys your standard teapot, white and looping and on sale for $19.95. There. Done. And when she brings it to work, it takes a while before she recognizes it as hers. For the first few weeks, when she walks into the kitchen she’ll look around and the kitchen is just really pale without her little teapot (like him, it sort of brightened up the gray of Dunder Mifflin Scranton). But anyway she'll whip her head around a few times and have an awful image of Dwight or Toby or someone using her teapot, but then she see the stark white reminder of newness and blank slate and goes over with her decaffeinated white tea and boils the water and rummages through the drawers in the kitchen for a packet of Sugar in the Raw.
-------------------------
He realizes it within his first week back from Stamford. And she’s sure he thinks she’s like, being cruel and throwing it in his face that she’s “moved on” or something. Well to be perfectly honest, she hasn’t moved on but she trying, so. But she really just wants him to ask about it, just say something maybe a little accusatory, so she can respond with like, ‘Well actually, it broke when I moved into my new apartment that I bought when I broke up with Roy because I’m in love with you.”
But he’s Jim, so let’s get serious. They’re both in the kitchen and she’s boiling water and he’s sipping coffee with tons of milk and sugar (“evolved” her ass) when it happens. He asks quietly in this gravelly voice that’s like, wow, and she shivers despite the fact that she’s pouring boiling water into her mug. Soft and questioning because of course he’s Jim, he’s staring down into his coffee and just goes,
“New teapot?”
She grimaces as she turns toward him.
“It broke, the old one,” she says, matter-of-fact, “When I moved.”
“Oh.” he stares into his mug and she looks up as his eyebrows spring back to emotionless-ness, but she’s sure she saw that pained look, tortured expression. The little fucker.
“Yeah. This one’s a little bigger though, more efficient,” and she knows he can hear the cruel edge in her voice, “so I guess maybe I’m evolving too.”
Chapter End Notes:
Please let me know what you think of this so far! I have the other chapters outlined so they'll all be posted soon, but I love some feedback/suggestions. Never too late to be inspired! Thanks for reading!
