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Author's Chapter Notes:
me, writing about the teapot...never! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I am sorry in advance for all the angst. 

It was their least romantic Valentine's Day by far. Even less romantic than last year, when the sitter canceled on them and Pam wound up covered in spit up, (thank you Phillip), while Jim wound up dealing with one of CeCe’s worst tantrums to date. Because at least on last Valentine’s Day, they were stable, and now… well now, now they were drowning. 


She was standing in the kitchen, trying to get a break from the fight they had been having for hours now. She had left him on the couch, she just couldn't look at him anymore. She hadn't seen him like this, ever. So torn up and raw. It was terrifying. 


Pam just didn't understand why everything had to change again, why he had to take this job, why Scranton isn't enough for him. They were so happy, they had finally figured it out, and he ruined it. God, she needs some tea, something to settle her emotions. She reached up into the cupboard, searching for her grandmother's old teapot, when instead she pulled it out. The teal teapot, the first real gift he gave her. She had used it every weekend before they moved. But then it got lost in the shuffle, like so many other things in their life. 


She remembers that time in her life so vividly. The long days spent IM’ing and sharing stolen moments over coffee and jellybeans. He had loved her for years before she could ever dream of returning the feeling. Sometimes, she swears, she can still feel the weight of her old engagement ring. That thing made her feel like a heavy weight champion, carrying around a promise that she made to a man that she didnt love. She remembers eating dinner alone when Roy was out with the guys, replaying every last detail of her conversations with Jim. wishing that he was sitting across from her, imagining a life where she never had to say goodbye to him at the end of the day. And she got that, and now it was all slipping through her fingers, her worst nightmare coming true.


“Hey,” he said as he walked into the kitchen, leaning up against the wall opposite to her. He looked exhausted, the product of a three hour long fight and a long day of work. 


“Hey,” she breathed out, looking down at the teapot in her hands. She couldn't face him right now, it was all too much. 


“Is that the teapot?” he asked.


“Yah,” she turned it over in her hands, examining all the chips and imperfections it had picked up in the seven years since he gave it to her.


“Wow, I can't believe we still have that.”  


“Why would we have gotten rid of it?” she asked him.


“I don't know, I thought maybe one of the kids broke it or something.”


“I miss the haircut you had when you gave this to me.” She told him, in an attempt to break up some of the tension between them. Besides, she really did miss his old haircut, and the long mornings she spent running her hands through it. The lazy intimacy that defined so much of their early relationship. She liked his new more “professional” look of course, but she misses the too-long hair she fell in love with. 


“I know you do.” he said


“Do you ever miss who we used to be? Like, when we first started dating?.'' It was a dumb question, but she knew that. It wouldn't help them get anywhere, but she just needed to know. 


“Sometimes. I miss my sleep, and getting to finally call you my ‘girlfriend’, but I don't miss living apart, or having to hide our relationship.”


“Yah.” 


“Yah.”


“I guess, I just wish that I could go back to before everything got complicated again. When it was simple. It was the first time that I felt like I could breathe, and now… now,” she told him.


“Hey, hey,” he said, bridging the gap between them, she began to cry. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her in an iron grip to her chest. 


“We're going to get through this. We got through it once, we can do it again,” he whispered into her hair, a promise that he desperately wanted to keep.


She wished that she could believe him, that words could still be enough. 

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They fell asleep in one-anothers embrace for the first time in a long time that night. She had missed listening to the beat of his heart and the feeling of his hand in her hair. They felt like them again in these moments, and it was intoxicating.


She loves this man so deeply and wholly that she swears it would tear her open to lose him, but they can’t keep hiding things from each other. They have to try, they have to get through this. They have to survive.

Chapter End Notes:
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