AN: This is inspired by the webcomic "When Curiosity Met Insanity" and the characters belong to Bri-chan and Rain. It's also based on the WCMI-inspired fic "Sunny Disposish."
Links are in my profile~ go forth and spread the love :)
Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you. Now tell me about hundreds of things.
~Saki
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
It was going to be another warm day, Alice thought as she took a sip of tea. Although it was still early, the air was thick with humidity and she could feel heat rising lazily from the grass around them. Mercifully, a breeze occasionally swirled past, making the leaves rustle in the morning sunlight.
It did nothing, however, to dispel the tension that hung over the table.
She had stayed up late the previous night, catching fireflies in a certain large green hat while blindfolded. The Hatter had stood in the middle of the lawn, calling out warnings when she got too close to something solid. As luck would have it, a meteor shower started and the Hatter had been transfixed, his face tipped up towards the inky black sky, searching for the intermittent shimmers of light.
Unsurprisingly, when left to her own devices, Alice had run headlong into the trunk of a particularly stately oak. But the beloved hat had escaped unscathed, which was clearly all that mattered.
"Never again!" he'd shouted at her while he ran his hands over the fabric, frantically searching for damage.
"It's your fault anyway!" she shouted back. The neighbor's house had suddenly lit up as a dog barked in the distance. It seemed that the March Hare could sleep through a verbal altercation in his garden, or at least he had the good sense to stay out of it.
"It was your idea, and you were the one who wasn't watching where I was going!" she called after him as he strode across the dark grass to the gate, his scowl caught by the flicker of a shooting star.
She had stood motionless until she was sure he was gone. Still fuming, she'd flopped down, watched the sky, plotted her revenge, and slowly fallen into a deep sleep.
Waking with a jolt just before sunrise, she'd made it back to her cottage before anybody could see her.
She was paying for it now, though. She gave her sore neck a squeeze.
The Hatter was leaning back into his armchair with his shirtsleeves rolled up. He was reading a thick book entitled A Geomorphological Analysis of Subequatorial Wonderland. It was apparently riveting, because he hadn't so much as looked at Alice or the March Hare all morning. The hat was resting on the table and the wind tugged at his perfectly white curls. Not that she noticed, of course.
Alice turned abruptly to the March Hare.
"These croissants are delicious," she said quietly. Her words seemed oddly blunt in the silence, so she added a smile, as if she had been gathering the courage to say something about it the entire time. The Hare responded with a gracious bow.
She continued, trying to maintain her conversational momentum. "I had planned on going into town today, but I think it will be too warm to walk." There was something unnerving about the situation and Alice was convinced that making small talk would help.
"Yes, I suppose it will be," the Hare said vaguely. She realized with a sinking feeling that he was in the process of getting up from the table.
Please don't leave me alone with him, she begged silently. I may kill him.
But, as expected, her plea went unnoticed.
The Hatter was humming and Alice couldn't decide which she disliked more: angry, wordless breakfasts or uninvited musical interludes. She was leaning towards the latter.
As soon as the Hare had disappeared inside, he stopped and the heavy silence returned. This time, however, it was accompanied by the peculiar tingle that comes with being observed by somebody unseen. It prickled along her skin and she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
Birds called cheerily to each other overhead, but it only served to highlight the fact that neither of them was speaking.
Refusing to look at him, she carried out a thorough inspection of her fingernails. If he thought she was going to apologize for last night, he could think again.
The March Hare soon returned, carrying a tray of small, fragrant lemon tarts, each one garnished with a juicy raspberry. Alice sighed noiselessly with relief and placed one on her plate. She complimented him on what was obviously another culinary success. Alice left out her observation that it was especially remarkable when one considered that he was, in fact, a hare. Unfortunately, her moment of repose was short-lived and he immediately went into the house again, effectively trapping her at the table.
It would be rude to leave now, with praised but untouched food sitting on her plate. Not that the Hatter or the Hare would notice, of course, but she did have certain standards. And in any case, the tarts did look promising.
So she had poured herself another cup of tea from a nearby pot with resignation and was reaching for the milk when the Hatter cleared his throat significantly.
Pausing with her hand in mid-air, she glanced at him.
"Yes?" she asked with sarcastic sweetness. There was always the off chance that he would attempt to make amends. More than likely, though, neither of them would ever bring up their nocturnal shouting match.
He snapped his book shut without marking the page and tossed it onto the table, sending a silver creamer flying. Ignoring it, he leaned back again and clasped his hands over his waistcoat, gazing at her steadily.
She rolled her eyes. "Unbelievable," Alice muttered as poured the milk into her tea and stirred.
His cocked his head to the side, still watching her. When he eventually spoke, his voice was suggestive.
"How do you like it?"
Her mouth fell open in shock.
"I beg your pardon!?" she exclaimed, recovering quickly and slamming her teaspoon down with a metallic clang. "That is completely inappropriate!" She stood up so suddenly that her chair began to fall over. The Hatter caught and righted it before it hit the ground.
"I- " He reached out and took her hand, but Alice shook him off. "I meant your tea," he explained apologetically. "How do you like your tea?"
She turned to look down at him, his expression open and innocent, hers suspicious.
"You know very well how I take my tea."
"I only know what you add when you have it here, and that may not be how you actually prefer to drink it," he said. "And I don't know the reason behind it."
Alice was exasperated. "There's no reason behind it. It's just tea."
He clicked his tongue, offended.
"Is that really what you think?" he asked in a patronizing tone. "Maybe you've been doing it wrong this whole time," he mumbled, mostly to himself.
She heaved a sigh and glanced at her plate. The crust of the tart was a perfect golden brown.
"Fine. I'll answer your questions about how I like my tea." Her words had a caustic bite to them, which she found quite satisfying. "But don't expect me to wax poetic about it." Alice returned to her seat and he looked pleased.
The Hatter leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, running his thumbs along his bottom lip. Apparently, formulating questions about tea required deep concentration.
"What do you put into your tea?" he asked after a while.
She threw her hands into the air and gave a short laugh that was more akin to a bark. "You just watched me! I add milk."
"How much?"
She held her teacup out to him for analysis. "Like this."
He nod was clinical. "I see." He indicated the creamer that she'd used. "I noticed that you poured it quickly. Is that always the case?"
"Well, I don't know. I suppose that depends on how much you're annoying me that day," she shot back, looking up at the trees. "Today, you've been especially vexing."
He beamed at her, his eyes dancing. "I affect how quickly you add milk to your tea?"
Unable to find a legitimate euphemism in the question, she shrugged before plucking the raspberry off of her tart and popping it into her mouth. Briefly closing her eyes, she let the sweetness of the fruit and the crunch of seeds crowd out the Hatter's interrogation.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" she asked after dabbing her mouth with her napkin. As she reached for a second pastry to have another berry, she marveled at the ability of deliciously ripe fruit to keep her at the table. Surely she wasn't that simple. Was she?
"What's your earliest memory?" he repeated.
A nebulous but sunlit recollection of chasing a cat through her mother's roses came to her before she could ask for clarification. "In general or of tea?"
"What details of life before tea could possibly be worth remembering?" he asked rhetorically, waving a dismissive hand. "There's no life without tea. Human life, anyway."
She recoiled slightly at the intensity of the statement. "That's absurd. Tea doesn't make us human." Taking a bite of her tart, she gave herself time to think. "Besides, if that were true, don't you think everybody would vividly remember their first sip of tea?"
The Hatter looked flabbergasted. "You don't?"
"I had never thought about it before," she answered defensively. "But I must have been very young because I can't remember a time when I didn't drink tea. Or perhaps it wasn't a significant event," Alice added. "Maybe my mother put a few drops into my mouth while I sat on her lap, or maybe she waited until I was old enough to drink from a cup and poured me a little once it had cooled." She smiled at the thought, but the subsequent pang of nostalgia brought her back. "I don't see why this matters, in any case," she finished.
Looking up at the Hatter, she could see that he was considering her carefully, almost anxiously, as if he expected her to start crying. He opened his mouth to say something, but shut it and shook his head slightly. "I'm sorry for asking," he said, which was obviously far less comprehensive than what he wanted to tell her.
"It's fine," she replied. "I really don't understand the importance of the question, but I regret that I can't give you the kind of answer you're looking for."
A sudden thought occurred to her, and her curiosity was piqued. "What about you?"
"What about me?" he asked, topping off his tea, and letting it flow over the rim of the cup into the saucer. He settled back into the armchair with it.
"What's your first memory?"
The Hatter shrugged and took a long drink.
"This," he said when he was done. He set his teacup back on its saucer with a small splash.
She contemplated his cryptic answer. It was times like these when she most wanted to know what was going on inside his head, she realized. She would love to know what made him say things like that.
He picked up his cup again and licked several drops of tea off of the bottom.
On second thought…
"Taking a sip of tea was your first memory or taking that sip of tea?" Alice asked, now quite content to remain in her own head.
"It's the same thing," he said simply. "Isn't every sip of tea the first?"
"Well, it's the first of the rest."
A slow, enigmatic smile spread across his lips. "So it is."
She felt uneasy, so she took another bite of her lemon tart, savoring the way the tangy filling was balanced by the buttery crust. There was probably a lesson in that, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Pastries can only teach one so much.
Alice studied the steaming liquid in her cup. "If tea makes us human, what were we before tea was invented?"
"I thought I was asking the questions."
"You are. I was just..."
"Asking me a question." He traced designs on the arm of the chair with his finger. "But I'll answer. We were un-human."
Her eyes narrowed. "You're making this up as you go. You've probably never even heard the story about how tea was discovered," she added, her voice lilting.
"Then perhaps you can enlighten me," he replied sardonically.
"Once upon a time," she began, before she was cut off by a snort from the Hatter. Alice ignored him and went on. "...there was a Chinese emperor who liked his water boiled before he drank it. One day, while taking a break on a long journey, a servant was boiling it as usual when a dried wild tea leaf fell into the pot. He pulled out the leaf and gave the water to the emperor, even though it had changed color. The emperor drank it and found that he rather liked it. In fact, he loved it and wanted more. And we've been drinking tea ever since."
The Hatter stared broodingly into his cup, swirling the tea around inside. "Now who's making things up?"
"It's just a story I've been told," she said, bristling. "I never said it was true."
"You shouldn't tell stories that aren't true," Despite his words, it sounded more like a friendly piece of advice than a reprimand. "Thankfully, I know what really happened," he said, pausing for effect. "There was nothing, and then there was tea. And we've been drinking tea ever since because if we stop, it all goes away."
Alice was silent for a moment before she laughed. "Where did you hear that? It's hardly a story at all." She straightened the napkin on her lap. "More like a superstition."
"Well, do you want to be the one to test it? I certainly don't want to be responsible for the end of the world," he said, his tone implying that she was welcome to it. "More to the point, I like tea too much to ever stop drinking it."
"Then I suppose I owe you my life," she replied dryly, dipping her fork into the filling of her second tart.
He watched her for a long time before she glanced up from her plate. His expression was unreadable.
"Do you ever pour the milk in before the tea?" he finally asked.
"Never."
"No sugar?"
Alice wrinkled her nose. "None."
The Hatter crossed his arms on the table and leaned in conspiratorially. His particular smell of tea leaves, bergamot, and leather reached her. It was a very pleasant scent. Objectively speaking.
She politely inclined her head because it seemed like the right thing to do when somebody leans in to speak to you, their parted lips inches from your ear.
"How about when you're alone?" he whispered.
She froze and the question hung in the air between them, heat radiating up her exposed neck and curling around her ears. The birds continued to chirp, oblivious to the drama unfolding at the table below.
I'm going to burn his hat, she swore to herself. I'm going to throw it into a fire and watch that slip of paper shrivel up and turn to ash. Why is it even there, anyway? Who leaves price tags on their accessories? Imagining the green felt igniting gave her both hope and strength.
She straightened in her seat and set her jaw. When she whipped around to face him, her eyes flashed.
He'd never seen anything more beautiful in his life.
"I am done playing your game," she hissed acidly, jabbing a finger into his chest. He retreated, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender and placation, palms facing out.
Aside from being the most obscene conversation she'd ever had, the day had suddenly become unnaturally hot. She could feel a drop of sweat slide down her back.
"I apologize if I offended you." His eyes were wide with surprise. "I think you must have mistaken my meaning. I was merely trying to determine if you add sugar to your tea when you are alone." Confusion knit his eyebrows together. "What did you think I meant?"
Clearing her throat and taking several shaky gulps of tea, she avoided the question. She wasn't sure what the tea was supposed to do, but as long as she was drinking, she didn't have to speak. Eventually, the anger-driven adrenaline began to ebb.
In hindsight, she realized that she'd been the one who had given his words a vulgar meaning. The thought made her blush. "I misunderstood you."
"That's rather apparent," he murmured before slurping the tea out of his saucer. "Perhaps I should have prefaced my question with a bit of background information. When I drink tea alone, I add sugar. Somebody once told me that I should never take my tea with sugar, due to my... natural excitability."
Alice laughed in spite of herself and he grinned at her before continuing. "However, I do like it. So when there's nobody around to disapprove, I put some in. I was wondering if you did something similar."
She felt a pang of guilt for fantasizing about burning his hat.
"Perhaps you know me better than I thought," she replied, unaware of the affection that danced between her words. "I do like sugar in my tea, in all honesty. But nobody else in my family does, so I've learned to go without."
He seemed to find the idea of forgoing sugar out of consideration for the preferences of family members fascinating until she pointed out that his reasons were not so different.
Their conversation then turned to oolong, Darjeeling, Assam, and Ceylon, to boiling and straining, and to sleek clippers, polished tea chests, and fine porcelain. They experimented with milk-to-tea ratios and exchanged cups to compare the results of their preferred steeping times.
The Hatter described teas as "astringent," "clean," "pointy," "earthy," and "malty," while Alice tried to find the right words, using "sunny" to characterize flavor several times. He nodded enthusiastically with understanding, sometimes interrupting in his fervor.
And to her surprise, she didn't find it rude. She told herself that she only forgave him because he was talking about tea. It didn't have anything to do with the fact that the day was now sweltering and his bow tie was undone and his waistcoat half unbuttoned.
On more than one occasion, she found herself staring at his mouth while he spoke or watching his hands as he gestured wildly. Just as she was beginning to notice the way his freckles stood out in the sunlight, the March Hare returned to the table.
She felt an inexplicable disappointment.
Alice politely tried ease the Hare into the conversation, but he was quite fascinated by the tart he was eating and gave only short answers before failing to respond entirely.
The Hatter poured himself more tea and hesitated momentarily. Biting his lip, he glanced over at the Hare, who was studying a blob of lemon filling as though it were a diamond.
Without looking in his direction, Alice smiled slyly with understanding and passed one of the sugar bowls in front of her to the Hatter.
"I believe you may be a corrupting influence," he said softly as he added some to his cup.
"I certainly hope so. I find your excitable nature charming."
He shook his head in mock disapproval while he set the bowl between them. "Didn't anybody ever tell you that flattery will get you nowhere?"
Laughing, she reached for the sugar, only to feel his hand on hers.
"Although there's no such thing as nowhere, is there?" he mused, moving his thumb reassuringly across the back of her hand. "Nowhere still sounds like somewhere to me."
Alice imagined that she could see all the things he wanted to say flickering behind his blue eyes. She couldn't tell if he wouldn't say them because it would be inappropriate or if it was because some things are just too big for words.
He dragged his fingers up her hand to her wrist, where they rested lightly.
She opened her mouth several times to respond with something insolent or clever or dismissive before realizing that, for once, she didn't really know what to say.
"Is that sugar?" the Hare asked sharply, and they quickly pulled their hands away. Alice avoided making eye contact by looking down at her lap, tucking a renegade piece of hair behind her ear.
"It is," the Hatter said evenly. He picked the book off the table, he handed it to the Hare. "Do you by any chance have the second volume? It's truly wonderful and I can't stand the thought of waiting another minute to read the next." He put his hat on dramatically, as though it explained everything, and in a way, it did.
Indignant, the Hare turned and went inside, muttering about the effects of sucrose.
Alice was adding a small amount of the offending substance to her own tea when a terrifying realization swept over her. All of his questions and her answers came flooding back to her, filled with new meaning.
"Our conversation wasn't just about tea was it?" she asked with resignation, already fearing the answer.
He laughed loudly, his cup dangerously close to toppling over. The sun was high, but the brim of the enormous hat was shading his face.
"Tea is never just about tea."
Alice thought about that for some time, alternately fascinated and embarrassed. What could the way she steeped and stirred her tea possibly tell him? What if...
Alice blushed furiously.
"So," she asked, trying to sound casual. "What did you learn about me?"
The Hatter winked at her before answering. "Maybe one day you'll find out."