A/N: Hi! I'm Lexi, and this is my first fanfiction on this site, so bear with me. Feedback would also be nice!
Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock or any of it's characters.
Molly Hooper's tea preferences were extremely dull. Her mother had always believed that people's tea preferences reflected their personalities, so around the time she was 12 she realized that her mother must want her to be a dull person. Or she thought that she was already dull. As a child, her mother had always given her plain hot tea, which was very bland in taste. Her family never drank any other kind of tea, so until her adulthood, she had never even had a sip of anything other than hot tea. After drinking such a dull tea for so long, Molly and her tastebuds found all other teas to be much too sweet for her likings.
This is why Molly still drank hot tea on her first day at St. Bart's morgue. Being a pathologist was certainly not everyone's dream job, almost no one's, but Molly felt... safe in the morgue. Secure. She had never had much excitement in her life, and her mother, a rather bland woman, had lead her as a child to connect excitement with chaos. She had wanted Molly to live a normal, unexciting life: get a normal job, marry a normal man, have normal children, do normal things.
Molly's lab coat blended well against the stark white walls of the lab as she walked towards her first body in the exam room, and it blended even better when she stopped dead in front of the exam room next door to the one her body was in.
In the room was a tall, handsome man with particularly outstanding cheekbones standing next to the body with a- oh God, why does he have a butcher knife? He raised up the knife and- oh, oh my God, why is he chopping that man's wrist with the knife?
One the older pathologist passed and smirked at the look on Molly's face. He put his hand on her shoulder, which made her jump, as she was still on edge from the blindingly handsome knife-wielding stranger.
"Relax. That's just Sherlock Holmes," he said, giving her a pat on the back before walking away.
"Sherlock Holmes..." She muttered his name under her breath.
"Yes?"
Molly let out a sharp gasp as she turned to see the blindingly handsome knife-wielding stranger A.K.A. Sherlock Holmes standing next to her, having just come out of the autopsy room without her noticing. Still with the knife in his hand.
"I- Uh, I was just-"
He raised her eyebrows at her.
"Um... what were you doing in there, exactly?"
"I was simply testing exactly how deep a butcher knife could cut when being swung at varying speeds and from varying heights. I haven't seen you here before. Are you new?"
He spoke very fast, and it took Molly a few seconds to register what he had said to her before she held out her hand to him slightly.
"I-I'm Molly Hooper. I just started today."
"Sherlock Holmes," he stated. He didn't shake her hand.
"I know. So, are you here a lot, I guess?"
"Almost everyday." He looked her up and down, his starting at the top of her ginger hair and going slowly down all the way to the toes of her shoes.
"Ah, of course you're new, your shirt is pressed but it looks like it's been worn quite a bit, meaning it's the only good shirt you have and you wanted to make a good impression on your first day. Although, you might be taken a bit more seriously if you dust off your pants, they have cat fur all over them, looks like you have... two? No, three, but two of them are the same color. And you must keep the lighting in your apartment dim. Really, that one wasn't that hard, you're wearing one black shoe and one brown shoe, no one would notice if the lights weren't so fluorescent. Also, I'm surprised no one has pointed it out to you, but your first appointment is actually not right now, but an hour from now."
Molly blinked at him, trying take in everything he had just said without taking a single breath.
"Wha- no, my next appointment is right now. H-how do you know my schedule?"
"Your watch is set wrong."
Molly glanced up at the clock on the wall.
It said 6:00. She looked down at her watch.
It said 7:00.
"I'll be in lab. Oh, and Molly, would you get some coffee?" Sherlock said, more of a order than a request, "Black. Two sugars."
As she went to fulfill his drink request, Molly thought back to her bland, dull hot tea. Her mother must have been right. This black tea certainly defined Sherlock's personality, she could tell that, and she had only met him a few minutes ago. He was bold. Confident. And two sugars. Maybe he was sweet, in some way, once you got close to him? If you got close to him.
But it Molly's mother was right, then this bland tea that Molly always drank really did reflect her personality. Did everyone think she was bland?
Today, she decided, she would drink the tea that went with the personality she wanted. She brewed herself a cup of coffee with two sugars.
Molly did not enjoy coffee with two sugars at all.
Maybe she could just start with some sugar in her tea.
Baby steps, Molly Hooper. Baby steps.
