Work Text:
Mrs Hudson was a very particular woman when it came to things that mattered, and tea mattered. In the corner of her kitchen was a sacred cupboard with six teapots of various sizes and styles, several infusers, a set of fine china teacups, silver teaspoons, and approximately two dozen caddies of leaf teas, green, oolong, and black. She took strong black teas with milk, weak ones with lemon, and spiced or flavoured ones brewed for five minutes with two sugars. Tea was a ritual for her, soothing and calming, marking the passage of her day.
She had tried very hard not to learn how Sherlock and John took their tea. She was not their housekeeper, after all. But some things you couldn’t help but pick up, and through discussions with John about which teabags to buy she learned that Sherlock took his with milk and sweet if John thought his blood sugar was low, and John took his medium strength with very little milk. He bought Tesco’s own teabags; she favoured the ones that Stephen Fry advertised, and eventually she brewed him a mug from her emergency stash of teabags hidden at the back of the cupboard, and he agreed that her taste was better after all. Next time he met her in the hall with his hands full of shopping, she noticed a tell-tale yellow box in the top of his bag and smiled to herself. Next she tried to convert John to leaf tea, but he pointed out that if he brought several packets of loose leaves into the kitchen they would just end up the subject of an experiment that he didn’t find out about until after he’d made - and drunk - the next cup.
The morning she went to bring in the milk and found them staggering in the door, damp, smelling of chlorine, and covered in bruises and what looked like brick dust, she was glad she had learned their tastes. She followed as Sherlock more-or-less carried John up the stairs and shooed them onto the sofa before scurrying back downstairs. Quickly she pulled out two small teapots and dug through her caddies. For John, Golden Cassia oolong, smokey but gentle and soothing. For Sherlock, chai, her own recipe with an assam base and spices, served with honey and whole milk, sweet enough to calm the nerves and with enough of a combination of flavours to distract that part of his mind that just didn’t stop running. For herself, a simple Lady Grey, no milk, no sugar.
When she returned upstairs with three cups placed neatly on a tray, she found them in silence, sat so close to one another their shoulders were pressed together. Sherlock had shed his coat and jacket but was still in his dusty trousers and clean shirt. John was in his damp sweater, shivering slightly and frowning at something no-one else could see. Wordlessly she placed the cups on the coffee table in front of them and sat back in John’s armchair, watching as they sipped at their tea and the edges of stress and weariness eased them away from the palpable tension by small degrees. The three sat in silence for a good ten minutes, drinking and taking comfort in one another without speaking, until finally Sherlock put down his cup, took John by the hand and led him away with only the slightest flicker of his eyes expressing his thanks to his landlady.
She rose and tidied a little, cleaned the mugs and fussed over the state of the kitchen. Eventually she mastered the urge to sob, put down the tea towel and headed back to the stairs. The door to Sherlock’s room was ajar, almost a invitation to check on them, and when she glanced in she saw John, curled up in the bed as though trying to make himself as small as possible, and Sherlock beside him, his arms wrapped tightly around his friend. They were both sound asleep.
Tomorrow morning she would pop back up, and probably find John in the kitchen, fussing around with the morning tea. He would thank her for last night and maybe ask for some of her chai to assuage Sherlock with when he was in a fractious mood. Sherlock would sweep in, kiss her on the cheek and say something casually outrageous to prompt John into an argument so that they would never talk about how she had seen them today. She wondered how long it would take them to work out what was going on between them.
For now, she wondered if it was too early to call on Mrs Turner next door. All her teas were wonderful, but her neighbour had a way of making tea with a shot of her second-best whisky that really hit the spot. It was either that or sit in her living room and cry, and she would much prefer the tea.