Joanlock headcanons for @superjulie57 (I saw you had a birthday recently – Happy Belated Birthday!):
Joan sees PDA very differently than Sherlock. For her it’s not excessive, it’s just too uncomfortable for her to do something private in a public place, even as basic as holding hands. Sherlock doesn’t see PDA as excessive so much as he sees it as no one else’s business. He’s not uncomfortable like Joan is, he’d just rather not have total strangers making assumptions about just how close and special Joan is to him.
They hold hands after a very dangerous thing happens on a case. Gunshots are involved, but no one is hurt. Joan took his hand for comfort in the taxi, and Sherlock didn’t let go when they got out of the taxi to go into the precinct. Joan rewarded him later that night. Not just for holding her hand, but for insisting she put her own comfort before his.
Sherlock likes to surprise Joan with ice cream, especially in the winter. He goes all over the city to find unique ice cream shops to buy from or for them to visit. The first time he takes Joan to an obscure ice cream shop in the middle of January, he can’t get her delighted smile out of his mind and he vows he’ll work as hard he can for the rest of his life to make her smile like that more often.
Sherlock isn’t ticklish. Joan is. Sherlock only takes advantage of this when they’re both naked, or when Joan is very sleepy from tedious casework and they’re in the privacy of the brownstone.
The first thing Sherlock bakes for Joan that isn’t Yorkshire pudding is an under-baked batch of M&M cookies, Joan’s favorite. Sherlock found that out from Mary. When Joan sees how they’re under-baked, how she likes them, really gooey in the center, she absolutely melts and gets their favorite take-out that night, personally picking it up and getting a double order of Sherlock’s favorite Thai dish. He gives her a foot rub in return. They never really stop thanking each other for small gifts.
Joan starts the trend of morning kisses. Sherlock is a bit nonplussed at first. They don’t always wake up together, very seldom actually, but they usually end up meeting in the kitchen. The first ‘good morning’ kiss she gives him is just a small peck on the cheek, but Sherlock decides he’s not satisfied with that. The next morning, he has several mints before taking a single sip of coffee, and when Joan leans up to kiss him, still a bit tentatively, he kisses her deeply until they’re both breathless. Sherlock is very pleased when he sees Joan struggle to remember where the spoons are for a moment after she puts cream in her coffee. She gets him back later by giving him a neck massage when he’s trying to read online articles for a case and he can’t concentrate for several minutes while her hands work magic on his stiff neck muscles.
Every summer, when the bees are at their happiest and most active, they both sit on the roof if the evenings are cool enough, and drink lemonade. After Joan came home slightly tipsy a couple times, Sherlock told her he didn’t mind if she got tipsy around him, and so sometimes Joan takes something a bit stronger up to the roof for herself. Sherlock loves sober Watson, but tipsy Watson tends to babble a bit more like he does, and he never tires of her voice.
Courtesy of @your-lovely-bird and their headcanon about Joan starting a lavender garden for the bees on the roof: When the lavenders first bloom, Sherlock picks a bouquet and puts them on Joan’s nightstand for her to wake up to. This is usually followed by Joan putting a sprig of lavender in his chest pocket and kissing him until he forgets why she’s kissing him. Sherlock finds he has a Pavlov’s dog response to the smell of lavender because of this. Joan knows it and once burned a lavender scented candle in the middle of winter to prove her theory.
