Work Text:
1. When Joan was small, her friend Monica had a treasure hunt birthday party. Her mom had hidden riddles all over the house, each pointing the way to the next present. One was in the chimney, Joan remembers, and Monica got soot all over her party dress when she reached up to find it. Living with Sherlock is a bit like living in a constant treasure hunt, only the riddles don't always lead to presents and, frankly, the days of soot being the worst thing Joan could expect to get on her clothes are long gone. Sometimes she makes a game out of what she can tell her dry cleaner. Sometimes she just brazens it out.
2. It's a terrible cliche to say that doctors like coffee and cops like doughnuts. However, Joan can swear hand on heart she wouldn't have made it through residency without the Starbucks across the street from the hospital. In her new life, Joan has found Gregson heading bleary-eyed to the genuinely appalling station coffeemaker in the early hours of the morning more than once, slapping down an open Dunkin Donuts tray. (The glazed ones, to her surprise, go the fastest.) Whenever she looks over her shoulder to see Sherlock staring, motionless, at a board full of his incomprehensible notes, she resigns herself to being in the station till at least first light. She takes two donuts. Gregson understands.
3. There are more similarities between medicine and consulting detective work than Joan might have expected. For one thing, Joan gets more use out of her (excellent) stitching skills than she'd ever really wanted for her own kitchen. Sherlock refuses to go to hospital unless Joan forces the issue. Sensing that card probably has a limited number of plans, she's trying to keep it up her sleeve for an emergency. That's another thing: her definition of "emergency" is definitely as flexible now as it was when she wore a white coat all day. Triaging is a transferable skill. Sherlock coming home with bleeding knuckles just makes her roll her eyes and reach for the rubbing alcohol, now.
4. Joan is used to sleeping odd hours in odd places so the adjustment to living with Sherlock isn't as hard as it could have been if, say, she'd had a normal person's sleeping schedule. This doesn't mean, however, that she likes being woken up at the crack of dawn. Once, it's by Sherlock rummaging through all her shoes and throwing the ones that fail him in some way over his shoulder and into the corridor. Not for the first time, Joan is glad they don't have other lodgers.
"What?" is about all she can manage.
It does the job though: Sherlock turns to look at her, still holding her newest pair of boots in one hand. "The weather's turned," he says. "You'll need footwear with proper grip if we're to continue our partnership in inclement weather."
Joan flops back into the pillows. "Check those soles," she says. "We're fine."
"Good," Sherlock says. "I wouldn't want to lose time in the ice."
And, yes, Joan is half asleep, and, yes, Sherlock is Sherlock - but she's pretty sure he means he doesn't want to lose her.
"I'm not going anywhere," she says. "Go back to bed."
When she wakes up (properly, when the sun has actually risen), all her boots are stacked neatly against the wall.
5. In the winter, Sherlock turns off all the heating in the building for some kind of experiment involving rocks and radiator piping (Joan didn't ask). In the time it takes him to turn it back on again, Joan has bought thermal underwear and Miss Hudson has taken up crocheting. Joan finds her in the kitchen one afternoon, patiently teaching Sherlock the basics. Over the course of the afternoon Joan makes three rounds of cocoa, Miss Hudson finishes a sweater, and Sherlock makes two small, mismatching, socks. It would almost be quaint, were it not for the crime scene files Joan has been poring over at the table. She asks what she's supposed to be looking for.
Sherlock holds up his latest inexpert sock.
"Use your words," Joan tells him.
Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Holes," he says.
6. Joan finds Sherlock asleep in the bath more than once. By the third time, she folds one of Sherlock's lopsidedly crocheted blankets and leaves it on the laundry basket. The fourth time, he's added a pillow. The fifth time, he's brought Clyde.
7. Sherlock's texting style varies from extravagant (rarely, mostly when he's feeling particularly personally slighted: Joan, your insistence on keeping the milk in the right side of the fridge door is completely detrimental to the system I have devised for our dairy products) to barely comprehensible (often, with no explanation: jn cm bck immdtly. crim!!!!!!!!). Joan's personal favourite just reads BEES.. She looks at it from time to time and never feels anything less than overwhelmingly fond.
8. Alfredo helps Joan learn how to pick a lock fast enough that Sherlock can only sniff haughtily and insist he could do better. This turns out to be incredibly useful when she gets a call from Marcus Bell late one night and arrives at the station to find him handcuffed to his desk chair on the empty station floor.
"I'm not going to ask," Joan says, which they both know is her asking, and picks the lock in seconds.
Bell rubs his wrist. "If you don't," he says, "the take-out's on me."
9. For medicine, Joan got used to studying books that weighed too much for her to hold open one handed, practicing sutures on bananas, and shift patterns that made her wince. For detecting, there isn't anything for Joan to get used to because familiarity requires repetition. Instead, there are late nights spent in odd corners with battered case files and early morning conversations in the back of cabs that make even the veteran cab drivers look at them a little funny. There's more running than Joan really thinks is necessary - Sherlock probably just likes the drama of it - and Sherlock, always Sherlock. She's not doing this for him, not at all, but that doesn't take away from how glad she is to have him in her life. Medicine will always be her constant, her touchstone, something she can reach in for and find in herself as a ground, and detecting might be running a close second - but now, she can reach out, and know that Sherlock will be there, reaching back.
10. Joan finds Sherlock reading a book upside down over breakfast one morning. She raises an eyebrow at him. Sherlock looks at her, then his book, and then flips the book right way up.
Joan watches him.
"As ever, Watson, you see but do not perceive. This was an entirely intentional - " he begins, but Joan cuts him off.
"Don't even start," she says. "And make me some coffee."
Sherlock gives her the chipped mug they both use when they're feeling snippy with each other, but he adds an extra sugar all the same.