Work Text:
His eyes are focused, fingers gripping and grazing the skin there, grabbing the too curved waist. Feminine. Child baring. Wide pelvis for decreasing the pain during child birth. Sign of a-
It doesn't matter, does it? It does not matter what he does. Hormones. Surgery. Nothing will ever change what he is. You can create the perfect forgery of a painting, but some odd detail will give away its true creator. The body is merely transport. How many times had he repeated that to himself, and how many times did it prove to be true in all matters except for this?
True, Sherlock supposed he was much luckier than others in his situation. Of course, his parents did not take to the idea right away. It was a shock to them, when Willow became William. When Scottie became Scott. But they came around, eventually. His mother, adamant that their disappointment towards their son was not his gender identity, but his excessive drug use. Mycroft had merely scoffed and retorted that of course Sherlock was his younger brother, what else could he be? All in all, he had quite the supportive family. His mother, much to Sherlock's constant embarrassment, became the epitome of the over-enthusiastic PFLAG Mum.
But supportive families did not deter from the fact that Sherlock, most days, woke up feeling utterly wrong. A joke of genetics. A mistake of matching chromosomes.
His showers scalding, as though attempting to burn away the skin that should not have been his. The pin-pricks left on his thighs from injections that were not of illegally obtained drugs. The odd smile he wore when Sally greeted him with ' Freak,' and all he could think was, 'If she only knew.' Molly, who fawned over him, who did not realize that Sherlock's rejections of her were not solely out of disinterest but of fear of rejection itself, of illogical worry that her adoration would turn to pity, or worse – disgust.
Only Victor never looked at him in disgust. A laugh, and a ' So?' But even Victor left, in the end. Sure, it had more to do with drug use and not to do with identity, but he still left. And people like Sherlock did not find people like Victor often.
The Work never cared. The Work was an indifferent wife, who cared neither about identity nor chromosomes. The Work was constant. The Work was always there for him.
And then there was John.
John, who found Sherlock's vial of testosterone while on one of his danger nights. John, who was shocked, confused, and then almost too quickly put it together. John, who reiterated the inane phrase “It's all fine.”
But it's not. It's not all fine, when Sherlock scratches at his arms and his thighs and his hips. When Sherlock wants to crawl right out of his skin and into something else. When that feeling is so horrific that Sherlock would rather be dead that have to use that sodding prosthetic piece, that packer that feels so detached and yet so a part of him at the same time one more time. Those days, it is not “all fine” and Sherlock wants to tell John exactly where he can go with his “It's all fine” philosophy.
But other days, when Sherlock is feeling uncomfortable, when it's a struggle, and he barely pulls himself out of bed, and John greets him with a warm cup of tea, with milk and no sugar, and gives him a smile – a smile, a genuine smile, no pity, no disgust, merely acceptance – and rambles on about work or Justine (or is she Dana?) Sherlock relaxes in John's presence because John knows and John doesn't care – so much like Victor in that sense – and Sherlock believes him.
In those brief, rare moments, Sherlock can believe that maybe, just maybe, it is
all fine
after all.