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In the hours before the surgery, Sherlock sat in a hospital bed, dressed only in a hospital gown and sheet, feeling horrifically out of place. They'd asked him not to wear his binder today, and he'd folded it and left it on his bed before dressing in his customary long coat to hide his breasts. His shirt didn't fit right, and as he hailed a cab he'd felt a stab of triumph that he would never have to worry about it again.
They had since given him a fluid drip and left him in a room alone. He hadn't told Mycroft, nor Mummy- he didn't know how they would have responded, but it wouldn't have been good.
When a nurse finally returned to wheel him into the operating room and start him on a drip of pre-anaesthetics as well, he was so preoccupied wishing he'd told Mycroft, that he’d told anyone where he would be that he didn't realise he was going under until he woke up, and Mycroft was by his side.
Of course, with the amount of mind-altering drugs in his blood, he didn't process that his brother was there and that he shouldn't be, simply pressed the button for more morphine because bloody hell his chest hurt, and there were bandages wrapped tightly around his entire ribcage that reminded him vaguely of the time he'd tried to wear two binders to flatten him even more.
Then a nurse was there, asking how he felt and taking his vitals, and his brother was holding his hand because only now did Sherlock remember that he hated hospitals, and he also had the worst urge to vomit- and vomit he did, again and again, all the way out of the hospital and into his brother's luxurious and rather more spacious house.
And only when he was in the same bed he slept in every time he was in his brother's house after rehab, did he realise Mycroft was by his side, actually there. That Mycroft hadn’t shouted at him or done anything to stop the surgery- because clearly he’d known well beforehand. But he was too tired, and in too much pain to question it, and slipped away again.
It was Mycroft who unwrapped his bandages the next morning, and gave Sherlock his dose of Vicodin, and checked his stitches and emptied his drains. It was Mycroft who carefully, so carefully, gave his little brother a sponge bath and a book and helped him back into bed, and only then did Sherlock have the courage to meet his brother's eye.
"Did you think you could hide it from me forever, Sherlock?" Mycroft asked gently, smoothing his hair back from his forehead like he was still a very small child. "I knew as soon as you picked a date." And then he kissed his brother's forehead and tucked a blanket around him, and Sherlock thought that perhaps the best thing was that he didn't have to explain to Mycroft now why he had wanted the surgery in the first place.