Work Text:
"Sophia Hughes, according to her ID, 29 years old, works at Tanner's Bar & Grill in London. Her boss claims she left for her break two nights ago with a man, promised she'd come back and never did. New flatmate came back from her night shift at a convenience store around seven a.m. and reported her missing - that's the flatmate there - and, well, this is how we found her. Apparently, this alley is commonly used by, uh, working girls, so, there's a bit of a lead right there, maybe. Ideas, Sherlock?"
"Twelve," Sherlock said to Lestrade as he bent over the corpse.
"Sure," Anderson muttered contemptuously behind them. "Look, she's probably a prostitute, the man who left with her was a pimp or a client. Simple. We don't need you here, Holmes."
"What do you think, John?" Sherlock asked, with a valiant determination to block out the sound of Anderson's voice.
As he always did, John looked to Lestrade for the OK before kneeling on the other side of Sherlock to examine the body.
"Blunt force trauma to the back of the head, looks like," said John, ignoring Sherlock's eye-roll at his being so painfully obvious. "Contusions on other parts of the body, face, arms, and stomach, but nothing serious. Lacerations just at the base of the skull." Even being an army doctor, John's stomach turned a bit at the gore. It always did.
John stood. "She was beaten to death, probably punched to cause those contusions, knocked down, and kicked until, well..." He trailed off then. "Looks like the murderer, whoever they were, wiped her clean after they killed her. Otherwise there would be a lot more blood coming from those lacerations, they're quite nasty. Probably didn't want their DNA all over the corpse." Lestrade nodded as if in agreement, and Sherlock finally stood and looked at John.
"Well done, John, really, you're scintillating. Of course, you've missed the most important thing about this woman as it pertains to her murder, but well done nonetheless."
John, now, was the one to roll his eyes as he and Lestrade braced themselves for the big deduction.
"Look at her, you two, really look. Look at her chin and jawline, look at the shape of her body, look at the clothes she's wearing, just think about her name, for God's sake. Square chin and jaw not commonly seen on women, very overtly feminine and provocative clothing, and a positively predictable female name. This woman is transsexual, started very young if the amount of progress she's made is anything to go by. Been on hormones for several years judging by the size of her hips and breasts - look closely, you can see injection sites there on her arms, probably oestrogen shots from awhile back, but she switched to pills because those scars are old. So she's a transsexual, working as a bartender. Bartenders don't make a lot of money, I'm surprised she could even afford the oestrogen, so there's no way she's had the surgery yet. A transsexual whose body is still male, leaving with a strange man in the middle of the night, only to be found two days later with her head bashed in? Conclusion: she left on her break with a man she'd just met in the bar, intending to have sex with him, but she didn't disclose her condition to him beforehand. He finds out, gets angry, beats her to death - somewhere else, there's not enough blood around for this to be the scene of the crime - gets scared, cleans her up, dumps her here in an alley known to be used for the world's oldest profession, hoping that will cover his tracks. Truly, truly dull, Lestrade. The only question now is who was that man and where can we find him. Anderson, for God's sake, wipe that idiotic look off your face, it is phenomenally annoying."
John and Lestrade whirled to look at Anderson, who was scowling hatefully at the dead woman.
"Fucking trannies," he muttered spitefully. "If you ask me, I don't put it past the poor guy. If I found out the girl I was about to get off with was really a man, I'd get angry, too," Anderson sneered.
John's stomach leapt into his throat, and it wasn't the gore this time.
Never one to miss a beat, Sherlock sighed sharply and spat, "Dear God, Anderson, there's saying stupid things and then there's saying things that make me want to commit homicide. Pray you stay on the safe side."
Sherlock turned to Lestrade then. "You won't find any DNA on the body. This man is impulsive - obvious, he didn't really mean to kill the poor girl - but he does know how to clean up after himself. In fact, I don't think it's a stretch to say he's killed before, beaten someone to death for some imagined offense against him. Get a description from the bar owner, and find any man who lives in London and has a criminal record - violent crimes, assault or something similar - who matches the description, then text me. Honestly, Lestrade, this is textbook," Sherlock whinged before spinning round and setting off. "Come on now, John, Angelo's closes soon."
John followed the detective, nearly jogging to keep up with his long, quick stride. He refused to let himself panic, he refused, he refused, he refused. He would go and he would have dinner with Sherlock and then they would go back to 221B and John could suffer silently in the privacy of his bedroom.
Sherlock knows. He knows.
➣➣➣
John remembers the first time his mother made him shave his armpits. She was just ten years old, only a girl, readying herself to go to her grandmother's funeral. Her mother came into the bathroom, threw back the shower curtain (much to her daughter's horror), and handed her a razor. Bewildered, completely uninformed on how to use it, she stared back at her mother until the woman sighed, long-suffering, and took it into her own hands, shaving the young girl's armpits and legs. She didn't mind it terribly, until the next day, when the itchy stubble came in under her arms and in the back of her knees, skin irritated by the disposable razor her mother had used. Henceforth, she avoided shaving whenever possible.
When she was fifteen, she stopped shaving her legs and armpits altogether. She kept the damning evidence well hidden beneath sleeves and jeans, but one day her mother saw; she shouted at her daughter, called it "repulsive" and, similar to the first incident five years previous, thrust a razor into her resentful hands while she was showering.
She cried that night, hating her mother a little bit, hating how bare she felt after she shaved, hating the fact that her father didn't have to shave anywhere but his jaw.
➣➣➣
(8:31 a.m.) Terrence lee, 41 yrs old, lives in camden, histroy of violence against women. Bar owner picked him out from a lineup. Looks like our guy if u want to come see -L
(8:31 a.m.) Dull. -SH
(8:35 a.m.) Come on sherlock. Just come by the Yd and let us know if hes our guy -L
(8:35 a.m.) He is. I'm 99 percent sure of it. -SH
(8:36 a.m.) And since when is that good enough 4 u -L
(9:10 a.m.) U really should come down though. Hes got somthing to say that u might wanna hear -L
(9:19 a.m.) And looks like hes got something u might wanna see -L
(10: 01 a.m.) Enough torturing me with the abbreviations. John and I'll be down in twenty. -SH
(10:03 a.m.) Thanks sherlock :) -L
(10:03 a.m.) Yes. -SH
➣➣➣
Testosterone acts faster than oestrogen, and oftentimes has more noticeable effects. It won't change your height but it will straighten your curves out, it will grow hair on your chin and grow the cartilage in your throat to an apple and most of all, it will lower your voice, deepen it. A prime identifier of gender is the voice, and for this John is thankful; his voice was once high but now it is masculine enough that he can bear with it.
Sherlock's voice is deeper, though.
And John is a short man. He used to hate the fact when he was younger, but he's long since accepted it. Still, that doesn't stop him getting jealous of Sherlock Holmes every once in a while; jealous of his height and the long, lean lines of his body, the sharp angles of his cheekbones and shoulders and hipbones, angles that John never had and never would.
And John's not gay, but that doesn't stop him just looking at Sherlock sometimes, because if he's being honest, Sherlock is a beautiful man. John can't help but appreciate it, especially knowing that he, John Watson, is not such a beautiful man as Sherlock.
➣➣➣
John almost didn't hear it because he had turned his radio up so loud, but Sherlock was knocking quite forcefully on the bathroom door. "Hurry up in there, John, Lestrade has our murderer down at the Yard. I fear that too much exposure to Anderson will cause him permanent brain damage, and then we'll never get a confession!"
John's face smiled to itself in the mirror, briefly, before it went back to frowning.
If Sherlock deduced that Sophia Hughes was transgender as quickly as he did, there was no way that he didn't know that John was trans. It's completely impossible for him not to know, John thought to himself. So why did he never say anything?
John had decided to take a very long, very hot shower that morning, hoping it would relax him, or clear his mind, or something, like it did for the characters on the telly. Of course, being naked never really relaxed John. He hated being without his binding, without his packing. It just... didn't feel right.
Some people liken it this way: a transgender man is trapped in his own body, held captive by feminine features, imprisoned by a fleshy cage he knows to be all wrong; breasts where there should be none, hips where there should be none, and, well, nothing where there should be something.
John wasn't sure if "trapped" was the proper way to describe it. He'd had this body all his life, he supposed, and he couldn't rightly say that it wasn't his. But he knew that, when he looked down at his naked body while he was in the shower, or changing, he just didn't like it. It wouldn't be entirely accurate to say it looked wrong to him; it just didn't look good.
John gave a start when he heard a pounding on the door. "John, for God's sake, I will pick this lock if you don't hurry up! You bloody well know I know how!"
He smiled to himself again, shaken out of his bleak reverie. At least Sherlock, for one, wasn't at all perturbed by the day's events. If the transsexualism involved in the case had struck any semblance of a chord in Sherlock, he didn't show it. But then, that was Sherlock, that was. Unperturbed, unemotional, cold reasoner.
➣➣➣
"Stop right there. Don't walk through that door."
John ignored him and moved into the living room towards Sherlock to hand him a cup of tea. He stood next to the couch where Sherlock lay for a solid minute, cup in one hand which was extended to him, before the genius detective even reached up to take it.
"Made tea," John said rather belatedly as he moved to sit on his Union Jack pillow. He knew his best friend's habits so well, especially the habits he took up when on a particularly difficult case, that he didn't even have to look up to know that Sherlock downed the near-boiling drink in one swallow and then threw the (plastic; John had learned from past mistakes) teacup right over his shoulder. It hit the back wall with a clatter.
"It doesn't make any sense, John!" he shouted. "Lee and Hughes actually got off together. They even made a sex tape, John. Motive, gone!" (This was accompanied by a thrown chemistry journal.) "And Lee's alibi is positively iron-clad. There's no way it could have been him!"
He's getting that crazy look in his eyes, John thought as the detective leapt up from his lying position to squat on the sofa.
"Do you think this is Moriarty?" said Sherlock excitedly, wild-eyed. "Maybe this isn't a hate crime at all, maybe her being transgender had nothing to do with the murder. Maybe..."
"Maybe you were wrong?" John finished for him.
They both knew that that was a stretch.
➣➣➣
John remembers the day Harry came out to their parents. She'd had a little too much to drink that night, and Mr. and Mrs. Watson were furious when she came home, three hours late, stumbling through the door in a haze of strange girls and booze. The younger daughter was in her room, reading, and heard the heated shouting match; heard their parents ask Harry what the hell was wrong with her; heard Harry reply, "Well, I'm a lesbian, for one." Heard the silence that immediately followed. Heard the sharp slap from their father's hand, and their mother's shocked chastisement. "Louis!"
John remembers the way Harry stormed into their shared bedroom and slammed the door - hard - in their father's reddened face.
"Better watch out for those two," Harry had warned, already starting to fall asleep in her bed. "You and your short hair, I'll bet they think you're a dyke, too." She'd laughed. "Imagine the look on their faces if you were! If they found out they'd raised two - not just one, but two!"
She kept quiet. She wondered how she would ever tell her parents that she was a he.
➣➣➣
John heard Sherlock's talking rather than listened to it during the cab ride to Scotland Yard. The Hughes case still had the world's only consulting detective slightly baffled (though he himself would never admit to that). Sherlock was toeing the line between genius and insanity at this point, feeling stress on multiple pressure points - add the exceptionally interesting murder to an Anderson in rare form, and a Mycroft badgering him about some international drug trafficking case, and John had been walking on eggshells all week. He had texted Sherlock the other day asking him to get milk while he was out, and Sherlock was so insulted that John could even think about such a thing when the Hughes case was still on that he didn't speak to John until the next afternoon.
Distantly, he heard Sherlock saying something about how perhaps Lee had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or something, perhaps they got jealous, that's what people do don't they, get jealous, something about sentiment uttered with a gibe, something, something, transsexual, oestrogen, male-bodied, transgendered, sex change, John itched to tell Sherlock his terminology was off.
➣➣➣
"Taxi!"
Sherlock, always getting too excited when the game was on, left John stranded at the Yard after running off to chase a lead that he seemed to have pulled out of thin air. His blogger was left to find his own ride. And John rolled his eyes when, upon climbing into the back of the cab, he found Anthea sitting next to him texting.
How on Earth does Mycroft do it, he wondered. "Hello again, then," he said genially, as ever trying to impress the pretty woman with his gentlemanly disposition, or something. And as ever, she didn't respond.
This time he was brought to an empty underground car park, where Mycroft Holmes stood twirling his (damned, stupid, bloody) umbrella. "Evening, John."
"Texting. A brilliant invention."
"Indeed. However, it does have its shortcomings: for one, urgency is not always easily conveyed via text message." Twirl.
"Whereas abandoned car parks speak louder than words."
Mycroft frowned. "Surely you are aware that my brother has been eschewing my numerous attempts to involve him on a recent drug trafficking case?" John nodded. "And you are aware that this case is of national importance?" Twirl.
John shook his head in response to the implied questions rather than the ones asked outright. "Sorry, Mycroft, Sherlock's already got a case. And besides, I'm not sending a former cocaine addict off on the scent of cocaine dealers. I don't really care about the international importance, I'm not sending Sherlock into - what? What?"
Mycroft's laughter had been steadily growing heartier since 'already got a case'. "Dear, sweet John, ever the caretaker of my brother. Such a kind soul that I almost do wonder why Anthea never obliges you; but then, I know why she doesn't."
John willed his cheeks not to redden. He doesn't mean it the way you think he means it. He's talking about something else. He doesn't mean that. He had been especially sensitive ever since they took the damn Hughes case, misinterpreting things as insults, getting upset over nothings.
Luckily for his blush, Mycroft was already turning and walking away. "I think, in time, Sherlock will take this case. And you and I both will ensure his safety. Take care, Doctor Watson." Twirl.
➣➣➣
Sherlock's apologies were never spoken, John had learned during their time as flatmates. But John knew when they were there.
This time, Sherlock took John to dinner to apologize for running off and for Mycroft. Angelo's, as always, though John didn't mind. He didn't mind having one or two constants in his tumultuous life with Sherlock, the madman. And it always made John laugh, just a little bit, that Sherlock's chemistry experiments burned holes in their walls and he spent his days chasing down serial murderers, and still he visited the same restaurant every time he wanted to eat out.
Sherlock seldom actually ate, though, if John was being accurate. Which always made a few unpleasant images flash through John's mind: of Saturday nights at uni spent crouched over the toilet bowl, ridding his body of that which he had consumed to stop his frame getting any curves.
He'd been taking testosterone long enough that he didn't need to worry so much about the fat distribution anymore and could afford to treat his body better now; although every once in a while, John wondered if he could look like Sherlock if he just ate a little bit less... if that would make him a little less round and a little more angular... but he always stopped himself thinking that. John was a doctor, after all, and he wouldn't abuse his body that way. Sherlock could just sod right off with his thin body and his (stupid, bastard, annoying) cheekbones.
➣➣➣
(11:39 p.m.) Stop kidnapping my friends. -SH
(11:40 p.m.) A rather unfounded use of the plural there, dear brother? -MH
(11:47 p.m.) Go to hell. -SH
(11:48 p.m.) Yes, probably. The drug trafficking case is not getting any less potent, Sherlock. -MH
(11:48 p.m.) No, probably not. -SH
(11:48 p.m.) Don't make me order you. -MH
(11:49 p.m.) I'd like to see you try. -SH
➣➣➣
(1:04 a.m.) I need to talk to the flatmate. -SH
(5:22 a.m.) Sophia hugheses flatmate? Why -L
(5:25 a.m.) Why not? You lot probably didn't ask any of the right questions. -SH
(5:27 a.m.) Thanks a lot -L
(5:28 a.m.) ...What for? -SH
(5:29 a.m.) N/m. Ill call her in. -L
(6:06 a.m.) Thank you, Greg. -SH
(6:09 a.m.) Excuse me while i take a screenshot of that -L
(6:09 a.m.) Sod off. -SH
(6:10 a.m.) :) -L
➣➣➣
Sherlock hadn't told John why they were talking to the flatmate, merely grunted something about "idiots" before retreating back to his silent reverie in the cab. They got to Scotland Yard and immediately went to find the poor grieving friend, who was sitting timidly and twisting her sweater with her fingers when they walked into the interrogation room.
Sherlock didn't even bother to greet her or introduce himself; he grabbed a chair, sat down in front of her, and leaned right into her personal space before demanding, "Tell me everything remarkable about Sophia's life that has occurred in the past year."
Shocked, the girl made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a choke. "I - sorry?"
"Sophia. Hughes. Your flatmate. Shall I remind you? She had wavy blonde hair, quite tall - "
"Don't be an ass," the girl said sharply. (In the corner of the room, John laughed. Few people took that approach with Sherlock.) "Everything remarkable about her life in the past year?"
"Yes. I'll start you off. Tell me about her medical condition. Anything odd? What about her doctors and therapists? Tell me everything significant relating to her gender."
"Well... she got a new, uh, hormone doctor - "
"Endocrinologist," John corrected automatically. Shit. Just providing further evidence for Sherlock to analyze later. Oh well, he himself was a doctor. Perhaps Sherlock would think nothing of it. Or perhaps he would think a lot of it.
" - yeah, endocrinologist. Anyway, she was mad because the new doctor made her get a lower dose of the hormones, I think. But she said her, uh, gender therapist took care of it."
"Yes, what else, then? There has to be something else. Other areas of her life. Come on, say something useful!" Sherlock was bordering on psychotic.
The flatmate huffed. "She's had three boyfriends, one lasted about two weeks in the beginning of the year. One lasted about a month before they had a huge fight, which was in the summer, and they never spoke to each other again. And one ex-boyfriend was hanging around the flat for a while about two months ago, but she told him to piss off and that was that, I guess. He didn't come back."
Sherlock had gotten up out of his chair and was pacing around the tiny room, muttering to himself, hands flailing about, clawing at his hair, smacking himself in the forehead. John was beginning to get concerned. "Sherlock, you okay?"
"No, John! This case! It has been nagging at me all week, I don't understand, if Terrence Lee has nothing to do with it and Sophia's transition has nothing to do with it and her ex-boyfriends have nothing to do with it, then - "
The detective stopped dead in his tracks. His hands had been in the middle of a gesture when he had stopped; they were now frozen in mid-air. The expression on his face, too, had frozen in the middle of a word, giving him a comical look. Even the flatmate, sitting at the interrogation table, was inert, twisted around to look at the madman behind her and making no movements. John had to unfold his arms and shift his feet a bit to assure himself that time itself hadn't stopped.
Clarity dawned on Sherlock's face. "Oh..." Dropped his hands. "Oh." Clapped his feet together and brought his hands to the prayer position under his chin. "Oh!" He gave an abbreviated jump before dashing out the door of the interrogation room without another word to the girl or to his friend.
The two who were left looked at each other, bewildered. John turned to leave, but first: "I'm sorry, miss, what did you say your name was, again?"
Still in the post-Sherlock Holmes state of shock and disillusionment, her answer was slightly dazed and slightly late. "Mary. Mary Morstan."
He nodded. "Good day, then, Mary." And walked out, out of the Yard to grab a taxi back to Baker Street.
➣➣➣
John Watson, ex-army doctor, soldier, fighter, action man, was afraid to look in the goddamn mirror.
He had good days and he had bad days, of course, it wasn't as though he was always terrified of looking at his own body, of having a body at all. But today was a bad day.
Briefly, he considered not even changing into his pyjamas at all, but ever the utilitarian, he rationalized that they were the most conducive articles of clothing to comfort and sleep, and decided that he would soldier on through peeling off his clothes and replacing them with pyjamas. He turned his radio up, hoping to drown his brain in the drivel of bad pop songs and irritating commercials.
Coat first, obviously, then shirt, then the T-shirt underneath that... not the binder, not yet. Shoes, socks off, jeans... now he had on his binder and his pants. He couldn't sleep in his binder, though; not only was it extremely uncomfortable, but it was in fact medically unsafe and could restrict his breathing and compress his chest too much, even to the point of causing himself harm if he wore it too long. So he unzipped the front and took it off like a vest; he was walking to his dresser to grab a sports bra (cringed) and a T-shirt when he caught a look in the mirror by accident.
He couldn't even afford to get his own flat, there was no way he would be able to afford surgery any time soon. And so there his chest was, looking all wrong, all wrong, hanging off his rib cage like a pair -
The door was now open, and Sherlock Holmes was in it.
John had never moved faster in his life. One second he was in the middle of his bedroom, wearing nothing over his torso which had such an obvious addition to it and only a pair of red cotton pants over his crotch which so obviously had something missing. The next second (half a second) he had his coat held over as much of his body as he could cover and he screamed at Sherlock, "Get the fuck out!"
"John, we have to go! We're closing in on the murderer now, time is of the essence! Get dressed and let's go!"
Sherlock's long, black (stupid, dramatic, poncy) coat billowed out behind him as the detective left John's bedroom, and John had never felt sicker in his life.
➣➣➣
People tend to talk about "coming out" as though it is a single event in a gay or transgender person's lifetime in which they tell every person they know and every person they would ever know exactly who and what they are. But what people often overlook is that, even if the first time is the hardest or the most arduous, you never stop coming out. If you're gay or transgender or otherwise a gender or sexual minority, you're always going to meet new people, and make new friends, and some of these people will have to know eventually. Even John Watson, who had always been one for stealth regarding his status as transgender, had met new people and come out to new people - at med school, in the army, and just in everyday life. His parade of girlfriends - obviously if he intended to go anywhere with them, he had to let them know eventually.
Some people accepted it just fine. They assured him that, no matter his parts, he was a man, he was a John, and they would and could never think of him as anything else.
Some, however, stumbled. They asked him inappropriate and invasive questions, they walked on eggshells where it wasn't necessary to do and blundered forth without regard where John would have appreciated some tact. There were always people who had to make it about them ("Do you know how hard it is for me to get your pronouns right?... It's really hard for me to understand."), and there were always people who, although they were saying it out of concern and good will, made downright offensive comments ("I think you're just confused... Were you molested?... It's okay to be lesbian, you don't have to pretend to be a man.").
Some of his girlfriends were more than a little bit shocked, and occasionally they were quite averse. This, although it always disappointed him, never really surprised him; he knew it was a lot to ask. Hey, baby, I can make your dreams come true. Yeah, Three Continents Watson, that's me, always flirting with the ladies, always chasing skirts. Oh, and by the way, I have breasts and a vagina. Form an orderly queue, ladies. It was a difficult thing to accept; he knew that better than anyone.
(Still, that didn't mean it didn't hurt. It always hurt.)
And then, of course, there were always those times when John Watson found out who his friends really were.
➣➣➣
"For once, Mycroft's constant badgering was actually useful. As John knows, my brother has been bothering me all week to do some work on a drug trafficking case - huge organization, international, illegally solicited all kinds of drugs to all kinds of people, from the homeless to the Royals. Naturally, I told him where to stick it at first, but then we talked to Sophia Hughes' roommate and it hit me. The flatmate told us that Sophia's new endocrinologist refused to give her access to the hormones necessary for her hormone replacement therapy, and she told us that this made Sophia angry and upset. But looking at her body, she looked like a regular woman - there was no evidence she'd been off the hormones, no beginnings of facial hair, not even noticeable body odor. The flatmate said her therapist had taken care of it, but psychologists can't write prescriptions. Where was she getting the oestrogen, then? The answer, of course, is that our Sophia had turned to an illegal oestrogen provider to get her fill."
John watched Sherlock jump around Lestrade's desk in excitement, using extravagant hand gestures to drive his points home. He watched Anderson look on in disgust that was likely motivated by more than one factor. He watched Lestrade's face alternate from confusion, to sudden clarity, to amazement, to confusion, lather, rinse, repeat.
John wanted to go home now. He wanted to go home.
"So Sophia's getting illegal hormones from a big-time drug dealer. Now, the roommate told us that Sophia had an 'ex-boyfriend' who wouldn't leave her alone, but that wasn't her boyfriend, it was her drug dealer. She couldn't refer to him as her dealer to her friend, obviously, but why would she go with 'ex-boyfriend'? The answer, of course, is that the trope of the stalker ex-boyfriend is common enough that the flatmate wouldn't question it. But he wasn't exhibiting drug dealer behavior in public, he was apparently exhibiting jealous ex-lover behavior. Why would he act like this around a mere client? Maybe Sophia Hughes wasn't a mere client. Maybe the oestrogen dealer had himself a bit of an obsession with her, a romantic obsession."
John was tired and sad. He wanted to go home.
"The drug dealer stalks her but she tells him to "piss off", as the flatmate said. Then, Ms. Hughes walks out of a bar with one Terrence Lee, a man she'd never even met, and the two make a sex tape together and generally have a grand old time. The dealer gets jealous - how could she say no to him but yes to this strange man? - and waits before Mr. Lee has left to confront her. Things escalate, get out of hand, next thing he knows he's killed Sophia Hughes and has to do what he must to deflect suspicion. He dumps her in the alley of hookers and prays he never gets caught. But however will we find this mystery drug dealer? Mycroft has a list of the names of drug providers who sell hormones like oestrogen and testosterone to clients; they've been waiting for the opportunity to nab them and we've got that opportunity. Find the one who matches the flatmate's physical descriptors and you've got your man. You see, Lestrade, I told you before."
Lestrade made a sound of incredulity. "I ain't never heard any of that before."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "I told you before: textbook. Let's go, John"
Good, John thought. I want to go home now.
➣➣➣
John Watson, ex-army doctor, soldier, fighter, action man, locked himself in the bathroom for over an hour to avoid looking his flatmate in the eye.
➣➣➣
Eventually, he had to face him. John went to the sitting room to collapse onto his Union Jack pillow. He was just about to close his eyes when he was confronted very close-range with a steaming cup of tea, which he wearily took from the long white hand in front of his face. "Thanks."
No reply. Typical of Sherlock, but it didn't help to quell John's nerves.
They sat in silence for a good ten minutes (during which John cleared his throat at least seven times) before the doctor made his approach toward the elephant in the room. "About this evening - "
"Glad we finally resolved the case; I was beginning to think I was losing my touch." Humorous self-deprecation - not common with Sherlock. Meant there was something on his mind. Meant there was something wrong.
"Earlier, I mean. When you - " Inhaled deeply. " - when you walked in on me changing." Exhaled.
Five second pause, then: "Was that a question?" Snark. Good, John supposed. That was closer to Sherlock's usual self.
"I just - well, I understand if you don't - want to, you know, be my flatmate anymore, I know some people aren't really, well, comfortable with, you know - " He never stuttered this much when giving the coming out speech. What was wrong with him? Was it just the fact that this was Sherlock, the world's only consulting detective, the genius, the high-functioning sociopath? " - especially experiencing it in such close quarters, I understand if you want me to move out although I would very much like to continue the - the friendship and the working together as far as you can possibly - Sherlock, are you even listening?" Tears were threatening at the backs of John's eyes as he watched his best friend sigh, get up off the couch and pick up his violin. "Sherlock - "
"John, don't bore me with your dull little 'coming-out' speech that you've no doubt bored dozens of others with before. You said it yourself, that first night at Angelo's: it's all fine. Though this all does make me wonder if you really think so little of me that you think I would run out on what we have simply because your anatomy is different from mine."
➣➣➣
Harry had been confused at first. She had assumed that her younger brother was just a confused/closeted/repressed lesbian. John hadn't told their parents until he was already at uni so they couldn't kick him out. They never gave up their fight to try to "fix" him, not until the day they died. He lost a lot of friends at uni, but the ones he kept were good ones, like Mike Stamford. Mike had been more than accepting, actively working to try to support his friend and, later, the cause as a whole. In the army, most people didn't care, because it was stupid to whinge about the state of your doctor's genitals whilst he was sewing your innards back into your body.
Sherlock's reaction was an unusual one, to be sure. It was accepting, but it was almost... dismissive. It made John feel a little silly, in fact; he'd spent nearly two weeks in a constant state of agony, praying Sherlock wouldn't find out and playing out elaborate, extreme scenarios in which he would rehearse what to say if Sherlock ever did. Then, he'd been half-naked right in front of the man, his secret bared, and Sherlock wasn't fazed for even a second. Then, John had brought it up and tried for some damage control, which Sherlock abruptly dismissed as "dull" and acted like he was insulted by John's condescension to even be worried.
It was so trenchant, it was so atypical, it was so Sherlock.
➣➣➣
"Andria."
Sherlock smacked a book off the coffee table in rage. "That doesn't even start with a 'J'!"
John giggled at Sherlock's intense reaction. "It doesn't have to!"
"No. You're wrong."
"It was my name, Sherlock! I'm quite certain I'm right, actually, you git!" John was nearly doubled over.
Sherlock had bet him fifty quid that he could guess John's birth name. He had guessed Jeanette, Jennifer, Joann, Jillian, Jessica, Juliet, Jacqueline, Josie, Jordan, Julia, and all possible diminutives and variations of those, tearing his hair out in the process, before demanding that John tell him, for God's sake.
"No. Choose a new name, John. Choose one that starts with 'A'. Alex, perhaps. Andrew."
John laughed again. "Nope. John Watson. It's been on the papers for years."
Sherlock was laughing, now, too. "John. Quite a boring name, really. Why'd you choose it?"
John shrugged. "My father's name was John."
Sherlock almost fell for it, but: "No, it wasn't."
"You're right." He grinned. Sighed. "I wish I had some fantastic story about my uncle John who saved a dozen children from a burning building, or something, but really, I just chose it in particular because my favorite story as a child was Robin Hood."
It took Sherlock a moment. Then: "Little John."
"Yeah."
They sipped tea in a comfortable silence for a few moments before Sherlock spoke. "So if you're Little John, then who am I?"
The doctor grinned.