Chapter Text
Fifty-five minutes after he'd passed out, John finally heard his best friend stirring.
He stayed put, sitting peaceably in his chair, tilted just enough to have a view of the hallway. He didn't want to crowd Sherlock, and by doing so provoke the strop to end all strops and therefore the permanent end to this conversation. A physical examination was out of the question, so John just listened, instead. If Sherlock wouldn't allow him to look at him, then he'd just keep his ears open instead. Enough so to make sure that Sherlock was okay.
The sink turning on and off. The sounds of brushing teeth, Sherlock spitting, running the sink again. Rustling, whacks of towels, a grunt.
After no time at all, the door creaked open, and Sherlock emerged as a pale zombie.
He was hunched over, draped in his rumpled dressing gown and pajamas with his head down and arms wrapped miserably about his stomach. Every step was a dragged inch of exhaustion, heavy and slow with his feet barely even lifted off the floor. He looked like he'd wanted to just curl up back down in a heap on the floorboards.
He turned his back on the sitting room without looking up, padded off, and vanished into his room without a single word.
John winced.
He could hardly blame Sherlock. Not this time. In his shoes, John thought he probably would've done the same thing.
He decided to give Sherlock a few more minutes. From what he could hear, the worst of it had definitely passed; while he was still clearly unwell, it was no longer to the point of being seriously sick. Sherlock didn't need a doctor, anymore, he just needed to rest. Much more important that was allowing him to have at least a few moments of privacy.
After this afternoon, John figured it would be best if he let Sherlock collect himself and scrape back together some shreds of his composure, before this conversation.
He gave it ten minutes, after it had sounded like Sherlock had finally settled, to make his move.
Sherlock had stretched himself out in his bed, flat on his back again but this time buried securely under his duvet. Dressed now, and sullen rather than out of his mind. He still looked washed out and pale, his skin still damp, but the worst had passed, and he now just looked hungover or grousing with a bad cold.
He lay there with his arm draped back over his face, and despite John's very audible approach, still had eyes only for his sleeve.
"Hey," John called quietly, unsure of what else to say. He gave his bedroom door a close-knuckled rap. "Feeling better?"
"Yes."
"...Scale of one to ten?"
Sherlock sighed, his nostrils flaring. "Five." His voice was still a low and wrecked chainsmoker's growl.
John's brow furrowed. "You said earlier that appendicitis was a six."
"It's different types of pain. Appendicitis wasn't tolerable. This is. I-" He sighed loudly, clearly annoyed, and dragged his eyes open just enough to glare at John. "I'm feeling much better. Don't try and convince me I'm not."
John held his hands up in mock surrender, allowing the point to drop. However he wanted to describe it, Sherlock clearly did feel much better. Patients in severe enough pain that it qualified as some sort of medical emergency did not calmly answer questions, make sarcastic quips, and huff and puff. Sherlock was still in pain, but the crisis had passed.
"Can I get you anything?" He sat down on the edge of the bed, watching Sherlock even if Sherlock wouldn't look at him. He would treat this normally. They would have this conversation. "Just this once, since I don't think I fancy watching you crawl to the kitchen. You should drink something, at least."
"...Water. Room temperature. If you absolutely insist. And saltines," Sherlock muttered, frowning. Medically speaking, he still looked absolutely horrible. He glanced sideways at John, not even bothering to lower his arm from his face, and his bleary eyes were wet and bloodshot and just daring him to say something. "If you bring anything else, no matter how well-meaning, I will throw up, and you will clean it up. And if you try to lecture me on the importance of nutrition during my special time I will kill you in ways that are too unpleasant to speak aloud, and Lestrade will never be able to find the body."
"Yeah, yeah, all right, Your Highness. All right." Not even John of one hour ago would've been stupid enough to do something as suicidal as that. He got back to his feet, smiling a bit uselessly down at the bundle of blankets. "Should've figured you weren't the type for chocolate ice cream and netflix..."
"What?"
"It's- never mind. Never mind." No, that was a bad idea. He held his hands up, waving Sherlock down as he headed back to the kitchen to quickly fetch the requested items. He nearly made a comparison to a pregnant wife as well, but thought better of it. At least Sherlock was eating.
The consultant ignored the glass of water, but the crackers ended up on his stomach, spilling crumbs and crinkling plastic. He inelegantly crammed in three at once, looking a cross between ravenous and miserable and completely ticked off, and John's amusement fell. It really wasn't all that funny.
Sherlock's icy glare slid away from John, fingers pattering on his stomach as the ticks of a clock. Seconds passed in complete silence save for the noise of Sherlock's chewing.
Now or never.
"Sherlock. I-"
"Don't."
"I just wanted-"
"No," Sherlock said flatly, snatching his hand back. "There's nothing to talk about. We don't need to talk about this!" He jerked his head to turn firmly away, his eyes squeezed shut and his jaw clenched achingly tight. "I'd like to go back to sleep, John."
This was it, then.
If John caved, if John took the easy way out that Sherlock was offering- he could do it. He could hold up his hands and stand up and say, "Okay,", and this would never be brought up again. Sherlock would emerge from his room tomorrow or in a few days in one of his bespoke suits, pronouncing the game to be on, and that would be it. This was John's one opportunity, and if he gave Sherlock what he wanted, it would be his only opportunity. They would never talk about any of this again and everything would go back to how it had been before.
It was easy, yeah. It would be incredibly easy. For John.
He took a deep breath, and started again.
"You don't want to sleep. You only just woke up." He drummed his fingers on the side of the bed, willing Sherlock to look at him. "I wanted to apologise, actually."
"Fine." His voice was too fast, almost panicked, and he tried to squirm away again. "Apology accepted. Now go away."
"No, I mean... actually apologise, Sherlock. I was trying to make sure you weren't seriously hurt and I stand by that, but- you should've been able to control how you wanted me to know. If... you ever did. I'm sorry I took the choice away from you."
Sherlock snorted, his face still turned away. "It hardly matters." His fingers played with the sheets again- that anxious habit of his, the inability to keep still. "If that's all, then-"
"Sherlock."
The look on his face- genuinely horrible. He couldn't meet John's eyes and his white fingers wouldn't sit still and he looked like he wanted to crawl out of his own skin. He really believed John wasn't going to react well. Sherlock actually thought that today was going to end badly and was doing everything he could to postpone this conversation because he desperately didn't want to hear what John was going to say.
He took a deep breath, and started again.
"It's fine, Sherlock. Seriously- I mean that. It's all fine." He'd tried to swallow back the insulted feeling, that Sherlock would ever think otherwise at all, but he just couldn't stop the initial sting from worming its way back in. "Really? Did you ever really think I wouldn't be okay with this?"
Sherlock looked away, staring very hard at the opposite wall. His jaw was clenched so tightly it could've ground glass. "Not many people are." He fidgeted again, clearly supremely uncomfortable. "It also was not particularly inspiring to learn that you were estranged from your gay sister."
"Hang on, that's-"
"I don't want to talk about it."
John sighed, his shoulders sagging. This wasn't what he'd wanted. This wasn't what he'd wanted at all.
Sherlock lapsed back into silence. He looked like he wanted to turn on his side, to burrow under his blankets and ball himself away, but he was in too much pain to do so and contented himself with glaring at the wall and seething instead. His face stayed shrouded and cold, and he looked so miserable, but John knew he couldn't follow his lead into silence. It was not the right thing to do, to let this go.
He sat quietly, chewing on the inside of his cheek and determining his next move.
"I spoke to Mycroft-"
"I know. Obvious."
"...'Course it is." John hesitated again, resisting the urge to fix the edge of the duvet. Sherlock looked freezing, but trying to fix the blankets would probably get something thrown at him. "Is it obvious what we talked about?"
Sherlock hummed noncommittally. Still, he refused to look at John. His fingers drummed over his stomach in an ever-lengthening silence.
"I have endometriosis."
Unsure if this was a statement or answer, John just nodded. "Right."
Sherlock kept his gaze averted, picking on at stray threads. Clearly, he still did not want this conversation to continue.
Well? Fuck that.
He was Sherlock's doctor.
It was his job to have this conversation with him, whether it made him uncomfortable or not.
"Even if you already have a diagnosis-"
"John."
"-you ought to make an appointment for another exam. I could write you a referral, if-"
"John."
"-look, even if you already got the tissue removed, some of it has clearly grown back, and-"
"John," Sherlock groused, his voice lower the echo of a cello and one step away from the snarl of a panther cat. He covered his face with one long hand, squeezing the bridge of his nose in explicit annoyance. "There is absolutely no point in subjecting myself to it. It's only a problem if I slip on HRT, which, ignoring this aberration, I never do. Leave. It. Alone."
Well, that wasn't actually true. Medically speaking, it simply was not true. But John also hadn't been planning on pressing him about that. Not right now. But, if Sherlock was the one bringing it up... "Yeah, about that. You really should at least see an endocrinologist, Sherlock. Missing one or two doses shouldn't have been enough to cause this."
Sherlock groaned aloud, dragging his hand down his face. He looked like he wanted to just bury himself into a pillow and evaporate his entire existence.
Damn it, if he could at least not be a child about this. "Sherlock-"
"Yes, obviously not! I also shouldn't have just spent my entire afternoon wanting to kill myself, thrown up at the smell of your dreadful and ill-advised takeaway order, and I also really should not currently be experiencing the sensation of a family of newborn rodents cutting their teeth inside me." He finally dropped his hand to glare daggers at the ceiling, pale and disgusted. "Clearly, nothing about me has ever worked as it should. I don't care, John. And this is not something that we are ever going to discuss."
That was... a fair point, actually. Not one that necessarily satisfied him, but it did make some measure of sense. And John still wasn't done with this, but Sherlock's mind was clearly made up, and this part of the discussion was something that could wait. Now was certainly not the time to try and force it.
Sherlock was quiet for several moments again, the tension on his face fading as he realised further interrogation was not to come. His glassy eyes flickered away, cat-like and bloodshot, and his fingers still drumming an unsteady pattern on his stomach. "You called Mycroft."
"...Yes." Accusation glimmered in Sherlock's glare, but it took John a moment to figure out why. "I'm sorry. I had to talk to someone, and I know you hate him, but he was the only person I could be sure already knew."
"I don't hate him. He's irritating and more of a pest than a mosquito, and the country at large would probably be better off without him, but I don't hate him." Sherlock closed his eyes again, just breathing. "I suppose I ought to thank you for not calling anyone else."
John rolled his eyes, not bothering to resist his smile at that one. He didn't feel the need to ask if Sherlock would ever be able to say such a thing to his brother himself, or if he was aware that more of a pest than a mosquito was probably the kindest thing he'd ever said about Mycroft Holmes.
Another awkward silence passed. John swallowed hard, willing himself not to squirm. "So, um. Who else... knows, then? ...Mrs. Hudson?"
Which was- decidedly not where John had wanted this conversation to go. It was not helpful at all and stupidly counterproductive, and he had no idea how it had come out at all. But the topic had at least made Sherlock very marginally more relaxed than before, his mess of curls twitching in a faint nod, and that was enough for John to pursue it.
"We met before I transitioned. Apparently my personality was... distinctive enough that she still recognised me when, I found her in London. As she says, she's familiar with all sorts."
"Distinctive enough. Right. I'm sure that's the word." John had figured as much, knowing how far back Sherlock and Mrs. Hudson's history went, but he'd wanted to be sure. God, he couldn't even imagine what Sherlock must've been like, all the way back then. What he must've looked like, how much of a terrifying force of nature a teenage, desperately unhappy Sherlock Holmes would've been... John shuddered. He had his hands full enough with this Sherlock, thank you very much.
"Lestrade?"
"He knows some of it. I'm not sure how much." Sherlock went back to fiddling with the duvet, then began crumbling up another cracker. His eyes stayed distant and cold, averted away, and John hitched a leg a little more onto the bed. "He insisted on drug testing me before he'd let me properly consult, and wouldn't trust me unless he was in the room watching. I think I nearly made him pass out. He's found my testosterone on his ridiculous drugs busts, too." The consultant huffed under his breath, sounding unspeakably annoyed. "We've never discussed it, so I don't know what he thinks. I've given him more than enough to make a proper deduction, but given the how lost at sea he is without me, I don't have the slightest idea what conclusion he's drawn. I don't care."
Privately, John figured that somehow, the DI had probably grasped a lot more than he'd let on. Like Mycroft, Lestrade had been eager and willing to make sure John had known Sherlock's history with substance abuse upon just moving in, but also known to not tell him this.
Sherlock really had no idea how lucky he was, did he?
"Okay. Um- Mol-"
"For god's sake, John, are we to explore my entire address book? What does it matter?! No, Molly doesn't know!" His eyes flashing, Sherlock finally wormed upright, yanking away from John's hand and glaring at the water as if it had said something to personally offend him. He sipped at it, mouth twitching. "Moriarty does."
Alarm jabbed through him in an electric shock.
"What- Moriarty?! As in... as in Jim Moriarty?" No. No, this wasn't happening. His brother and very old friends were one thing, but London's very own consulting criminal? "Guy who held a gun to my head and nearly blew us both up, that Moriarty! What the hell, Sherlock, are you sure?!"
"Mmm, yes. We had a whole conversation about it- he can be very polite, when he wants to be." Next to John's sudden and immediate alarm, Sherlock remained horrifyingly aloof, even flashing him another pale and wan grin with his eyes alive for the first time all day. "There's nothing to get worked up about, believe it or not. He's only interested in beating me on his own merits; to watch me fail at my own game. He wants me to lose to him, not... society's prejudices." He paused for a moment more, somehow managing to look so bored John wouldn't have been surprised to see him start twiddling his thumbs. He'd cared infinitely more about ordering John to Tesco's for tea than calmly discussing the way his sworn nemesis and London's most dangerous psychopath could tear apart his life. "It would just be so boring to destroy me with something so serendipitous."
That was... pretty fucking alarming. And somehow, Moriarty finding it boring was not at all the relief Sherlock had meant it as.
But it also made a horrible measure of sense. Moriarty had always been fascinated by Sherlock's mind. That was the challenge, to him. Outting Sherlock would wreck his career and destroy his reputation. But that wasn't a win, not to Moriarty. That was cheating.
Moriarty liked to win. He didn't like to cheat.
It still didn't sit right with John. The very idea of Jim Moriarty knowing something that could do easily be used to destroy Sherlock made him sick to his stomach.
But Moriarty already knew. Somehow. Whether he liked it or not, it was far too late to do anything at all about it.
"...Right, then," John forced out, nearly choking on the words. "If you're sure." He watched Sherlock's silence and guarded cocoon, silver eyes still turned away from him and his jaw clenched, and before he knew it was squeezing a blanketed lump that was probably his hand. He couldn't help himself.
His next question was probably very, very stupid. But once again, he couldn't help himself.
"Anderson?" he tried, forcibly casual. "Donovan?"
Sherlock's startled eyes flickered back up, widening infinitesimally. "Why would they-?" He watched John for a moment in open confusion, just that one moment.
Then his gaze turned to ice, and the look on his face was nothing short of murder.
"We're done talking about this."
"Sherlock?" Shit. Shit. "I didn't mean-"
"No! No, I will not have this conversation!" Sherlock started to turn away, panting through his nose and clenched teeth, but then suddenly whipped back around to face John head on with eyes like fire. "What is it? It's perfectly all right for me to be a monster or a freak when it's just for my brain and how it works, who I am, John, but for something as inconsequential as my cock or lack thereof and now it's suddenly not okay?!"
Oh, fuck. He'd screwed this up. That hadn't been what he'd meant at all, except now that he heard the words himself it had been, just a little bit- that had been the worst thing to say, to even think, and he'd really offended him, hadn't he? John could see it right there on Sherlock's face. He'd had an hour to prepare and still barely managed to last ten minutes before taking the worst turn, facefirst right into a wall. "Sherlock-"
"No!" he shouted again. "This is exactly why I never told you! This, John, right here! You see me differently, now- you treat me differently! I'm Sherlock Holmes, I am a genius, I am an arrogant bastard freak of nature, because I am smarter than all of you, I'm- I'm a genius, John," he snapped again, breathless and enraged, his eyes burning and alive, god, he was so angry, "everything else is nothing more than meaningless transport- and yet the first thing you'll think when you look at me now is what's under my trousers! Just- fuck off, John!"
"I'm sorry! I know I'm messing this up, that's not what I meant at all, but I'm trying here, Sherlock! And I know it's not fair to ask you to be patient about this, but I'm doing all that I can- just give me the bloody chance to try!"
Sherlock shut his eyes again, huffing through his nose and looking furious, and John had to take a moment to just turn away and breathe. Yelling at each other wasn't going to get anywhere. He forced himself to remember the look on Sherlock's face, earlier this afternoon. To remember how silently angry Mycroft had been at him on the phone.
This wasn't about him. This was about Sherlock's life- a secret John had found out without his permission, an one that Sherlock had never wanted him to know. As frustrated as John was, he couldn't lose sight of that.
He returned back to the side of the bed, finding Sherlock turned back away and unbearably sullen, glaring at the wall with half-lidded, angry eyes. John reached forward to gently touch the lump of blankets, but something about the look on his face made the impulse quail, and he pulled his hand back without ever touching him at all.
"I'm sorry," he repeated quietly. "I'm not... trying to treat you differently. Or I shouldn't be. I'm just trying to understand you a little better, I think. I'm certainly not going to pity you."
Sherlock's ashen face twisted; he still looked punched in the gut. "I should hope not."
"But," John forged on, catching the edge of the lump with a firm hand, "I don't want to just ignore it, either. It's- obviously important to you. What kind of friend would I be if that I pretended today didn't happen at all?" He stopped, giving him a moment, but Sherlock's sullen expression only turned even more annoyed. "At the very least, it's something that I need to know about if you want me to keep being your doctor."
Sherlock all but pouted, looking incredibly put out, but at least no longer outright angry. "Everything's worked just fine until now," he pointed out, and John could do nothing but raise an eyebrow. Oh, sure. Everything had worked out just fine. That was why he had almost called an ambulance for Sherlock just this afternoon, yes, definitely.
For several moments, it remained quiet. Sherlock continued looking sulky and unhappy, his eyes veiled, but John's point had been made. At the very least, Sherlock now had to know that John wasn't going to react badly. Even though it still hurt a little bit that that had ever been a concern in the first place.
All he needed to do was wait, and listen.
"They found it when I was twenty-four," Sherlock sighed at length, his voice still impossibly low and flat. He stared distantly at the ceiling, far, far away from John and his room. "I went in for a hysterectomy. I woke up to find out I hadn't gotten one, and my surgeon absolutely ecstatic to inform me he was referring me to another specialist. He'd cut me open, found endometriosis and diseased tissue instead, and therein found the reason I wanted to mutilate myself." His voice was a calm drawl, spectacularly unbothered, the words and his vacant expression dripping with condescension, and his fingers pattered up and down like he was playing an invisible xylophone. He looked absolutely fine with it. "He understood why I'd wanted to before, but I didn't have to do that anymore. I was sick, you see. Properly ill! With a documentable medical condition, and not some sort of mental disorder. Now, they'd be able to treat it! I'd be able to be a proper girl. Perhaps even still have children. ...he expected me to be thrilled."
This was Sherlock's retelling, and John had already decided to let him say it at his own pace, without pushing or interruption. But at that, he knew he had to say something. "That was a long time ago, you know." He risked squeezing Sherlock's fidgeting hand, trying to get him to sit still. That certainly explained why Sherlock had never gone for the procedure again. "He sounds like a prick. But things have progressed a lot, in just a few years. Between me and Mycroft, I'm sure we could find you a much better-"
"No."
"It could be worth-"
"No, John." He turned his head away, curling away even more to bury himself under the blankets with his back now to him, a sullen and annoyed little ball. "Believe it or not, I'm not dependent on medical intervention to be satisfied with who I am. Why the hell would I want to dedicate the next months or years of my life to centering around the fact that no matter how much I look like a man, in the eyes of most of the braindead masses, I'm still not one? It won't change how I look. It won't change how people see me. I already went through it once and it didn't even work, John." Sherlock stopped for a moment, his face grey and vacant. "Do you have any idea what it's like to have your entire life defined by something that you hate?"
John drew up short, his breath caught.
"I... no." He swallowed hard, feeling suddenly very discomforted. "I didn't think of it that way, I guess. I'm- sorry."
He hadn't. And he didn't have any idea what that was like.
But after spending most of his life running away from his drunk father and his drunker sister- the last several years in particular had mostly been spent pretending Harry did not exist, beyond an uncomfortable knot in his stomach whenever the subject came up-
Well, maybe he could understand. Just a little bit.
Sherlock hardly looked mollified, but he didn't look further incensed, either. He just looked very, very tired, and after a moment curled even more away, all that was visible being a head of angry, frizzy curls. "It's not all as angst-ridden and heart-breaking a story as you're thinking, you know," he grumbled. "Daddy taught me how to tie a tie. I'm not entirely sure he hasn't deleted I wasn't born this way entirely. He... insisted on being involved, actually, though google would have sufficed just fine. Though I still had to wear a skirt to school."
"Public school?"
"Obviously," Sherlock sniffed; he could almost see the vicious eye roll. "Even that wasn't as bad as it could've been. It was only for a few years. Tedious. Stupid." He paused again, pressing his face deeper into the pillow. "The first time I passed out, I was sixteen, and ruined Mummy's Christmas dinner. The nurse at A&E was very confused as to why my parents had brought me in, and said I needed to grow up and learn to deal with it. Like the rest of us. Mummy nearly had her fired."
"Good," John snapped savagely. "She should've been."
Sherlock's mouth twitched, and for the first time he looked something other than exhausted. His silver eyes flickered back to John, unreadable and cold for one long moment.
Then they lightened in amusement, and he finally won himself a hard-fought smile. "Perhaps." He paused again. "I did learn to deal with it. Mostly with heroin. And then cocaine, which isn't quite a traditional painkiller, but- the sustained activation of dopamine is more than satisfactory as a replacement sensation. It's transcendent, really."
"Mm. Yeah. And addictive. That part, too. The most addictive substance known to man, isn't that what the most recent studies show?"
"A doctor's addict is a bored genius of a user," Sherlock returned, rolling his eyes. He was clearly very unimpressed and not at all open to pursuing the subject, and returned to thumping his fingers on his stomach again instead, frowning at the ceiling. "The only reason a twenty-four year old drug addict was allowed to go in for reassignment surgery was because Mycroft, pillock though that he is, arranged it. Don't tell him I said that."
"What. That he's a pillock?"
"He is a pillock. He just also has his uses. His limited, upon very rare occasion, uses." He shook his head in a twitch of curls, still burrowed under his blanket. "I even had a boyfriend, once. In university- you can shut your mouth, John, it is not that much of a shock. Victor."
John worked his jaw, again forcing himself to keep his mouth shut. Boyfriend. Not his area- except it had been, once.
And it clearly wasn't now.
Because this Victor... had ended badly? And in what way? It must have ended badly; Sherlock looked upon the very idea of romantic relationships with outright hostility. John had known him for years, and the closest he'd come to one was whatever the hell Irene Adler had been. And John was still a doctor, he knew the statistics, he knew how things could go wrong, but as his own sickened rage started to swell up inside of him he had to catch himself short, because wasn't this what Sherlock had been so worried about? For John to look at him and reduce everything that he was down to this?
Sherlock could read minds, even sick as a dog and curled up facefirst into a pillow, and the detective waggled a hand at him, his fingers long and dismissive. "Stop that. It's silly and unnecessary. Victor... didn't fully understand, no. And he did break up with me after he found out. But he wasn't violent or cruel. He stayed friends with me. He didn't even out me." Sherlock tucked his head deeper into the pillow, gone quiet, almost wondering. "Whatever sad story you've been telling yourself in your head is unwarranted. I really have been extraordinary lucky, John. As even someone of your limited mental faculties can undoubtedly see."
There was something unspeakably sad, about the way Sherlock said that. How mystified he was, by the fact that this Victor had chosen to treat him with at least one single scrap of human decency, like that wasn't something he had any right to expect- like John wouldn't have gone out right now to go track him down to smash his nose in had he dared to have treated Sherlock with anything less. It wasn't that he was wrong, exactly... and maybe that was the problem.
Because he wasn't wrong.
It felt horrible to admit it. But John knew the statistics, and Sherlock was right. He truly had been extremely lucky. He had been born into a wealthy, well-connected family, to get him access to treatment in a day and age when that was the only way to get it. He had had supportive... friends? Whatever Victor and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson counted for, he had people who knew his secret and hadn't been violent or broken his trust. He had had a supportive family. That, in and of itself, was still horrifyingly uncommon. Sherlock really had been incredibly lucky.
Perhaps it was the resigned way that Sherlock said it. That Sherlock knew he was lucky, and John knew it, too. How easy it would've been for his life to turn out so very differently, and how unfair that was. How unfair that it had to be termed lucky, just because he had had something at all approaching healthy relationships with friends and family.
And John knew the story he'd gotten today was the glossed over and sanitized version. Sherlock could tell whatever version of the story he wanted to; like it or not, John was a doctor. He knew what the facts were. Sherlock was a transgender man that had been born in the 1980s.
There was a reason that Sherlock had been so alarmed when John had so stupidly yanked that towel away. There was a reason that Mycroft's first instinct had been, not to ask if Sherlock was okay, but to plan to get John as far away from his brother as possible.
Sherlock's story wasn't all rainbows.
John swallowed again, smothering down a knot of eye-burning rage. "Tea?" he asked, getting to his feet. "Or more water?"
The fluffy ball shrunk again, considering. His face was still completely hidden, and he didn't look like he was going to be coming out again any time soon. "Four sugars."
It wasn't his usual. Just this once, though, John figured he could forgo the lecture about his cholesterol.
He took his time in the kitchen, making two very careful cups of tea and then taking a moment to sip at his own. Three sips. Count to ten. Do this right, John.
His return to Sherlock's bedroom found the blanket burrito sitting back upright, his knees pulled loosely to his chest. His face was visible now, only just, a sliver of pale, ashen skin that was still faintly flushed, his hair in a bedraggled muss and stood all up on end. He accepted the cup of tea, bringing it to his face and overflowing cocoon, and focused his quicksilver eyes on it and it only.
The interim silence, then, was John's opportunity to make his move.
"So." He sat carefully down on the side of the bed, brushing at the bundle of expensive sheets. "I'll let it drop, after today. But I do really think you should see a specialist, Sherlock. I'm sure Mycroft has a list of discreet ones, and just a simple blood-test or check-up can be much more illuminating than you might think, especially if something's wrong."
Sherlock sipped wordlessly at his tea.
"I'll consider it," he muttered finally.
John nodded back. "Thank you." He focused on his own tea, hoping to get Sherlock to understand. "Then, if, uh... that's what you want. That's the last we have to talk about any of this, then."
The detective's eyes flickered again, and he stiffened by degrees, the tea in his cup sloshing. He glanced at him speculatively, his gaze unreadable, and John could do nothing but look back and wait to pass his test.
Sherlock's life might've been lucky, up until now. He might be lying through his teeth, and hiding everything about it that hadn't been because he didn't want John to know. There were unquestionably things that had gone wrong and been cruel and unfair, even in what very little he'd told John here today.
All John was concerned about was how to make it better going forward.
Do you have any idea what it's like to have your entire life defined by something that you hate?
Then this couldn't define him going forward, either.
"That would be... yes. I-" His friend paused, his piercing, exotic eyes not looking away even once. "Thank you, John."
"Well. Not quite, actually. Sorry, but- as your doctor, I really think I have to-"
Sherlock started to pull away, his pale face transforming back into hostility. John caught his arm before he made it "Next time you fly, you're taking all your medication with you. Even if I have to hide it in the bloody peanut butter, you got that? Because we're not repeating this afternoon ever again."
Sherlock blinked. His tired eyes remained dull and exhausted, but his mouth twitched again, just a little, and for the first time all day, he finally looked entirely put at ease.
"Deal," he said.