Symmetrical, Unbroken 1/2
Title Symmetrical, Unbroken (1/2)
Fandom Sherlock BBC 2010
Pairing Sherlock/John
Rating NC-17
Prompt Sherlock is intersexed and identifies himself as a man. His ambiguous genitalia and the history of his sexuality and identity are what have kept him from being close to people romantically, particularly John. John finds out or is told, and it really is all fine.
(This is similar to a previous prompt, but that prompt said "Sherlock has both female and male genitalia, he is intersexed," and that's not what intersexed means for humans.)
Warnings References to the medical management of intersexed people being, at times, less than humane, but nothing specific or graphic. Intentional tense change: Parts 1-3 are in present tense, the rest in past tense.
AN Resides at the bottom of part 2/2.
1.)
Hindsight is 20/20.
It's a thought that has probably never crossed Sherlock's mind, considering that his present sight is usually far better than 20/20, but it can still be applied to him.
When John watches him licking the salt off crisps, leaving the potato a soggy oily mess on the side of a napkin, he thinks it's merely a disgusting habit.
2.)
John has had many girlfriends, but only two boyfriends, a fact that his sister likes to tease him about.
"Face it, John, you're what Kinsey would call homosexual, and incidentally heterosexual."
He rolls his eyes at her when she gets like that, a habit that drives her insane.
"How do you figure incidentally, when I've had far more girlfriends than boyfriends?" he asked once.
She had fixed him with a stare. "You've fucked a lot of women, and good on you, Jonny-boy. But you've been in love with two men, and I doubt you could say the same for any of the women."
He had flicked a beer cap at her, hardly an erudite response, but nothing else had been said on the matter.
It's not a problem, exactly, except that he hates admitting that she's right.
3.)
He knows he's going to develop feelings for Sherlock Holmes, from the moment he sees the man. He doesn't have Sherlock's gift for insight, but he doesn't need it to see how cold he is to Molly, all please and thank you while all the while he's being a right prick to her. After that first time he isn't like that in front of John, anymore, and John figures it's just that Sherlock has figured out that it makes him uncomfortable. He's swift enough to know that it's not because Sherlock has suddenly become a nicer man.
That doesn't stop the flutter of warmth under his twelfth rib when Sherlock turns his attention to John. It doesn't stop the fact that he looks forward to seeing Sherlock at the end of each day. It doesn't stop the feelings from happening-- attraction, fascination, desire. John catalogues them even as he figures that it's useless. Sherlock is married to his work, and has never, by word or sign, betrayed a human attraction to anything or anybody.
4.)
"How was work?"
John hung his coat.
"Sorry, what?"
"I was asking you how work was." Sherlock leaned against the kitchen worktop. "It's customary for one person to ask another, especially when there are indications that the day has been particularly stressful. Discussing it may help discharge some of the unpleasant emotion." He turned back to the experiment that he was carrying out in what looked like no less than a Waterford crystal bowl. Something gelatinous clung to the end of the fork that he was stirring the mess with. John looked away, but found himself continually glancing back.
"It was bloody awful, if I'm honest," John said. "Two transports to hospital, and one of them in less than expiditious fashion. I wanted to give the receptionist a piece of my mind but Sarah convinced me to let it lie for a day, but come on, someone walks in with slurred speech and a weak arm, and you tell them to take a number? You don't need a medical qualification to tell that some things are just bad news."
"A simple algorithm could save you some frustration on that front," Sherlock said. His eyes were still on the gel, which seemed to be emitting a gentle purple glow. "What else?"
"Does there need to be anything else?" He sat down heavily, his head perking up for a moment when Sherlock switched the kettle on. From the distinctive rumble John could tell that it was full of water, but he shook his head, sure that Sherlock wasn't going to actually make him a cup of tea.
"I assume so. Two dramatic transports would have been well within your tolerance for unpleasant events."
John sighed. "It wasn't any other specific event. Sarah had to leave early to attend a funeral. There were a spate of walk-in upper respiratory infections, and a pile of charts went missing."
"It was an aggregate rather than a discrete event," Sherlock said, wiping his hands on a tea towel. He stared at the towel for a moment, then chucked it in the bin.
"Is that where all the tea towels are getting to?" John asked.
"Not all of them." Sherlock pulled down a mug from one of the safe cabinets and, using a pair of tongs to handle the tea bag, made a cup of tea with a splash of part skim milk, the way John always took it.
"What are you experimenting with anyway?" John asked.
"Phosphorescent diatomes," Sherlock said. "I am assured that they are not poisonous, but they may have a repellent taste, hence the tongs." He set the mug in front of John.
"You made me tea."
"I'm using all of the worktop and you're clearly both dehydrated and exhausted. It seemed the least that I could do."
"Thank you."
"You're quite welcome." Sherlock covered the bowl with a sheet of cling film and set the entire thing in the microwave.
"You're not going to cook them?" John asked. It wasn't that he suspected diatomes of having feelings, but it seemed needlessly cruel.
"Of course not, it's just the safest, darkest place to put them for now. My work on the implications of a phosphorescent tide is nearly done but I may wish to observe them further tomorrow."
"You know, I'm sure there's a marine biologist or two who have written monographs on the subject." He took a sip of the tea. Perfect.
"Oh, there's many, but no one seems to be interested in the penetration of these diatomes into human flesh over time."
John shook his head. "Are you saying I'm glad I didn't have a closer look at the contents of that bowl?"
"I was not saying it, but your inferrence is correct. Now. I could murder a chicken tikka bunna. I suggest that you finish the tea, take a shower of no more than eleven minutes duration, then dress yourself in your pyjamas by which time I will have returned with food."
"You're going out to get food?"
"Again, a correct deduction, but a little elementary, given what I just told you." In the low light of the kitchen Sherlock's gray eyes looked almost warm. "I rang the takeaway when I heard your tread on the stair. I'll be back in fourteen minutes." With that he left the kitchen and moments later John heard the door slam as he left. He finished his tea, then did as Sherlock had suggested.
5.
Over the following week John thought on that evening often. He had commented to Sherlock, after dinner, that he didn't even have the attention span needed to watch telly, and Sherlock had responded by picking up his violin and playing John's favorite airs, despite the fact that John was well aware that his preference for Chopin and Mozart was contrary to Sherlock's predilections. John fell asleep on the couch and woke to find himself covered by a thin blanket. Sherlock was sitting up in the chair adjacent, reading on John's laptop.
"You'd be more comfortable in your own bed, and as you've been asleep for approximately three hours I think your circadian rhythm will tolerate you waking enough to go up to your room."
"Quite right," John had said.
The memory warmed him through the week and he found himself sitting at his desk when he should have been signing off on charts, a small pleased smile on his face.
6.
Months later London was covered in endless storms, thunder and lightning alternating with periods of intense soaking rain. While scientists and politicians droned about global warming and climate change John and Sherlock took no notice, focused on a different kind of storm. Caught up in the battle that was laid over London like a transparency on an anatomy diagram John barely noticed as he put himself into deeper and deeper danger, until Sherlock was threatened. Then he felt the danger like a familiar friend, a faithful dog at his side as he walked into an old stone church with only two exits, knowing that he was walking into a trap, sure only that he would have Sherlock out in time.
In time turned out to be only just in time, and the thick walls of the church absorbing the blast from the Semtex that seemed to be Moriarty's tiresome calling card now were their salvation. In the street John struggled to see clearly through the rain, to focus on Sherlock's face, the rivulets of rain in the sodium vapor light looking far too much like blood. John swept his hands over Sherlock's face again and again, looking for any sign, any inkling that he was not alright.
"John, John, I'm fine," the words clearly a lie as he held on tight to John's arms once he stumbled.
John gave in to fear, gave in to desire, gave in to every strong feeling that threatened to overwhelm him. He let his hands roam over Sherlock's neck, his face, his ribs and his chest, pushing through thin fabric to feel the skin and muscle and bone underneath, all whole. Sherlock fell forward, caught by John's broad chest, and his head was heavy on John's shoulder. John lowered his face to Sherlock's cheek, brushed his lips against that softly bristled skin, then nearly fell as Sherlock pushed him away.
"We cannot," Sherlock managed to croak out. "We cannot do this." Sherlock ran towards the ambulance, balance off, limbs moving without coordination. He was met by two EMTs, and John tried to let his relief that Sherlock was being seen to outweigh his disappointment that Sherlock had pushed him away.
7.
Barely a week after the church incident John was unsurprised to find a black car pulling up beside him as he walked home from work. He entered with a sigh, disappointed to find that the journey to whatever isolated audience chamber Mycroft was bringing him to would be alone, without even the lovely Anthea to distract him.
The car pulled up to a primary school, parked outside the propped open door that opened directly into one of the classrooms. John wondered if Mycroft was implying something about his intellect as he walked in.
"John. How lovely to see you again." Mycroft stood in the middle of the empty classroom, the message clear. You will approach me. John chafed at the implication, but knew that the entire thing would be over with more quickly if he just walked forward. In the corner Anthea sat on one of the plastic chairs that seemed so ubitquious in consolidated schools, her legs crossed at the knee. John tried not to look, failed, and, knowing that Mycroft would have noticed anyway, indulged in an entire second of leering as he walked towards the other man.
"Can't say the same, now, can I?" John asked.
"What a pity. I won't keep you long, John. Surely you can guess why you're here."
"I can't, and I won't," John said.
"Oh, please. Coyness is so unbecoming."
In the corner Anthea's thumbs sped over the keys. John had a brief mad moment of wondering if she was playing an endless game of Angry Birds.
He looked into Mycroft's eyes, but found no answers there. "I really don't know."
"That scene outside the church? Really, John, it was so..." Mycroft paused. "Gothic."
"Bit of a pervert then?" John asked. He had considered the possibility, but discarded it. It seemed that he was simply too rational.
"Not at all, I assure you. I wish you and my brother nothing but the best, but, knowing him, I'm sure he's continued to push you away."
"Once again, it's none of your business, however much you might think that it is." John's eyes flickered, as they were meant to, to the envelope that Mycroft held under one arm.
"And as usual, I must disagree with you." Mycroft handed John the envelope and John, knowing that it would only delay his return to 221B if he refused, took it in hand. The contents shifted, shuffled, heavy but smooth papers. "Photographs of our shared childhood. Sherlock did take so little from the house when he left. Mummy is quite at loose ends trying to figure out what to do with some of his more essoteric collections. But I bore you. Go on, John, open it."
"Why would I do that?" He tucked the envelope under his arm. "I'll bring them to Sherlock if that's what you want, but they're not mine to look at."
"But they are, John. I've just given them to you."
John stayed silent.
"I'm sure Sherlock knows all about your charming childhood with Harriet. Why shouldn't you know of our Boys Own Adventures?"
John allowed himself to smile at that, hoping, perhaps, that Sherlock and Mycroft had in fact gotten up to some innocent fun when they were young.
"I'll let him tell me all about them." He turned and walked away, back to the door, to Anthea. She stayed seated for a worryingly long time but stood just before his own step started to falter.
"John." And then he was arrested again, at the sound of Mycroft's voice. "Should Sherlock ever get over his ridiculous hang ups, you should know-- Mummy and I would welcome you into our family with open arms."
John cocked his head to the side as he wondered how Mycroft could sound so genuinely warm and so threatening at once.
"I'm not sure I'm up to one of your Christmas dinners," he said, as he turned to walk away. Anthea smirked over her shoulder at him as they got into the car, and he felt like he'd won at something.
8.
John watched with mild interest as Sherlock knelt on the worktop, rummaging through the smallest cabinet over the fridge. In John's parents' house that space had been for birthday candles and the fondue set, things that belonged in the kitchen but were rarely used. Given that most of the things in Sherlock's kitchen didn't really belong in a kitchen in the first place, John was reluctant to wonder what was in their smallest cabinet.
Sherlock jumped down, something cupped in his hand, and sat at the table.
"John, I have to ask you a favor, and I hope that you an appreciate the fact that I have never before put you in this position."
"What, never asked me a favor before?" John asked. He set his toast down on the side of his plate. If Sherlock was making preemptory apologies it was no time to be chewing.
"I've never asked you for this particular kind of favor. The thing is, John, I've had to do a bit of rearranging with my schedule of late. There was that issue at the aquarium that absolutely couldn't wait, and I rashly canceled an appointment for myself. Now it's been rescheduled but I'd rather not have to call the surgery again and explain that I actually need a new script. So." He pushed forward an what had been in his hand, an empty amber bottle with a paper label, and something like a small plastic pen.
Dexamethasone, John read. One daily, and per protocol. #40. He looked up sharply. "You're taking a steroid every day?"
"Yes."
John was surprised by the terse answer, and looked down at the injector pen. Forteo. "And you've got osteoporosis. Well, it's no wonder considering the steroid."
Sherlock just met his gaze with a look that John had trouble placing. He'd never seen in on Sherlock's face before, but at this moment Sherlock wasn't his flatmate. Sherlock was asking John to be his doctor, for however brief a time, and John had seen that face on patients before. He'd seen it when children had something they desperately wanted to tell, but couldn't because their parents were in the room. Come find me, the look said. Figure out what it is that I am trying to tell you.
John considered his options carefully. Arthritis was one thought, but dexamethasone was far stronger than the prednisone that some patients with rheumatoid conditions were given, and usually they weren't used at all in someone so young. Sherlock was on a daily steroid, and he'd been on it long enough to cause osteoporosis-- if it was the steroid itself that had caused it, and not the same underlying condition that occasioned the use of the steroid in the first place, the need of it, considering that no one would prescribe such a thing frivolously.
John looked at the prescriber's name on the bottle-- Malcom Ardent, one of the leading endocrinologists in London had prescribed the steroid. So, definitely not arthritis, then. The Forteo was a mimic of a human parathyroid hormone. John imagined the chemicals, a cascade in the bloodstream, endless checks and balances. Parathyroid, androgens, cortisol, ACTH.
"Adrenals," he muttered.
"Yes?" Sherlock looked pleased, and, he was surprised to note, nervous.
"Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?" John asked. He felt like he was being pimped in the halls of Barts, felt all of twenty years old again, suddenly.
"My dear John. You have the thing figured out."
"CAH," John said, irritated now. "And you've let yourself run out of dexamethasone?" He wasn't an endocrinologist, but he knew the crisis that could occur if Sherlock didn't attend to his daily corticosteroid.
"I have two left. They're under the skull, in case of emergency. I was hoping you'd help me."
John looked at the bottle, the implications of the illness settling over him like a heavy mantle. CAH could lead to a salt wasting crisis in less than a day.
"This explains the mustard on toast," John muttered. "The endless love of soy sauce. The way you lick the salt off of crisps."
"We'll make a detective of you yet."
John shook his head slowly. "I'll do it. Just enough until your next appointment. I may only be a GP but I know how serious it would be if you missed several days."
"It's four days from now. A prescription for five doses would be most welcome."
"I'll write it for seven. You have a protocol for stress."
"I haven't any cases on at the moment." Sherlock leaned back, an attitude of feigned nonchalance.
"I'll refill your Forteo as well. Wouldn't do to get out of the habit."
"Thank you."
John went to his room and took the prescription pad out of his desk. He kept three blank scripts on hand and while he never would think that anything in his life was a secret he also knew that Sherlock would never use them for his own benefit. He wrote the scripts out carefully, signed them, and brought them back downstairs.
Sherlock nodded as he accepted them, taciturn again.
John was nearly out the door when Sherlock's voice stopped him.
"John?"
"Yes?"
"We'll talk more tonight." Sherlock was sitting at the table, still holding the prescriptions in his hands, and the manila folder that Mycroft had given him was on the table too.
"See you then," John said. As he walked down the stairs he had the feeling that he'd not really uncovered as much as Sherlock had wanted him to, but then again, he was on his way to work, a whole day of far more mundane diagnoses awaiting him.
9.
Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table when John got home, an air of expectation practically radiating. John felt something in him that had been wound tight by the busy day of work loosening when he saw his friend, and the warm feeling under his ribs that he'd come to associate with Sherlock returned.
"Shall we open it?" Sherlock asked, referring, clearly, to the envelope in the center of the table.
John clicked on the kettle. "What could be in there that is so important? And why did you wait for me?"
"Because the contents of the envelope concern you. Intimately." Sherlock lifted the edge with his fingers, flipping it over in his hands as if it were a very large coin.
The word intimately hit John in the gut. If this went badly, he might be looking for a new place to live. If it went well... he couldn't articulate what he thought about that, even in the silence of his mind, but it made the heat under his ribs flare like anything.
John brought down two mugs from the cabinet, set the tea bags in and stared at them while the water boiled. Sherlock sat quietly, continued to sit in silence while John made their tea and set it on the table. The warm feeling under John's ribs was still there, faint but steady, and he felt his lips quirking in a smile when he realized this was what people meant when they talked about a comfortable silence.
"I haven't looked at these, yet," Sherlock said as John sat down.
"But you can deduce what they are, I'm sure."
Sherlock shook his head. "I can infer, based on what I know of Mycroft, and I can guess, based on what I know of our shared childhoods, but I cannot deduce with any certainty. I am certain that Mycroft took pains to make sure that these were not damaged, and I'm fairly certain that for sentiment's sake he has sent the original prints, as opposed to copies, which means there are likely sheets of paper between each photo. If we open it like so, they should be in chronological order." He undid the copper brad holding the envelope shut, and slid the contents towards the opening. "As I suspected."
Sherlock tipped the envelope so the stack of paper and photographs sat on the middle of the table, the first photo visible only as a shape through the thin white paper.
"Go ahead."
John lifted the A4 paper, slid the photo closer to himself and held it by the edges. It was a square photo, rounded edges, faded with time so the red tones stood out more clearly, but even for all that and the grainy focus, it was clearly Mycroft, age seven or so, his left arm crooked and cradling a small bundle while his right arm was braced along the baby's side.
"There's a similar picture of Harry and I," John said, unexpectedly moved by the sight of child Mycroft with infant Sherlock. "Only in our picture, you can see my dad's hand holding me closer to her."
"You and Harriet are separated by only four years," Sherlock pointed out. "At seven Mycroft had the muscle control needed to keep an infant steady, at least for the time it took to take the photo."
Mycroft was sitting very straight, his expression conveying a sort of guarded happiness.
"I believe that every family with two children separated by some years has a photo like this in their albums," Sherlock pointed out. "The later photos will be more elucidating."
John removed the next A4 sheet of paper. Mycroft, a child of nine or so, now, stood in front of a flowering shrub that was only just lightly covered in leaves. He held the hand of a small girl, maybe not quite two. The girl wore a pink dress, smocked, tiny white socks, and black Mary Jane shoes.
"Easter?" John asked.
"Yes. Mummy did insist on the typical seasonal photos. I'm sure that unless he has decided to give in to his own vanity, there must be a picture of Mycroft in a reindeer jumper somewhere in this pile." His words were light but tension radiated through his voice, and in every line of his body.
John knew what he was looking at, but took a moment to figure out how to confirm it. "And that," he said, pointing to the child holding Mycroft's hand. "That's you."
"That's me." His voice was still tight, but some of the tension seemed to have gone from him, Sherlock's arm bumping gently against John's own. "Mycroft and little Sherlock."
John blinked. "Sherlock, really?"
Sherlock laughed softly. "Yes, really." He set the picture down. "If I had been in a position to pick my own name, at some point in my life, do you think I would have chosen something as esoteric as Sherlock?"
"It suits you," John said. He couldn't imagine the man being called Stephen or Michael, or any other known name, really.
Sherlock removed the next piece of A4 paper. A serious little girl in a school pinafore stood before the same shrub as the Easter photo. The twist to her mouth was familiar to John-- had he not known that she was Sherlock, he would have guessed a sister.
"I was so cross," Sherlock said. "I knew that none of the other children knew how to read yet and I knew I was going to be bored. And then my mother insisted that I wear a dress. It was a difficult morning."
"But she still took a photo," John pointed out.
"She was good about archiving important moments." He set the photo aside, but didn't reach for the next one.
"So, they thought you were a girl, when you were born, then?" John asked. He'd meant for it to come out as a statement, but his voice curled up at the end.
"You can hardly blame them. I can't be angry about it. It does seem like Mummy was hedging her bets, calling me Sherlock. But they told her that I had two X chromosomes and a perfectly sound set of ovaries. So she did the only sensible thing and raised me as a girl."
John picked up his tea, finally cool enough to drink comfortably. "What other suggestions did she take?" Part of him felt that it was none of his business, but on the other hand, Sherlock had sat him down to talk about it, complete with photos. Sherlock wanted him to ask.
"None of them."
When John looked Sherlock was smiling, one of those rare smiles that wrinkled up the skin at the corners of his mouth, crinkled the corners of his eyes too.
John felt himself relax, relieved. "Really? She must have been a strong woman."
"She was. I can deduce from your obvious relief coupled with your inquisitive nature that you have spent your free time at work today researching the atrocities that are visited on little girls with this condition in the name of science."
"I did." John had thought about when Sherlock had been born, sometime in the early 80s, when the convention of surgically altering infants with CAH was still strong. "I can hardly believe she managed to keep you away from the doctors."
"I still had far more visits to the surgery than many other children. I had to have blood drawn constantly, it felt like." His right hand drifted to his left antecubital fossa and scratched at the skin through his shirt. Repeated phlebotomy could look like track marks, John knew, and he wondered if Sherlock had strted using intraveneous drugs at some point, using the same pock mark the doctors had made. "I had to take medicine every day, and that made me different as well, but overall I'd say my childhood was quite normal." He paused. "For a given value of normal, I suppose."
"Tell me about something that wasn't normal," John said. "I can't imagine you and Mycroft having a bog standard childhood."
Sherlock stared at the plain sheet of paper as if there were a picture on it. "Father worked in chemical engineering. One year on Guy Fawkes day Mycroft and I had been naughty and Mummy sent us to bed early. We could hear the fireworks in other peoples' gardens and we were in disgrace, in our pyjamas so early and in our rooms with the blinds shut. Father came home many hours after our regular bedtime, but I was awake, reading under the covers with a torch."
"What were you reading?"
"The Brittannica, Ca-Ch. Mycroft came into my room, sneaking through the dark, and led me out by the hand. Father met us on the landing and we three snuck out into the back garden. My parents had a lovely lily garden, a natural pool they'd improved upon. Father was holding a box, and wearing heavy gloves. He used Mummy's kitchen tongs to take something out of the box, and pointed to the middle of the pond. We stared there while he threw it, and the explosion and sparks were immediate. Mycroft and I couldn't hide our excitement and we stood there in our bare feet on the grass, yelling sodium and jumping up and down. We had wanted to see that for ages."
"What did your mother think of that?"
"She was livid, of course, that her punishment had been undermined by Father, and of course there was the danger and the fact that we were out in the cold in bare feet, but I she was at least a little pleased that Father had done something for us children, and it was the first time he'd shown any affection towards me in the longest time. He carried me back into the house, in fact."
"How old were you?"
"I was five."
John rapidly adjusted the mental image he'd had of Sherlock under the covers with a volume of the encyclopedia.
"In pyjamas it was easier for him to forget that I was different. In the daytime I did insist on wearing boy clothes, which my mother allowed and my father fought, vehemently."
"What about school?"
"I tolerated the pinafore only because it was close enough to the jumpsuit the boys wore in junior infants. The year one uniforms allowed for girls to wear trousers, which I did."
He moved aside the next piece of paper. "Mummy was good at chronicaling important events, as I said." The snapshot was Mycroft and Shelock on the hall stairs, both of them dressed as if for a formal dinner. Sherlock was clearly wearing Mycroft's old clothes, a little too big in the waist, the trousers breaking extravagantly over his shoes. The rumpled air would have suited a gangster in a speakeasy but next to Mycroft's tailored appearance he looked insouciant. "This is us on the way to Grandmaman's eighty-fifth birthday dinner."
"She let you go like that?" John turned the picture over in his hands. A felt-tip pen had marked the back of the photo, faded but legible. Mycroft 12 Sherlock 5.
"Of course not. She rushed me upstairs, demanded that I hand over the clothes. I sat on my bed in my pants and vest and sulked for about a half hour. When she came back upstairs the trousers had been hemmed and taken in, the sleeves on the jacket shortened. We went to the dinner and no one said a thing about my appearance. Mummy's family has always tended more towards the avant gard. They possibly thought I was merely a lesbian. I was very sad afterwards, though, to find that Father had fired the housekeeper who had done the alterations."
"I'm sorry," John said. "He shouldn't have made you a battleground like that."
"He really shouldn't have. Mummy just wound up hiring her back and with a substantial raise, with a contract that Mycroft helped her draft, meaning that Father couldn't fire her again without some rather great expense on his part."
John laughed, but his heart felt heavy, imagining a home with one child being the bone of contention between two parents, the other child aligning himself with his mother. He flipped over another sheet of paper. Sherlock was as tall as Mycroft, now, his hair the same wild black nimbus that John knew. Still, Mycroft had his hand firmly on Sherlock's shoulder, an adult pose in contrast to the picture of the gangly child that Sherlock was. Sherlock wore a blazer, shirt, and tie, unmistakably a boy now.
"I was on my way to sit for my first set of GCSEs," Sherlock explained. "Mycroft was home from university for a long weekend."
John turned the photo over. Sherlock 13 Mycroft 20.
"I was seeing the doctor for shots, then, to stop any feminine puberty from happening. It was considered a radical step, back then, letting a child declare that they weren't going to develop into an adult woman. The number of psychiatrists and counselors I had to see was immense. And boring. It was so boring! I had been playing them off one another for lack of anything to do and that nearly got me branded with Borderline Personality Disorder. A diagnosis that is most common among girls, I knew, so I had to stop that little game and I was so beyond bored. Mycroft convinced me to just play it straight, eyes on the prize." He took the photo back from John. "He's always been more of a Utilitarian than I am."
"I'd hardly say that," John said, more surprised by Sherlock's dismissal of his own Utilitarian thought. "You're more married to the idea that the ends justify the means than anyone I've ever met."
"Even so."
Sherlock turned over the next piece of paper. This picture showed Sherlock at the height he was now, leaning one elbow on Mycroft's shoulder as they stood on the same hall stair. Sherlock wore black jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Mycroft wore a suit, similar to the ones John always saw him in, as well as a familiar long-suffering expression.
"This was just after my surgery. Mummy had asked Mycroft to come home, in case she needed help caring for me, but it was a simple surgery and I was up and annoying everyone within a day or so."
"Surgery?"
"I had my ovaries removed when I was sixteen, left the hospital the next day."
Sherlock's chest was flat under the hoodie, the angle of his jaw similar to what it was now, even though his cheeks were a little fuller.
"I would have had them removed sooner, but Father put up an awful fuss about the whole thing."
"Where was your father?"
"He moved out of the family home when I was five. Just after that Guy Fawkes day, in fact. When I was six Mummy and Mycroft and I spent a year in Corfu with Grandmaman, and when we returned to our new home in a different part of London it was as Mummy and her two sons, Mycroft and Sherlock. Father joined us there for a short while, but he left again, for good, when I was eight."
"You were living as a boy when you were seven?"
"In my mind I'd been a boy since I could remember."
"But I mean, your mother had you living as a boy in public from that point on?"
"Do you doubt that I knew my own mind? Seven is the age of reason, after all."
"I don't doubt it." John turned over some of the information that Sherlock had told him, and made a guess. "You didn't ask me to write a script for your testosterone."
"I hadn't run out. And besides, it would have muddied the waters, considering what it was that I wanted you to figure out."
"But you did want me to know."
"Of course I did." He flipped over the next page, then shuffled through the next few photos at speed. John caught an impression of Mycroft wearing academic dress, flanked by his mother and Sherlock, and, fleetingly, though Sherlock palmed the photo almost immediately, of the two of them quite recently in matching reindeer jumpers.
"Was that what I think it was?"
"Of course, John." Sherlock sighed and tilted his hand. "Observe. The things we do to keep Mummy happy."
"Did the two of you fight over who got to wear the one with the light-up nose?"
"Don't be ridiculous, John, we fought over who had to wear it."
"What else did you fight about?"
Sherlock's hands stilled as he gathered up the photos. "What particulars did you want to know?"
"Does Mycroft blame you for your father's decisions? Is that why he became your enemy?"
Sherlock laughed softly, almost a snort. "Don't be foolish John. What have you seen or heard of him in these photos and these stories that does not speak of support? Mycroft saw the truth nearly as soon as I did. I wasn't a girl being cruelly virilized by a disease, I was a boy. My body wanted to be a boy, my mind was a boy's mind. No. We never fought over that, save perhaps for the times when I would try to parlay my condition into an excuse for antisocial behavior. He didn't take well to that. Still doesn't, in fact, as you might imagine. But it has nothing to do with our present enmity. That is at its core, perhaps, a difference in temperment that has nothing to do with our bodies."
Sherlock swept the photos into a neat pile and slid them back in the envelope. "So, now you know of my checkered past. It still bothers my father, when he mentions his two sons to have someone ask, oh, I thought you had a daughter and a son. It happens rarely, rarer all the time, still, but as far as Mycroft knows he avoids it altogether by simply saying nothing about either of us."
"And your mother?"
"Mummy was frank with her close friends about my condition. She didn't tolerate speculation or suggestions, just said that it had been a mistake at my birth for them to call me female, and she would raise me as a boy. So the gossip of women being what it is word got around that Solange Holmes had two sons, end of."
"You could have told me about this without having Mycroft kidnap me, again," John pointed out.
"Could have, but I do allow him to have so little fun at your expense." Sherlock grasped his mug, fingers wrapped around the cup rather than the handle, and drank. "The question is, John. Is it fine? Is it really all fine?" His face was full of challenge.
"It is, of course." John felt his heart fluttering, a pleasant overture to the closeness he'd been anticipating.
"You developed your infatuation believing me to be a man."
"You are a man, you just said."
Sherlock waved his hand, stopping him. "You beleived me to have been born a man, like you. Unambiguous."
"I have dated women as well as men, you know," John pointed out.
"And some would argue that I am neither," Sherlock said. "I'm not some perfect combination of both. I live as a man, I call myself a man, but when it comes to my body it is not what people expect. I once thought that if I had the temerity to simply live as I felt myself to be that by the time someone had occasion to become intimate with me that it wouldn't matter, but both times I tried such an experiment it did matter, very much."
"Then you dated the wrong people," John said. "I swear, I'm not concerned."
"Not now. But what about when you find out that I do not enjoy being penetrated? That sex as you know it is out of the question?"
"Then we'll do something else, when it comes to that. Sherlock, I haven't even kissed you."
"And you won't, as long as there is a chance that I would let you into an intimate relationship with me only to be rejected at the point by which humiliation was already inevitable."
"There is no chance of that." John reached for his hand, wrapped his fingers completely around the back of Sherlock's hand, the thin bones shifting as he squeezed. "Please. You know me."
"I do." Sherlock turned his hand so he was grasping John's, and stood, pulling him up. "You have experience with a large number of sexual partners."
"Thanks, Sherlock, make me sound like a tart."
"It's merely a fact. Allow me to be completely frank in terms of my expectations. Despite the fact that we just spent a half hour tacitly discussing my genitals, you will not be removing my clothes this evening, nor yours."
"That's fine," John said. His entire body felt warm, aching, leaning towards Sherlock. "Can I kiss you soon, please?"
"Yes."
Part 2
Fandom Sherlock BBC 2010
Pairing Sherlock/John
Rating NC-17
Prompt Sherlock is intersexed and identifies himself as a man. His ambiguous genitalia and the history of his sexuality and identity are what have kept him from being close to people romantically, particularly John. John finds out or is told, and it really is all fine.
(This is similar to a previous prompt, but that prompt said "Sherlock has both female and male genitalia, he is intersexed," and that's not what intersexed means for humans.)
Warnings References to the medical management of intersexed people being, at times, less than humane, but nothing specific or graphic. Intentional tense change: Parts 1-3 are in present tense, the rest in past tense.
AN Resides at the bottom of part 2/2.
1.)
Hindsight is 20/20.
It's a thought that has probably never crossed Sherlock's mind, considering that his present sight is usually far better than 20/20, but it can still be applied to him.
When John watches him licking the salt off crisps, leaving the potato a soggy oily mess on the side of a napkin, he thinks it's merely a disgusting habit.
2.)
John has had many girlfriends, but only two boyfriends, a fact that his sister likes to tease him about.
"Face it, John, you're what Kinsey would call homosexual, and incidentally heterosexual."
He rolls his eyes at her when she gets like that, a habit that drives her insane.
"How do you figure incidentally, when I've had far more girlfriends than boyfriends?" he asked once.
She had fixed him with a stare. "You've fucked a lot of women, and good on you, Jonny-boy. But you've been in love with two men, and I doubt you could say the same for any of the women."
He had flicked a beer cap at her, hardly an erudite response, but nothing else had been said on the matter.
It's not a problem, exactly, except that he hates admitting that she's right.
3.)
He knows he's going to develop feelings for Sherlock Holmes, from the moment he sees the man. He doesn't have Sherlock's gift for insight, but he doesn't need it to see how cold he is to Molly, all please and thank you while all the while he's being a right prick to her. After that first time he isn't like that in front of John, anymore, and John figures it's just that Sherlock has figured out that it makes him uncomfortable. He's swift enough to know that it's not because Sherlock has suddenly become a nicer man.
That doesn't stop the flutter of warmth under his twelfth rib when Sherlock turns his attention to John. It doesn't stop the fact that he looks forward to seeing Sherlock at the end of each day. It doesn't stop the feelings from happening-- attraction, fascination, desire. John catalogues them even as he figures that it's useless. Sherlock is married to his work, and has never, by word or sign, betrayed a human attraction to anything or anybody.
4.)
"How was work?"
John hung his coat.
"Sorry, what?"
"I was asking you how work was." Sherlock leaned against the kitchen worktop. "It's customary for one person to ask another, especially when there are indications that the day has been particularly stressful. Discussing it may help discharge some of the unpleasant emotion." He turned back to the experiment that he was carrying out in what looked like no less than a Waterford crystal bowl. Something gelatinous clung to the end of the fork that he was stirring the mess with. John looked away, but found himself continually glancing back.
"It was bloody awful, if I'm honest," John said. "Two transports to hospital, and one of them in less than expiditious fashion. I wanted to give the receptionist a piece of my mind but Sarah convinced me to let it lie for a day, but come on, someone walks in with slurred speech and a weak arm, and you tell them to take a number? You don't need a medical qualification to tell that some things are just bad news."
"A simple algorithm could save you some frustration on that front," Sherlock said. His eyes were still on the gel, which seemed to be emitting a gentle purple glow. "What else?"
"Does there need to be anything else?" He sat down heavily, his head perking up for a moment when Sherlock switched the kettle on. From the distinctive rumble John could tell that it was full of water, but he shook his head, sure that Sherlock wasn't going to actually make him a cup of tea.
"I assume so. Two dramatic transports would have been well within your tolerance for unpleasant events."
John sighed. "It wasn't any other specific event. Sarah had to leave early to attend a funeral. There were a spate of walk-in upper respiratory infections, and a pile of charts went missing."
"It was an aggregate rather than a discrete event," Sherlock said, wiping his hands on a tea towel. He stared at the towel for a moment, then chucked it in the bin.
"Is that where all the tea towels are getting to?" John asked.
"Not all of them." Sherlock pulled down a mug from one of the safe cabinets and, using a pair of tongs to handle the tea bag, made a cup of tea with a splash of part skim milk, the way John always took it.
"What are you experimenting with anyway?" John asked.
"Phosphorescent diatomes," Sherlock said. "I am assured that they are not poisonous, but they may have a repellent taste, hence the tongs." He set the mug in front of John.
"You made me tea."
"I'm using all of the worktop and you're clearly both dehydrated and exhausted. It seemed the least that I could do."
"Thank you."
"You're quite welcome." Sherlock covered the bowl with a sheet of cling film and set the entire thing in the microwave.
"You're not going to cook them?" John asked. It wasn't that he suspected diatomes of having feelings, but it seemed needlessly cruel.
"Of course not, it's just the safest, darkest place to put them for now. My work on the implications of a phosphorescent tide is nearly done but I may wish to observe them further tomorrow."
"You know, I'm sure there's a marine biologist or two who have written monographs on the subject." He took a sip of the tea. Perfect.
"Oh, there's many, but no one seems to be interested in the penetration of these diatomes into human flesh over time."
John shook his head. "Are you saying I'm glad I didn't have a closer look at the contents of that bowl?"
"I was not saying it, but your inferrence is correct. Now. I could murder a chicken tikka bunna. I suggest that you finish the tea, take a shower of no more than eleven minutes duration, then dress yourself in your pyjamas by which time I will have returned with food."
"You're going out to get food?"
"Again, a correct deduction, but a little elementary, given what I just told you." In the low light of the kitchen Sherlock's gray eyes looked almost warm. "I rang the takeaway when I heard your tread on the stair. I'll be back in fourteen minutes." With that he left the kitchen and moments later John heard the door slam as he left. He finished his tea, then did as Sherlock had suggested.
5.
Over the following week John thought on that evening often. He had commented to Sherlock, after dinner, that he didn't even have the attention span needed to watch telly, and Sherlock had responded by picking up his violin and playing John's favorite airs, despite the fact that John was well aware that his preference for Chopin and Mozart was contrary to Sherlock's predilections. John fell asleep on the couch and woke to find himself covered by a thin blanket. Sherlock was sitting up in the chair adjacent, reading on John's laptop.
"You'd be more comfortable in your own bed, and as you've been asleep for approximately three hours I think your circadian rhythm will tolerate you waking enough to go up to your room."
"Quite right," John had said.
The memory warmed him through the week and he found himself sitting at his desk when he should have been signing off on charts, a small pleased smile on his face.
6.
Months later London was covered in endless storms, thunder and lightning alternating with periods of intense soaking rain. While scientists and politicians droned about global warming and climate change John and Sherlock took no notice, focused on a different kind of storm. Caught up in the battle that was laid over London like a transparency on an anatomy diagram John barely noticed as he put himself into deeper and deeper danger, until Sherlock was threatened. Then he felt the danger like a familiar friend, a faithful dog at his side as he walked into an old stone church with only two exits, knowing that he was walking into a trap, sure only that he would have Sherlock out in time.
In time turned out to be only just in time, and the thick walls of the church absorbing the blast from the Semtex that seemed to be Moriarty's tiresome calling card now were their salvation. In the street John struggled to see clearly through the rain, to focus on Sherlock's face, the rivulets of rain in the sodium vapor light looking far too much like blood. John swept his hands over Sherlock's face again and again, looking for any sign, any inkling that he was not alright.
"John, John, I'm fine," the words clearly a lie as he held on tight to John's arms once he stumbled.
John gave in to fear, gave in to desire, gave in to every strong feeling that threatened to overwhelm him. He let his hands roam over Sherlock's neck, his face, his ribs and his chest, pushing through thin fabric to feel the skin and muscle and bone underneath, all whole. Sherlock fell forward, caught by John's broad chest, and his head was heavy on John's shoulder. John lowered his face to Sherlock's cheek, brushed his lips against that softly bristled skin, then nearly fell as Sherlock pushed him away.
"We cannot," Sherlock managed to croak out. "We cannot do this." Sherlock ran towards the ambulance, balance off, limbs moving without coordination. He was met by two EMTs, and John tried to let his relief that Sherlock was being seen to outweigh his disappointment that Sherlock had pushed him away.
7.
Barely a week after the church incident John was unsurprised to find a black car pulling up beside him as he walked home from work. He entered with a sigh, disappointed to find that the journey to whatever isolated audience chamber Mycroft was bringing him to would be alone, without even the lovely Anthea to distract him.
The car pulled up to a primary school, parked outside the propped open door that opened directly into one of the classrooms. John wondered if Mycroft was implying something about his intellect as he walked in.
"John. How lovely to see you again." Mycroft stood in the middle of the empty classroom, the message clear. You will approach me. John chafed at the implication, but knew that the entire thing would be over with more quickly if he just walked forward. In the corner Anthea sat on one of the plastic chairs that seemed so ubitquious in consolidated schools, her legs crossed at the knee. John tried not to look, failed, and, knowing that Mycroft would have noticed anyway, indulged in an entire second of leering as he walked towards the other man.
"Can't say the same, now, can I?" John asked.
"What a pity. I won't keep you long, John. Surely you can guess why you're here."
"I can't, and I won't," John said.
"Oh, please. Coyness is so unbecoming."
In the corner Anthea's thumbs sped over the keys. John had a brief mad moment of wondering if she was playing an endless game of Angry Birds.
He looked into Mycroft's eyes, but found no answers there. "I really don't know."
"That scene outside the church? Really, John, it was so..." Mycroft paused. "Gothic."
"Bit of a pervert then?" John asked. He had considered the possibility, but discarded it. It seemed that he was simply too rational.
"Not at all, I assure you. I wish you and my brother nothing but the best, but, knowing him, I'm sure he's continued to push you away."
"Once again, it's none of your business, however much you might think that it is." John's eyes flickered, as they were meant to, to the envelope that Mycroft held under one arm.
"And as usual, I must disagree with you." Mycroft handed John the envelope and John, knowing that it would only delay his return to 221B if he refused, took it in hand. The contents shifted, shuffled, heavy but smooth papers. "Photographs of our shared childhood. Sherlock did take so little from the house when he left. Mummy is quite at loose ends trying to figure out what to do with some of his more essoteric collections. But I bore you. Go on, John, open it."
"Why would I do that?" He tucked the envelope under his arm. "I'll bring them to Sherlock if that's what you want, but they're not mine to look at."
"But they are, John. I've just given them to you."
John stayed silent.
"I'm sure Sherlock knows all about your charming childhood with Harriet. Why shouldn't you know of our Boys Own Adventures?"
John allowed himself to smile at that, hoping, perhaps, that Sherlock and Mycroft had in fact gotten up to some innocent fun when they were young.
"I'll let him tell me all about them." He turned and walked away, back to the door, to Anthea. She stayed seated for a worryingly long time but stood just before his own step started to falter.
"John." And then he was arrested again, at the sound of Mycroft's voice. "Should Sherlock ever get over his ridiculous hang ups, you should know-- Mummy and I would welcome you into our family with open arms."
John cocked his head to the side as he wondered how Mycroft could sound so genuinely warm and so threatening at once.
"I'm not sure I'm up to one of your Christmas dinners," he said, as he turned to walk away. Anthea smirked over her shoulder at him as they got into the car, and he felt like he'd won at something.
8.
John watched with mild interest as Sherlock knelt on the worktop, rummaging through the smallest cabinet over the fridge. In John's parents' house that space had been for birthday candles and the fondue set, things that belonged in the kitchen but were rarely used. Given that most of the things in Sherlock's kitchen didn't really belong in a kitchen in the first place, John was reluctant to wonder what was in their smallest cabinet.
Sherlock jumped down, something cupped in his hand, and sat at the table.
"John, I have to ask you a favor, and I hope that you an appreciate the fact that I have never before put you in this position."
"What, never asked me a favor before?" John asked. He set his toast down on the side of his plate. If Sherlock was making preemptory apologies it was no time to be chewing.
"I've never asked you for this particular kind of favor. The thing is, John, I've had to do a bit of rearranging with my schedule of late. There was that issue at the aquarium that absolutely couldn't wait, and I rashly canceled an appointment for myself. Now it's been rescheduled but I'd rather not have to call the surgery again and explain that I actually need a new script. So." He pushed forward an what had been in his hand, an empty amber bottle with a paper label, and something like a small plastic pen.
Dexamethasone, John read. One daily, and per protocol. #40. He looked up sharply. "You're taking a steroid every day?"
"Yes."
John was surprised by the terse answer, and looked down at the injector pen. Forteo. "And you've got osteoporosis. Well, it's no wonder considering the steroid."
Sherlock just met his gaze with a look that John had trouble placing. He'd never seen in on Sherlock's face before, but at this moment Sherlock wasn't his flatmate. Sherlock was asking John to be his doctor, for however brief a time, and John had seen that face on patients before. He'd seen it when children had something they desperately wanted to tell, but couldn't because their parents were in the room. Come find me, the look said. Figure out what it is that I am trying to tell you.
John considered his options carefully. Arthritis was one thought, but dexamethasone was far stronger than the prednisone that some patients with rheumatoid conditions were given, and usually they weren't used at all in someone so young. Sherlock was on a daily steroid, and he'd been on it long enough to cause osteoporosis-- if it was the steroid itself that had caused it, and not the same underlying condition that occasioned the use of the steroid in the first place, the need of it, considering that no one would prescribe such a thing frivolously.
John looked at the prescriber's name on the bottle-- Malcom Ardent, one of the leading endocrinologists in London had prescribed the steroid. So, definitely not arthritis, then. The Forteo was a mimic of a human parathyroid hormone. John imagined the chemicals, a cascade in the bloodstream, endless checks and balances. Parathyroid, androgens, cortisol, ACTH.
"Adrenals," he muttered.
"Yes?" Sherlock looked pleased, and, he was surprised to note, nervous.
"Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia?" John asked. He felt like he was being pimped in the halls of Barts, felt all of twenty years old again, suddenly.
"My dear John. You have the thing figured out."
"CAH," John said, irritated now. "And you've let yourself run out of dexamethasone?" He wasn't an endocrinologist, but he knew the crisis that could occur if Sherlock didn't attend to his daily corticosteroid.
"I have two left. They're under the skull, in case of emergency. I was hoping you'd help me."
John looked at the bottle, the implications of the illness settling over him like a heavy mantle. CAH could lead to a salt wasting crisis in less than a day.
"This explains the mustard on toast," John muttered. "The endless love of soy sauce. The way you lick the salt off of crisps."
"We'll make a detective of you yet."
John shook his head slowly. "I'll do it. Just enough until your next appointment. I may only be a GP but I know how serious it would be if you missed several days."
"It's four days from now. A prescription for five doses would be most welcome."
"I'll write it for seven. You have a protocol for stress."
"I haven't any cases on at the moment." Sherlock leaned back, an attitude of feigned nonchalance.
"I'll refill your Forteo as well. Wouldn't do to get out of the habit."
"Thank you."
John went to his room and took the prescription pad out of his desk. He kept three blank scripts on hand and while he never would think that anything in his life was a secret he also knew that Sherlock would never use them for his own benefit. He wrote the scripts out carefully, signed them, and brought them back downstairs.
Sherlock nodded as he accepted them, taciturn again.
John was nearly out the door when Sherlock's voice stopped him.
"John?"
"Yes?"
"We'll talk more tonight." Sherlock was sitting at the table, still holding the prescriptions in his hands, and the manila folder that Mycroft had given him was on the table too.
"See you then," John said. As he walked down the stairs he had the feeling that he'd not really uncovered as much as Sherlock had wanted him to, but then again, he was on his way to work, a whole day of far more mundane diagnoses awaiting him.
9.
Sherlock was sitting at the kitchen table when John got home, an air of expectation practically radiating. John felt something in him that had been wound tight by the busy day of work loosening when he saw his friend, and the warm feeling under his ribs that he'd come to associate with Sherlock returned.
"Shall we open it?" Sherlock asked, referring, clearly, to the envelope in the center of the table.
John clicked on the kettle. "What could be in there that is so important? And why did you wait for me?"
"Because the contents of the envelope concern you. Intimately." Sherlock lifted the edge with his fingers, flipping it over in his hands as if it were a very large coin.
The word intimately hit John in the gut. If this went badly, he might be looking for a new place to live. If it went well... he couldn't articulate what he thought about that, even in the silence of his mind, but it made the heat under his ribs flare like anything.
John brought down two mugs from the cabinet, set the tea bags in and stared at them while the water boiled. Sherlock sat quietly, continued to sit in silence while John made their tea and set it on the table. The warm feeling under John's ribs was still there, faint but steady, and he felt his lips quirking in a smile when he realized this was what people meant when they talked about a comfortable silence.
"I haven't looked at these, yet," Sherlock said as John sat down.
"But you can deduce what they are, I'm sure."
Sherlock shook his head. "I can infer, based on what I know of Mycroft, and I can guess, based on what I know of our shared childhoods, but I cannot deduce with any certainty. I am certain that Mycroft took pains to make sure that these were not damaged, and I'm fairly certain that for sentiment's sake he has sent the original prints, as opposed to copies, which means there are likely sheets of paper between each photo. If we open it like so, they should be in chronological order." He undid the copper brad holding the envelope shut, and slid the contents towards the opening. "As I suspected."
Sherlock tipped the envelope so the stack of paper and photographs sat on the middle of the table, the first photo visible only as a shape through the thin white paper.
"Go ahead."
John lifted the A4 paper, slid the photo closer to himself and held it by the edges. It was a square photo, rounded edges, faded with time so the red tones stood out more clearly, but even for all that and the grainy focus, it was clearly Mycroft, age seven or so, his left arm crooked and cradling a small bundle while his right arm was braced along the baby's side.
"There's a similar picture of Harry and I," John said, unexpectedly moved by the sight of child Mycroft with infant Sherlock. "Only in our picture, you can see my dad's hand holding me closer to her."
"You and Harriet are separated by only four years," Sherlock pointed out. "At seven Mycroft had the muscle control needed to keep an infant steady, at least for the time it took to take the photo."
Mycroft was sitting very straight, his expression conveying a sort of guarded happiness.
"I believe that every family with two children separated by some years has a photo like this in their albums," Sherlock pointed out. "The later photos will be more elucidating."
John removed the next A4 sheet of paper. Mycroft, a child of nine or so, now, stood in front of a flowering shrub that was only just lightly covered in leaves. He held the hand of a small girl, maybe not quite two. The girl wore a pink dress, smocked, tiny white socks, and black Mary Jane shoes.
"Easter?" John asked.
"Yes. Mummy did insist on the typical seasonal photos. I'm sure that unless he has decided to give in to his own vanity, there must be a picture of Mycroft in a reindeer jumper somewhere in this pile." His words were light but tension radiated through his voice, and in every line of his body.
John knew what he was looking at, but took a moment to figure out how to confirm it. "And that," he said, pointing to the child holding Mycroft's hand. "That's you."
"That's me." His voice was still tight, but some of the tension seemed to have gone from him, Sherlock's arm bumping gently against John's own. "Mycroft and little Sherlock."
John blinked. "Sherlock, really?"
Sherlock laughed softly. "Yes, really." He set the picture down. "If I had been in a position to pick my own name, at some point in my life, do you think I would have chosen something as esoteric as Sherlock?"
"It suits you," John said. He couldn't imagine the man being called Stephen or Michael, or any other known name, really.
Sherlock removed the next piece of A4 paper. A serious little girl in a school pinafore stood before the same shrub as the Easter photo. The twist to her mouth was familiar to John-- had he not known that she was Sherlock, he would have guessed a sister.
"I was so cross," Sherlock said. "I knew that none of the other children knew how to read yet and I knew I was going to be bored. And then my mother insisted that I wear a dress. It was a difficult morning."
"But she still took a photo," John pointed out.
"She was good about archiving important moments." He set the photo aside, but didn't reach for the next one.
"So, they thought you were a girl, when you were born, then?" John asked. He'd meant for it to come out as a statement, but his voice curled up at the end.
"You can hardly blame them. I can't be angry about it. It does seem like Mummy was hedging her bets, calling me Sherlock. But they told her that I had two X chromosomes and a perfectly sound set of ovaries. So she did the only sensible thing and raised me as a girl."
John picked up his tea, finally cool enough to drink comfortably. "What other suggestions did she take?" Part of him felt that it was none of his business, but on the other hand, Sherlock had sat him down to talk about it, complete with photos. Sherlock wanted him to ask.
"None of them."
When John looked Sherlock was smiling, one of those rare smiles that wrinkled up the skin at the corners of his mouth, crinkled the corners of his eyes too.
John felt himself relax, relieved. "Really? She must have been a strong woman."
"She was. I can deduce from your obvious relief coupled with your inquisitive nature that you have spent your free time at work today researching the atrocities that are visited on little girls with this condition in the name of science."
"I did." John had thought about when Sherlock had been born, sometime in the early 80s, when the convention of surgically altering infants with CAH was still strong. "I can hardly believe she managed to keep you away from the doctors."
"I still had far more visits to the surgery than many other children. I had to have blood drawn constantly, it felt like." His right hand drifted to his left antecubital fossa and scratched at the skin through his shirt. Repeated phlebotomy could look like track marks, John knew, and he wondered if Sherlock had strted using intraveneous drugs at some point, using the same pock mark the doctors had made. "I had to take medicine every day, and that made me different as well, but overall I'd say my childhood was quite normal." He paused. "For a given value of normal, I suppose."
"Tell me about something that wasn't normal," John said. "I can't imagine you and Mycroft having a bog standard childhood."
Sherlock stared at the plain sheet of paper as if there were a picture on it. "Father worked in chemical engineering. One year on Guy Fawkes day Mycroft and I had been naughty and Mummy sent us to bed early. We could hear the fireworks in other peoples' gardens and we were in disgrace, in our pyjamas so early and in our rooms with the blinds shut. Father came home many hours after our regular bedtime, but I was awake, reading under the covers with a torch."
"What were you reading?"
"The Brittannica, Ca-Ch. Mycroft came into my room, sneaking through the dark, and led me out by the hand. Father met us on the landing and we three snuck out into the back garden. My parents had a lovely lily garden, a natural pool they'd improved upon. Father was holding a box, and wearing heavy gloves. He used Mummy's kitchen tongs to take something out of the box, and pointed to the middle of the pond. We stared there while he threw it, and the explosion and sparks were immediate. Mycroft and I couldn't hide our excitement and we stood there in our bare feet on the grass, yelling sodium and jumping up and down. We had wanted to see that for ages."
"What did your mother think of that?"
"She was livid, of course, that her punishment had been undermined by Father, and of course there was the danger and the fact that we were out in the cold in bare feet, but I she was at least a little pleased that Father had done something for us children, and it was the first time he'd shown any affection towards me in the longest time. He carried me back into the house, in fact."
"How old were you?"
"I was five."
John rapidly adjusted the mental image he'd had of Sherlock under the covers with a volume of the encyclopedia.
"In pyjamas it was easier for him to forget that I was different. In the daytime I did insist on wearing boy clothes, which my mother allowed and my father fought, vehemently."
"What about school?"
"I tolerated the pinafore only because it was close enough to the jumpsuit the boys wore in junior infants. The year one uniforms allowed for girls to wear trousers, which I did."
He moved aside the next piece of paper. "Mummy was good at chronicaling important events, as I said." The snapshot was Mycroft and Shelock on the hall stairs, both of them dressed as if for a formal dinner. Sherlock was clearly wearing Mycroft's old clothes, a little too big in the waist, the trousers breaking extravagantly over his shoes. The rumpled air would have suited a gangster in a speakeasy but next to Mycroft's tailored appearance he looked insouciant. "This is us on the way to Grandmaman's eighty-fifth birthday dinner."
"She let you go like that?" John turned the picture over in his hands. A felt-tip pen had marked the back of the photo, faded but legible. Mycroft 12 Sherlock 5.
"Of course not. She rushed me upstairs, demanded that I hand over the clothes. I sat on my bed in my pants and vest and sulked for about a half hour. When she came back upstairs the trousers had been hemmed and taken in, the sleeves on the jacket shortened. We went to the dinner and no one said a thing about my appearance. Mummy's family has always tended more towards the avant gard. They possibly thought I was merely a lesbian. I was very sad afterwards, though, to find that Father had fired the housekeeper who had done the alterations."
"I'm sorry," John said. "He shouldn't have made you a battleground like that."
"He really shouldn't have. Mummy just wound up hiring her back and with a substantial raise, with a contract that Mycroft helped her draft, meaning that Father couldn't fire her again without some rather great expense on his part."
John laughed, but his heart felt heavy, imagining a home with one child being the bone of contention between two parents, the other child aligning himself with his mother. He flipped over another sheet of paper. Sherlock was as tall as Mycroft, now, his hair the same wild black nimbus that John knew. Still, Mycroft had his hand firmly on Sherlock's shoulder, an adult pose in contrast to the picture of the gangly child that Sherlock was. Sherlock wore a blazer, shirt, and tie, unmistakably a boy now.
"I was on my way to sit for my first set of GCSEs," Sherlock explained. "Mycroft was home from university for a long weekend."
John turned the photo over. Sherlock 13 Mycroft 20.
"I was seeing the doctor for shots, then, to stop any feminine puberty from happening. It was considered a radical step, back then, letting a child declare that they weren't going to develop into an adult woman. The number of psychiatrists and counselors I had to see was immense. And boring. It was so boring! I had been playing them off one another for lack of anything to do and that nearly got me branded with Borderline Personality Disorder. A diagnosis that is most common among girls, I knew, so I had to stop that little game and I was so beyond bored. Mycroft convinced me to just play it straight, eyes on the prize." He took the photo back from John. "He's always been more of a Utilitarian than I am."
"I'd hardly say that," John said, more surprised by Sherlock's dismissal of his own Utilitarian thought. "You're more married to the idea that the ends justify the means than anyone I've ever met."
"Even so."
Sherlock turned over the next piece of paper. This picture showed Sherlock at the height he was now, leaning one elbow on Mycroft's shoulder as they stood on the same hall stair. Sherlock wore black jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. Mycroft wore a suit, similar to the ones John always saw him in, as well as a familiar long-suffering expression.
"This was just after my surgery. Mummy had asked Mycroft to come home, in case she needed help caring for me, but it was a simple surgery and I was up and annoying everyone within a day or so."
"Surgery?"
"I had my ovaries removed when I was sixteen, left the hospital the next day."
Sherlock's chest was flat under the hoodie, the angle of his jaw similar to what it was now, even though his cheeks were a little fuller.
"I would have had them removed sooner, but Father put up an awful fuss about the whole thing."
"Where was your father?"
"He moved out of the family home when I was five. Just after that Guy Fawkes day, in fact. When I was six Mummy and Mycroft and I spent a year in Corfu with Grandmaman, and when we returned to our new home in a different part of London it was as Mummy and her two sons, Mycroft and Sherlock. Father joined us there for a short while, but he left again, for good, when I was eight."
"You were living as a boy when you were seven?"
"In my mind I'd been a boy since I could remember."
"But I mean, your mother had you living as a boy in public from that point on?"
"Do you doubt that I knew my own mind? Seven is the age of reason, after all."
"I don't doubt it." John turned over some of the information that Sherlock had told him, and made a guess. "You didn't ask me to write a script for your testosterone."
"I hadn't run out. And besides, it would have muddied the waters, considering what it was that I wanted you to figure out."
"But you did want me to know."
"Of course I did." He flipped over the next page, then shuffled through the next few photos at speed. John caught an impression of Mycroft wearing academic dress, flanked by his mother and Sherlock, and, fleetingly, though Sherlock palmed the photo almost immediately, of the two of them quite recently in matching reindeer jumpers.
"Was that what I think it was?"
"Of course, John." Sherlock sighed and tilted his hand. "Observe. The things we do to keep Mummy happy."
"Did the two of you fight over who got to wear the one with the light-up nose?"
"Don't be ridiculous, John, we fought over who had to wear it."
"What else did you fight about?"
Sherlock's hands stilled as he gathered up the photos. "What particulars did you want to know?"
"Does Mycroft blame you for your father's decisions? Is that why he became your enemy?"
Sherlock laughed softly, almost a snort. "Don't be foolish John. What have you seen or heard of him in these photos and these stories that does not speak of support? Mycroft saw the truth nearly as soon as I did. I wasn't a girl being cruelly virilized by a disease, I was a boy. My body wanted to be a boy, my mind was a boy's mind. No. We never fought over that, save perhaps for the times when I would try to parlay my condition into an excuse for antisocial behavior. He didn't take well to that. Still doesn't, in fact, as you might imagine. But it has nothing to do with our present enmity. That is at its core, perhaps, a difference in temperment that has nothing to do with our bodies."
Sherlock swept the photos into a neat pile and slid them back in the envelope. "So, now you know of my checkered past. It still bothers my father, when he mentions his two sons to have someone ask, oh, I thought you had a daughter and a son. It happens rarely, rarer all the time, still, but as far as Mycroft knows he avoids it altogether by simply saying nothing about either of us."
"And your mother?"
"Mummy was frank with her close friends about my condition. She didn't tolerate speculation or suggestions, just said that it had been a mistake at my birth for them to call me female, and she would raise me as a boy. So the gossip of women being what it is word got around that Solange Holmes had two sons, end of."
"You could have told me about this without having Mycroft kidnap me, again," John pointed out.
"Could have, but I do allow him to have so little fun at your expense." Sherlock grasped his mug, fingers wrapped around the cup rather than the handle, and drank. "The question is, John. Is it fine? Is it really all fine?" His face was full of challenge.
"It is, of course." John felt his heart fluttering, a pleasant overture to the closeness he'd been anticipating.
"You developed your infatuation believing me to be a man."
"You are a man, you just said."
Sherlock waved his hand, stopping him. "You beleived me to have been born a man, like you. Unambiguous."
"I have dated women as well as men, you know," John pointed out.
"And some would argue that I am neither," Sherlock said. "I'm not some perfect combination of both. I live as a man, I call myself a man, but when it comes to my body it is not what people expect. I once thought that if I had the temerity to simply live as I felt myself to be that by the time someone had occasion to become intimate with me that it wouldn't matter, but both times I tried such an experiment it did matter, very much."
"Then you dated the wrong people," John said. "I swear, I'm not concerned."
"Not now. But what about when you find out that I do not enjoy being penetrated? That sex as you know it is out of the question?"
"Then we'll do something else, when it comes to that. Sherlock, I haven't even kissed you."
"And you won't, as long as there is a chance that I would let you into an intimate relationship with me only to be rejected at the point by which humiliation was already inevitable."
"There is no chance of that." John reached for his hand, wrapped his fingers completely around the back of Sherlock's hand, the thin bones shifting as he squeezed. "Please. You know me."
"I do." Sherlock turned his hand so he was grasping John's, and stood, pulling him up. "You have experience with a large number of sexual partners."
"Thanks, Sherlock, make me sound like a tart."
"It's merely a fact. Allow me to be completely frank in terms of my expectations. Despite the fact that we just spent a half hour tacitly discussing my genitals, you will not be removing my clothes this evening, nor yours."
"That's fine," John said. His entire body felt warm, aching, leaning towards Sherlock. "Can I kiss you soon, please?"
"Yes."
Part 2