A word of warning: this is something I put together over a few days for a friend, and it hasn't been beta-read, so it's definitely a bit sketchier than I usually post things. However, I also just like it so I thought I'd throw it up here.

ALSO. While I've got trans and genderqueer friends who I asked for help while writing this, I'm cis-gendered myself, so I may well have screwed up. If I have, please tell me so I can educate myself and avoid making the same mistakes again, and please know that my intention was not to be offensive.

1.

Sherlock can't understand why everyone is so surprised - he always knew he was a boy, or at least that's what he says, until Mycroft coughs meaningfully and flicks the corner of his newspaper, and Sherlock concedes, although not to Mycroft, that he might not always have been aware.

Anyway, the main trouble is with Mummy, who won't stop fluttering and looking agitated until Mycroft drops his newspaper to his lap and says,

"Mummy, really. I'll go round to my tailor to-morrow and have clothes made for him. I'll take care of all of it, it's all right, just for God's sake don't tell Father or I'll have to sit through another row."

Which comforts Mummy, and in an odd way comforts Sherlock too; he doesn't like Mycroft, but at least Mycroft can always keep up with him, and it's a relief to have someone in the sodding house who can, he thinks, as Mycroft's newspaper settles back into place, hiding Mycroft's ugly face, and Sherlock goes back to counting the number of ways he could poison the dog.

2.

Sherlock ends up letting Mycroft fix almost everything for him. Normally he wouldn't, but Mycroft is the only one who can talk to Father about anything, and Sherlock doesn't like giving in to him but he likes getting his own way. His talks with Father are always monumentally unproductive, always rows and stupid questions like "why aren't you going to Uni?" and "why do you wear those damned clothes?" and most banal of all "what the hell is going on up in your room, girl?" when it's obvious he's doing experiments.

Mycroft, on the other hand, is an ass, but at least he's never once slipped and called Sherlock Sarah, and he's paid for all of Sherlock's new suits, and he's the one who's been meeting with doctors to arrange for the operation. Of course Sherlock insists on talking to them, too, but Mycroft finds them and brings them in.

One day after the fellow leaves - Mummy sees him out with a stop for tea and biscuits, doting as ever - Mycroft unfolds his newspaper and starts to settle back into his chair, and Sherlock says, "When?"

"When you've turned twenty-one, little brother."

Sherlock narrows his eyes. "Sooner."

"Absolutely not. This is preliminary investigation. In the next five years alone the technology will have changed and advanced entirely." He lifts his brows at Sherlock over the top of a half-page photograph of a cricket match. "Do you want it done badly now, or well later?"

Sherlock wants it badly now, but he's barely eighteen and in spite of all of Father's urging has never held a job. He knows he's clever, but he hasn't worked out how to make it pay, not yet. Mycroft, of course, is practically Britain's entire secret service all on his own. "Two years."

"Three, if you've moved out of the house." Mycroft's glance strays to the kitchen, where Mummy is getting tea things out for them. "Do you really think this is the place for you?"

"Why not?" Sherlock asks, mostly to provoke Mycroft, because he hates their house.

"You're a clever boy, Sherlock. But there's nothing here to be clever about, not unless you want to go on killing off Mummy's pets as creatively as you can manage."

Sherlock scowls.

"We have the same misfortune, you and I," Mycroft says. "We have ordinary parents, but neither of us could be called quite ordinary. I am providing you with the opportunity to become less of a curiosity, but you'll be doing yourself a favour if you go somewhere new. Somewhere with lots of little games and puzzles and problems with you. You can make yourself a nice friend or two. And perhaps the vicar will stop coming 'round to tell Mummy you're going to hell if she can tell him you've gone to London instead. I can put you in touch with people. Just think about it." His face, oddly serious, twists into one of his hideous smiles as Mummy comes out with the tea tray.

Sherlock is already on his feet, his face burning. "I don't need your fucking help, you wanker. Two years."

As he storms out he hears Mummy's fretful voice. "Oh, dear, why are you two always fighting? Oh, my. There's always such a row going on…"

But in the end, he lets Mycroft fix it all, all except the little flat with the rent he can barely pay and the roommate he can barely endure, in the filthiest part of London imaginable, because he has to do something to get out from under Mycroft's nasty little umbrella of protection. Now it's only a matter of weeks before everything is set in motion, and he lies awake every night listening to the life stories of the people outside his window, which he can tell from their footsteps and voices and the way they slam the doors of their cars, and he tells himself that it's going to be worth it, it's going to be worth it.

He runs his long fingers over the stuff his pyjamas are made of. Soon he'll trade this stupid body for the one he needs, and once that's done he can finally start getting something done.

3.

The operation takes two years all told.

Sherlock details all the pieces of the various surgeries in his journal, in the blunter handwriting he's taught himself over the last few years - Mycroft remarks that most people can't tell the difference between a man's and a woman's handwriting, but Sherlock doesn't care if most people are idiots, because he knows the difference and that's what matters.

Bilateral mastectomy, hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, metoidioplasty. They're splendid words, scientific concepts that play out in his own body. Sherlock demands to be allowed to stay conscious for all of the surgeries in order to watch the procedures, but Mycroft only shakes his head, eyebrows shooting up.

(It's a double indignity, both giving in to Mycroft and being unable to know what people are doing to his body. He wants to watch, to know that he's still in control. He almost asks to have it taped for him, but the thought of seeing himself helpless and senseless on a surgical bed while five-foot hills of blue paper cut into his skin and take out the bad bits revolts him, and instead he just endures not knowing.)

The best part, though, is the anaesthetic. Bupivacaine hydrochloride is a standard post-surgical anaesthetic, and the nurse injects him with it every morning. Sherlock lies in his little bed in the uncomfortable paper gown feeling it spread through him until all the useless, uninteresting parts of himself fade out of existence and all that's left is his brain, thinking, thinking, thinking.

He knows how to be convincing when he has to be, and he talks her into giving him a syringe and bottle for during the night, when, he assures her, he has trouble sleeping because of the pain. The nurse is extraordinarily sympathetic; she promises not to tell the doctor or his brother.

And when it's over he's back in that filthy, boring apartment - Mycroft has spent over fifty-thousand quid and Sherlock's going to pay it back because he won't be in debt to him, damn it, it doesn't matter how ridiculous it is to imagine how he'll make that much money - but he's got a bottle of bupivacaine in his pocket, and a smooth flat chest with tiny nipples, and a sodding cock, for God's sake, and that's enough to show for two years of work.

Doesn't matter what Mycroft says. Sherlock's clever, and the stuff in that bottle only makes him cleverer. He looks around his room in silence. Poisons are just trivia now. It's time to get to business.

4.

John finds out, as inevitably he would - Sherlock isn't honestly surprised, except for a little mild annoyance that it takes him so long; he's always underestimating how slow ordinary people are. As a matter of fact, John doesn't even deduce it.

What happens is that like some rubbishy cliché Sherlock gets himself shot, and before he knows it he's flat on his back, sucking helplessly at the air for breath - getting shot hurts, he thinks stupidly, trying to focus himself, his brain and his vision, and then John's falling to his knees next to Sherlock's shoulder.

"Oh, Christ. Oh, Jesus. Sherlock. Easy, you're OK, just lie still. You're OK."

Sherlock starts to laugh, although that hurts too. "You're talking nonsense," he says, and his voice comes out in the same hoarse gasp one gets after strangulation. "You're scared out of your wits."

"What the bloody fuck else should I be?" John is pulling off his coat with practised movements, and Sherlock notes, as rapidly as he notes everything, that this is how John undresses wounded bodies to tend to them. John's done this a hundred times before. "Tell me you're just a bleeder," he says, as he unbuttons Sherlock's shirt, so quick that anyone less experienced would be tearing the buttons loose.

"Runs in the family," Sherlock agrees. "Text Lestrade."

"No. Do you have scissors?"

"Black case in my coat. She's going to get away."

"You'll find her again, you're Sherlock Holmes." John finds the case in Sherlock's pocket and unzips it, tossing aside the hypodermic and the wire-cutters. He cuts Sherlock's undershirt open to the collar. "OK. Yeah. I can do this."

"I'd hope so. You've always given the impression of competence." Sherlock's brain feels as though pieces of it are coming loose inside his skull. John's tossed-off compliment is sticking in his head like something important (who the sodding hell has that kind of faith in him?). John's big, indelicate hands are playing soft piano on his chest, centring on the white-hot place where the bullet is buried in him.

"This is going to hurt."

"Pain's boring," Sherlock murmurs, just before the rolled-up bundle of John's jumper presses down into the wound and he screams, caught off-guard anyway.

"It's OK, it's OK, oh, Jesus, I'm sorry," John says. "I've dialled nine-nine-nine. I'm sorry, I'd do it myself, but I think your collar's fractured, you need a shot of adrenaline, and I don't have the stuff to do anything but try to stop you bleeding."

"It's all right," he says, panting. "I've been in hospitals before."

"Yeah, but - " John's hand grazes one of the scars on his chest, and Sherlock's body trembles oddly. "Look, I'll talk to your doctor. I'll make sure it's someone who can keep his bloody mouth shut."

"The syringe in that case is adrenaline."

"The hell, of course it is." John laughs; somewhere in the background Sherlock can hear sirens. John's hand finds his and squeezes, and Sherlock manages to keep himself from cringing again at the pain. "It's OK. I'll get you somewhere sterile, get the bullet out. I'll do the reconstruction myself if they let me."

Sherlock opens his mouth to say he doesn't care, he doesn't care who knows, but for some reason all he can think about is Mycroft telling him he'll turn him into less of a curiosity, and he imagines what Donovan and Anderson and Lestrade would say if they knew, and he just nods.

5.

"Your doctor sounds like an idiot." Sherlock glares out from under the blue blanket the emergency medical team draped over him in the ambulance. The pain in his chest - it's hard to tell exactly where it's located because it's spread out so far - is making it difficult to breathe again, but he props himself up on one arm anyway, holding the blanket over his scars. "I want another doctor. I want someone competent."

The emergency nurse looks back at him helplessly. "Well, look, we have to get to this immediately. I mean, we don't get this sort of thing in here very often, so the gunshot specialist isn't in to-day, and this isn't protocol - "

"What do you think the difference between a general surgeon and a specialist is? Do you think it's just the name? Is this the kind of thing you forget in order to remember nonsense about the solar system?"

"Sir, please calm down. I'll have to find my supervisor and ask her - "

"I'm perfectly calm, I just don't want to be seen by some halfwit - "

"OK, just shut up." John has his face wound up in that strained frown, and both hands lifted in a gesture that makes it look like he's about to strangle someone with a very wide neck. Sherlock laughs to himself; his brain is still slipping around inside his skull. "Both of you, shut up. Look, I want a surgical nurse here, now. I want an operating room and a surgical kit. I'll do it myself."

"That's definitely not protocol," the nurse says. "I don't think I can allow that, I'll just page the specialist since you won't see the surgeon who's here."

"No, no, you won't. OK? You won't. We're wasting time. I'm a field surgeon, I know what I'm doing, and I know him." He turns sharply, beckoning to another of the nurses. "Hullo, yeah, can I get OR scrubs and a room, please? Now."

There's something commanding and assured in his voice that Sherlock is unfamiliar with - something as confident as the way his hands felt when he undressed Sherlock and started staunching the wound. This is the place he knows. The second nurse nods crisply and heads off, sending yet another woman in pastel scrubs over to them. This one takes hold of the gurney and starts wheeling Sherlock.

"Sherlock, listen, they have to put you out, OK?" John is walking alongside, his smart quick walk, as authoritative as though it were his own hospital. "So I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do. Once you're out I'm going to get a quick x-ray and find out how bad your collar is. I might not be able to take the bullet out. I will if I can. I'll do whatever reconstruction I can. Then I'll get someone good on wound care, get you a bed, but I swear I'll be here the whole time, I won't go home, I'll make sure I'm in charge of all your care top-down, all right?"

"I don't want anaesthetic."

"What? No, that's mad, I'm putting you under."

Sherlock tries to sit up again. "No, no." It's beginning to hurt to talk, too, and the complacency he let himself slip into when John first took over is giving way to a sort of feverish urgency. He feels the same way as he does when something is just out of reach of his mind, or he can't make someone understand what he's trying to say. "The drugs, the nicotine, this is where I got started. It was anaesthetic. It helps me think."

"Hang on." John stops, and the nurse pulls the gurney to a halt against the wall. He takes Sherlock's face in his hands, leaning close. "Listen to me. You can't do this awake. Now if you were in the field with me, I'd get you black-out drunk and hold you down, but we're in London, I've got access to the best drugs they stock, and I'm not going to risk your life, OK? After the surgery you can manage your pain however you like. But right now you're going to do what I say. D'you trust me?"

All Sherlock can think of is John's calloused hand brushing the mastectomy scar, the only person in the world who's ever touched it - even Sherlock couldn't bring himself to. He can feel the ridges of John's fingerprints on his skin. "Yes. Fine."

"OK, good man." John's head comes up. "Let's go, he's been bleeding long enough. Once we're there send for a pint, all right? He's AB neg."

The rest of it scatters after that. He tries desperately to stay alert to John's movements, but the walls heave like someone's sick stomach, and by the time the hypodermic pricks his arm he's barely conscious anyway. He can't even make out the scattered handfuls of words John keeps throwing to him in his soft and certain voice.

When he wakes again he's lying in a hospital bed under a thin, starchy sheet, wearing the same kind of blue paper gown he wore after the operation. His shoulder feels like a small fire is burning there, undulled, and when he turns his head he sees John, mouth tucked in one corner in something between resignation and worry.

"John."

John's expression lightens, and he pulls the chair up closer to the bed. "Hey. I'm sorry it hurts. You're not on anything."

"Where's Mycroft?"

"He's not here right now. I promised him I'd look after you." His expression changes again, very subtly, and Sherlock realises it's with hurt.

"He's usually hovering over me like some bird of ill omen by now," he says, acerbic enough that he hopes John won't know he's trying to soothe him.

"No, I told him I'd stay with you. He told the staff to give me whatever I want and left again."

"Of course he did."

John lets out his breath. "Lestrade's been by, too, but I told him you were out. Only one nurse has seen you with your shirt off, and I think your brother took her out in the hall and had one of his, uh, dramatic confrontations with her. So that's it. That's, uh, it." Sherlock watches his face carefully. John is still looking at him, his forehead creased into thin lines of worry, his hands on his knees - Sherlock has the feeling that he's trying hard not to touch anything or move - and half-nodding, as if he's reassuring himself of something. "Yeah. OK. So."

"John."

"Yeah?" He meets Sherlock's eyes hurriedly.

"I don't mind that you've seen my scars."

6.

Sherlock gets out of the taxi, half-leaning on John. He can stand up by himself, of course, but John is offering his arm, and Sherlock has realised, after the appallingly boring two weeks in the hospital, that John likes to be useful to him.

Mrs. Hudson fusses enormously, following them up to the flat with tea and biscuits and sandwiches, asking paroxysms of questions that Sherlock brushes off as usual. The flat looks the way it did when Sherlock last saw it, beautifully chaotic and full of information - it tells him everything John has done while he's been in the hospital, tells him that Sarah has visited once or twice and Lestrade has been there too - and John hasn't moved his experiments around. It's perfect, as much as anything in Sherlock's life achieves his requirements for perfection.

Once Mrs. Hudson has been soothed and dispatched, and Sherlock's trunk abandoned in his room, and both their coats shed on John's favourite armchair, John turns to Sherlock and runs a hand through his hair with a combination of weariness and good humour, and smiles.

"Time to change your dressing."

Sherlock is wearing his silk shirt half-unfastened, draped over both shoulders, and he unbuttons the rest of it with his free hand, and John helps him out of it; beneath it, his arm is bound across his waist to keep it immobile. The band of the sling tops just below his scars, and John pauses - it isn't a hesitation - and runs his thumb over the left one.

"Is this OK?"

It seems almost ridiculous that he should be asking; for the last two weeks he's attended to nearly every aspect of Sherlock's care, from choosing the various aspects of the wound care that Sherlock can't be bothered to remember, to diagramming the physical therapy programme he claims he's going to get Sherlock into. Sherlock just looks at him, lifting one eyebrow, and doesn't move.

So John touches him again, just as carefully. His hand lingers for a moment, then travels upward, over Sherlock's thin, flat chest (he's lost weight in the hospital, from stagnation) to the bandages that cover his shoulder. The weight of John's hand is enough that Sherlock can feel the pressure as he clips the bandages loose, but the pain is the same dull, heartbeat-steady ache that's been going on for the last week.

Beneath the bandages is the wound, not swollen now, but still a little discoloured, sewn up with John's neat, regular stitches.

Two weeks away has done nothing to compromise Sherlock's ability to navigate the flat without looking, and he backs into one of the chairs in the kitchen, clearing a space on the table with his good arm. John sits across from him, setting the little plastic bag of hospital supplies on the table.

In the hospital, one of the innumerable wretchedly pleasant nurses attended to the business of the wound; this is the first time John has ever done it himself. Sherlock closes his eyes and concentrates on the cold sensation of John cleaning the stitches with a sterile solution, then drying it carefully, then spreading silver on his shoulder. All of John's movements are gentle - Sherlock doesn't mean to, but he realises after a moment that he's comparing John to the doctor who attended to his incisions after the operation. It makes his body tense, and he feels John sit back, lifting his hands away.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Go on."

"Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"Look, if you're worried - I haven't told anybody, and I'm not going to. Why d'you think I recognise what the incisions were from? I've seen that kind of work before. Some of Harry's friends are - yeah, I mean, I've seen it. And, uh, and I don't think there's anything wrong with it. Or with you. So if you're all right, then, uh, then we're all right."

Sherlock opens his eyes. John is looking at him with that earnest look he gets when he really wants Sherlock to hear something, that look that mistakes Sherlock for someone cleverer and better and more worthy than he is.

"How would you describe me?"

John blinks. "Um, brilliant. Yeah. And a bit mad. And a good friend."

"A friend."

"I know that's a little dull for you - "

"Do you think I'm a curiosity?" He tries to speak neutrally, to get an honest answer, but he says the word with distaste, as though it were an unwieldy detail in a case he's been working on too long (but seven years is too long, he's Sherlock sodding Holmes, he solved Moriarty's puzzles in matters of hours, he shouldn't be rolling this word around in his head for seven fucking years).

John is still looking at him, the earnest expression giving way to something Sherlock can't read at all. Finally he says, "No. No, I don't, I think you're different from most people, yeah, but I don't think you're something weird or, or curious, no, I think you're fine. All of you's fine. Can I finish now?"

Sherlock nods, leaning back into his chair. This is just data. It's just data, it doesn't mean anything, and he certainly doesn't care what other people think about him, especially ordinary people like Anderson or Donovan or John, the kind of people who care about things like the operation. That sort of thing doesn't matter.

When the wound is dressed again, John says, "I think you'd be more comfortable in a jumper or something, have you got anything like that?"

"No."

"OK, well. You can borrow one of mine. Be a bit short, but it should be all right." He pauses. "Look, I won't ask again after this, but you are all right, yeah?"

"Yes," Sherlock says slowly. "Yes, I'm - fine."