A/N: Not sure how many Sherlock-turned-into-a-girl stories there are out there, but this one needed to get writ. Trust me, all you Johnlockers will like it.
The Platypus Hunt
Chapter 1: Gender Irrelevance
Sherlock Holmes woke up and realized something was different. He was certain it was morning; the usual time. He had no idea what day it was, but of course if he needed to know something that mundane he could always just ask John. His room hadn't changed at all, either in its dimensions or in its content. All of his belongings were exactly as he'd left them. He blinked up at the ceiling, which looked exactly the same as it always had. But when he tried to roll over and go back to sleep, he suddenly understood.
A few minutes later, dressed in his clothes which no longer fit him properly, Sherlock barged into the living room where John was already enjoying breakfast behind a newspaper. "I've got a new case," he announced.
"What's happened to your voice?" John asked absently, not even looking up from his paper.
"I've been turned into a woman."
John quirked an eyebrow and sipped his tea. "Hilarious," he commented, continuing to read.
The dramatic moment spoiled, Sherlock flounced his way to his favorite chair and settled into it, breathing deeply as he began to think.
Everything was so normal that a full fifteen minutes went by before John set aside his paper and glanced at the female Sherlock sitting and thinking in Sherlock's chair. "Eh…" he uttered, blinking in confusion, and then fell silent. A half-laugh crossed his face, followed by a very full frown, and ending in a close-lipped grimace of acceptance. He dared to look again.
Undoubtedly, it was Sherlock. His face, only more feminine. His gawky frame, but with female features. His dark curly hair…but longer than Sherlock's had been yesterday.
"So," John ventured, folding his hands atop the newspaper on the table. "You've been turned into a woman."
Sherlock slid a cold eye in John's direction. "Obviously."
John grimaced again, nodding. "Yes, obviously, obviously… obviously a wig, and a very good make-up job, and some sort of…stuffed…bra or bodysuit or something. And, as a very nice touch, you've bought a set of your normal clothes two sizes too big and put them on, creating the illusion that you've somehow shrunk six inches in height, overnight. Very brilliant, but…" he leaned across the table, earnestly. "Why are you doing it?"
Sherlock turned that strange ashy color that would have been a flush of anger in a normal person. "That's the problem, John. I'm not doing it. I woke up as the opposite sex."
John stared, and felt the first twinge of belief. "No," he scoffed, overriding it. "Nice trick, really. Like I said, hilarious. But no." He made to pick back up his newspaper, and Sherlock practically flew across the room at him.
"Why not?" Sherlock demanded, desperate. "Why don't you believe it? Can't you see this is real?"
Up close, the voice and the face and the…the body all seemed extremely convincing. But still, John couldn't believe. "I see it, Sherlock," he said to be placating. "But I don't believe it. One of the few facts about you of which I am absolutely certain is that you are, in fact, a man. A male. People can't just wake up as the opposite sex."
"It's impossible," Sherlock agreed, staring at John. "But here I am, and I'm not hallucinating, unless we're both hallucinating. We need Mrs. Hudson!" He slammed his fist on the table, and John's face twitched at the recognition that it wasn't Sherlock's regular hand. "Mrs. Hudson!" Sherlock hollered, in the direction of the stairs.
Mrs. Hudson came up to their flat speedily enough, considering her hip. "Sherlock? What is it? Your voice sounds a bit off this morning, is it something to do with your experiments?" She caught sight of Sherlock and gasped, covering her mouth with her hand. "Sherlock? Is that you?"
"Good morning Mrs. Hudson," Sherlock replied, with a measured nod.
John felt a twinge of annoyance at how Sherlock seemed to be enjoying the attention. "It appears that he's been transformed into a woman," John explained, as a parent might explain that their child was currently enacting the role of an astronaut or a ninja.
"Oh dear," Mrs. Hudson exclaimed, and looked back and forth between the two of them. "Is it permanent?"
"No idea," Sherlock said with a happy little smirk, and John's annoyance grew at how pleased he sounded. Another mystery to solve, wasn't it wonderful?
"And it isn't, I don't know, injections or anything?" Mrs. Hudson asked, aghast.
"I didn't do this to myself intentionally, if that's what you're wondering," Sherlock clarified. "I just woke up in a completely female body."
John cleared his throat. "All right, that's enough." His annoyance had reached its peak. "We're both convinced; you're a girl. So tell us what's going on. Out with it."
Sherlock looked at him as if he'd never seen him before. "Out with what?"
"Your new case. The murder, the kidnapping, whatever it was. You've gone to great lengths here to prove that it's possible for a man to convincingly appear to be a woman; though I'm not sure why you bothered, since cross-dressers have been doing it for centuries. So my guess is that there's some case of mistaken gender, maybe the man with motive, the most likely suspect, couldn't be the perpetrator because witnesses swear it was woman—something like that?"
Sherlock smiled at him, so goddamn fondly amused, it made John feel like the world's biggest idiot. "Lovely deduction," Sherlock complimented him, making it even worse. "But the art of disguise does have its limits. Stand up, please."
John stood, not sure why he felt so wretchedly embarrassed. Sherlock walked over and stood next to him, lowering his gaze a lot less than usual to meet John's eyes. John realized it immediately—Sherlock had shrunk. He was still taller than John, but only by a few inches. "You're slouching," John accused.
"I assure you; I am not," Sherlock retorted, and shrugged out of his jacket, thrusting his shoulders back in his now-too-big-for-him shirt, which of course drew John's eyes like a magnet to Sherlock's utterly ridiculous, impossibly womanly little breasts.
It had been a split-second slip, but it was enough to make John turn scarlet, and when his eyes reconnected with Sherlock's, Sherlock blinked at him with a miniscule tilt of his chin, which meant that he was puzzled.
Puzzled about John's reaction, clearly; Sherlock could usually decipher John's emotions, but in this case he was oblivious.
"Oh dear," Mrs. Hudson interjected, understanding immediately. "Sherlock, Sherlock, you aren't wearing…undergarments…a bra?"
Sherlock frowned down at his new chest. "Of course not; I don't own one," he replied. John rolled his eyes with a long-suffering look, and turned to Mrs. Hudson, imploring her to save him.
"Mrs. Hudson, would you please…"
Mrs. Hudson cut him off. "Of course dear, no need to say another word. Sherlock, love, come with me." She beckoned him over, and Sherlock approached her, looking mystified. "This is a little out of Dr. Watson's depth, I'm afraid. If you're going to be a girl, we're going to have to take care of a few things for you," she said kindly.
Now Sherlock was taken aback, and whirled to face John. "Out of your depth? Because I'm female? I never took you for a chauvinist."
"A chauvinist." John repeated, and let it sink in. He had a pretty high boiling point, he thought; but this was his limit. He raised his head with a motion like racking the slide back on a pistol. "A chauvinist? I am not a chauvinist. And of course this is 'out of my depth'; it's beyond the realm of human experience! Unless you are faking it, which I still sincerely hope that you are, this situation is unknown to medical practice, to science, to history—nobody just turns into a girl, Sherlock, nobody. And even you can't possibly expect me to treat you as if nothing is different, when you're parading around here with, with, with—"
Sherlock took offense, or pretended to. "Breasts?" he suggested, quirking an eyebrow, and decided to take full advantage of the fact that John seemed temporarily unable to speak. Sherlock cupped his now-girlish hands over the womanly body parts in question, smooshing them together under the thin fabric of his shirt in a way that made John turn at least three shades redder.
Mrs. Hudson gasped and grabbed Sherlock's wrist. "Oh my. Sherlock," she scolded. "Please-You mustn't do that; it's terribly impolite, really! I supposed you don't know any better, but, it is rude. Come with me, now, downstairs. Let's go. Let poor John breathe for a moment."
Sherlock stared at the now-paralyzed John like a cat who'd caught some inferior creature but was uncertain whether or not it was edible.
Finally John looked down at the table, red, mad, and defeated. "Please just go," he managed tersely.
Sherlock allowed Mrs. Hudson to lead him down the stairs by his sleeve.
221B Baker Street remained deserted the rest of the day. John had fumed in the flat for a while, then gone out for a walk, and then for a drink, and then for another drink after that. Sherlock, meanwhile, spent the day updating his wardrobe to match his new gender, while Mrs. Hudson fussed over him and tried to impress upon him the finer points of social etiquette for females.
She also managed to direct him into the correct public restroom for his new anatomy, just in the nick of time.
"But I'm not really a girl," Sherlock argued aloud in the middle of the shopping plaza, even though no one was arguing with him. Mrs. Hudson blinked at him. Sherlock sighed, ignoring the three or four incredulous glances he got from passersby. "I mean, physically, yes, now I'm a girl. But here…" he tapped his knuckle to his forehead. "I'm still exactly the same. Still me."
"Gender equality, then?" Mrs. Hudson ventured.
"More like gender irrelevance. However… I have always thought of myself as male. Referred to myself in the masculine and so forth. I suppose I ought to adjust that now."
"If you think it's necessary," Mrs. Hudson said supportively.
Sherlock smiled. "It might help me pick the right lavatory next time," he muttered. He inhaled, looked around at his world, and resolved to think as a female from then on.
She, the female Sherlock, was trying on pairs of sensible walking shoes when Mrs. Hudson managed to bring up the most important subject: John. Sherlock had been a little surprised by her flatmate's anger earlier, so she listened patiently while Mrs. Hudson gave her all sorts of curious advice about how to interact with her one and only friend in the world, now that she was a member of the fairer sex.
"…just please remember, if he does want to stay, you're going to have to treat him a little better now," Mrs. Hudson concluded.
"What's wrong with how I treat him?" Sherlock scoffed. "I think I know him well enough by now to know that he's not going to run off just because my voice is a little higher. If tomorrow I wake up in the body of a monkey with horns growing out of my head, that'd hardly be enough to scare John away."
Mrs. Hudson's distress was clear. "Oh dear, do you really think so?"
Sherlock rolled her eyes. "What I meant was, John didn't move in with me because I was tall and handsome. My physical appearance doesn't matter to him."
Mrs. Hudson wrung her hands, staring at Sherlock in dismay. "If you say so, dear, but…"
Sherlock picked up the little floor-level mirror that she'd been using to try on shoes, and angled it so it reflected her face. "For god's sake, Mrs. Hudson. I look practically the same as I did yesterday. Longer hair. Smaller nose. Zygomatic bones still pronounced. And I am still the same person. John and I will continue on exactly as before."
"But Sherlock, you haven't thought it through! What if he shows up with flowers and chocolates for you, the poor man. What will you do then?"
Sherlock put the mirror down. "Don't be absurd. He knows me better than that."
"I suppose time will tell," Mrs. Hudson sighed. "Only…do be careful? With John, I mean…please? He is just a man after all and, well, I can't abide the thought of things going sour between the two of you."
When Sherlock returned home, she noted John's conspicuous absence, and quickly deduced that he was resolving his stress down at the pub. She settled in to do some blood work, to compare her current DNA with that of her formerly male self.
When the door finally did creak open in the early morning hours, Sherlock could tell from John's first three steps up the stairs that he was drunk.
"You're home late," she remarked as John appeared at the top of the stairs.
"Oh god," John groaned. "You're still a girl."
"Yes," Sherlock drawled, not looking at him.
John rubbed his eyes. "Right. Fine, that's fine. Goodnight then." He shuffled towards the stairs that led up to his room, unaware that Sherlock was staring at him.
"You're drunk," she couldn't help but point out. John gave a little laugh.
"Good. Observation," he slurred, putting a hand on the wall as he started up the steps.
"You don't usually drink to excess."
"Please Sherlock. Not now. Let me go—let me go to sleep." He pushed open the door to his bedroom and stumbled inside, but before he could find the door to close it again, Sherlock swept into the room behind him, rambling away.
"I realized earlier that this little gender incident had frazzled your nerves for some reason, but if you're feeling so overwhelmed that you're driven to drink I wish you would let me know. I might have needed you for something and you aren't nearly as useful when you're intoxicated."
John sat on the bed and squinted up at his flatmate. "So it's to be lectures from the wife now?"
"Wife? I was-" Sherlock uttered, and would have gone on, but John raised his voice and pointed back out at the stairs.
"Get out!" John all but shouted. "For god's sake. Ninety percent of the time you're off in your own world, why now do you feel the need to hassle me? Leave me alone and get out."
Sherlock blinked rapidly, recalculating. "…I don't understand why you're angry."
John put his hands over his face and yelled into his palms. "Because you're a bloody girl and it's impossible and you act like nothing is different even though it changes everything!"
"Changes everything?" Sherlock shook her head in disbelief. "That's what you think? Then you must be sexist after all; from my perspective it doesn't change anything, other than my shoe size and how I use the toilet."
"The toilet." John groaned, falling sideways onto his pillow. "Oh god, no. The toilet," he muttered, closing his eyes.
Sherlock continued to ramble about something, but John was in no condition to process what she was saying. A few seconds later, John was out like a light.
A/N: yep, not much to say about this one yet... tbc.