A/N: well, here it is, finally, because SO many people asked about this...
Chapter 11: Pharmaceutical Solutions
Three days later, John came downstairs in the morning and found Sherlock wrapped in a blanket on the couch, clicking listlessly at her laptop and looking absolutely miserable.
"…You okay?" he asked cautiously.
"I've decided to become religious," Sherlock muttered.
"Religious?" John echoed, trying to keep all hints of bemusement out of his voice. "And why is that?"
"Because I believe I'm experiencing the wrath of an angry God, punishing women for their original sin or however the dogma goes. It's the only explanation."
"Hm." John sighed, shifted his weight, and couldn't figure out what to do with his hands. "So… bad cramps, then?"
Sherlock leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. "At first I thought it must be some sort of viral hemorrhagic fever, maybe my body rejecting its new organs and liquefying them—"
"Don't need the details, thanks," John interrupted her.
Sherlock stared at him in sullen anger for a minute, until her expression was displaced by a fresh wince of pain. "…then," she continued in her gloomiest voice, "I did some research on the internet and realized that what I'm experiencing is all…normal."
The disgust in her voice was just a little too theatrical, making John scrunch up his face in disbelief. "Research, Sherlock? But you must have known about it before. It can't have been a total surprise."
"Yes I knew about it," Sherlock huffed. "But knowing about it and feeling it happen to you are two different things. Do you 'know about' people being eaten by sharks? Of course you do. But I bet it would still be a 'total surprise' when the shark is eating you."
"All right, you're right." John made the universal palms-down 'calm down' motion in the air. "I have no idea what you're going through. Sorry."
"It just doesn't make any sense," Sherlock hissed. "How can this much pain be 'normal'? From an evolutionary standpoint it makes no sense to have half your population crippled by useless pain and mess on a monthly basis. Females in this condition would have been of little use amongst the earliest hominids. I can't believe that natural selection failed to eliminate this…this…counterproductive process eons ago. And I'm sure no other mammals experience this torture, so why are human women so afflicted? Must be the wrath of God. Simple."
"Ehhm, actually, I think some of the great apes also have…" John began, until a seething look from Sherlock shut him up.
"But the pain, John!" She snapped her laptop closed and cast it aside on the couch. "Are you telling me that chimps and gorillas are out in the jungle right now suffering like this just because they were born female? Why should nature punish females this way? Why should life as a female be so much more difficult and awful than life as a male?"
John bit his lip and made a face, willing himself not to laugh. He did feel sorry for her, sort of. "I don't know," he answered, shaking his head. "Maybe it won't be so bad, once you get used to it?"
After all, John reasoned, hundreds of millions of women got up every day in the same state of misery that Sherlock was in, and they got dressed and went to work and paid their bills and functioned the same as men. But that logic aside, the look on Sherlock's face made John realize instantly that it had been the wrong thing to say.
"Oh," she said with a dark chuckle. "Maybe the rest of the sheep are content to 'get used to it'. Not me. I've never appreciated pain; far too distracting. This time I was unprepared, but there won't be a next time, not of this."
She sounded so sure of herself, so smug. John's face flickered with worry. "And… how do you intend to get out of it?"
She shrugged. "I'm sure there are several pharmaceutical solutions. Haven't really looked into it yet, but it should be easy enough. Hormones are just chemicals, after all."
"Sherlock, no. I'm not gonna let you sit around here conducting chemical warfare on yourself. Too dangerous, too many side effects."
Her eyes narrowed. "You saying you don't support a woman's right to progesterone injections?"
"I'm saying any kind of injections or mucking about with your hormones should be a last resort for a serious problem, not a way to avoid the inconvenience of a natural cycle."
"Hmpf," Sherlock snorted, looking away. "Then I'll just do it the easy way."
"Which is?" John asked, frowning.
"Starvation," Sherlock announced brightly, as if it were the cleverest idea in the world.
John's face clouded with anger. "Don't even joke about that."
She opened her mouth to make a smart-arsed remark but John cut her off. "I'm serious Sherlock, don't. It's bad enough you don't eat when you're working on cases. Not eating for other reasons, especially that reason, is so unhealthy it makes me angry to even think about it. I am your friend, and I am not gonna let you starve yourself. In fact, I'm going to make us some breakfast right now, and you're going to eat it."
Not waiting for a reply, he stormed off into the kitchen, leaving Sherlock sulking on the couch. After a few minutes, hearing John rummage about for a pan for sausage and eggs and a pot for beans, Sherlock rolled her eyes and dragged herself into the kitchen after him, crumpling dramatically into a chair. She hunched over until her forehead rested on the table, and stayed there, not speaking.
Once breakfast was sizzling on the stove, John snuck a concerned look back at his flatmate. "By the way," he asked. "Do you, ehm, have everything you need?"
"Apart from a large quantity of illegal opiates, yes," Sherlock muttered in a bored voice, not lifting her head. "Molly thought of it and brought me an assortment of supplies."
"Including those fifteen different bottles of shampoo and stuff in the shower?" John asked. "I wondered where those came from. Figured it was one of those female mysteries, best left unquestioned."
"Hm, yes," Sherlock mused. She turned her face sideways, away from John, so she could speak more clearly. "Molly put those there and bored me with her subjective evaluations of the effectiveness of 'citrus splash' and 'lavender bliss' and so forth; said I'm supposed to try them out. But then she showed me what else she'd bought for me, which led to a horrific session of 'girl talk', and my reluctantly agreeing to keep everything on hand just to be prepared for the worst, which then manifested itself at approximately midnight last night."
"You were up all night?" John asked, feeling a pang of sympathy for her. "Curled up on the couch thinking you had some organ-devouring hemorrhagic fever? And you didn't bother to wake me up and tell me?"
"I didn't know whether it was contagious," Sherlock retorted, as if that shouldn't have needed explaining. "No sense in both of us dying from a new strain of Ebola. And by the time I figured out what it was, I also figured out that you, being a man and having no conception of my affliction's severity, would most likely tell me to keep a stiff upper lip and march on."
That sounded a bit harsh to John, until he imagined being dragged out of bed at two in the morning to be informed that Sherlock was on her period—and then he had to admit it was probably for the best that Sherlock had left him asleep.
"Anyway," Sherlock continued, sounding bored. "I've just realized that Molly bringing all that stuff over here is surely what inspired Mycroft to try and interfere with my life again. Would probably be kind of us to inform Molly that she's under surveillance."
John blinked, puzzled. "Mycroft? What's he done now?"
Still not raising her head, Sherlock groped around on the table until she found a particular torn-open envelope, and held it up in the air without looking at it, waving it to indicate that John should take it from her.
John left off stirring the beans and took the envelope, pulling out the paper within. His eyebrows climbed as he identified what it was. "Doctor's appointment," he summarized.
Sherlock heaved a sigh, sounding supremely annoyed. "To ensure I am 'in good working order', as my brother so tactfully implored. I texted him back, told him I wasn't interested in being enrolled in any breeding programs, thanks very much."
John choked on a laugh and then cleared his throat. "Breeding program, right. A whole army of little Sherlocks, that's just what the country needs." He set the envelope down, going back to turn the sausages. "…Might not be a bad idea though, to keep the appointment."
Sherlock raised her head just enough to cut into his back with her eyes. "What for? If I need a doctor I've already got one."
"Hah. Wrong kind of doctor, sorry."
"You must know the basics at least. They do have women in the army."
John smiled. "Yeah, and if they have a collapsed lung or a limb blown off, call me up." He shoveled the eggs and sausages out of the pan and onto two plates, followed by generous helpings of beans. Then he turned the stove off, and brought the plates to the table.
"You could at least help me get some kind of prescription for this agonizing pain," Sherlock complained into the table, having put her face back down on it.
John shook his head, setting knives and forks next to the plates. Then, before he sat down, he just stood and looked at Sherlock for a minute, hunched in on herself and slumped over in misery. He felt some genuine sympathy for her, but at the same time, her dramatic moping kind of made him want to laugh. "You'll be fine," he reassured her. And then, on a whim, John reached out to the back of her head, and gave that wild mop of hair an affectionate ruffle.
Which had the completely unintended effect of making Sherlock's shoulders clench upwards, and then melt back down. She took a sharp breath, which had just enough of that unmistakable hitch in it to make John's heart drop into his shoes and then bounce back up to get stuck in his throat. He froze.
"Do that again," Sherlock said, voice utterly calm.
The kitchen seemed very quiet. John swallowed, and reached down, and ruffled her hair once more, his fingers putting just the briefest pressure on the base of her skull before he lifted them away.
"Now do that for hours," Sherlock commanded.
John laughed. "I should've known you'd like that. You're always scratching the back of your head when you're stressed. Now how about you sit up and eat."
Sherlock sat up immediately, and John took the seat across from her, and to John's satisfaction Sherlock began to eat without a single word of protest. There didn't seem to be anything to talk about, which was fine. Sherlock kept idly glancing at John with a sort of an abstract, appreciative expression on her face, as if she were studying a painted portrait of him instead of the conscious, breathing body of the man himself.
"I thought I wasn't hungry," she blurted out, after suddenly finding herself with an empty plate, every bite eaten. "But I was…wrong." She actually looked mildly embarrassed.
John met her eyes, glad that she seemed to have returned to his plane of existence. "Normally I'd tease you mercilessly for that," he pointed out. "But considering your current 'affliction' I think I'll let it go, just this once."
"We should sleep together," Sherlock said next, completely matter-of-fact.
John looked like he'd been hit by a truck.
Sherlock scanned his expression and then looked insulted. "Not right this minute, obviously."
John sat back in his chair, mouth half-open in surprise, and looked around the kitchen, left and right. He seemed to be having some kind of argument with himself, which made Sherlock squint at him, wishing she really could hear his thoughts. Finally, he took a breath, and blew it out.
"Yeah, obviously," was all he said, echoing her. Sherlock bit her lip and frowned at him so intently, she looked ridiculous.
They stared at each other, until John couldn't help it—his face crinkled into a wide smile, which gave way to a giggle, and then they were both laughing, because even Sherlock recognized that their situation was more than a bit absurd.
The incoming-text chirp from John's phone was the only thing that gave them a reason to try and regain their composures. John picked up his phone, looked at it, still suppressing his giggles, and read the message.
"Oh my god," he said abruptly, all laughter instantly gone.
"What?" Sherlock asked.
"It's my sister," John said, suddenly going pale.
"What happened, is something wrong?"
"She wants to visit us," John explained, swallowing.
Sherlock relaxed a little, actually gave a half-shrug. "So you've said."
"No—this says she wants to visit us tomorrow."
"Ugh," Sherlock groaned, rolling her eyes. "I doubt I'll be in the mood for entertaining company tomorrow."
"Knowing Harry, she'll be the one entertaining us," John said. "I keep forgetting you haven't met her."
"Can't we propose a later date?"
"No, she's got a flight out of Heathrow tomorrow night and wants to stop in for a visit on her way to the airport."
Sherlock sighed. "So she'll just be here for an hour or two? Might be tolerable. And it'll be an excellent opportunity for us to rehearse our story."
John grimaced. "Our story? What story is that? Wait—you mean Mycroft's story, how we're supposed to tell people you've been female all along?"
"If we can convince your sister, we should be able to convince the rest of the world."
"Not gonna work," John predicted, shaking his head. "Harry may not have met you yet, but she does read my blog. She knows you're supposed to be a man."
"Thousands of people have read your blog," Sherlock reminded him. "And now it's up to us to make them all believe that the male Sherlock you've described was really a woman from the start, cross-dressing."
John just stared at her, mortified.
She rolled her eyes. "What's wrong? Don't tell me you've some moral compunction about telling a lie to your sister."
"Oh, I'll tell her a lie," John said. "But I can't guarantee that she'll believe it."
Sherlock smiled. "Don't worry," she said in a way that made it impossible for him not to. "I'll make sure everything is perfectly convincing."
John decided not to dwell on whatever that meant, and texted his sister back, telling her it would be great to see her and that she was free to stop by anytime.
Omg I can't wait to meet Sherlock! Harry texted back within seconds. See you tomorrow!
A/N: No, Mycroft is not trying to get Sherlock into a 'breeding program', that was just a joke, lol. Mycroft is just worried about Sherlock as usual. And as for Harry Watson, is it creepy that I really, really want to see her played by Amanda A? I hope not. I think it would be awesomely hilarious to see that happen on screen. :)
Anyway thanks everyone for reading, I hope you're enjoying it! TBC!