it does make me wonder if that's the reason why the romance was not progressed in elementary, though - because everyone knows the characters were originally both men.

I don’t think so. They just wrote a relationship like the first post is talking about, people who may be soulmates but know they’d be terrible in a romantic relationship and so don’t do that.

It’s a good point - they took the original close friends relationship from the books and just gender flipped one of the characters, making for an interesting dynamic. They also gender flipped Moriarty and had her fall in love with Sherlock which was an intriguing idea given their games in the book.