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John attempted to peel his eyes open, managing on the third or fourth attempt. He sat up – or rather, he moved an inch or two from the sofa, realised his head had been cleaved in two by a maniac with some sort of siege weapon, and reclined again, closing his eyes. After a few minutes of very careful exploration, he realised there was no wound that he could find, and reasoned that there must be another explanation for the blinding pain in his head. Slowly things began to come back to him; the pub with Lestrade the night before, the pints, the shots, the kebab on the way home – there was the explanation for the rumbling in his guts, at least – and finally collapsing on the sofa because getting up the seventeen stairs to the flat had been hard enough, let alone the rest of the way up to his room.
A loud snuffle against his hair had John’s eyes pinging open again, and he twisted his head around quickly to see what had made it.
“OWWW!” he whispered, screwing his eyes shut, the motion having set off the bodybuilder with the cannon once more. Another snuffle, this one in his eye-line, made him open his eyes once more in an attempt to see what was going on. Sherlock was sitting on his haunches at the side of the sofa, snuffling in John’s hair. He was completely naked, as far as John could see, although he was making a concerted effort not to look too closely.
“Sherlock, what the hell?!” he burst out, turning his head rapidly away from his flatmate’s nudity, and setting off the barbarian with the double handed broadsword once again. “Get some clothes on, wouldya?”
Sherlock just sat, watching John, his tongue lolling out of one side of his mouth. A few seconds later, Jilly, the Great Dane from next-door, came trotting out of the kitchen with a bath towel draped over her back. She stood watching John with a curiously fervent expression, and then started to whine a little. She reminded John of those supposedly hilarious videos the girls had emailed around at work, with the husky saying “I wuv you!” In fact, John could almost believe she was trying to talk to him, but he supposed it must be a figment of his hungover and possibly still drunken imagination.
“What are you still doing here, Jilly?” John mumbled. “I thought Mark would have been over to get you by now!” Mark was one half of Mrs Turner’s married ones, and Jilly’s owner. John and Sherlock had agreed to look after her for a few days while the couple had a long weekend break in Cornwall. At John’s words, Sherlock cocked his head to one side and made an odd noise John had never heard him make before. “Sherlock? Are you okay? You’re acting very strangely today…” At his words, Jilly closed her eyes and let out a huge snort. She walked over, carefully picked up John’s mobile from the floor by the sofa and dropped it in his lap, where it bounced right into his testicles, causing him to fold in half with a wince. The berserker in his head responded by pounding on his brain with a sledgehammer, just for a little variety.
When he felt a little better, John picked up the mobile, and saw he had a message from Mark, stating that he and his husband had been delayed, but if it was okay with John and Sherlock, he’d collect Jilly the following morning. John fired back a quick message saying that was fine, and collapsed back to the sofa once more.
A strange noise from the kitchen made him struggle slowly and carefully up from his prone position, and for a moment or two, he didn’t quite believe what he was seeing. Jilly was standing with a large piece of paper trapped underneath her paw. In her mouth was a large permanent marker, and she was decisively marking the paper. John laughed a little and shook his head, instantly regretting it. “Jilly, come! Come on girl, come here!” Sherlock poked his nose into John’s side, huffing and butting at him. “Sherlock, what the hell are you doing? I’m starting to get seriously worried about you!”
At that, Jilly dropped the pen and carefully manoeuvred the piece of paper into her mouth, trying hard not to get slobber all over it. She brought it over to John, and dropped it into his lap. Then she sat back on her haunches, the towel slipping from her back to the floor. John could swear she looked embarrassed, and she turned to tug at the towel, eventually managing to pull it back up around herself. John vaguely thought he might have considered that odd, if he had been in complete control of his faculties. He went to screw up the paper, then realised with a start that Jilly – against all the odds – had managed to WRITE actual WORDS on the paper. He sat for a moment or two, his mouth hanging open, as he tried to wrap his brain around the concept.
The writing was extremely child-like – it had been written by a dog with a pen in her mouth, John thought, of course it was – and simultaneously, it was genius. The handwriting (mouthwriting?) was messy, and the pen had run a little where Jilly had taken the paper in her mouth, but overall it was fairly legible.
“JOHN EXPERMENT GONE RONG BODYSWAP JILLY AM SHERLOCK”
John read the paper, then read it again. He pinched the soft skin on the inside of his wrist, in an attempt to decide if he was actually still dreaming. It hurt. A lot. He decided he probably wasn’t dreaming, and that if, in fact, he was, then the quality of his dreams had improved a lot. Either way, he wanted to find out what was going to happen next.
John looked at Jilly. “Sherlock?” he asked, waiting for the Sherlock-body next to him to start laughing like a drain and telling him how gullible he was when he was hungover. Jilly-Sherlock rolled her (his?) eyes, and nodded.
“Fuuuuuuck…..” John had absolutely no idea how to respond to the news that he was now flat-sharing with a dog, and his best friend would be collected the next morning by their neighbours. At least, that was probably the best way for it to happen, John couldn’t imagine Mark and Peter would want their Great Dane showing up in the guise of a six-foot-tall man with no propensity to wear clothes. He glanced back at the man beside him; he had one leg stretched straight out in the air, and was busy attempting to lick the back of his own thigh, doing a pretty good job too.
John furrowed his brow, looking at Sherlock… or was it Jilly? He decided that the first thing he needed to do was to work out who was who. It would be easier, he considered, to call each of them by the names of their conscious self. He couldn’t imagine Jilly being able to work out that when he said “Sherlock” he was referring to her, so for the time being, the detective’s body would be Jilly, and the Great Dane’s would be Sherlock. It was surprisingly easy once he had gotten his head around it, the keen and perceptive gaze coming from the canine body probably had a lot to do with it.
“Okay Sherlock, so what do we do about this? IS there anything we can do about it?” Sherlock managed to convey a shrug with the body of a Great Dane, and John’s admiration only increased. “Look Sherlock, we need to find a way to communicate properly. How about if I grab the tiles from the scrabble set, can we make that work?” Sherlock cocked his head on one side, contemplated for a moment or two, then nodded. John struggled up from the sofa, and went to rummage around in the cupboard for a few moments. The roadworker pounding in his head with a pneumatic drill seemed to have taken a coffee break, and left it to Mr Muscle to gently stroke John’s brain with a feather duster. He swept everything on the coffee table over to one side, and tipped the contents of the box out, tossing the board and racks back inside, leaving just a jumbled heap of letters there. He sorted through them swiftly, turning them all letter side up, then into piles of individual letters, arranged alphabetically.
“I think we need to try this out, Sherlock, what do you say?” John looked over at Sherlock, who had been watching him intently. Sherlock stood, the bath towel falling off his back once more. “Why are you wearing a towel, Sherlock? Is it because you’re naked?”
Sherlock moved over to the table, nosing at the piles of letters. “O, B, V, I, okay, okay, Sherlock, I get the message… Well at least we know that’s going to work, I suppose, nice to know I’m still an idiot even when you’re not in the right body!” Sherlock rolled his eyes again, and spelled out, “N O T A N I D I O T,” John laughed.
“Not as much of an idiot as you, I’ve managed to work out that this body’s not the one that’s naked, that one is…” Sherlock seemed to start for a moment, then huffed as though he were laughing. “I can try and put some trousers on her, if it makes you feel any better…?” Sherlock shook his head slowly, huffing all the while, as if to impart to John the pointlessness of the proposed enterprise. Jilly started to sniff at John’s leg, dropping one hand heavily on his knee and looking imploringly at him.
“Oh, okay, food,” John said. “I don’t suppose you’ll be too happy with me feeding your body Pedigree Chum, will you, Sherlock?” The look Sherlock gave John said everything that needed to be said, and with a capital NO! to boot. John wandered into the kitchen to rummage through the fridge, and found a plate of cold chicken; leftovers from the meal Mrs Hudson had brought the boys the night before. As usual, Sherlock hadn’t touched his, and as Mrs Hudson gave very generous portions – she was always trying to feed them up – there was plenty left over. John spooned two lots out onto flat plates, and placed one on the floor in front of Jilly, and the other in front of Sherlock, who snorted and fixed John with a rigid gaze.
“Come on now Sherlock, it’s not fair for you to starve Jilly’s body, even if you’re not hungry.” Sherlock attempted to convey that it was equally unfair for Jilly to stuff Sherlock’s body and leave it feeling heavy and sluggish for him, assuming he managed to get back into it someday, but John waved him off. “I realise you think it’s unfair for her to eat and desecrate your precious starvation plan, Sherlock, but I don’t relish the chances of being able to explain it to her, do you?” Sherlock rolled his eyes again – it was rapidly becoming his default expression – but began to delicately tuck in. John could see him pause for a moment, as though trying to decide whether or not he should attempt to pick up the meat with his paws, but realising he would just look silly sillier. John turned away, finding something inconsequential to do, not wanting to prolong Sherlock’s embarrassment. In Sherlock’s body, Jilly was already nose deep in the chicken, sending scraps all over the floor, then licking it up with her tongue. John made a mental note to find something he could sanitize and put down under the plate for future meals; Sherlock wouldn’t appreciate Jilly’s casual treatment of his transport.
“Would Mycroft-” John was rapidly cut off by Sherlock’s growling; his feelings on THAT suggestion were pretty obvious. “Right, no Mycroft. Obviously the British Government and all it’s resources will be of absolutely no use whatsoever…” Sherlock – eyes rolling again – moved over to the table again, and after a few moments of diligent nosing of tiles, John read the following message: WILL WEAR OFF NO NEED FOR FATCROFT.
“Do you honestly think he doesn’t already know what’s going on? That he isn’t already investigating possible cures?” John’s eyes moved to the corner that Mycroft’s minions routinely decorated with a camera whenever they broke in to relieve some of their boss’s worries. It was currently empty, but he knew that didn’t mean they weren’t being watched. As he spoke, John sorted the tiles back into their piles. Sherlock nosed the piles into a new communication: CHECKED BEFORE EXP WE RE CLEAR.
“So what, we just wait? For how long? Jeez Sherlock, Mark and Peter will be here in the morning to collect Jilly, are you going to go with them? And what if you need proximity to get back in your own body, what if you get stuck in Jilly’s? I don’t want to even BEGIN to think about living with her in your body!”
Jilly had finished licking up the scraps of chicken from the floor, and was now sitting by the door to the flat, whining a little in the back of her throat. She looked back over her shoulder at John, and whined again. “Oh god, she needs to go out, Sherlock, what do I do now? I can’t really take her for walkies like this, can I?!” John walked through to the kitchen, and encouraging Jilly to follow him, led her through to the bathroom. She scrabbled awkwardly on all fours, her neck bent at an awkward angle, but eventually managed to follow him inside. About fifteen minutes later, John returned, with Jilly following along behind, looking much more relieved.
“Never, ever do whatever it was that caused… THIS… ever again, okay? I don’t EVER want to be that intimately acquainted with your bodily functions again, Sherlock!” Sherlock had the good grace to look slightly abashed at John’s words. “How long will it be until it all wears off, anyway?” Sherlock nosed about on the table again, and produced: COUPLE HOURS I THINK. “I bloody well hope so,” John replied fervently. Sherlock produced SRRY JON CN T HELP IT.
“Being a dog is doing absolutely nothing at all for your intelligence, Sherlock…” John laughed. Sherlock snorted, and nosed out: FASTER then arranged neatly underneath, I CAN GO BACK TO FULL SENTENCES IF YOU PREFER BUT IT WILL TAKE MUCH LONGER.
John let out a high-pitched giggle, “Okay, point taken, Sherlock. So what do we do while we wait? Wanna go walkies?” The look Sherlock gave John could have melted tungsten, but John was too busy rolling around the floor and giggling to notice it. “Wanna play fetch?” Sherlock stalked over to where John was laying on the floor, and seemed to be about to do something, when they heard Mrs Hudson call up the stairs.
“Woohoo, boys!” John leapt up immediately, calling Jilly, and shoving her unceremoniously into Sherlock’s bedroom.
“Jilly, sit, stay!” he hissed at her. He had just managed to get the door shut behind her when the door to the flat opened and Mrs Hudson stepped inside.
“Hello John, got some post here for you, it was delivered this morning. Jilly, hasn’t Daddy come to get you yet?” she cooed, scratching Sherlock behind the ears. Before he could do anything about it, Sherlock’s back leg lifted a little off the floor and began to kick rapidly. His back arched, and a look of absolute bliss came over his face. “Aww yes, you like that, don’t you Jilly?” Mrs Hudson said, rapidly devolving into baby talk. “Yes, you love it when I scratch your special spot.”
John’s mouth dropped, and he started to giggle. Mrs Hudson looked over at him, a questioning look on her face. “I’m just thinking about how Sherlock would look if he could see Jilly right now!”
“Oh yes, he does love her, doesn’t he?”
“Oh, I’d say they’ve got really close, Mrs Hudson. Got a real bond,” John said, and he sniggered.
Sherlock was enjoying himself far too much to worry about what was going on around him, and when Mrs Hudson stopped with a “well I have to be getting on, I have biscuits in the oven,” he actually whined. “Never mind Jilly, Daddy will be back soon, and look, I’ve got a treat for you!” and she fished in her pocket, pulling out a doggy biscuit, which she offered to Jilly. Sherlock glared at John, who was wheezing with laughter in the corner, and delicately took the offending biscuit from Mrs Hudson, crunching it up then rushing to the water bowl in the corner to gulp up as much as he could, to get rid of the taste, John presumed.
Mrs Hudson shook her head, said goodbye to John, and made her way downstairs. John went through to let Jilly out of Sherlock’s bedroom, and found her curled up in the middle of Sherlock’s bed. He couldn’t help a grin when he saw that she had drooled all over his pillow.
The next couple of hours were spent either lounging about on the sofa, tongue-bathing or trying bad-temperedly to fit a Great Dane body comfortably into Sherlock’s armchair, depending on who was being considered. John dozed off again; he’d only had a few hours of bad sleep thanks to the amount of alcohol he’d drunk the night before. He was awoken rather abruptly by the sound of Sherlock shouting, “Oh for God’s sake, what the hell is that taste?!”
John looked around for Jilly, spotting her fast asleep under the kitchen table with her head on her paws. He was vaguely aware of voices from downstairs, then the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Mark popped his head round the door, calling “Jilly! Come ‘ere, girl!” and Jilly bounced up immediately. Mark and John exchanged a few pleasantries, all with the sound of Sherlock grumbling around in his bedroom. Finally, with a gift of Cornish fudge from their break as a thank-you present for looking after Jilly, Mark left, taking her with him.
“Sherlock, what on earth is your problem?” John asked, leaning on the doorpost of Sherlock’s room as he flung his things around the room in a temper.
“I’ve had this disgusting taste in my mouth ever since I came back into my own body John, and I can’t work out what the hell it could be! What did you give Jilly to eat?” John cast his mind back over the afternoon, and with a sudden flash of inspiration, collapsed in a giggling heap.
“John….” Sherlock warned, sternly. “What is it? What do you know?”
“Well, Sherlock… I think Jilly may be more flexible than you when it comes to body wash… She was using her tongue earlier… your tongue, I suppose… And she looked as though she was being quite thorough about it!”
Sherlock’s eyebrows nearly disappeared straight off the top of his head, and without another word, he disappeared into the bathroom and started alternating between scrubbing his teeth with triple the amount of toothpaste he needed, and gargling with mouthwash. John thought it was entirely possible this was the best day he had ever had…