When they arrived at the beachhouse, Sean and Elijah had already been food shopping, and opened the place up. Dom helped unload the car, and then collapsed in the living room, while Liv was given a tour of the house. He looked up as the couch dipped and Elijah settled at the other end of it.

"Hi."

"Oh, you're talking to me now?" It was a bit sharp, perhaps, but Dom felt he was due a little snarkiness.

Elijah grimaced. "Yeah, look, I'm sorry, it's just..." He waved a hand vaguely. "This is fucking weird."

"Believe me," Dom declared, gesturing to his body. That wasn't his. "I know exactly how fucking weird this is."

Elijah shook his head. "Not just the fact you're a girl. You've Liv. And it's weird. You look like Liv, but you walk like Dom. And act like him. And even talk like him, if you ignore the accent. And Liv looks like you, but... yeah. All that."

Dom looked down at himself, sprawled in his usual fashion on the couch. OK. Point. "But I am still me," he noted. "It's still me in here. All of this," again, he indicated the body, "is just... I dunno. Plumbing."

Elijah grinned, and Dom grinned back, and he was amazed at how much of a relief that was. To still be able to grin with Elijah the same, despite everything. "Yeah, but it's Liv's plumbing."

"And that's going to be the problem." Both of them looked up as Billy walked in, followed by the rest. The tour, apparently, was finished.

"What's going to be the problem?" Dom asked, as the other took seats around the room. It was, he noticed, very odd to see Liv holding his body like that. A little too stiff, and just leaning the wrong way. She still sat like a girl. Fair enough; really, she still was.

"To state the problem in the simplest terms," Sean began, "you two have swapped bodies."

"Weren't you listening when I explained this morning?"

Sean ignored him, and kept speaking. "And now we have to decide what you're going to do about it. What we're all going to do about it."

"What are our options?" Liv asked.

Orlando started counting them off on his fingers. "Come clean to PJ, the cast, the crew, and the rest of the world."

"Not tempting," Liv commented quickly. "I can't even think of how to do it, let alone the sort of response we'd get."

Orlando shrugged, and moved on to the next finger. "Just tell the people who need to know, like PJ. Or, alternatively, tell no one beyond us."

"I like that one," Dom declared. "The fewer people who know about this, the better." Liv nodded.

"The thing is," Billy continued, "if you're going to keep it a secret from anyone, you're going to have to be able to convince them that you are each other."

It was Elijah's turn to shrug now. "They're actors, aren't they?"

"They've only got a week to prepare," Sean pointed out.

Elijah made a dismissive gesture. "No worries. Stress of filming covers any lapses of behaviour. Body-swapping is not something that people immediately think of as an excuse for weirdness."

"Good point," Billy conceded, and looked between Dom and Liv. "You two think you can pull off being each other?"

Dom opened his mouth, but once again, Liv beat him to it. "It's more complicated than that, you know." Everyone turned to look at her, and she shrugged a little self-consciously, a purely Liv trait. "He not only has to be me. He has to be me being Arwen. And I have to be him being Merry."

There was a moment's silence as that sunk in. Dom shrugged, and stood up. "Well, we'd better get to work, then."

Sometimes, Dom wished he kept his fucking mouth shut.

Liv's mouth. His mouth. Whatever. That was the first point of business.

"You have to stop calling each other by the wrong names," Billy lectured them.

"They're the right names," Dom responded.

"Not to the rest of the world. You're Liv, you're Dom. And that goes for you lot too." He turned to address the others. Elijah stopped sniggering and tried to look attentive. "You need to get used to it."

"Yes sir," Orlando agreed, and both he and Elijah started laughing again.

But yeah, Dom wished he'd kept his mouth shut. Because 'getting to work', meant just that.

That afternoon, the guys went surfing. He and Liv went over each others' scripts. Sure, they had the voices, but they had to learn how to use them all over again. Once he got the hang of it, it was easier than he'd thought it would be. It was just a matter of learning what this new voice could do, and then tweaking certain parts.

Which didn't make it any less weird, of course.

When the others returned, they were greeted with an Arwen-perfect: "What's this; a surfer, caught off his board?"

Three laughs. Elijah just stared.

"Here, what's he looking at?" Liv asked, precisely Merry.

Elijah shook his head, eyes wide. "This is so fucking bizarre."

And it was bizarre. There were fencing lessons (the other hobbits helped Liv with those), and walking-like-an-elf sessions (with Orlando's assistance). Dom maintained he had the worst part of the bargain. He had to learn Elvish. Fucking Elvish. His tongue was never going to recover. And how to do it all in a full-length damn skirt. How did anyone ever do anything in those things? And there were sleeves he had to learn to manage as well.

All Liv had to learn to do was look like a male. Surely it couldn't be hard. She was halfway there, after all. But she was having as much trouble as Dom.

After they ran through one scene, Billy noted: "She's going to have to do better than that, or people are really going to get the wrong idea about Merry and Pippin."

"Like they don't already," Sean laughed.

"Don't make me start with the Frodo and Sam jokes."

"Yeah, but they'd be justified this time, what with Merry prancing about like a pansy," Dom butted in, and poked Liv, who was sulking. "And stop crossing my legs like that. I look like a girl!"

Billy turned to look him up and down. "Why yes, you do."

And then there were the mannerism lessons. And that was the kicker. The little personal quirks that were so easy and thoughtless when... well, when you didn't have to sodding think about them all the time. Liv had more poise than Dom, fewer nervous habits. The fourth time someone knocked his hand away from running through his hair, he half-screamed, "Fucking hell!" and stormed outside.

"Just let it be," he could hear Billy say behind him. "He needs to blow off steam."

"She," someone corrected.

"Bugger."

But it was happening, when they did think about it. Happening before his eyes when he looked in the mirror and when he watched Liv moving around the kitchen almost exactly like he would. There were small differences. Her Dom smiled more, and there was the occasional odd, almost uncertain movement. She used his hips more. His Liv was more energetic, more fidgety, and he wasn't quite used to the extra height yet.

And then there was the peeing sitting down, and the underwear. Oh, and the fucking skincare regime.

"But you have bloody beautiful skin!" he interrupted in the middle of the explanation.

"And how do you think I keep it bloody beautiful?" she replied sternly. "And don't say 'bloody'. I don't use that word."

Every morning, when he woke up, the first thing he did was raise his hand in front of his face, and wiggle fingers that still weren't his.

Every evening, he looked up into the sky and prayed to change back. After a few days, he started trying different deities. No one seemed to be listening, though.

Saturday night, they all sat down to Sean's pasta bake surprise for dinner (the surprise being whether it would be any good or not, since he always made up the recipe as he went along).

"You guys ready?" Billy asked them, between mouthfuls.

Dom and Liv exchanged a look, and shrugged. "Guess so," Liv provided. "There's not much else we can cover. We've just gotta remember it all."

"We'd better be ready," Dom noted. "We're all out of time." They had to be back by tomorrow evening, ready to start filming again the next day.

"What you need," Orlando declared, gesturing with his fork, "is a test."

"You have something in mind?"

Orlando grinned. "Well, there's that pub in town. Saturday nights they always have a dancefloor. Lots of strangers. I figure it'd be a great place to test-drive your new bodies."

Dom eyed Orlando suspiciously, but Liv just grinned. "Sounds like fun."

Getting ready to go out, Dom discovered, took a lot longer when you were a girl. And even longer when you didn't really know what the hell you were doing. Make-up was another discovery - yeah, sure, he'd dabbled with eyeliner and mascara a little, but this whole fucking foundation thing... Women did this on a regular basis? Not just when they had to go on screen? Bloody hell.

And what, precisely, he was going to wear was another battle. The argument was still raging when Elijah came to check on them.

"It fucking does not!" Liv declared, throwing her hands up in the air.

"And I tell you it does," Dom countered, looking over his shoulder at the mirror. He looked up to Elijah, standing bemused in the doorway, and said: "Lij, does my arse look big in these pants?"

In response, Elijah collapsed laughing.

Dom sniffed. "Well fuck you."

"Ass," Liv corrected, suppressing her own giggles. "Not arse."

"Fuck you too."

He wore the pants, in the end, because he didn't really know what else to wear. The problem was that they were tight. Very fitting. And white. They smoothed across his thighs in a way nothing he'd worn before ever had, and sat so low on his hips that he was sure they were going to fall off. Of course, they weren't, because he had hips now. Hips that went out, and back in to a waist that was bared by the slightly short hemline of the asymmetrical top Liv had decreed he was going to wear. That top was tight, too, skimming over an ample bust. Liv's ample bust. Now his ample bust.

Jesus fucking christ.

"Come on, already!" Orlando, interrupting his reverie in front of the mirror. "You're fucking gorgeous; let's go."

They went.

The pub was half-full, the dancefloor sparsely populated as the DJ played Soft Cell's 'Tainted Love'. Elijah and Orlando bounced immediately onto the floor, and the others pushed through to the bar, which was massed solid. Dom, looking for an empty spot, was surprised when one opened right in front of him, two guys stepping aside. Billy nudged him forward. "First round's on you. We'll find a table."

Dom stepped up to the empty bar, suddenly very conscious of the way the guys on either side were looking at him. Right, think Liv. He smiled at the barman; that was a good start, right? The barman grinned broadly. Leered, almost, Dom realised, and he blinked. "Ah, two pints of red, one of stout, and -" What the hell did Liv normally drink? "And a Wild Turkey and coke."

The barman smiled at her as he started to draw the pints of beer. "Not a local, love?"

Dom caught himself in the act of leaning against the bar, turned the one-elbow prop into a rather fumbled but still, he hoped, acceptable two-elbow drape. What the hell was he supposed to do with his hands? He settled for propping his chin on his laced fingers. What else? Oh yeah, the barman had asked a question, was now looking at him with one raised eyebrow as he set the two pints of red on the bar. "No, not a local. Just in the country for work."

"You're working on that movie, aren't you?" Said with a sideways glance and smile.

Jesus. This was flirting. This was fucking flirting. What was he supposed to do? He settled for smiling. It always worked for Liv, after all. "Guilty."

And then, thank God, the drinks were ready and he could toss some money on the bar, gather them up - the barman raising both eyebrows this time, for no reason Dom could see - and flee back to the others.

There were more raised eyebrows when he reached the table, depositing the drinks. "What?" he demanded, looking around the three. "Why the fuck is everyone looking at me like that? I ordered a girly drink - that's for you, by the way L- fuck! I mean Dom, so you can get your hands off my stout - and I leaned against the bar the right way and I even fucking flirted with the fucking barman and I haven't said one non-Liv swearword yet."

Billy was trying not to fall off his chair laughing, which wasn't helpful. Liv was chuckling. Sean seemed to have himself under control enough to point to the drinks - Dom hadn't even spilt any! - and say: "You carried all four at once? That's very impressive."

Dom just stared at him for a moment, then back to the drinks. "That's it? Oh, fuck me! Fuck this!" He grabbed his pint of stout, downed a large gulp, and gestured towards the still-laughing pair. "And fuck you too."

Sean patted him on the shoulder. "You were doing very well."

That really didn't help. But a pint of stout - good, rich stout brewed to the point of it almost being salty and they really could make a fine beer in this country - certainly did help. A lot. When the music started into the first highly-recognisable bars of the Proclaimers' "500 Miles", and Elijah and Orli descended on the table in a storm of insistence, there was some niggling feeling at the back of his head that this was maybe not a good idea, but fuck that, too. Why shouldn't he go and dance?

Then he got onto the dancefloor, which was more crowded than it had been before, and he realised why he shouldn't. Not his body. How the hell did he dance in this?

Someone touched him, a hand at his hip, and he jumped. The hand slid around his waist, arm following. Quick glance down; he recognised that arm.

"Relax, it's easy," Liv said - his voice said - in his ear. And that was his old body sliding up behind his new body. OK, yes, this was easier, put his hand over Liv's hand and move with her, slightly, sway to the rhythm. "A woman on the dancefloor can do little wrong," Liv advised. "Bend your knees a little more. You're allowed more sway when you're female. It's all about the hips; don't be afraid to move them."

So, yeah, maybe he could do this after all. He half-turned his head towards her. "What about you?"

He could see the grin out of the corner of his eye. "I'm fine. Just act like a muppet, that's all male dancing is."

She ducked away with a laugh as he rounded on her, but Orli stepped forward, wrapped an arm around his waist, and stopped him chasing her off the floor. "Come on, Elf Princess. Show us how graceful you are."

"Fuck off." But he let Orlando pull him, laughing, up closer against him, dancing in exaggerated sways with an arm around his lower back, pulling him against Orli's bony hip. He draped his arm around Orli's neck in return, laughed along with him. It sort of felt good, dancing against someone like this, the way their bodies fit together and, Jesus! Was he fucking drunk already? He'd only had one pint.

He took a step back from Orlando, who let him go.

A few more songs - a couple of bubble-gum dance numbers and the amusing inclusion of YMCA, pleasantly followed by the Chemical Brothers - and Dom thought he was really getting the hang of this female dancing thing. Unfortunately, a number of other people seemed to think so too. Not even the presence of Orli and Lij had persuaded half a dozen different guys not to approach Dom. And frankly, he was running out of ways of politely extracting himself.

He was also running out of bladder space, apparently. Time for a toilet break.

On the way across the pub came approach number seven. He looked pleasant enough, Dom supposed, stopping with a sigh of frustration as the guy stepped into his path. Fairly well dressed. As clean cut as they came in this place. Smiling nicely. His line of choice was: "Can I buy you a drink, love?"

"No, thanks. I'm here with friends." Liv had suggested it as a good brush-off line. Though in Dom's (very limited, but quickly expanding) experience, it didn't really work.

Now was no exception. The guy grinned more broadly, leaned forward to sling an arm around Dom's shoulders. "Aw, come on. Just a little one."

And frankly, Dom had had it with guys who just wouldn't get the picture. He braced both hands against the guy's ribs, and shoved. Hard. The guy went staggering backwards. "Look, I'm not interested. Just fuck off, will you?"

As he marched onwards, he heard from behind him: "Fucking feral slag!" His hands curled into fists, but he kept going, repeating under his breath, like a mantra: "Girls do not hit people. Girls do not hit people." He pushed out the door that led to the amenities corridor. "Girls do not- Oh, hey Li- Dom. What are you doing out here?"

She was leaning against the wall, empty glass in hand, and glazed expression on her face. His face. Oh fuck this. He really wasn't thinking terribly clearly. Though by the look on Liv's face, he wasn't the only one.

"I came out to go to the toilet," she said quietly, and turned to look at him. "I almost went into the wrong one."

Dom looked up at the little sign. She was standing outside the Ladies.

"This is really real, isn't it?" There was something in the tone of voice that made him look back at her, quickly. In the eyes, too. Something stark. "I mean, it's all been a bit of a game so far. Just a laugh. But... tomorrow we go back and I'm going to be you and you're going to be me and it's going to have to work and it's going to be real."

Dom leaned carefully against the wall next to her, took the empty glass from her hand. "How many of these have you had?"

Liv laughed, and the moment was fleeing past, and they were stumbling forward again. "Not enough. I've been trying to get drunk, but it just ain't working. You've got too much damn alcohol tolerance."

Dom snorted. "Whereas I've had one pint and I'm feeling a little giddy."

"Swap you?"

Dom laughed along with her. "What a great idea!"

Later, Liv would teach Dom how to use cleavage as a secret weapon in pool. Elijah would call foul, but that was just because Dom, even in Liv's body, could still beat him without breaking a sweat. Orli got revenge by commenting - extensively - on Dom's arse every time he bent over. It was those damn pants.

Even later, Liv would leave them all slack-jawed as she dirty-danced with a leggy blonde, twining limbs and ending with the sort of scorching liplock a drunken dancefloor produces.

"Jesus Christ," Orli breathed, voicing their thoughts. "There's fucking tongue in there." And it was somehow worse because no one else in the pub saw anything wrong with it.

Liv left the blonde with a cheery grin and a quick line, came sauntering back to the table to down the last of her drink. "You're gaping, boys." And the grin broadened. "Always wondered what that was like the other way."

Even later that that, Dom would finally snap when a guy groped his arse in passing, and turn around and belt him. Surprisingly, the consequences were nothing but a chorus of laughter from the guy's mates, who dragged him back to the bar, on the premise that alcohol cures everything.

They left shortly after that, Billy curling an arm around Dom's waist. "You're so violent these days, Liv. What's gotten into you?" Elijah laughed out loud. Dom just grunted, and elbowed Billy in the ribs.

The next day, they went back, and Dom had to be Liv, and Liv had to be Dom. And it was going to have to work.