Author's Notes: I'm a bit late with this, sorry. Also, I'm sorry for any typos and any imperfections in general; these last few days were hell in school so some of the chapters might not be quite as well done as others. I finished school today, though, so I hope everything gets back on track from tomorrow.

Also, since today's prompt is 'genderswapped', I did what I could with it and therefore this chapter is mostly the comic relief of the whole story. Enjoy it while you can because, looking at the prompts, there'll be another Big Thing coming up.

Day Seventeen: Genderswapped

"Are you sure that's the right one?" Jack asked, standing on his tip toes behind Ianto, who just shrugged. "Not really. But I don't want to ask the Doctor because he'll kill us for screwing it up in the first place. Hold this."

They really hadn't meant and harm. It was nobody's fault that the TARDIS's storage room – one of many of them, anyway – was next to their room. They'd been going though it out of sheer curiosity and had ended up finding the machine they were currently trying to get back to its original state. It had already been pretty beaten up when they'd seen it, but Jack dropping it and Ianto failing to catch it on its way down had resulted in it being broken.

Jack held it as Ianto tried to reconnect the wires. "I'm pretty sure that the purple one isn't supposed to go there," the Captain commented warily as the small machine started heating up. Ianto snorted. "So am I, but it's not like the Doctor'll ever use it. That place is full of junk. He won't even notice."

"Fair point," Jack conceded, then switched hands when the temperature kept rising. "Ianto, if this thing explodes on me–"

"It won't," Ianto muttered, biting his tongue in concentration. "Just give me a second here– bloody hell!"

"I told you. Hot," Jack snapped, but his expression softened when he saw the burns on Ianto's fingers. Of course his reaction would be worse, the Captain thought. His body temperature was nearly twenty degrees lower than a human's. "You all right?"

"Fine." Ianto took the pair of pliers he'd been using before and tentatively leaned closer to the machine, neatly cutting off the brown wire. The heat became unbearable; Jack dropped the machine with a cry of pain and the last thing he saw before the vast room was filled with smoke was Ianto kicking it as far away from them as possible as it exploded.

Jack's eyes watered and he tried to blink the fog away. His whole body was aching and he felt decidedly weird. "Ianto?" His voice sounded unfamiliar too and he tried to clean his throat, but it didn't improve things very much. "Ianto, are you okay?"

"Think so." Ianto's voice was similar to his and Jack wondered what the gas had been. Helium, perhaps? "What about you?"

"I'm–" Jack's voice died when Ianto came into view. He – if it was Ianto at all and if Jack wasn't hallucinating – approached the Captain, unsure, which gave Jack the time to pull himself together.

Staring back at him – with the same expression of hesitant curiosity as his own – was a woman. Significantly shorter than Ianto had been as a man *which was rather alarming, because that meant that Jack had shrunk in size as well, considering that they were similar height again) but with relatively the same features – big forehead, wide, bright blue eyes and extremely pale skin. His hair was falling in big dark curls just under his shoulders and he was practically swimming in his clothes. The hand that reached to touch Jack's face tentatively was smaller but with the same long, delicate fingers.

"Jack," the same strange voice came out of Ianto's (now even fuller than usual) lips. "I think I might have some news for you."

"Likewise," Jack replied, running a hand through Ianto's silky hair. "That bad?"

"No," Ianto said hastily and gulped. "You're very pretty."

Jack chuckled quietly. "So are you. What do we do?"

"Wardrobe," Ianto said decisively. "Those clothes are falling off of me."

o.O.o

Ianto had the unfair advantage of being turned into a woman once, so he had better experience of what he was supposed to do with female clothes and therefore had finished dressing first. His clothes now consisted of a white dress shirt that was purposefully a few sizes too big so he could make it flare out of the black pencil skirt he'd chosen and accentuate his tiny waist, and black pumps. He was sitting on an armchair near the mirror Jack was currently examining himself in and occasionally made unhelpful remarks about the clothes the Captain wanted to try.

Jack was rather pleased with the body he'd ended up with. His complexion and eyes were the same, even if the proportions of his figure were very different and he couldn't quite put his finger on what he had to do with his hands, and his hair was still short – somewhat. It reached his neckline and its ends pointed in several different directions, but he liked it. Looking at Ianto in the reflection he realised that neither of them had changed all that much. Jack had kept the 'ruffled-up' appearance and Ianto looked like a porcelain doll in a business meeting.

"Try jeans," the man in question called from behind him. "Low-waisted, dark blue, skintight. And... a red plaid shirt."

"No way." Jack was ready to compromise, considering his own clothes didn't fit all that well right now, but this was too much.

Ianto jumped up from his armchair and neared Jack with a surreal amount of balance considering the length of his heels. "Trust me," he said with a small smile, leaning over Jack's shoulders and picking up from the rail in front of them the clothes he'd suggested.

"This is the biggest wardrobe in existence, Ianto. I'm sure we can find something else."

"No offense intended, Jack, but you don't exactly have it in you when it comes to clothes."

"You can talk!" Jack protested as he grudgingly left his old shirt on the floor and started putting on the new one. "Your clothes are basically the same save for the skirt!" He ditched the shirt Ianto had given him and found a pale blue one, just for a dash of normality, and his own braces. The side effect from them once he put them on was that they made certain bits of him stand out rather nicely. Speaking of which... "Oh," Jack said, his fingers frozen over his own chest. "I think we might have forgotten something,"

Ianto frowned. "What exactly?"

"Do me a favour and look down."

Ianto's face was the epitome of suffering.

o.O.o

"We need help," Jack said once they were dressed again. "And the Doctor is out."

"What about Amy and Rory?"

"That's who the Doctor's out with." They had only met the Doctor's current companions about a week ago when he'd picked them up after several months of living on Earth. They were on and off all the time, apparently, and one could never predict when they'd appear again.

"Maybe we can fix it ourselves," Ianto offered and, at Jack's sceptical scoff, continued, "I know that it didn't go very well, but we could try again and maybe it'll reverse the process. River once gave me this thingy–"

"River!" Jack interrupted. "We could call River!"

"She'll laugh so hard she'll break a rib," Ianto said darkly. "But yes, that's probably our only chance." He took his phone from where he'd left it next to him and started fiddling with it. Jack was starting to think that this was his version of the sonic screwdriver. "What are you doing?"

"Texting," Ianto said. "I'll tell her what's happened. When she replies, we'll be able to trace the coordinates. The Doctor started teaching me to fly the TARDIS but I still can't do everything properly."

"Neither can he," Jack threw in just as Ianto turned on his heels, phone still in hand. "You found her?"

"I found her."

Five minutes later, they were both standing in the control room and Jack smiled at the way Ianto bit his lip while he fiddled about with the all the switches and buttons. "You're getting better at this."

"I am," Ianto nodded as he pulled one last lever and the TARDIS dematerialised. Jack briefly hoped that the Doctor wouldn't want to get back on his ship any time soon, because he'd be in for a surprise and he wasn't sure that Ianto could get them back the same instant they've left.

"You know," he said, leaning in to steal a kiss from his lover. "I'm starting to think that this isn't actually all that bad."

Ianto smiled down at him – the heels, as opposed to Jack's boots, were making their height difference bigger than it had ever been – and brought him closer for a proper one. Everything felt different under Jack's fingers; there was soft skin and sudden curves and concaves where he'd been used to hard, angular planes, and hair that slid like satin in his hands instead of the hard, gelled spikes of Ianto's usual short one. "Even when you put us into all sorts of messes," Jack mumbled into his mouth, "They're usually pleasurable ones."

Ianto pulled away. "What do you mean, I put us into this mess? You dropped it!"

"Yes, but you cut that wire."

"And then you dropped it again!"

"You can't blame me for everything!" Jack couldn't believe this. Actually, on second thought, he could. Ianto could be like that.

"Oh, so it's all my fault?"

"Yes, it is! I don't think..." Jack's voice died when he heard the door opening and they both turned around to see River staring at them and laughing so hard that tears were coming out of her eyes.

"I told you," Ianto muttered as he tried to look as dignified as possible. "You really shouldn't find this amusing, you know."

"This is so precious. I thought you were joking." River approached them and looked them over. She was holding a gun in one hand and there were a few holes on her dress and when Jack looked at the monitor that showed the outside world, he saw that it was anything but a prison. "Seriously, I didn't know that even you two could be capable of that. Ianto." She nodded as she gave him a small kiss on the cheek and turned to the Captain. "Jack. I like what you've done with the hair," River threw in as she examined them.

"It wasn't me," he said. He'd seen River several more times after the ball on Arion and it was easier to accept now that the kiss was a way of greeting Ianto and that it meant nothing more. She was also – apparently – married to the Doctor, which made things a lot easier. "It was this thing." He pointed to the machine which they had taken out of the storage room. It was black now, but at least it was still in one piece, and it still emitted small puffs of smoke. "Any idea what it might be?"

"Yeah, I think." She carefully picked it up. "But it's very badly damaged, it could take days."

"Days? " Ianto seemed terrified, then hopeful. "We'll help, of course, but... Could you perhaps, you know, give us a few advices in the mean time?"

"Yes," Jack put in half-heartedly. He really, really didn't want to have to ask for help. "Because we've got little to none experience on... well, this, so..." He shrugged. "A few pointers, maybe?"

River was trying really hard not to laugh again and, while he appreciated the effort, the Captain was still peeved. "Sure."

"Great!" Ianto exclaimed as if he had barely held back, then pulled on a lock of his hair. "How do I brush this? It looks like it'll be a nightmare to take care of."

Jack raised a hand. "I have a question about eyebrows," he said, trying to sound as authoritative as possible. "They just look... wrong on this face."

River gave a small chuckle, then started up the TARDIS again. "Worry not. Just let me get us back where you've been before. Him indoors tends to freak out if she's not parked where he'd left her."

o.O.o

"If you keep screwing your eyes shut, I won't be able to do anything!"

"It hurts!"

"Of course it bloody hurts, now stop moving!"

Twenty minutes later Ianto's hair was still in its perfect state, now with River's hairspray added and an interesting smell to accompany it, and Jack was sitting in one of the chairs near the console while River kept trying to peel off his first layer of skin – or, as she insisted on calling it, plucking his eyebrows. He already kind of regretted asking for it at all.

She seemed deeply amused by his and Ianto's cluelessness and even their constant – and probably obvious – questions that they had while they prepared for several long days in bodies that weren't exactly they own didn't seem to ruin her mood.

"River?" Ianto's voice was coming from somewhere on his right. "Are you sure that this'll hold? The hair is still all... soft."

There was a deep sigh. "You know, everyone of my professors said you were smart and not just a pretty face."

"Oi!" Jack couldn't see Ianto's expression but was pretty sure that he was scandalised just by that one syllable.

"Of course it's soft, that's why it's hairspray and not gel. Plus, it's made in the 42th century, one of the biggest names on the market. That's what I use for my hair, anyway..."

Just then, the door creaked open and Jack carefully directed his gaze to the entrance without moving too much as River continued her work.

The Doctor was standing by the door, his mouth slightly open and his eyes wide and unsure. Jack could clearly imagine what he was seeing right now – he was pretty sure that the man wouldn't recognise either of them – and in that case, the completely lost look he had was more than understandable.

River beamed at him. "Hello, sweetie!"

After a moment or two, the Time Lord seemed to shake the shock off. "Yes! Hello! That is... you know, I'll just go get..." He turned around abruptly and Jack could hear him shouting at someone in the distance, "Ponds! Your daughter is having a pyjama party in my TARDIS!"