Owen woke up one Friday morning to find he was naked except for a red sock on his cock and a length of copper piping stuck on the big toe of his right foot. He was on the floor too. On the floor at WORK. He lay there for a while, feeling cold and needing to pee and trying to remember what had happened the night before. Gradually he started to recall a few things. It was Jack's birthday. They had a party. They all drank a great deal and then, for some obscure reason, they played charades. A vivid and rather horrific memory of Jack dancing naked with a waste basket on his head suddenly filled his mind. He sat up carefully, holding his head on with both hands. It was sure to fall off otherwise.
Once he was on his feet he discovered that the copper piping, unlike the sock, wouldn't come off. So he limped to the bathroom still wearing it. Then he decided to take a shower. This was a mistake because he couldn't stand in the shower wearing the pipe and it wouldn't come off. While he was trying to decide what to do, Jack and Ianto came into the bathroom holding hands. They didn't let go even while they pissed. It was very disturbing. They were both naked too.
"You don't need to keep clinging to each other like that" Owen moaned, watching them enter the shower together "it's sickening."
"Our hands are stuck together" Jack explained.
"What happened last night?" Ianto asked "I can hardly remember a thing."
"I remember Jack dancing with a waste basket on his head" Owen said.
"Was there anything in it?" asked Ianto.
"Jack's head or the basket?" asked Owen. He laughed and his head fell off. It didn't really. He just felt as if it did. He cleaned himself as best he could at a wash basin and then, wearing a towel, he ventured out into the Hub. When he went to find some clothing he discovered Gwen and Tosh. They were not naked. Tosh was dressed in Jack's clothing and Gwen was wearing what looked like one of Ianto's suits. They were asleep in each others arms, so he got some clothes and left them to sleep.
Jack and Ianto liked being together, but this, thought Jack, was ridiculous. After their shower they went down to the Medical Lab to try to find something to separate their hands. A moment after they got there Owen arrived. He soon found something that he sprayed on their hands, and after a half hour they found they were able to peel their hands apart.
Jack went to his office and found a large wooden crate by the door. With Owen and Ianto's help he opened it and found it was full of socks. Hundreds of socks. Socks of all colors and textures. Jack had never been able to get excited about socks and now he had hundreds of the damn things.
"What a pity we can't eat them" said Ianto, as the three of them started to remove the socks from the crate "I'm starving."
"We should pair them" said Jack.
"What for?" asked Owen.
"Socks should be in pairs" said Jack.
Just then Gwen and Tosh arrived, still in Jack and Ianto's clothing. "Oh socks!" cried Tosh " I love socks. We should pair them."
Jack smirked at Owen. "Told you" he said.
Gwen looked at Owen's feet. "You have some copper piping stuck on your toe" she said helpfully.
"OH" shouted Owen "what a surprise. I hadn't noticed!"
"Sarcasm" said Tosh "is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
"No it isn't" Owen objected "that's something else. You've got that wrong."
"Oh , fuck off, Owen" said Tosh, to everyone's surprise. Then she added "I've got a terrible hangover."
"I'm going to send for some pizza" said Ianto "if you all want to spend ages pairing up socks then you can, but I'm not going to."
"OOH" Owen said "someone's in a mood."
"Shut up, Owen and help me pair these socks" Jack instructed.
"Where did they come from?" asked Gwen, as Jack lifted the crate onto the floor.
Jack held up a piece of paper. "This was just inside" he said "it says from all your friends in The Sock store."
"You have friends in a Sock Store?" Tosh said.
"I have friends everywhere" Jack grinned.
"You couldn't have useful friends" groaned Owen "ones who send you cars or something really expensive. Oh No. You have friends who send you socks." He was somewhat irritated. No one ever sent him crates of socks. He was a great guy and no one had ever sent him a crate of socks. It was very upsetting.
They sat on the floor and started to sort out the socks. Owen could think of many things he'd rather do than sort out and pair off socks. It was boring and his toe hurt. For some reason though he couldn't stop sorting socks. When Ianto returned, saying the pizzas were on the way, he found all his colleagues sorting socks with great diligence. He was amazed.
"What on earth are you doing?" Ianto asked, in an irritated tone.
"What does it look like?" Owen sighed " we're pairing socks and sorting them into sizes."
Ianto groaned. "Why all these separate piles?" he asked. Resisting the very strong temptation to stamp on all the socks and disarrange them.
"These are wool" explained Tosh "these are cotton, these are nylon and these are mixed fibers."
"Why don't you just throw them back in the crate?" asked Ianto.
"We can't do that" Jack told him seriously "socks have to be kept in order. You of all people ought to know that."
They've all gone crazy, thought Ianto. He tried to recall if they'd drunk anything weird or alien last night but all he could remember was Jack singing something about knitting. Which was, he now realized extremely weird in itself. He vaguely recalled Jack saying he could knit and discovering that no one else could. Then he remembered that they all climbed up to Myfanwy's nest and ---then his mind was a blank. He looked at them as they sat on the floor and wondered why Owen still had the pipe stuck on his toe. Why hadn't he tried to remove it? Why was it there anyhow? He had no ideas at all. At that moment the pizzas arrived so he went to collect them. When he returned they were all still sorting.
"Food" he said, waving a pizza under their noses. They ignored him and went on sorting and talking about socks and other rubbish. He had never heard such boring talk in the Hub before.
"These are nice. They have ships on the side."
"Those are mixed fibers. Your putting them in the wrong pile."
"What d'you think these are made of?"
"Look on the label."
"It's in Chinese."
"I ate a sock once." Naturally this was from Jack.
"Why?"
"It was a bet."
"What was it made of?"
"It was wool. It caught in my throat and made me throw up so I lost the bet."
"You would eat a sock. What's wrong with some thing tasty."
"Like what?"
"Oh, well, a bra or something."
"You've eaten a bra?"
"I didn't say I'd eaten one. I just thought it might be better to eat than a woolen sock."
"What about the metal bits?'
"What metal bits?"
"The clasps and things."
"You could spit those out."
"Then you'd loose the bet."
"Why didn't you eat a cotton sock?"
"I didn't have any."
"I ate a moldy plum once."
"That's not really like eating a sock, is it?"
"It was green."
"Some plumbs are green."
"This was a red plumb."
"You just said it was green!"
"IT WAS MOLDY!"
"It was one I'd knitted."
"You knitted a plumb?"
"I never said anything about plumbs. I knitted socks and then someone bet I couldn't eat one and they were right, I couldn't."
"You can knit socks?"
"I haven't knitted for years but I'm sure I could still do it."
"Trust Jack to know how to knit. Of all the useless idiotic things for a man to learn. Knitting!"
"I told you last night I could knit, I'm sure I did!"
"I can't remember last night."
"Neither can I."
"I'd like to know why I have this pipe on my toe. I had a sock on my...on my cock too."
"Why?"
"I don't know."
"Keeping it warm, I expect."
"TOSH!"
"Why don't you take it off?"
"I did."
"I mean the pipe."
"It wont come off."
"Have you tried grease or lube or something."
"I haven't had time."
"I had my hand stuck in a drain once."
"I don't want to hear any more about things being stuck in other things."
"Is this sock made of nylon?"
"It's mixed fibers."
"I remember something about last night."
"What?"
"We ate something."
"WHAT?"
"It was a sock."
"WE ALL ATE A SOCK?"
"Ianto didn't eat it."
"WHY DID WE EAT A SOCK?"
"STOP SHOUTING OWEN!"
"WE ATE A SOCK?"
"IT WASN'T A REAL SOCK!"
"WE ATE AN UNREAL SOCK? HOW THE FUCK DID WE DO THAT?"
"It was made of marshmallow. It was great."
"WE ATE A MARSHMALLOW SOCK?"
"STOP SHOUTING!"
"I HATE MARSHMALLOW."
"STOP SHOUTING!"
"Where did it come from?"
"It was in Myfanwy's nest."
"Why should she have marshmallow?"
"I don't know. It was in a box. It was a big sock too. We divided it up. It was pink."
"UGH. I'm going to be sick."
"I know a place where you can buy marshmallow shapes. You know---shaped like boobs or cocks or----"
"Shut up, Jack or I'll be sick all over you."
Ianto had finally had enough of all the idiocy he was observing. It was obvious, he thought, that the marshmallow sock was poison or at least had very unpleasant side effects. He sat down on the floor with his companions and handed out the pizzas. They attempted to eat and sort socks and talk rubbish all at the same time. Jack, in particular, was getting more odd by the minute. He kept talking about knitting.
"I can knit anything" he boasted "I won a prize once for my knitting."
"What did you knit?" asked Tosh.
"It was a sweater" Jack explained "it was red with palm trees on it. It was a very complicated pattern."
"I've never wanted to knit" Owen complained "men don't knit."
"What about Sailors?" said Gwen "I thought some of them could knit."
"It was a bookcase" said Jack.
"You knitted a bookcase?" Tosh cried in surprize.
"The prize was a bookcase" sighed Jack "it wasn't very useful. I didn't have any books."
"You didn't have any books?" gasped Gwen.
"No one had any" Jack said. At that moment he coughed and spat something out of his mouth. It hit Owen. He grabbed it and threw it at Jack, who ducked. It hit Tosh on the cheek. It was an olive. Tosh looked at it for a moment and then ate it. Jack, inspired evidently by this, proceeded to throw more olives at Tosh. Some of them missed her but she found them and ate them anyhow. Gwen thought throwing food was a good idea and started to remove tomato from her pizza and throw it to Owen, who tried, with a striking lack of success, to catch it in his mouth. Ianto decided to leave them to it. It seemed safer. He got to his feet and left them throwing food at each other.
Some time later he noticed that things seemed to have gotten rather quiet, so he went to see what his companions were doing. The room was a mess and so were Jack, Owen, Tosh and Gwen. The floor was covered in several large piles of socks. Owen was dripping what appeared to be lube on his pipe. Jack, Gwen and Tosh were all naked and Jack was wearing a number of socks about his person. He was standing very still and Gwen and Tosh were trying to fit a sock on his cock. It wasn't easy because he had a hard on and was obviously enjoying the attention. Both Gwen and Tosh were complaining.
"Stop it moving about. I can't get the sock on."
"I think we need a bigger sock."
"It's his fault. It wasn't that big when we started."
"Get a bigger sock. There's a green one there."
"I don't think Jack looks good in green. What about this blue one?"
"Is it bigger than this one?"
"Yes."
"Give it to me."
"There. That's better. If only it would keep still and stop twitching about."
"He's making the sock wet too."
"Only a little bit. Have you got a towel?"
"No."
"Pull it on a bit more. I think it's starting to fall off."
"It's his fault."
"There."
"Oh hell. That was unexpected. Now it's come right off."
"It all wet too."
"We are useless. We can't even put a sock on a man without a disaster happening."
Ianto left them again. He thought he'd just have to wait till the weirdness wore off. At least they'd eaten, he thought. It was true there was a lot of pizza on the floor and on the socks and on them, but they had eaten some of it. He didn't dare bring them coffee although they had to be be very thirsty. He went to the kitchen area and made himself some coffee. He decided he'd give them some if they asked for it. Luckily they didn't ask. As he sat sipping his hot coffee he tried to remember the party. He knew they'd all had a lot to drink and they'd all danced and sang too. Oh, fuck. He'd done a rap. It was all about fucking Myfanwy, which he'd never done ,or even thought about and didn't actually think was possible anyhow. I'm never going to drink alcohol again, he vowed. He was also very glad he didn't like marshmallow, although having two women trying to put a sock on your cock looked like fun.
Much much later he went to see what the rest of the team were doing, since things had gone very quiet indeed. They were all asleep on the floor. Ianto was relieved. Owen had managed to remove the pipe from his toe too. Ianto started to feel more cheerful. Things would soon be back to normal. He fetched some blankets and covered them over. It was a pity they were lying all over the once neat piles of socks but they were quiet. He suddenly remembered how the pipe got on Owen in the first place. Owen had been boasting that he could put his toe in a pipe and dance the hornpipe. Once Jack found out what a hornpipe was he had betted that Owen couldn't do it. He could though. He was very good too. Ianto thought that now he could remember, the information might be useful in the future. The sight of Owen completely nude, dancing the sailors hornpipe with a length of pipe on his toe was something really worth remembering. I love my work, Ianto thought. It's so rewarding. He gazed down at his sleeping colleagues fondly. They were amazing. He was still glad that he didn't eat any marshmallow though. He had been about to eat some, he now recalled, when he noticed that Myfanwy, who must have had some marshmallow herself, was flying around in circles. She was making odd noises too. So he hadn't eaten any. He left them sleeping and went home.
When he went to work the following morning they were all there. All looking normal and all working. He made coffee and as the day passed he gradually noticed something strange. They were all wearing odd socks. That was the only thing though.
THE END