Hi again: here's another old thing I had on my computer. Special mention to SallyFerrell: thanks for the pm, and I hope this'll do! Thanks for reading, everyone!

It had been a long day, and Hutch was now enjoying the peace of sprawling on Starsky's couch, reading Starsky's magazine, drinking Starsky's beer, and listening to Starsky's muffled grunts of concentration.

He took another sip of his drink and twisted around to look in the direction of the noises. Vaguely he heard a grumbled "Damn socks!" and grinned in amusement.

Starsky strode into the room with a red sock in one hand and a blue in the other. "Hutch, have you seen my red sock?" He held up the lone red sock in his left hand, as if to help Hutch remember.

Hutch looked up from the car magazine he was browsing through, long enough to glance at the sock. "No."

Starsky's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Have you GOT my red sock?"

"No." Hutch looked down at his feet, only to notice that he was in fact wearing red socks, and one appeared to be slightly different to the other.

Starsky followed Hutch's gaze and Hutch quickly tried to pull the leg of his jeans down with his other foot, to cover the suspect sock.

"That," and Starsky pointed authoritatively, "is my sock."

Hutch shrugged. "Must have got mixed up with mine. Well, I presume you don't want it back right now." They had participated in no less than three foot chases that day, and both were nursing several bruises and scrapes, and they had come back to Starsky's place for the evening to recover.

Starsky appeared to consider what Hutch said, then shook his head. "Nah." He picked up his own drink from where he'd left it on the coffee table and headed back to the bedroom. Curious, Hutch got up to follow. For some as-yet unknown reason, Starsky, wanting distraction from the day's work, had decided to organise his sock drawer when he got home, and had invited Hutch to keep him company while he took on this important task.

A brightly coloured scene greeted Hutch as he stepped into the bedroom. Socks of various colours were scattered over the floor and the bed, some of them arranged in small piles according to their colour, and some just randomly distributed.

Hutch cleared his throat and lifted a hand to gesture at the room in general. "Uh, so, Starsk," he began, looking around again, "What exactly is going on here?"

Starsky had knelt on the floor and begun to gather socks together. He gave Hutch a look, eyebrow raised, that said it should have been obvious what he was trying to do. "I'm sorting them."

"I can see that." Hutch crouched down next to his partner to observe the process in detail.

Starsky picked up a grey sock, hunted through a pile of different shades of grey for its partner, then pressed the two together and folded them into a tight square.

Hutch watched in fascination. "Can't you just ball them up like most people do? Or, you know, just throw 'em all in and hope for the best?"

Starsky looked at him as if he was daft again. "You shouldn't ball them up, it ruins the elastic. Besides," he gestured to the sea of socks, "I think you can fit more in this way. Do you know how much difference it makes to fold them instead of rolling them?"

Hutch shrugged. "No. How much difference does it make?"

"Actually, not a lot," Starsky admitted. "But it sure looks neater."

"Hmmm," Hutch said non-committally over the rim of his bottle. He pushed himself to his feet and headed back to the living room, laughing silently at Starsky as he went.

"You staying here tonight?" Starsky called as Hutch departed.

"Yeah, if you don't mind. Nowhere to be in the morning," Hutch reasoned.

"Great," Starsky answered. "I've got a plan for tomorrow."

"That sounds ominous," Hutch muttered as he selected one of Starsky's books.

At 2am, Hutch was awoken from a totally uncomfortable sleep on Starsky's couch to hear faint sounds of banging coming from the bathroom.

He sat halfway up, opened his eyes and squinted into the darkness. A faint glimmer of light was coming from the bathroom door. Hutch dragged himself off the couch, abusing the stupid cushions as much as he could on the way, and headed in the direction of the bathroom, pure curiosity driving him. Of course, Starsky could be using the bathroom completely innocently, but then, the door WAS open, and there was a lot of muffled banging and muttering coming through the door.

Hutch peered around the door silently, to the sight of Starsky crouched in front of the sink with a cloth in one hand and a bottle of bleach in the other.

Hutch cleared his throat, his mouth twitching into an involuntary grin of amusement, and Starsky jumped up, startled, hitting his head on the underside of the sink.

"Geez, Hutch, give me a heart attack why don't ya?" he complained, one hand pressed to the top of his head.

"What are you doing?" Hutch demanded, folding his arms.

Starsky dropped the bleach and the cloth and stared down at them. "What does it look like?" he asked sullenly.

Huth pretended to stroke his chin in thought. "Uhm, like you're cleaning your bathroom at 2 in the morning."

"I always clean when I can't sleep." Starsky picked up the cleaning items again and busied himself with putting them away.

Hutch stepped into the bathroom, patting Starsky's arm as he got near enough. "Does that have anything to do with the sock thing?"

Starsky looked up at Hutch innocently. "What sock thing?"

"At least come out of the bathroom," Hutch tried, exasperated. Starsky obediently came out and followed Hutch into the living room.

They sat on the couch, where Hutch nudged Starsky with his shoulder. "So what's with the sock organising, and the middle-of-night bathroom cleaning?"

Starsky sighed, shrugged, and looked at his hands. "Dunno. I always clean when I had a bad day too.

Hutch nudged again. "Why?" He thought about it, and decided to try a bit of psychoanalysis. "You know what I think?"

Starsky rolled his eyes. "I'm sure you're going to tell me."

Hutch sat more upright and lifted a lecturing finger. "I think that you clean, because you have control over this environment. You can choose to clean it up, and you do."

Starsky nodded, unimpressed. "Uh huh. Maybe I also clean because it's no fun to come back from a hard day's work to try and relax in a house that looks like a pigsty. Obviously you have no such problems." Anticipating the cushion that was about to come his way, Starsky ducked, but it came at his head anyway.

Starsky grinned as he fended off the cushion. "Well, it's hard enough to clean up the streets, but we CAN do something about my apartment. And your car."

"Where does my car come into it? Was that your great plan for tomorrow?"

Starsky grinned slightly again. "Maybe."

Hutch grabbed Starsky's arm and looked at the watch that was still attached there. "It IS tomorrow. Now are you gonna go to bed so we can get some sleep before... well, before we do whatever you claim we're doing tomor... today?"

Starsky sighed, reclaimed his arm and stood up, yawning as he did so. "Fine. Bathroom's clean enough anyway. G'night."

Hutch attacked the sofa cushions some more, then reclaimed his makeshift bed. "Night," he answered as Starsky disappeared.

Hutch awoke with a start from a strange dream in which Starsky's place had been taken over by armies of evil socks, saw the light coming into the room, and decided it was probably time to wake up anyway. He could hear the sound of the shower running, and thought with surprise that Starsky really must be on a mission if he was up this early on a day off.

Draping the blanket around himself like a cloak, Hutch got up and wandered into the kitchen to start making coffee.

Five minutes later Starsky appeared, still yawning, and headed straight for the coffee. Hutch watched him with amusement. "On a mission today, partner?"

"Yep," Starsky replied, seemingly immune to teasing. "And you're helping."

"Great. So what, precisely, is this mission?" asked Hutch, fearing he knew the answer.

Starsky gestured vaguely to the outside with one arm."Your car. It's a health hazard. And not just to me; to you too. What kind of partner would I be if I didn't watch your back?" Starsky emphasised this with a loud slurp of coffee.

"You don't have to watch my back for danger from the car. That car is hardly the same level of danger as... oh, a gun-wielding crazy person, for example."

"Well, what if we were in the car, chasing some crazy guy, and then all of a sudden, you hit the brakes and a... a rock, or somethin' you forgot you had, flies off the back seat and hits you in the head?" Starsky smiled smugly, pleased with himself.

Hutch tutted. "Please. How would a rock get enough lift off the back seat to reach my head? And why would a rock be in my car?"

Undeterred, Starsky racked his brain for another terrifying thought. "Okay... how about an old coffee cup you threw on the floor, it rolls under the driver's seat and gets under the brake pedal and you can't stop the car?"

Hutch had to admit it could be possible for that to happen, although if it did, he could probably kick the cup out of the way in time, couldn't he? Damn, Starsky was getting to him now.

"Alright, fine, you made your point," Hutch conceded. "So when do you propose to begin this mission of mercy?"

Starsky grinned. "Right after we clean up in here."

"I knew you had an ulterior motive. You want me to clean your apartment."

"Well, help me to clean it, yeah."

Hutch glanced around the almost perfectly tidy kitchen, shook his head, headed back to the couch to divest himself of his cloak, and went to get dressed, sneaking another pair of Starsky's clean socks out of their drawer on the way.

Hutch emerged fifteen minutes later to find Starsky vaccuuming the living room, and promptly tripped over the cable, yanking it out of the wall socket.

Starsky gave him a Look.

Hutch shrugged and grinned. "I did that on purpose. Wanted to ask what you needed me to do."

Starsky looked around, and Hutch did the same. "Well, it looks okay in here, I guess," Starsky decided. Hutch nodded, not being able to see anything out of place at all. "Why don't you clear up in the kitchen while I finish this?"

Hutch headed in there, cleared up the mess that consisted of only two used cups, then replaced the clean and dry cups on their shelf and rejoined Starsky.

"To the car?" he asked, gesturing to the door.

"Yep," Starsky led the way to the door and down to the driveway, where he clambered into the back seat and began rummaging. With a sigh of resignation, Hutch got in on the other side and climbed back to join his partner.

A sheet of newspaper landed on Hutch's head, followed by a pair of socks. "Huh," Hutch exclaimed, examining the socks and not bothering to remove the newspaper hat. "I wondered where these went."

"I told you before," Starsky explained patiently from beneath an old map. "If you kept them sorted..."

"Yeah, yeah." Hutch reached down to the floor and came up with a handful of crushed coffee cups.

Starsky had gone quiet. "Hey," he exclaimed, slightly muffled from his position on the floor. "I found him!"

Hutch sat up and tried to look over Starsky's shoulder. "Who?"

"Rocky!"

Hutch sighed. Sometimes he questioned his sanity in hanging out with Starsky. "I'll ask again. Who?"

"You kidnapped him! I've been wonderin' what happened to him for months, and here he just turns up, trapped under a pile of crap in YOUR car!"

"Starsky, I'll ask one more time before you force me to hurt you..."

Starsky emerged, an indignant look on his face. "Rocky!" He held up a rounded grey pebble and shook it in Hutch's face.

"Oh," Hutch answered without enthusiasm. "Your rock. How'd that get in here?"

"You tell me," Starsky grumbled, slipping the rock into his pocket.

Hutch was rummaging on the floor again. "Huh. This isn't mine either," he decided, coming up with a candy bar in his hand. Well, it used to be a candy bar. It was vaguely bar-shaped, but the markings had long ago worn off the packaging, leaving just a scuffed brownish-white wrapper.

"Hey," Starsky sounded pleased, "That must be the one I lost!" He snatched it out of Hutch's hand and started to open the wrapper.

Hutch watched in disgust. "What are you doing? Please don't tell me you're gonna eat that thing."

Starsky sniffed at it suspiciously. "Smells okay."

"Starsk, don't do it..." Hutch shut his eyes in resignation.

Starsky shrugged and nibbled the chocolate. "Tastes okay too."

Hutch squinted one eye open to stare at his partner. "That's disgusting. You don't even know how old it is."

"I do, actually," Starsky said smugly. "I can pinpoint it as about a year old, because that's when we were on that stakeout, where you threw my candy bar into the back of the car and told me I should eat carrot sticks instead."

"Oh." Hutch shrugged. "Well, I still say it."

Starsky ignored him and took a more enthusiastic bite, having apparently decided that the chocolate was safe.

Hutch shook his head. "If you get food poisoning, don't expect me to be sympathetic," he warned.

For the next two hours, they unearthed various historic items from the back of the car, and a lot of rubbish, and ended up with a full rubbish bag and an unusually clean car.

Starsky settled his newly-discovered cowboy hat on his head and looked over at Hutch, who had folded the old newspaper into a sort of sailor hat. "How about we take her for a spin to celebrate her first clean-out? Where shall we go?"

Hutch considered the options. "Grocery store?"

"That's what I like about you Hutch, always thinking big."

Hutch shrugged. "I need to buy stuff."

"Fresh out of powdered unicorn, huh?"

Hutch sighed and answered patiently. "Yes, Starsk, I'm all out of unicorn, and also out of the stuff you like, so can we go now?"

In answer, Starsky climbed forward into the passenger seat and waited while Hutch joined him at the front of the car.

They entered the store and each started to go their separate ways, gathering armfuls of their preferred things.

As Hutch lined up his purchases on the checkout, Starsky glanced out of the window. Something caught his eye, and he looked again, then poked Hutch in the shoulder and gestured outside. "Hey, Hutch? Is that your car they're messing with?"

Hutch frowned, looked in the direction Starsky pointed, and took off out of the store without another word.

Starsky shrugged and looked at the man behind the checkout. "Guess I'll pay for this stuff."

Five minutes later, Starsky was leaning against the counter and tapping on it restlessly, holding the bag containing Hutch's food and wondering where his partner had got to. He was thinking he really should have followed him, when the door to the shop opened and the subject of his worries came through it.

Starsky stared at Hutch, wide eyed, and pointed speechlessly before he managed to ask, "What happened to you? Uh, did you catch 'em?"

Hutch shuffled over to him, shivering and dripping water all over the shop floor. Luckily the shopkeeper wasn't watching. "Can I tell you after I'm dry?"

"Uh, sure," Starsky replied, taking Hutch's arm and leading him outside. "Good thing we didn't come in my car."

They got back into the car, and Starsky stared in surprise at the litter that was somehow once again scattered over the back seat.

After the short drive back to Starsky's flat, he dragged Hutch inside and demanded again to know what happened.

Hutch sat down on the couch with a damp squelching sound and took a deep breath, ready for his explanation. "Well, I left the car window open when we got to the store, and those kids you saw were emptying their litter in there." He paused to shiver, and Starsky held back a comment about how the kids couldn't be blamed if they mistook the car for a trashcan. "So I yelled at them, then I chased 'em, and we came to this garden. And then, there was a little yappy dog, and a pond..."

"And let me guess, you somehow managed to trip yourself into the pond," Starsky deduced.

Hutch blushed. "You ought to be a detective," he grumbled, trying to hide his embarrassment.

"Yeah, well anyway, you'll be needing a change of clothes now."

"And socks," Hutch ordered.

"So, Kenneth, what did you learn from all this?" Starsky called in a teacher-type voice as he headed into the bedroom to retrieve dry socks.

Hutch sniffed. "Uh... always carry spare socks? Never clean your car?" He wished Starsky would can the teasing and just bring dry socks, but of course he wasn't going to be let off that easily.

Starsky came back with a pile of dry clothing, including socks, and dumped them into Hutch's arms before giving him a shove towards the bathroom. "Always keep your sock drawer tidy."

Hutch stared at him. "Huh... what? How... that doesn't even make sense."

Starsky pulled the bathroom door closed in front of Hutch's surprised face. "Give it some thought," he suggested, grinning. That oughta keep him busy. He rummaged in the bag of food Hutch had bought, coming out with cookies, and settled down in front of the tv.

Hutch, meanwhile, stood staring into space for a good 30 seconds, before deciding that he was never going to understand Starsky logic. And he was not going to tidy his sock drawer.

The End