A/N: Somehow "so much" autocorrected to "soapy" during a serious conversation with a friend... so I started typing this thinking it was just going to be a silly paragraph-next thing I know, it's almost 1,500 words. Go figure. (By the way, huge thanks to those who reviewed Call Me! Since people wanted me to continue, I am in fact working on a second part after all, so keep an eye out for it!)

Quite suddenly she had heard what sounded like a large splashing of water followed by a dull, muffled 'thump' coming from upstairs.

And then, a moment later—

"NAMIE-SAN…!"

The woman whose name was just called looked up slowly from the papers on the desk, eyebrow twitching, and merely mumbled, "Oh, no."

"HELP!"

Izaya's shrieking voice echoed from upstairs a second time; he was still in the bathroom, she figured, all the more reason to ignore whatever tragedy must have befallen him in the past 40 minutes since he went upstairs; taking a bath, as she'd thought, which, reflecting upon now, was an unusually long amount of time even for him.

"GET UP HERE, NOW!"

Averting her gaze back to her work, Namie continued muttering under her breath and pretended not to hear.

In the very next moment she felt a moist object make impact with the back of her head. Cursing, she spun around in the chair and stared at where the object had fallen next to her…

It was a soaked loofah sponge.

"What the hell-?!" Namie rose to her feet at once and glared up towards the second floor where Izaya stood, still sopping wet, clad in nothing but a white towel as far as she could see—

"OI—! Are you deaf? Get up here, I said I need your help!"

Namie's mouth hung open for a bit as she slowly processed the fact that her boss had the nerve to come out practically naked to throw a sponge at her from the balcony—with admittedly good aim…

"Why? Aren't you potty trained?" She snapped, and immediately regretted the words at his next reply—

"Well, you see, I made a bit of a mess up here and…"

"I do not want to hear it. Get yourself a damn plunger, Izaya-!"

"Oh, gross!~ No, it's not that…! I just… Come up here already, it's getting worse!"

With a silent groan Namie finally dragged her feet up the stairs to where he stood, making a somewhat strained effort to keep her eyes directly on his face. "Your hair looks funny like that. You look like a wet cat. You know how it seems like they shrink to half their size with their fur clinging to them…? It's like that."

"Shut up. Look, just come over and-"

"What is that?" Namie interjected suddenly in a deep voice, having just cast her eyes on the background to check for any visible problems aside from Izaya's bare body within three feet of her. Without even glancing back to where Namie was staring, he answered, "Yeah, see, because you kept ignoring me you're only going to have to help me clean up more…"

"Is that water?"

"Yes, it is."

"…On the floor-?"

"Yes… So you do have eyes, good—even if you like pretending your ears don't work… Anyway, it's from the bathroom." As if that weren't obvious—after all, where else…?

Namie moved past him without waiting and stepped into the spreading puddle with her shoes still on, following it down the hall. Just as he'd joined her, Namie flung open the door to the bathroom and—

Suddenly Izaya's slight panic made sense.

"Izaya, how…?!"

The whole room was flooded. Pink bubbles drifted lazily across the tiled floor with the soapy water, which seemed to have spilled over the side of an overflowing tub. Peering to the right, she spotted just that very sight at once, and quickly noticed a spot close to the tub where a small amount of red was mixed in with the pinkish tint.

…Blood…? She looked back towards Izaya and finally forced herself to lower her gaze downwards; if Namie had only done so earlier, she would have noticed the raw, scraped skin on his knees.

"Hm…? Oh, that—I slipped… when I got out… I jumped out, actually; I don't suppose you heard a loud crashing noise a couple minutes ago…?"

Indeed she had, but, like always, she tried to ignore whatever racket Izaya was making; most commonly, it was the rambling words that tumbled forth from his mouth whenever his one-woman audience was in the same vicinity.

It became clear to Namie with the new information in this vague explanation that Izaya had already been in the tub when he noticed it was overflowing… which made even less sense than him returning to the tub from his bedroom for whatever reason after starting the bath, as had been her first assumption.

Looking back towards him for an answer, Namie's interrogatory stare was met simply with a shrug. "…Are you going to help me clean this all up or not? I really didn't want all the soap getting out to the hall like that—aah, this is really going to be a pain, isn't it… It's your fault for not coming the second I called-"

"My fault?" Namie spat back at him with defensive disbelief at having just been blamed for the flood Izaya had somehow started all by himself. "You're the one who…! You, this… How the hell-? How? …Wait, why are there bubbles?" The last question was not the result of a delayed observation of the pink froth but mere curiosity upon realizing they were still unexplained.

"I decided to take a bubble bath," Izaya answered bluntly. "Is that a problem for you? Don't look at me like that—your judgment actually burns…"

Namie sniffed. "I just didn't think you were the bubble bath type."

"Well." An immediate glint had just appeared in his eyes that Namie didn't like one bit. "There are obviously a lot of things about me you don't know, Namie-san… And you know, while it's convenient like this, if you're really curious I suppose I wouldn't mind showing y-"

"So how did this happen? How did you go from taking a bath to flooding your second floor?"

"…" Izaya cleared his throat a bit. "…Do I really have to say it? Really now, it's kind of obvious, honestly-"

"Of course it is." Having come to the most logical—and amusing— conclusion just as Izaya had confessed that bubble baths were a guilty pleasure, Namie's face stretched into a slight smirk for the first time that day. "But it's so hilarious and pathetic I'd rather hear it straight from your mouth."

Izaya returned the smile wryly after a moment. "…So that's how it's going to be."

"Yes, go on…?" Namie's tone was almost sickening.

"Aah, I really don't like when your voice goes all sweet like that; don't talk to me like I'm your brother just because you're probably wishing he was the one standing before you naked like this… Or maybe the scented bubbles up here really are deluding you into some hallucination…? Should I take the towel off after all, then? Of course, you're such a creep you probably still try to take showers with your brother anyway—disgusting woman…"

Namie's smile fell a fraction of an inch. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"Eh? You just admitted it-?!"

"I'm not going to get that mop until you tell me just exactly how Orihara Izaya, the skilled and resourceful information broker of Shinjuku, flooded almost the entirety of his upstairs floor while taking a bubble bath."

"…Alright, look." Izaya had recovered his plastic grin as Namie waited in patience to finally hear the shameful surrender. "Don't act like you've never fallen asleep in the tub before." Namie snorted loudly; he ignored it. "The water is so warm and you're just sitting there submerged and resting your head on the back of the tub there… You close your eyes and it's just so relaxing, right…? And the bubbles make it smell really nice… Hey, cut that out! What's the point of making me tell you this if you just giggle through it?!"

"…You're really actually an idiot…" Namie had pressed her hand against her lips in a struggle to suppress more laughter. "I never would've thought you'd be reckless enough to do something like this, and with me here…"

"Yeah, yeah," Izaya interrupted in an exasperated tone. "So I fell asleep during a bubble bath—sue me."

"Oh, I will—reckless endangerment of an employee, perhaps… after all, you could've drowned me."

"Namie-san, you're too dramatic, you know."

"Look who's talking."

Namie's smirk seemed to now fill her entire face; Izaya threw his hands in the air with an amount of flair quite appropriate for such a rebutted accusation. "Please, just go get the damn mop…!"

At that moment—

Namie choked in sudden disturbed surprise and stepped back, recoiling as the towel around Izaya's waist slipped loosely off his hips and straight to the floor—as did she.

At once, a piercing cackle flooded Izaya's apartment far faster than the soapy water ever could have—

And yet, unbeknownst to them, that same pond had only continued to seep into the balcony walls and now dripped slowly down the steps.