Let's cut to the chase, shall we?

When Izaya walked home into his apartment late that night, he expected dinner waiting on the stove and his secretary filing his papers like he had asked. Instead, as he came to realize merely seconds after entering his domain, there was something drastically different in his complex.

Yes, there was food in the kitchen. Even though it had been hours since it was cooked, there was still an aroma that lingered and caused his taste buds to salivate in anticipation. The man idled in the kitchen for a few seconds as his finger took a dip of the dish, allowing himself to taste the culinary art. However, there was still an urgency that Izaya could not suppress because his secretary was not there.

Frowning just a bit, the man maneuvered away from his kitchen and towards the rest of his living space.

There were traces of unfiled papers, something that Namie wouldn't have condoned if she were here…which lead to the question as to where she was. Izaya went through several possible scenarios as to why the work was not done. Inside of his coat pocket, he fingered his switchblade with the air of a professional assassin.

Namie probably lost her marbles and turned herself to the police.

No, he thought vehemently against that thought. She was far too rational and too selfish to even think about going to jail instead of continuing her job. No, not even that woman was stupid enough to go against the instincts of self-preservation.

He began to think again and came up with another solution.

Maybe, she wanted to visit her brother.

That would make sense, but she hadn't done so in a while. If anything, she had been ignoring her brother recently. She hadn't tried to call her precious little Seiji and she didn't seem to react anymore when he had teased her about her incestuous feelings. Izaya welcomed that development because humans evolved and infatuation was nothing more than a roadblock for Namie to grow into something mature and less…heinous.

With feather light footsteps, he tread up the stairs and peeked into the rooms that were on the upper floor. He kept extra quiet, not because he was worried for his safety, but because he really wanted to see if he could surprise anybody with his skill. Once he reached the first door, his guest room, he gently grasped the doorknob and peeked inside.

Plain bed sheets, drab furniture, and various miscellaneous niceties that would please even the most finicky of his humans that dared stay in his apartment. (There was one incident with Shinra that would lead him to staying the night, but that story was for a later date.) Even so, once he deemed that there was no one occupying this room, Izaya immediately closed the door and made sure that it remained locked. If there was something fishy going on, he made sure that no one could escape. Not that anyone could, but precautions were precautions.

Repeating the same steps for the next door (his bedroom for all those stalkers out there), he found out that there was absolutely nothing. There was currently absolutely, completely nothing to be concerned about. Already, the nagging feeling that was gnawing his insides was starting to subside because of his logical reasoning, but there was still one door left that he had yet to investigate.

Forgoing his earlier ministrations to keep himself silent, he simply strode forward and pushed the door wide open. To his surprise, nothing stopped him—he was secretly hoping that he would find Namie worshipping Satan or something. As the door creaked ominously opened his, dark russet eyes surveyed his surroundings and stopped at the floor. Immediately, he bent down and studied the figure that lay before him.

He didn't know what was worse, the fact that the stains splattering the floor was going to be a pain to get rid of or the fact that his employee was lying face down. As his hands patted her head to see if there were any noticeable injuries, he checked the floor and groaned. Yup, the floor was obviously the greater evil of the whole picture. Now, as his eyes narrowed, he found that there was a bump on her head!

"What has my little secretary done now," he mumbled. There was watermarks all over the place, an overturned bucket, and was that bleach? Izaya had a pretty good idea that she was probably plotting his death or something. That would make the most sense and the least disturbing of his other scenarios.

That was okay.

This was normal.

Namie groaned when she felt herself getting gathered into the arms of her employer. She felt wind whip her hair around and her thighs were getting—

"Are…you taking advantage…of me?" Namie managed to ask coherently. She was gaining a lot of momentum with her speech, going as far as to weakly enunciate her question with a wayward punch that did nothing but amuse the man.

He abstained from laughing in front of her face and did the next best thing.

"Take advantage of you? You're a tad bit repulsive with that incestuous love of yours! Who knows," he exclaimed as he dropped her into his bedroom," maybe your stupidity and your disgusting love might rub off on me! What would the yakuza think?"

"That you're a bored person with nothing better to do than mess with other people's lives?" The woman shifted from her prone position and decided to get under the covers. Her eyes were closed and she made sure that her head wasn't lying on the wrong side. It was almost amazing that her voice and snark had returned so quickly.

"You might be right about that," Izaya muttered as he paced around his room. There was something in his eyes, something that looked akin to fear and worry in his eyes. He stopped in front of Namie's face and leaned down to her level. "Does this mean I have to take care of you?"

Namie's steel grey eyes looked at him in such contempt that even Shizuo would have cowered in fear. However, seeing that Izaya Orihara was her boss, the man just chuckled at her expression and straightened. This was going to be a disaster.

"I'll take that as a yes."

When Namie sniffed the pillow, she wasn't sure if she was supposed to be flattered or repelled by the fact that she was in his room.

She kept her mouth open so that she could drool all over his things.

"You're doing it wrong," Namie mumbled as she watched him make soup in the kitchen. She was on the couch, lying with a blanket draped over her lean frame and the remote grasped firmly on her hands. After hours of interrogation—Read: snarking competition—Izaya deduced that she had been sick, decided to clean up the bathroom with the intent to poison him in the long run, and wasn't paying attention. Thus, she fell to her doom and now she had to be taken care of. By him.

Her boss.

Shouldn't he be the one to be paid for this?

It was boring and frankly, he would rather watch young teens clamor over the gang wars that were happening in Ikebukuro.

"Namie," the brunette information broker grumbled as he strained the noodles from the hot water. "You're practically blind from where you're sitting. How do you know that I'm doing a bad job?" Good grief woman, give me a chance!

"Idiot, I can hear how bad a job it is!" Her face scrunched up in annoyance when she heard the deliberate sounds of a fork's prongs being scraped over priceless china.

The woman had half a mind to get up from her position and beat some sense into him. The other half wanted to sit still and wait for him to serve her some soup. Then, she would throw the contents into his face without tasting it. Hopefully, he would be careless enough to not let the soup sit out for some time to cool down so that he would be burned. If not, and this is where Namie's mood soured, then she would have to resort to treating him like a slave.

"Did you hear how well I can make music?" Even if Namie was too far away from Izaya to see, she could tell that he was smirking and possibly spinning around in glee. He was that type of person after all. "Or do you want an encore?"

"No, thanks," Namie groaned. She reached over to the table that was moved closer for her benefit and her hands quickly grabbed a tissue. The sounds of a yowling trumpet could be heard as Namie got rid of the sticky yellow goo from her nostrils. It was that disgusting. "It's like hearing you torture a cat you just adopted."

There were the sounds of rustling and a knife cutting up vegetable from the kitchen. The woman could only hope that the man was not cutting up chunks so huge that she couldn't bite through it. She was a stickler for being healthy and all, but anything bigger than necessary was going straight into his mouth.

He shrugged. "At least it was better than hearing your rendition of a trumpet." Mental images of what was coming out of her nose were too horrifying for the informant to comprehend. He almost wanted Shinra to be in his apartment to take care of her, but Namie declined.

Adamantly.

And by that he meant that one of his ears felt elongated and that his hair was being extra spiky after that argument.

"It's called the human body," Namie called out as she threw her used up tissue into the garbage can that was a wee bit away from her. She bit her lip in frustration when she realized that the snotty hankie dropped to the floor mere nanoseconds after she threw it. It was a failure.

Thank various deities that Izaya wasn't here to see that.

Maybe she should try again.

"Or do you not know how to blow your nose?" The scientist was curious, had he ever gotten sick before? It seemed unlikely because he always looked like he was in shape. Not only that, but Namie always had the sinking feeling that he wasn't human at all. Not because of the way he seemed to always talk about other people like they were playthings—she did that sometimes—or the fact that he seemed to always get out of Shizuo's way unscathed. No, what really got her concerned was that he seemed to be exceptionally resilient whenever she poisoned his meals.

(She really needs to start giving heavier dosages if that was the case.)

Needless to say, one day the great and powerful Izaya Orihara was going to fall from his pedestal one day.

And she was going to see that happen.

"Am I the best information broker in all of Japan?" He raised an eyebrow when he saw that the concoction that was bubbling in the stove start to bubble over the rim and onto the counter, creating a mess. Was that supposed to happen?

Namie sniffed haughtily as she tried to simultaneously clean her nasal passages and retort with a burn.

"I can't compare you to anyone else now can I?"

"Precisely, since you don't know any other people with professions similar to mine, you're going to have to default with a yes." Thinking quickly, he grabbed a washcloth that was lying on the counter and started to wipe up the mess. At the same time, he also turned off the stove. From a taste test, he surmised that the meal was done and fit for both Namie's and his tastes. She had absolutely no right to criticize him.

Namie heard the cupboard where all the dishes were kept open with a creak and she winced when she heard him rattle the objects inside carelessly. Granted, he was filthy rich, but still… Shouldn't he be a bit more vigilant about that? To keep her mind off of things such as trivial like this, the woman balled up the used up tissue and aimed at the wastebasket.

She channeled her inner Michael Jordan and threw.

It landed mere inches away from the couch and an immeasurable distance away from the rubbish bin.

How disheartening, she thought as she felt another bout of mucus build up in her nose. If she didn't hurry, there was going to be a breakthrough and she didn't want to feel the products of her cold congeal on her face.

Blegh. That would be disgusting.

Izaya might deduct from her pay if he caught wind of that.

"Namie! I got someth—" Dark, slim eyebrows arched in a way that would have made Namie tickle herself with glee if it wasn't for the fact that she was lying on the couch feeling like the world was suffocating her.

"Well," Namie mumbled as she shifted so that she was staring up at the ceiling instead of saying hello to the bin. "Are you going to give me the food, or are you going to stand there looking like an idiot?" As if to highlight her question, her stomach grumbled and she moaned into the pillow that was tucked under her head.

"I realize that you aren't comfortable because of your ailment, but could you please enlighten me as to why you did…that?" He made his way so that she could fully see him and pointed helpfully towards the line of balled up tissues that lay scattered on the floor. It was like Hansel and Gretel decided to take a walk through his apartment, but instead of using breadcrumbs, the children thought it was a better decided to spread their germs around.

"I think…you know the answer to that," Namie moaned as she tried to sit up from her prone position. Instead of sitting up straight like the boss she was, she only worsened the headache that was already pounding in her head. With the fist that held her newest booger filled projectile, she aimed at the garbage can, but only succeeded in letting it roll on the ground. Izaya merely quirked his eye at that.

"Biological warfare, huh?" He muttered as he helped her up onto the pillow.

Namie hummed in reply.

She was far too gone to realize that she was letting herself be fed by the informant of Shinkjuku and Ikebukuro.

"That never happened." The woman gave a loud sigh as she saw that the files she was assigned last week were still haphazardly piled where she left them. On top of that, this week's papers needed filing. While she appreciated that there was work for her to do, she was a bit miffed that it grew to an almost unmanageable size. That, and her boss was giving her orders left and right. Was this his way of getting back at her?

He gave a slight smirk as he tapped several keys on his laptop. "Don't be embarrassed, you're only human." His face melted into a full blown grin as he reveled in the glare that Namie was sending his way. On most days she ignored him; seeing her like this was a treat! Maybe she should get sick more often… "You can't blame me for thinking you were almost tolerable when you started drooling all over my pillows."

Thwack! A bunch of business envelopes exploded when it came into contact with the window.

"Geeze, you're almost as bad as Shizuo," he muttered as he surveyed all the documents that lay scattered on the floor. Fortunately, Namie only rivaled Shizuo in his hatred, not in his super strength.

"You're sadly mistaken when you say I drool," the ex-scientist sneered as she readied another volley of papers. "And don't compare me to that man! Last time I checked, he threw my brother in the air!"

Namie wisely chose to ignore the fact that her precious brother had provoked the fight with a pen stabbing.

Izaya decided to bring it up.

At Namie's forced silence, Izaya stood up from his chair and stalked over to her station. She glanced up at him in confusion for a second before schooling her expression into that of a bored bystander. Pity, he would love to see more than that. With no regard towards her personal space, Izaya leaned close to her, their faces mere inches apart.

In retrospect, with Izaya's sexual harassment and the fact that she irrevocably in love with her brothers, this was bound to happen. She refused to give Izaya the satisfaction that she was caught by surprise with his sudden actions. Instead, she boldly ignored him and resumed filing without a hitch.

"Oh, Namie…" He grabbed both wrists with one swoop and Namie found herself eyeing the documents with a critical eye. Why was he cataloguing the movements of the woman who owned the bakery in a nondescript location in Ikebukuro? She found herself thinking as she tried to not give her boss the time of day—even if she was paid to do that.

Forget it. Might as well get it over with.

Pasting a blank expression of evil on her face, she faced her employer, nearly blanching at the little distance that existed between them.

"Is there anything you require?"

Without preamble, the man grabbed her head.

And sneezed into her dark locks.

"Yeah. I need some medicine and some fatty tuna if you don't mind."

Namie would make sure that Shizuo gained access to the flat within the next few hours.