Bubbles, bubbles everywhere. And the damned telephone jangling demandingly in the midst of it.
"Daddy," a sweet girlish voice chirped helpfully as the speaker batted happily at the mounds of glittering suds that coated every square inch of the kitchen's tile floor and piled up against the walls in fluffy, billowing drifts, "the telephone's ringing."
"I know sweetie," her harassed father replied, trying to dump yet another dustpan full of suds down the sink. It was amazing. The more he got rid of, the more seemed to keep coming. He'd already been working for more than a half an hour on the cleanup. It was endless, almost. Thank kami that Makoto was off guarding Serenity on her tour of Eastern Europe and Russia. Because if his wife ever found out about what had happened in the inner sanctum, her precious kitchen (and particularly to her prized Viking dishwasher), he was a dead man. But was it really his fault? He'd merely made a perfectly understandable mix-up while cleaning up after lunch. After all, who knew that dishwashing soap and dishwasher soap weren't fully interchangeable?
The phone shrilled again, more insistently.
Without warning his two-year old daughter, Amasa made a slippery dash through the foam and grabbed the handset from its cradle. Lemon-scented frothy lather spattered her from the tips of her lopsided russet pigtails to her jelly smeared, mint overalls to her soggy Mary-Janes.
"Oshi-oshi," she graced the caller with her toddler's version of a greeting and then began jabbering away a mile a minute. He bit back the curse that threatened to erupt, unwilling to sully his innocent little girl's ears with profanity. When he'd discovered the overflowing dishwasher while taking her to get a quick snack, she'd already heard a word that, if repeated in front of her mother, was going to get him in a lot of trouble.
He needed help. Maybe, he thought, he could enlist Jadeite to help him clean. Jadeite would understand how the mix-up had occurred, he having committed more than a few acts of unthinking stupidity in his time. It was surprisingly easy to do when distracted by a busy two-year old. And he could bribe the man into silence with a bottle…okay a few bottles of good scotch.
With any luck Makoto would never know. And at least the floor would be clean.
Sudden silence had Nephrite lifting his head.
"For 'ou, daddy." Laughing, Amasa held out the telephone to him and blew at a passing bubble that threatened to land on her pert, freckled nose. He warily took the phone.
"Moshi-moshi," he barked into the receiver. 'Please let it be Jadeite. Or Kunzite. Or anyone but…'
The sound of a kiss met his ear a second before Makoto's cheerful voice filled the line. "Konnichiwa, darling. I miss you so much. Serenity's enjoying seeing Red Square and I've collected some interesting recipes along the way, but I must say, one onion dome is starting to look a lot like another to me and I can't wait to get home. I hope Amasa-chan's behaving herself, for your sake. Why'd she pick up the phone anyway?" Innocently she asked just the wrong question. "Is something going on?
Nephrite stared at the kitchen. The dishwasher was still wheezing like a dying rhino and burping out soapsuds intermittently. Amasa was skating through them, giggling and flailing her arms about to stir them up. She sneezed as one accidentally went up her nose, slipped, and fell down in a heap, bumping her head on a cupboard. More startled than hurt, she nonetheless began to wail.
Nephrite felt a pounding behind his eyelids. Makoto had left him in charge, trusting him with their daughter and their home, and now it was all falling to pieces in her absence. Finding himself shin-deep in suds while his daughter cried was the very last straw. What in Terra's name had she been thinking?!
"Honey?" Makoto prodded, when she received no answer. What was going on?
And without warning Nephrite yelled like he hadn't yelled in a very long time. "WHY THE HELL DIDN'T YOU BUY DISHWASHER SOAP BEFORE YOU LEFT?!"
There was silence from Makoto's end of the phone. Suddenly she had a very good idea of what was probably going on. The mental picture was too much. A sudden, nervous squeak of laughter escaped before she could help herself.
"MAKOTO!" he hollered, a red haze dancing in front of his eyes. "It's not funny!"
"Oops!I'vegottagocauseSerenity'scallingme.Loveandkissestoyouboth.Andwe'llbehomeinaweek.Don'tcallme.I'llcallyou.Bye!" The rapid-fire scattershot of wifely conversation terminated with a click, following which Makoto threw herself on her hotel bed and laughed until she cried. Nephrite stared disbelieving at the handset which buzzed tauntingly at him. He bit back the sudden urge to hop up and down like an infuriated Rumplestiltskin.
She'd hung up on him.
Even though she was a continent away, he couldn't help screaming her name at the top of his lungs as he slammed down the phone, wondering what had possessed him to marry such an aggravating, infuriating woman.
A soggy sniffle from his little girl drew his attention back to the situation at hand. Gathering her close, he looked her over carefully, kissing her forehead. She had a slight goose egg forming on the back of her head, but otherwise appeared fine, even gracing him with a watery smile when he tweaked her pigtail. Popping a thumb in her mouth, she latched onto his leg and looked at him with her mother's trusting emerald eyes. The ones that could, in both mother and daughter, turn him into a silly-putty shell of himself. And then he remembered.
Ah…right. That was why.
