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Panam had been in Chinatown for nearly an hour trying to pretend that she wasn’t killing time until she was supposed to meet up with her new choom. V had wanted to take her on a food tour of the city once she’d found out that Panam enjoyed pierogies, something about having a choom of Polish descent and knowing the best places in town.
They weren’t supposed to meet up for a while yet but between the incessant holo-ads echoing off bare walls and the sounds of her neighbors fighting she’d been driven from her, still too new, Night City apartment far too early hoping that some human contact would settle her soul. A pipe dream in Night City to be sure.
She was only a couple of blocks from V’s megabuilding when she got the text.
V: do you kno how to stop this?
Attached was a picture of a dishwasher with a truly astonishing amount of bubbles seeping out from behind the closed door. Panam shook her head in genuine amusement. Why V thought she, a nomad who’d lived in the city for all of a couple of months, would know what to do in this scenario was beyond her. Still, she would head up to V’s apartment to check things out.
If nothing else, it promised to be an entertaining show.
***
The door to V’s apartment slid open quietly but V was nowhere to be seen. Panam stepped over the threshold cautiously, eyes scanning the room for the merc. Most of the floor was soaked with a visible layer of water, the area to the left of the entry was almost completely obscured by a large piles of soapy bubbles collecting in drifts. Some bubbles freed themselves from the group and soared gently through the air. It was a pretty big mess but the overall smell was an improvement from the day old Buck-a-Slice scent she’d been exposed to the last time the merc invited her over. To be honest that first visit was almost enough to make her rejoin the Aldecaldos immediately.
“V?” Panam called, trying to pinpoint her choom’s position.
V popped her head out so that it was visible from behind a small partition on the left side of the room where the foam was the densest. “Thank fuck you’re here! What do I do?”
Panam took a couple of steps forward to try and assess the damage, but she nearly broke her neck as her foot slipped on the wet, soapy floor. Fortunately, a lifetime of athleticism helped her fall correctly and all that was injured was her pride…and her ass.
“Panam!” V yelped, scrambling to her feet in an attempt to reach the fallen woman, only to lose her footing in the exact same way and end up hitting the ground flat on her face.
The nomad winced at the sight. V was going to have a hell of a bruise tomorrow.
V moaned pitifully, mostly obscured by the larger piles of bubbles near the machine. Panam did her best not to laugh. She’d seen this woman butcher a Wraith den to get to Nash and then silently kill her way into an even bigger Wraith den to rescue Saul only to be finally undone by household chores.
Trying more sincerely to help this time, Panam planted her hands down onto the wet, soapy floor and tried to push herself back into a standing position. “How did you even manage this?” Predictably, her arms slipped and she ended up right back on the damned floor again with a bumped elbow to show for her efforts.
“I wanted to wear my favorite shirt tonight but it needed to be washed and it seemed like a waste to go all the way to the laundry mat for one shirt so I figured I could fire this thing up and wash it here. A dishwasher is basically the same thing as a washing machine.” V had started army crawling through the foam in an effort to get to Panam, to give the woman credit she was actually making incremental progress.
The bubbles were only increasing in quantity, which was a little alarming to Panam. V definitely wasn’t getting her security deposit back. “Didn’t you turn the damned thing off?” She shouted, getting a mouth full of soap for her troubles.
As if the idea hadn’t occurred to her, V turned back toward the out of control dishwasher and her eyes glowed blue for a second as she turned the machine off remotely. “Probably should have done that a while ago.” V admitted without a hint of guilt or shame. She was now lying with her chin on top of her fists positively covered in bubbles and she seemed to be blissfully unbothered by the situation, not showing any anger or frustration at the scene whatsoever.
Panam, who had given up on movement for the immediate future, took a cue from her host and relaxed, surrendering to the foam. “For the record, my suggestion, in the future, would be to wear another shirt!” Had this happened to her Panam knew she would have been plenty pissed off at herself and anyone in the general vicinity. V’s unflappable attitude was curious to her but she had to admit it was…nice to see a sillier side to the badass, deadly merc she was so quickly getting attached to.
“It’s a very important shirt, Panam.” V protested, her face grave.
Panam didn’t buy V’s act for a second. She shook her head in disbelief. “It cannot be that important.”
The merc finished crawling to Panam’s location, still mostly near the threshold of the apartment. V sat up with her legs crossed so she could better stare at Panam, who suddenly became exceedingly aware that V was wearing very, very small, white shorts and a white t shirt, the front of which were now see-through. “It makes my rack look great. It’s a very important shirt.”
It was hard for the nomad to imagine V’s breasts looking any better than they did at this particular moment. Panam forced herself upright as well lest she get caught staring at her choom’s tits.
“Or do you think they look good enough right now?” There was a sly smile and a knowing gleam in V’s eyes, her gaze turning more intent. If V had deliberately flooded her apartment as a setup to get Panam slippery and wet, she was going to throttle the merc.
Later.
She would throttle her later. Panam vowed as she pulled the younger woman in for a kiss. Their lips met in a closed mouth kiss, Panam still a little tentative. V cupped her jaw and angled her head slightly, single-mindedly focused on deepening their kiss, pulling Panam’s lower lip between her own, only to immediately pull back. Both women spluttered, trying to get the taste of soap out of their mouths. “Shower.” Panam suggested, scooting along the floor too eager to get V’s clothes off and put her hands on the merc’s body to care about how undignified she looked doing so.
V inched along after her cackling wildly.