Keye would go home, but that would mean asking Alexander for help. He seemed to have been doing that a lot lately...not again. It would seem weak of him to go to Alexander with anything and everything. Also, he wasn't supposed to go see Douglas alone and he had...that was sure to lead to a lecture. He'd go home and not tell Alexander, but he didn't know how to take care of burns on his own.
So, with a quick stop at the apartment to get his laptop (Alexander wasn't off work yet) and do a little research, he was at Taryn's door, fidgeting and whimpering. He was burned, and his clothes were rubbing, and it hurt.
Knock knock.

Taryn was writing a paper when the knock came. (Or rather, she was procrastinating on writing a paper by reading fanfiction and chatting with various friends online.) A visitor would be a welcome distraction from the work.

"Come in."

She's dressed in her version of layabout clothes; an extremely loose tank top--which she never wears in public because it is less flattering and more revealing than she likes--and a pair of black knit capris with paint and bleach stains. Her hair is in a messy almost-bun. (For some reason, she can't write anything serious with her hair touching her neck.)

She twisted around in her chair and reached across the bed to turn the knob and open the door about half an inch.

"It's Keye. I...Taryn, d'you have a minute?"
He leaned forward to peer in the door. The expression on his face was one of pain and frustration: now that the spell was gone, the torment had subsided, but those burns were causing him constant low-level discomfort that intensified almost unbearable whenever anything contacted his skin.

"Sure. What's up?"

She stood and pushed her chair in, opening the door all the way and waving him inside.

Honestly, she couldn't think of any reason at all for Keye to come and visit her, unless he suddenly couldn't wait to for her to get to her email to correct his essay. Or if something happened to Violet and Wick?

She looked a little confused, but smiled welcomingly anyway.

He stepped in, chewing on the corner of his lower lip.
"I...ah, got hurt. Not cuts or bruises...burns. I dunno how to deal with that...I thought you might know..."
He shifted his weight uneasily from foot to foot. He didn't want to pull up his sleeves and show her...they were too tight, it would hurt.

Yes, Taryn knows what to do with burns. She dumped a pan of chicken on herself when she was eight; it was painful, and she still has the scars.

"Where? Do you know how bad they are? Blisters, anything like that?"

This is Taryn in a mode that Keye probably hasn't seen her in before; it's something like a motherly attitude, something like a nurse, and somewhat businesslike. (It's how she treats her siblings when they've hurt themselves.)

"On my arms, up to a little bit above the elbows, and my legs to a little above my knees."
Whimper.
"It hurts."
He said it flatly, resisting the urge to whine.
"I dunno how bad, I haven't looked."

"Show me."

Her first impulse? Stick him in the shower for a bit. That'll sooth them, even if he isn't really too keen on covering himself in cold water.

"If they're really bad second or all the way to third degree, I can't do anything except send you to the hospital. If it's just first degree or maybe mild second degree, I can help some."

She'd still recommend he have a doctor help out.

He pulled up his sleeves, whimpering. The burns weren't too bad, but they obviously hurt.
"Ow." he said helpfully.

She looked at them for a moment in silence.

"First degree, maybe a little second degree, but not much," she pronounced. "Your legs are like that too?"

Without waiting for him to nod or answer in anyway, she took his hand and pulled him towards the only other door in the room.

"Go in there and take a cold shower. It'll help. My towels are the pale blue ones."

"Okay."
One of the good (or bad, depending on the situation) things about Keye is that if you act like you know what's best, he'll (mostly) believe you. He didn't argue.
He yelped when she took his hand, though. That was burned too, though not very noticeably.

What followed was one of those awkward showers where Keye, lacking a cap, ended up leaning in odd directions to keep his head out of the water. He fell once, hitting his chin rather sharply, but got right back up again.
Eventually, he was standing in the middle of the bathroom wtih a towel around him. He was still dripping somewhat--trying to dry off those burns had hurt.
"Okay, what now?" he shouted, through the door.

Taryn, on the insistance of her mother, has a very well equipped first aid kit in her room. She hasn't used it much--except once, and that was on Wick--so it's still fully stocked. Convenient, isn't it?

"Now? Now you get at least half decent and come out here so I can wrap those up in gauze and protect your newly fragile skin."

She's also gotten out a large t-shirt without sleeves that she uses as sleepwear, and intends to make him wear this instead of his long sleeved thing.

With a sigh (of course he'd have to be decent, but putting his pants back on wasn't going to be fun) he got half-dressed, rolling his pants up to just above where the burns started. Now that was an odd thing: all of the burns cut off at a certain point, a straight line, no unevenness. Unnatural.
He came out of the bathroom, the towel wrapped tightly around his upper half (he didn't want to be naked any more than Taryn wanted to see him naked), his shirt in one hand.
"Can you put something on that will make them not hurt so much? Neosporin?"
Not that one of those little tubes of Neosporin would cover such a large surface area.

"Here, put this on; 's better than the towel," she told him, handing him the shirt. "And I've got Neosporin, yeah, but that's not what I'm going to use."

She has a small container of some kind of gel that was sort of a golden colour in her hand, with one of those little push in caps, like you see on bottles of hand soap. Putting a bit of this in her palm, she gestures for him to hold out his arms.

"Sorry it's scented, but I don't have any plain aloe vera. Which's really good for burns."

It's actually meant for sunburns, but it will do for this just as well.

"So are you going to tell me how this happened?"

Sunburns are no different from any other kind of burn (although perhaps a bit less severe), so aloe should work quite well.

Keye turned away from Taryn, quickly taking off the towel and replacing it with the shirt. His back was just as scarred as his front, of course, but it was less intimate.
He turned back around, sticking both his arms straight out in front of him.

"I...went to see this guy that Dr. Barclay works with. He told me not to. I don't think they like each other much. But it was such a nice day, and the guy lives all by himself...so I went and I washed his car and then I knocked on his door. And he asked me in, but then started saying really mean things, so I got mad and said mean things back, and then he knocked me down and burned me."

Eyebrow.

"Sounds like a real charmer." She worked the cooling gel along his left arm, gently and slowly, so as not to hurt his burns any more than they were hurt already. "I guess I can understand feeling sorry for the guy, but maybe you shouldn't go in next time?"

On to his right arm...

"Holy crap, Keye, what happened?"

This in reference to the long line of stitches, of course.

"Mm. He's not so bad. Just obsessive-compulsive and grouchy."
A little more than just grouchy, don't you think?
"Huh? N-n-nothing!"
Acting on immediate instinct, he tried to pull away, shutting his eyes.

"Keye..." She held on to his arm, still gently rubbing the aloe into the reddened skin. Her voice was very gentle and very soft. "It's not nothing when you have a line of stitches up your vein..."

Even more softly.

"Did you try to kill yourself?"

Don't forget, Taryn is occasionally suicidal herself. Darcy can attest to it--if he hadn't 'forgotten,' of course. She understands this as much as she understood the other things...

"Yes..."
He sniffed, almost angrily.
"Don't guilt me, please."

"Not going to." She finished rubbing the aloe onto his arm and pointed to her bed. "Sit. I have to reach your legs."

A pause.

"... I'd never have the guts to use a razor... 'm too scared of physical pain..."

Yes, she just admitted that she's suicidal, also.

He sat down, sticking both legs straight out in front of him, holding on to the edge of the bed for balance.
Then he frowned. He didn't like the idea of his friends feeling like that. Ever.
"Ooh, Taryn..."
He almost reached out and touched her...almost. But he remembered that she might not like that, and quickly put his hand back down on the bed.

How is it that someone can never seem to apply what they feel about other people to what other people might feel about them?

"Nothing lately," she shrugged, putting the aloe on his legs now. "It was really bad, around the time I discovered magic. Or... magic discovered me. Whichever. God was the only constant, only one who never asked me to be better or different or someone else... And then he didn't exist."

It was a bit of a shock, to say the least.

She looked up at him and shrugged. "'m better now."

"Magic wasn't bad for me. I never believed in god. It was almost good, like before there wasn't something else out there, and then suddenly, there was."
He shrugged, and resisted the urge to kick his feet.
Then he nudged her hand, very very lightly with his own (careful, now, he didn't want to scare her).
"I don't think you should be different."

She smiled and leaned on the bed, looking up at him. There wasn't anything more to do, except wrap him with gauze so that he wouldn't hurt himself by rubbing the burns against things...

"Hayley did. Didn't like the way I dressed, didn't like the way I acted, thought I should be more 'mature' than I am. And my parents never say it in so many words, but I know they wish I were like Jessica."

The smile widened.

"I like it when people like Taryn, not Jessica's little sister, or Rhealyn's daughter, or Hayley's friend."

That's a compliment, by the way, Keye.

"Some friend..." he said, mildly incredulous.
"I don't know any of those people. But I like Taryn by herself and the way she is, anyway."

She shrugged.

"I dunno, maybe she had a few points. And I do sometimes still wear some of the things she picked out for me, but... we don't talk anymore."

She tapped his legs as she rose and sat down on the bed, drawing her legs up and leaning back on her pillows. "You can put them down now."

Still that smile.

"I like Keye."

He put his legs down, looking worriedly at them.
"How'm I ever gonna get my boots back on...eh?"
There's that hopeful, little-boyish look.
"Really?"

Damn, Keye is cute.

"Really."

Half a giggle.

"As for the boots, I don't know. You could walk home barefoot, but that might not be a very good idea in this city."

Half a frown.

"My flipflops wouldn't fit you."

"Barefoot seems like the best option...no, your flip flops won't fit, definitely."
He held up one foot. It was, indeed, very large. Absurdly so.
"...and I really don't wanna put my boots back on. They're too small. That would really hurt."

"Too bad I don't have duct tape. We could make a pair of temporary flipflops from that."

In contrast to Keye's absurdly large feet, Taryn's are rather small for her height. And very high-arched, a fact which makes it a rather rare occasion indeed on which she actually wears those flipflops she mentioned.

"Don't get your feet cut up or anything," she warned. "That'd be nasty."

"I won't...I'll watch out for glass..."
He sighed heavily, running his hands through his hair. This discussion probably meant that it was time to go, but he didn't really want to leave. He stood, picking up his own shirt and his boots, laying the towel on the bed.
"Well...well, see ya later, then."

He's the one who brought up shoes, remember?

"Hold on a minute, boyo," she half-scolded. "Have to wrap you up like a mummy so you don't get yourself even further burnt by too much sunlight, or rub against something because you forgot you were burnt. Sit."

Unlike Alexander, Taryn uses nicknames and things like 'boyo,' 'mister,' and 'you' interchangeably with people's real names.

"Oh yeah, I forgot!"
He brightened up considerably, sitting down again and grinning broadly. His mismatched teeth were one of the few things he wasn't self-conscious about.

"Don't want to put it on while the aloe's still damp, or it'll stick," she explained. (I'm fairly certain that she's half making that up, because she doesn't really want to go back to her paper, either.)

"Also, you look like a mess. Can I brush your hair?"

What can I say? Taryn absolutely adores hair. She and her sisters (and sometimes her mom) will spend hours brushing each other's hair and playing with it.

She won't do anything too outrageous to him, though.

"...I do that on purpose, but you can if you want."
Keye likes having his hair brushed...it's very relaxing to him. You can't touch his face or his neck, but you can fool with his hair all you want.

She made a little delighted noise and bounced up off the bed, grabbing her hairbrush from her desk--which is where she keeps just about everything, actually, so that it's all in easy reach--and knelt on the bed behind him.

"You're not tenderheaded, are you?"

One of her sisters is, and it's a royal pain in the arse to brush Esther's hair. Anything pulls.

"Are you kidding? I barely feel anything."
No hurting, just pressure. Which is almost like one of those head-massages. Interesting.

She chuckled and started brushing.

"I don't either; five younger siblings and all of them pulled my hair when they were little, and some of them still do. I swear my scalp is impervious to pain." Well, not quite, but she's gotten quite good at ignoring it.

Mmm, hair.

It really doesn't matter whose hair she gets to play with, really, as long as there's lots of it there. Short, short hair is no fun at all.

Keye's hair definitely isn't short-short. If it layed flat, it would come nearly to his shoulders, but even when brushed, it won't lie flat. It's rather coarse, and very thick, but the tangles come out easily.
Keye has his eyes closed. This is very nice.

"Your hair's almost 's long as mine," she marveled, still brushing it out. (It doesn't need it so much anymore, but she still wants to keep going; she likes hair, as I've already mentioned.)

Although, that's a bit of an exaggeration. Her hair reaches several inches past her shoulders... She should dye it again, soon. The roots must be starting to show, even if she hasn't actually looked for that.