It's late afternoon out on the waterfront. It's still one of Douglas's favorite spots to take a walk. For exercise, of course, since he doesn't particularly care for the scenery, which generally includes too many people for his liking.

He'd just finished thinking about the last few specimens he'd collected,... he'd been lucky, really, to have gotten those. Maybe more opportunities would crop up. He was feeling playful today.
...
Douglas has a weird definition of 'playing'.

Keye, on the other hand, did not come here often, which would explain why he had not yet learned to avoid it because of Douglas.
It was just one of those days...one of those days when you have to torment yourself by purposely aggravating a phobia.
Keye was standing at the end of a dock, staring dubiously into the water. If he hadn't been, he would have seen Douglas and been off running.

Well, what have we here. He caught sight of Keye from the corner of his eye, and stopped. He peered at Keye for a few moments. No, he wasn't supposed to hurt the boy,.. or kill him, no matter how much fun that would be.
He couldn't let the opportunity pass him by, though. Alexander wasn't anywhere in sight.

Douglas wasn't generally prone to mischief-style playing, but just this once he'd make an exception. He started walking slowly towards the dock, simultaneously muttering a spell and gesturing towards Keye. The spell's desired effect would be that Keye felt a nice solid shove, more than enough to throw him off balance, especially if he wasn't expecting it.

Keye hardly even made a noise...just a slight squeak, and then he toppled into the water.
There was some thrashing, and...
Wasn't Douglas going to not kill Keye?
Because he can't swim.

Once he reached the end of the dock, he blinked down at Keye as if he were some interesting and rare sea creature in an aquarium. While this was greatly amusing, he knew it couldn't last long because the boy would drown. Which he would like to watch, but he knew he couldn't get away with it. He'd known he was asking for trouble bothering Keye in the first place, but he'd rather avoid making more of a mess.

What a pity. I've never seen anyone drown. Oh well.

Seeing as people were watching - a few were pointing and wondering if something was the matter but were too far away to tell - he couldn't do this magically, so...

"Stop struggling," he said irritably. Douglas leaned down and grabbed the back of Keye's shirt, hauling him up so his head was above water.

Keye did not stop struggling. As soon as he had some air in his lungs, he thrashed towards the dock, trying to get a hold on it.
He was neither listening to nor trying to get away from Douglas; this was because the fact that it was Douglas had not registered. Keye was nearly mindless with terror.

"Heh."
This was almost as funny as actually watching the boy die would have been. Douglas, with a bit of effort, pulled Keye half onto the dock, and then let go of him. The boy could go the rest of the way on his own, and Douglas wasn't going to help any more than he had to.

Keye dragged himself the rest of the way, and lay dripping and gasping for air. After he felt sure that he wasn't drowning anymore (insofar as he could think that coherently), he curled up into the fetal position and began to shake violently.

"It's only a little water," Douglas smirked and prodded Keye with the toe of his shoe. "Calm yourself."

Great fun, this. He couldn't have known of Keye's hydrophobia, but that only made this a more pleasant surprise.

Keye twitched and did not respond, only squeezing his eyes shut harder. Various parts of his brains were feeding ever more reasons to be terrified to one another: water, drowning, water, more water, Douglas is poking me with his foot, water...

"Hello?"
Oh, drat. Maybe he swallowed too much water.
Douglas crouched next to him and felt for a pulse - ah, there it was. And the boy was breathing.
"Well, you aren't dead." He stood back up, smirkng. He didn't really want Alexander's boy to recover - this was fun to watch. But, damnit, people were staring, and some were coming over to see what the matter was... "Get up already."

Again, no response. After all, what good had ever come out of an encounter with Douglas? Keye felt much better remaining tightly curled up on the wet dock (wet, yes, but at least he wasn't in the water).
Instead of getting up (as he should have done, as illustrated by previous encounters in which he had not followed Douglas' orders), he began to cry softly.

"Get up or I'm tossing you back in the water. And this time I won't pull you out."
People were nearing. Someone called out to ask if everything was alright. Douglas, of course, said that everything was fine, thank you, please go away. He even smiled pleasantly at them.

Well, that got him on his feet. Hunched over, shaking, crying, and he still didn't seem to recognize Douglas, but at least he was standing. He avoided Douglas' eyes, but watched the rest of his body, wary. He wasn't about to be caught off-guard and pushed back into the river.

Douglas stared at him a moment, unblinking.

"You're not going to die. It's only water."
Why yes, he is making fun of Keye's fear of water.

Meanwhile, yet another concerned bystander is heading towards Douglas and Keye - someone with a remarkable resemblance to Keye, except that this young man doesn't look like a half-drowned rat.
" 'Scuse me...?" Benji called out, as he approached. Douglas turned to look, and almost did a double-take. There were two of them now?

Keye blinked, almost jolted back into coherency by the sound of a familiar voice that he trusted. He looked pleadingly at Benji and hugged himself tighter. At the moment, he wasn't sure who that was, but he was pretty sure that it was a good thing that he was here. Maybe he would take him somewhere dry and safe.

Douglas glanced between Benji and Keye once more, then cautiously asked, "Yes?"

Benji cleared the remaining distance between them. "I was just wondering if-... whoa, Keye, are you alright?!"
He'd recognized his twin already, but hadn't seen the state Keye was in until he was close. He almost shoved Douglas in his haste to get to Keye.

Douglas narrowed his eyes but didn't comment, preoccupied with analyzing the situation.

Keye locked eyes with Benji and blinked rapidly. He took a couple deep, shuddering breaths.
"I f-f-fell in. I c-can't s-swim."

"Christ..." Benji paled slightly, "You could've drowned. Thank goodness you're okay..."

"You know each other?" Douglas inquired.

"Hell yeah, we're brothers. Hey- I saw you pull him out. Thanks." Benji turned and offered to shake hands with Douglas. Douglas stepped back. Benji let his hand fall to his side, looking confused.

"You're welcome. Now, I'm sorry... but I am afraid I have to leave," Douglas said, with a strange, fake smile. He turned on his heel and strode away.

"Weirdo," Benji muttered.

"B-benji?" Keye said, several steps behind the current conversation. Ah yes, Benji. He knew that person looked familiar.
"Um...hi, wh...um, c-can we go somewhere else, p-p-please?"

"Sure we can." Benji nodded, concern showing in his eyes. He reached out to take Keye by the arm, to guide him along, but just in time remembered that Keye didn't like to be touched. Again, he dropped his arm to his side. He beckoned instead. "C'mon, let's go."

Keye nodded and followed him.
As soon as he was off the dock and onto solid ground, his shaking lessened and he stood up straighter. The water was comfortingly far away, and Benji was comfortingly close...and his numb mind seemed to be thawing a bit. Enough for him to attempt a smile anyway.
"H-hey...thanks for c-coming to see what was up."

"You're welcome," Benji gave a small nod, smirking. "...I think we oughta get you somewhere where you can get dried off. Is it faster to get to Keaton, or to...wherever it is you live?"

"Um...I dunno, I don't usually come here. I th-think I walked here from where I live..."
He chewed his lip thoughtfully, plucking at the heavy, wet fabric of his sleeve.
"I r-really don't like g-getting wet."

"Keaton, then." Because he doesn't know where Keye lives.

"Well, no one likes getting soaked when they're not expecting it. And if you can't swim, then I bet you'd like it even less," he grimaced. "You're gonna be alright, though?"

"I'll live, if that's what you mean." he grinned wryly. "But, y'know, I get totally freaked when someone even throws a glass of water in my face...so I think I'm gonna have nightmares about this for weeks."
Even now, it was work to avoid getting frightened and dropping to the ground to curl up again. He was forcing his full attention onto things like the insignificant minute details of the sidewalk, or the number and type of Benji's keychains, in order to distract himself.

"Seriously?" Benji said, with a 'holy crap!' kind of look on his face. He filed away this bit of infomation for later, in the space of his brain now devoted to Keye-related material. Every little bit was important. "Geez. That sucks. I'm not scared of water,... can't stand snakes, though, but that's only since I was bitten by one. Has getting wet always freaked you out...?"

Keye ignored the question. To be fair, he too was filing away information on his brother--given the choice between an uncomfortable topic and the aforementioned information, he was going to choose the latter.
"You got bit by a snake? Did it hurt a lot?"

It should be noted that Benji is easily distracted.

"Yeah, it did. It probably wouldn't've hurt as much if it was a grass snake or something, but I was bitten by a copperhead. It came out of nowhere and sank its fangs into my arm." He mimed the snakebite by pinching at his right wrist. "I was six when that happened. I can't even stand to look at a picture of a snake since then."

"Jesus, only six?" he shook his head. "You coulda died. I don't blame you for being scared of 'em."
He smiled vaguely up at the sky, and added irrelevantly "Indiana Jones was afraid of snakes, you know."

"Was he? Heh. Go figure."
...
"Were you always afraid of water?"
Benji's easily dstracted - just not for long.

"Oh, since I was fifteen."
Shrug. See? Casual disinterest. Not an interesting topic. Drop it!
...please?

"Yeah? What happened then?"
It's more recent, so there has to be a good reason...
"...Was it something like what happened today?" he aked, nodding back in the direction of the water.

"Well...sort of. I mean, I almost drowned. I mean, someone tried to drown me, and they almost did it." he shuddered and hid it with a shrug.
"I drink water, and I'm fine with showering. It's if I'm not expecting it, I get really freaked."

"Oh. 'Kay," Benji said lightly, watching Keye from the corner of his eye and getting a funny little feeling that he should leave the subject where it was.

"So. Uh... what's up? Haven't seen you since the party," he said, with a falsely bright tone of voice.

"Oh, not much. Oh yeah! I registered for classes at Keaton, I forgot. It's been...okay. I got beat up on my first day, though." he chuckled. "What've you been up to?"

"Same as you, pretty much, expect for getting beaten up," he smirked. He's not going to mention meeting Keye's ex-girlfriend - that probably wouldn't be a welcome subject right now. "Anyway, what'd you do - or not do - that got someone angry enough to fight you?"

"Well, there's this girl named Jetta..."
Way to avoid the subject, Benji.
"And she started bugging me, and I really hate her so I told her to go away, and I accidentally ran into this guy...I don't really remember, but next thing I knew, him and all his friends were jumping on me."

"...Jetta?... But she said that..."
Blink.
"Oh."

"What'd she say?" he glowered.
This, by the way, is not the usual ex-girlfriend rage. It is that bitch left me to die rage.
"If I find out she's been spreadin' lies about me..."