Summary: While helping Zedaph with one of his many experiments, Tango notices that his friend burnt himself with water and forced him to take a break for the burn to heal.
Characters: ZedaphPlays, TangoTek
Word Count: 1408
Note: This was originally written in 2022 and posted on Ao3
"Zed! You have to be more careful!" Tango's voice snapped Zedaph out of his thoughts.
Zedaph blinked as he took off his outer layer of clothing, his lab coat. Sure, it wasn't ideal, having hot water splash on you, but it was just a little. A quick change and Zed could go back to his work in the lab.
Tango, who decided to come visit and assist with something while catching up with his old friend, seemed to think otherwise. His ears perked up at the sound of splashing, and his tail stiffened while he looked over at his friend in worry.
“Dude, calm down, it’s not that bad,” Zedaph let out a small laugh while Tango reached him. “Okay, okay, I’ll take this off too.”
Zedaph pulled his sweater off above his head and tossed it down on the ground with his lab coat. Tango leaned down a little to look at his shorter friend’s chest, checking out the place the water splashed on him. It was only a few spots on his chest, not one large spot, and the red stops were small.
The sheep hybrid huffed a little as he stepped away from the netherborn, getting a little annoyed by his friend’s pestering. His tail twitched a little, and he made a clicking sound by fitting his hooves against the ground.
“Tango, I’m fine. A quick change into dry clothes, and I’ll be back to work,” he said.
Tango shook his head, “Zed, you were splashed with not just hot water, with boiling water. Just let me put some ointment on it.”
Zedaph huffed but didn’t disagree while Tango went off to a side room where Zedaph left medical supplies. The smaller man sat down in a chair just outside his experiment room. Well, one of them. It seemed every room Zedaph built had some kind of experiment in it. It was surprising that he kept his bedroom away from science.
After a few minutes of silence and listening to Tango fumble around in the room beside him, Zedaph finally looked back down at where the water splashed him. He winced at the sight, realizing it was worse than he originally thought. The red burns were starting to blister and part of it was peeling.
Second degree, he noted. Maybe he should take a small break from science to allow this to heal. He knew that Tango wouldn’t allow him to continue the project when he saw this. It would have been worse, but it was bad enough that it could leave a scar.
The sheep hybrid jumped at the feeling of a hand on his shoulder. Tango knelt down in front of him and looked at the burn. The netherborn grumbled under his breath, picking up a spray can.
“This is gonna sting,” Tango warned him and waited for his friend to nod before applying it.
Zedaph winced silently, tilting his head up a little to keep his hair out of the way. The other was surprisingly gentle with burns. Being part blaze, Tango never had to deal with any type of burn, but he had accidentally burnt people before so he knew how to deal with them fairly well.
The netherborn placed the can down and grabbed the ointment. He was only surprised that Zedaph had these in his medical cabinet as he seemed to be lacking a lot of other items. However, Zed did seem to get a lot of small injuries so the others didn't question it much.
"You need to keep the ointment on it. The spray is a numbing spray so it helps too," Tango said after covering the burns generously. "You probably don't want to wear a shirt or do anything that will get you sweaty. The shirt will irritate it, and it needs to air out. And you want to keep it clean."
The blaze hybrid stood up, handing the medicine to his friend. "Now, that means take a break from your,,, riskier experiments. Science can wait until that is healed enough. At least until all the pain and blisters are gone. Do I make myself clear?" There was a hint of a threat in his tone.
Zedaph could only nod. He was surprisingly calm during all of this. A second degree burn would normally have some kind of reaction to it. He just seemed to accept what had happened (and still was a little shocked as he didn't realize it that bad).
"I need to get back home," Tango huffed. "I promised Bdubs and Keralis to help fix the redstone they messed up at one of the Pass 'N Gas."
This caused Zedaph to let out a laugh. "Haha, have fun with that," he stated as Tango started heading towards the door.
"I'll check up on you later, so you know. So don't think about being stupid," Tango warned. "If not me, I'll ask Impulse." With that, Tango was gone, and Zedaph was alone.
Zedaph remained seated for a while, trying to think of what he could do. While it pained him to think about it, Tango was right. He shouldn't do a lot of current experiments if he didn't want to risk the burn getting worse and possibly infected.
Asking hermits to come over to test their brain was out of the options too. Zed couldn't wear a shirt without irritating the burn, and he rather not have his friends bombard him with questions on what happened, even if what happened wasn't exciting. He was just carrying a bucket of boiling water from one side of the room to the other, and he was splashed by said water.
Well, he supposed a nap would do him good for now.
The next few days went back slow. Zedaph kept himself busy with simple house work that he's been meaning to do. Being busy with all his experiments, his living quarters has become,,, quite messy, and not really a decent, livable mess.
He caught up on laundry, cleaned his dirty dishes, cleaned his shower and sink, and generally just picked up. Between these activities, Tango would message him to remind him to put the medicine on his burn. If not Tango, Impulse or sometimes Xisuma would message him. Zedaph just assumed that Tango told them so that if he forgot, someone else would remind him.
By the second day, the blistering was down, and Zedaph was able to wear a shirt again. The peeling had also stopped. In the afternoon, he did a few light activities related to science, that be writing down on the clipboards that kept forgetting to do.
On the third day, the sheep hybrid was starting to get irritated. His living quarters were clean. Everything was written down. His burn didn't hurt anymore(except when he showered, and the water hit it). He even checked his floating sheep and the villagers. There was simply nothing to do.
“Zed, how are you doing?!” A voice called out from the front of his base.
Zedaph perked up at the sound of Tango’s voice, and he met him in the front room by the sheep. He was wearing lounge clothes, sweatpants and a loose shirt to not irritate the burn.
“There you are! I am bored out of my mind here!” He huffed out.
Tango laughed at the shorter man who was huffing while almost stomping his hooves against the ground. The netherborn patted the other between the horns to get him to calm down before pulling his hand away.
“Why don’t I look at that burn?” He asked.
With one last huff, Zedaph pulled his shirt up to reveal the healing burn. The blistering was down, and it was starting to scab over. It wasn’t as bad as Tango had originally thought, but he also caught it before it could get worse. It was also clear that Zed was doing a good job with keeping it clean and covered in the ointment, given its slick feeling.
“It looks fine,” the netherborn said. “I don’t see why you can’t continue your experiments for,,, science.” The last part was said in a playful, teasing tone.
The sheep hybrid huffed again and turned away, pulling his shirt back down. Tango laughed as the other stomped away.
“Where are you going?” He called out.
“If I’m going back to studying science, I need my lab coat,” Zedaph called back, leaving view.
Tango only laughed harder at his friend’s actions.
"He's not even looking. You could do it now, get it over with!"
"No... not a member of T.I.E.S... I'll go for someone else."
Boogeyman Impulse, my beloved! He was so cool during the entire episode! His mental battle in controlling the bloodlust when it came to his fellow team members? *Chef's kiss*. I will draw more Life Series stuff, even if it kills me.
