Relief will soon be at hand. He just has to figure out which is of these is what he wants.

He's pretty durable, and unfortunately not wise to whoever's hand this is in, so he supposes the only test he can try is just, touching each one a little bit and seeing if it feels soothing, numbing, or something else like that.

The first cream he tries feels fine when he first touches it, but quickly warms up until it's barely not uncomfortably hot. The second one gives him a spiky pins-and-needles sensation where it coats his skin, lingering for a while after he scrubs it off.

The third turns his entire hand numb, which would technically be a solution to the burns if Honey doesn't mind not being able to feel his face. The cream in the jar next to it does the opposite, increasing the sensitivity of his skin until it's almost painful. The one after that does both, one after the other in waves about 30 seconds apart, at least if he leaves it on his skin for long enough to find that out. 

He isn't even halfway through this row of jars. 

Okay, maybe this is more trouble than it's worth. It's only an itch, right?

While he was thinking that, Honey unconsciously scratched at one of the burns, reopening his skin and redoubling the itchiness immediately around where he scratched.

Okay, maybe just a few more, in case he gets lucky.

The next cream tingles slightly but does nothing else as far as he can tell. The one next to it is a hair-removal cream. 

The one after that, though, has the soothing coolness of burn ointment. 

Success! He'll gently daub it on his burns, wait for a minute or two just in case something weird happens, and then head out of this room. He will give at least a try at boarding the door back up, but he's not going to stress it if he bends or breaks the nails or damages a plank.

Kolya is leaning against the wall just outside the door, fiddling with a screwdriver and looking unhappy. He looks up when Honey approaches. 

"I'd have thought the planks were a good enough 'Keep Out' sign," he says mildly. 

Whoops! "Ah, uh. Fair." He pauses for a moment. "You wouldn't happen to know another place I could find burn cream? In case one of those tenta-cats tries to melt me again before I jump ship."

"Yeah, I have a stash in my room, I get burnt a lot and Aurora worries—wait."

He raises both eyebrows at Honey. "You went through the boarded-up door looking for burn cream?" 

"Yes." He was also pretty curious. He doesn't need to say that though. "The burns were getting very itchy."

"Were," he repeats sceptically. "You found some?" 

"Yeah, it took a bit of searching since I couldn't make heads or tails of any of the labels, but there was a jar of some on one of the shelves, or at least a jar of something soothing."

Kolya takes a deep breath, using it to launch himself off the wall and stand up. 

"Show me." 

He guesses it's a good thing he didn't have time to nail the planks back up, it'd be a bit of a pain to carefully pull them back out.

He ducks back inside the lab and gestures to the shelf where he found the soothing cream. "Right over there, eighth from left."

Kolya very determinedly avoids looking at anything in the room as he strides briskly over to the medicine cabinet. He nevertheless avoids the various obstacles with seeming ease, barely slowing as he sidesteps tables, beds, and IV stands without even a glance in their direction. 

He doesn't touch the little jars of ointment as he silently counts along the row. One two three four five...eight. 

Pulling out the jar Honey used, Kolya holds it up to the light and squints at the label. 

"I forgot how bad the Doc's handwriting was," he mutters under his breath. 

"Yep," he says a little louder. "Burn cream. Meant for actual burns, though, not acid burns—you said one of the octokittens got you?" 

"Yup. Pounced on my face while I was sleeping."

"Yep, they do that."

He checks the jar is closed all the way and puts it back in its spot. 

"Anyway, if you haven't broken out in a rash yet, this won't do you any harm. There's a lot that could be said about the Doc's medical practices, but they'd never mislabel their medicines, and"—he laughs humorlessly—"they made things to last." 

So, this is the absent Dr. Celestine's lab? That would make sense. That does like it's going to be hard to ask about it, though. Oh well, it won't be the first thing he's been curious about but not gotten an answer to.

He nods. "All good then?"

He nods and closes the cabinet. "All good." 

A single glance around the room, with a somewhat pained expression on his face, and then he is exiting the room with the same alacrity with which he entered it, not slowing for Honey to keep up. 

Honey will hurry along along as well, and get to boarding the doorway up again assuming there is not another interruption.

Kolya's mood immediately and visibly lightens the moment the door shuts behind them both, although he's not all the way back to what Honey's seen of his normal self.

Helping Honey board up the door cheers him up a little more. "You know, I have an actual hammer, you don't need to use your bare hands—here you go—" 

Oh yeah, tools. "Thanks."

Honey will gladly take the hammer, and will be a much smaller danger to the continued structural integrity of the nails and planks with it in hand.

Afterwards, with a member of the crew right here, he might just follow Kolya around a bit more and be a help if he's allowed, like he did...a couple days ago? Ish? He's lost track of time a bit.

Ah. Good. Kolya has an oversized puppy following him again. Just what he always wanted.  

On the plus side, he supposes that if Honey is helping Kolya with repairs, he's not getting into any more trouble. And it's always good to have an extra pair of hands. So, sure, he can put Honey to work. 

...also, it is a little adorable how eager Honey is to help and how quickly he lights up when told he's doing a good job. If the kid had a tail he'd be wagging it. 

Honey has never really had the opportunity to learn how to direct himself except to satisfy basal urges, always having the influence of parents or commanding officers or laboratory managers deciding what he should be doing, so the only way of seeking validation he knows is to subordinate himself to someone else!

Of course, Honey isn’t consciously aware of that, most of the time at least. It just feels nice to be helpful and to not have to worry about the future.