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“What do you think, Sunday?”
Sunday jolted back into the present, blinking at the four pairs of eyes looking at him with varying levels of engagement in the current topic.
He plastered a smile on his face quickly. “Ah—yes? That sounds… wonderful.”
Dan Heng’s ears laid back, March’s jaw dropped, and Stelle shouted a triumphant “AHA” while Caelus chucked his phone at her.
Sunday got the feeling that whatever he had just agreed to was going to come back to bite him in the butt.
“You… genuinely think Stelle should attempt to turn her hair pink?” Dan Heng ventured, tail flicking.
Oh shit. Sunday internally died a little.
“Look—pink haired girls have all the fun!!! And I want new powers.” Stelle pouted.
Caelus rolled his eyes. “The pink hair is NOT the cause of things.”
“IT SEEMS TO BE A FACTOR—Mr. Yang!!!”
Welt looked up from the chess game he was currently losing to Himeko. “Uh—yes, Stelle?”
“Don’t the Kaslanas having white hair and blue eyes play into their lore???”
Welt coughed. “It’s… just a genetic thing I believe why—?”
“See!! Genetics!! So if I fool the universe into thinking I have the genetics I will get new powers.” Stelle proudly declared, standing up on the couch and planting her hands on her hips.
Caelus punched her in the shin and she elbowed him in the head as she fell down.
The attention drifted away from Sunday, his mind fixating again on the horrible, awful, insistent itching on his back.
Finally he couldn’t take it any longer and said a hurried excuse before rushing to his room.
He’d barely slammed and locked the door of his current bedroom shut behind him before he was stripping everything off his top half and trying his best to scratch the base of his wings.
He should have been keeping a more careful eye on the dates and how long it had been since he last molted. With everything happening in Amphoreus he’d lost track of time and hadn’t adequately prepared for the BLASTED itching that came along with his new feathers growing in.
He curled forward, pressing his palms into the ground as he stretched his larger back wings to their full length, hoping that letting them extend would ease up the world’s worst itch.
Some relief, but not enough.
He sat on the ground, trying to not claw the skin off his back as he wrapped his wings forward to examine them. The large primary feathers—the clipped ones—were molting properly, the new, unclipped and healthy dark feathers beginning to grow in. Sunday busied himself with gently plucking out the old ones that were ready, preening and cleaning the feathers he could reach. It gave his mind something to focus on besides the constant itch of the smaller feathers where his wings merged into his back.
When he was finally pleased with how the ones he could reach looked, he stood and eyed himself in his mirror. Twisted and turning—he just couldn’t reach all the areas to really preen where he needed.
He eyed the jutting corner of a wall, considering if he was desperate enough to rub his back against it.
When he was little, this had never been an issue. Robin and him and preened each other’s wings, taught by their mother how to do it.
When Robin left, Gopher Wood had done it for him a few times—but then Sunday bought a specialized kind of back scratcher meant for Halovians that let him do it himself, and that was that.
Sadly that was NOT one of the things he had brought with him when he fled Pencony.
He stepped toward the edge of the wall, figuring his dignity would die with his itching, when a pound on the door made him jump.
“Hey–Sunday are you okay?” March’s concerned voice floated through the door. “You left pretty suddenly. Is everything alright?”
“I need help dying my hair!” Stelle chirped.
“You are not dying your hair!” Caelus groaned.
“Why not?!”
“Because then I’d have to bleach mine white!”
“If you need anything let us know,” Dan Heng’s calm voice cut through the twin’s usual bickering. “We’ll be in their room.”
Sunday listened to them drift away, touched and embarrassed all at the same time. They’d noticed him leave, they’d care enough to come see if he needed help.
He was utterly mortified that he’d shown his discomfort enough that they'd caught on.
But… he considered his reflection in the mirror. He wasn’t the head of the Oak Family anymore. He was just… Sunday. His halo glinted a little, his hair loose and flowing around his face.
Maybe…
His back reminded him that he was going to tear off layers of skin if he didn’t do something soon, and he grabbed a loose knit sweater from the ground and headed toward the twin’s room.
When Sunday slowly peeled open the door, he was slammed by two overly warm bodies. Caelus and Stelle were flexible, strong, and more than happy to grab him and squeeze all the air out of his lungs.
He’d learned it was their favorite way to show affection, and while he was wheezing as he regained oxygen, he let himself be dragged to their massive bed—where Dan Heng had laid out a whiteboard and had a “pros and cons” list written out on it.
Considering the con currently written down was “dying your hair will not fool the cosmos into thinking you are actually pink-haired” Sunday had the feeling this was still about Stelle’s latest endeavor.
March grinned at him. “Help us list more cons!! I’m personally all for it but Caelus is determined that if Stelle does her hair then he has to do his.”
“You want to match?” Sunday asked the male twin as he sat down on the bed next to March—trying his best to not rip at his back like a rabid animal.
“Oh no–because if she dyes her hair then I have to bleach mine. I can’t be a pink girlie–” Caelus scrunched his nose in sadness at that. “--But I COULD be a Kaslana. No gender requirement there.” Caelus proceeded to flop on his belly across March and Sunday’s laps while Stelle draped herself over Dan Heng and plopped her chin between his horns.
Dan Heng’s tail curled around to rest over Caelus’s calves, the furred tip flicking lazily.
It was warm, cozy, and so welcoming that Sunday found himself leaning into March’s shoulder while she chatted away about the pros and cons of dying one’s hair. She thought Stelle would look adorable, she did not think Stelle would fool the universe.
Dan Heng, to quote his own words, “Didn’t give a shit about what color her hair was, but thought it was a dumb reason to dye it”.
Caelus was, for some reason, still determined that if Stelle did her hair then he had to do his. Sunday was finding this all very amusing, but the longer he sat there, the worse his back itched. It had become almost painful, it was itching so badly.
March noticed it first, probably thanks to having her shoulder pressed against his. “You good? You’re kinda…” She stared at him for a minute. “Twitchy.”
He blinked. He thought he’d been pretty still, all things considered.
Caelus looked over his shoulder, a golden eye peering curiously at him. “You’ve been off all day. You barely touched the piano.”
Dan Heng nodded his agreement, Stelle also bobbing up and down with his head.
Most days, Sunday wouldn’t have said anything. He would’ve just said it was fine, and mused over the problem on his own until he found a way to solve it.
But his back was quickly reaching the level of “might be on fire”, and his stupid brain had determined that these people were safe.
“... I…” he took a deep breath. “I have a rather odd request.”
Dan Heng tilted his head, Stelle’s cheek bumping into one of his horns. Caelus slipped off his lap, sitting upright. March leaned into him a little more.
Sunday stared at his hands, clasped in front of him. “I… need help… molting.” He winced a little saying it aloud. It was too vulnerable—too open. He’d revealed too much and now he had a weakness—
“Halovians molt?” Dan Heng’s voice was pure, delighted curiosity.
Sunday nodded, trying to silence the voice in his head telling him he needed to close himself off. He’d been working on this, he wanted to rely on them more. “Once or twice a year, yes.”
“Oh so like, actual birds!” March said, clearly amused.
“Is something wrong?” Dan Heng pressed, clearly the protective side of his brain kicking into gear after realizing that Sunday may not have shared this information so openly without something going on.
“ARE YOU BALDING?!” Caelus shrieked, clutching Sunday’s shoulders and shaking him. “YOU CAN’T BE BALDING!”
“Do birds go bald??? Dan Heng!!! CAN birds go bald!?” Stelle demanded, also looking horrified. “We can’t lose our fluffy bird!!! He’ll look like a naked chicken!”
Sunday, despite still trying to get over his embarrassment and feeling like a hoard of ants was invading his lower back, found himself laughing. “No, nothing that serious. I just can’t reach the parts of my wings closest to my back, and it’s itching terribly.” He scrunched his nose. “In return, I can treat you all to some more Penacony specials next time we’re in the area—if you would like."
Caelus had clearly decided that this called for immediate action—and next thing Sunday knew the male stellaron-holder had twirled him around and yanked his sweater up to his armpits.
The cooler air hit his exposed torso and Sunday let out a mildly undignified yelp.
“Caelus…” Dan Heng sighed. “You cannot strip people without asking their permission first.”
March was busy laughing so hard she was nearly falling off the bed, while Caelus oooh-ed appreciatively over Sunday’s larger wings.
Sunday resisted the urge to hide his face, his smaller wings tucking up around his cheeks.
“You really don’t need to hide these all the time,” Stelle murmured, and he felt her nimble fingers beginning to gently comb through his soft, smaller feathers. Caelus had taken to gently scratching around his wings’ base, and Sunday let out a sigh of relief as the itching finally began to subside.
March had finally stopped laughing and was beginning to pick at the wing Stelle wasn’t. “How do I do this though?”
Dan Heng was happily collecting the molted feathers as Sunday explained how to do it. It wasn’t long before he was dozing upright, the feeling of being cared for and no longer itching like a madman lulling him almost entirely asleep.