Sometimes I remember this panel and it makes me laugh because Riz just being Riz is great; but it also makes me want to cry because I'm sure the others must have felt terrible when they heard he was the killer.
The brass fanfare from the Beastars soundtrack The Status of a Hero, reminds me of the Masterpiece Theater theme song (before the Beeb vapidized it.) I'll leave it to the reader to decide if Dom represents Alistair Cooke of Alan Cummin better.
When Kai was kicked off the acting team, he never thought he’d be so...okay with it.
“The silk was an excellent choice. It really shimmers under the spotlight!”
Turns out that being a stagehand is kind of fun. Kai likes how hands-on it is, and how he always has something to show for himself at the end. Acting is ephemeral, but costumes can last a long, long time.
“I love this dresser, I’m so glad you were able to find it under all those other props!”
Of course, it helps that he likes the stage crew members. Legosi’s a weird guy, but he’s pretty chill when he’s not doing something completely insane. Fudge always knows the latest gossip. Riz is quiet and polite. Kibi is a bit of a wimp, but he’s funny.
And then there’s Dom.
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“You’re such a fast learner, Kai, I’m so glad you’re on our team.”
From the very beginning, Dom has made Kai feel welcome. He showers him in compliments, goes out of his way to include him, and spends extra time teaching him the ins and outs of stage management.
It’s...nice. In fact it’s almost too nice. Why is this bird being so nice to a mongoose? Kai knows that the Drama Club is renowned for their close interspecies relationships, but he always thought those were just casual friendships. That’s how it was on the acting team. At least, that’s how it was for him.
Well, that’s how it’s supposed to be, but apparently Dom didn’t get the memo, because everything Dom does makes Kai want to be closer to him. Kai can’t help it when Dom’s the one to lean over him and guide his hands along the sewing machine, to stay late to help him finish painting a set, to retrieve the box of light bulbs from the shelf that’s too high for Kai to reach. Doesn’t Dom know that his scent drives Kai crazy? Doesn’t he know better to be left alone in a room with a carnivore? Maybe that’s why Kai’s so attracted to - uh, fond of the peacock. Because he trusts Kai not to eat him.
Kai doesn’t know if it’s the smell of bird meat or the smell of Dom that’s driving him crazy, but whatever it is, Kai needs to sort it out.
The best way to sort it out is just asking. Probably.
The stage crew is reorganizing the Drama Club’s storage house in order to make room for the new dinosaur statue from this year’s Meteor Festival. It turns out the room is messy as hell, and if they want to be able to find anything for future productions, they need to clean it out.
Kai tosses a dozen threadbare, dusty costumes to the ground. “The actors couldn’t be bothered to help, huh?” He kicks them into the steadily growing pile of unusable costumes that were still taking up space here for some reason. “Not like it’s all their shit we’re cleaning up after.”
“If the actors were here, they wouldn’t know how to handle the equipment and they’d break all our stuff,” Fudge says.
Kai cocks his head. “Good point, actually.”
The crew continues organizing for an hour until the setting sun’s orange rays permeate through the windows. Dom dismisses everyone and thanks them for their hard work (Except Legosi, because he didn’t even show up in the first place. Punk.)
“Kai.” Kai’s ears perk up at the sound of that voice saying his name. Dom smiles at him as he asks, “Could you help me with one more thing?”
Kai nods. “Of course!”
“Thank you. The rest of you, have a good night.”
His heart starts to thump louder as the crew files out. Shit. Should he ask now? Now’s the perfect time, isn’t it? When it’s just the two of them?
Dom has him untangle a fake barbwire fence that got caught in some cords. By untangle he means use his teeth and claws to tear through it, because they don’t need the cord anyway and it takes a lot less time than trying to actually untangle it.
“Why did you ask me?” Kai tugs at another knot. It snaps in half. “Riz and Fudge have claws too.” Not to mention Riz’s claws and teeth are much more powerful than his.
Dom sits on top of a wooden table next to him, working his way through a big plastic box of every hat in every size you could ever imagine. He places a bowler hat twice the size of Kai’s head beside him in the ‘keep’ pile. He isn’t wearing his blazer - his white collared shirt is pulled tight across his chest, like he’s wearing a size too small. Kai feels the strange urge to buy him a shirt that fits him better. He’d be more comfortable that way. Or his buttons would be, at least.
“You’re a hard worker,” Dom says. “I like that about you.”
“Is that the only thing you like about me?”
“Of course not,” Dom says. Kai waits for him to elaborate, but the peacock doesn’t look up from his hats.
Kai snaps another cord in half. “Then why…?”
Dom shrugs. “I like to spend time with you.”
Kai gulps. He must know how that sounds, right? Like a deathwish. “Even when it’s just us?” Kai asks. “Even though...you and I...and I’m a - and you’re a - you know…”
Dom hops off the table and walks over to him in large strides. Kai resists the urge to step backwards as Dom stops right in front of him.
Kai’s painfully aware of how tall Dom is. The top of Kai’s head barely reaches Dom’s shoulders. His neck seems a mile high. Maybe because he’s always dwarfed by Legosi and Riz and the other larger carnivores in width, but Kai never thought of him as big. Yet, right now, when it’s just them, Dom standing mere inches away, looking down on him with sharp, glossy eyes, Kai feels like prey.
It’s absolutely thrilling.
“Kai,” Dom says in that gentle, not-quite-but-almost condescending tone. “I don’t know if you know this, but peacocks aren’t herbivores.”
“Uh...what?”
Dom drops his head down to Kai’s level. They’re nearly nose-to-beak. “If I wanted to... ” sunlight glares off the tip of his beak. His sharp, sharp beak. Kai never noticed how sharp it was before, “...I could eat meat.”
Kai gulps.
Dom straightens and takes a step back, smiling innocently like he hadn’t just completely flipped the narrative of their species . “Not that I’d ever choose to, of course~!”
“Oh of - of course,” Kai says, mirroring that innocent smile as well as he can, pretending he wasn’t just staring at his friend’s mouth. A mouth that, apparently, was made to tear through flesh just like his.
He waits until Dom returns to sorting the hats before he allows himself to breath. Keeping an eye on Dom, he reaches behind him and runs his hand over the wall. Fingertips fall into deep divots, punctures formed by his own claws. He’d dug them into the wall to keep himself from lashing out.
This wasn’t like that time with Louis. After hearing Tem’s position wouldn’t be his, Kai had lost himself to anger, a blind rage that had stripped him down to only his base instincts. This time, he’s lost himself to something else. Oh, it was definitely hunger - just not the kind he expected.
What the hell is wrong with me?
He’s embarrassed for not realizing sooner that peafowls aren’t strictly herbivores. Not that Kai would have any reason to know a peafowl’s diet...Dom’s the only peafowl Kai’s ever known.
Honestly, though, he’s relieved. It’s crazy enough to be attracted to another species, let alone another whole class of animals - Dom’s not even a mammal! If, on top of all that, Kai was attracted to a herbivore...he’d probably think he’d gone crazy. Or that he was just hungry.
That night Kai scrolls through his phone, reading as many articles about peafowls as he has the patience to.
The females of that species look much different than Dom. Kai doesn’t think he’s seen a single female peafowl at their school - not that Dom would be interested in them. Thank the dinosaurs for that.
Peafowls’ original diets consist of plants, insects, snakes, and small mammals. Small mammals. Was Kai a small mammal in Dom’s eyes? He’s much larger than mice and other rodents, but not nearly as big as Dom...Kai shivers thinking about it.
Honestly though, their diets aren’t too different. Mongeese can eat insects, snakes and small mammals, too. And birds. In another lifetime, a millennia ago, maybe, they might have tried to eat each other.
There’s one thing that stands out to him, though, more than anything else. It’s the first thing he runs into when searching for characteristics of peacocks: big, colorful, beautiful feathers.
Of course Kai has seen peacock feathers before. Everyone knows what they look like: they’re so distinctive, a marker of the species. Beginning at the small of their backs, the feathers form a long, tail-like covering called a train. It looks like one half of a woman’s poofy skirt, cascading from their waists down to their toes.
It’s only then that he realizes he’s never seen Dom’s train before.
Today, Dom doesn’t have to ask Kai to stay behind. All the other stagehands have excuses to leave early - Kibi is studying for a math test, Fudge has a date, and Riz has to refill his prescription. Legosi, once again, left early to do whatever it is he does when he ditches them.
Most of the older costumes and broken props have been moved and reorganized, so today they’re dusting. They use faux feather dusters with a long reach, Kai sweeping underneath cabinets and tables, Dom reaching the nooks and crannies at the top. They make a good team, Kai thinks.
Kai’s never been one to be afraid of confrontation - nor could the adjective “patient” be used to describe him. He can’t help himself from bringing up what’s on his mind the minute after everyone leaves. “Hey, Dom.”
“Yes?” Dom pauses his dusting to look down at him.
“Do you...uh…” Kai touches his lip, figuring out the nicest way to word it. “Do you have, like, a train?”
Dom’s eyebrows shoot up, and he immediately swivels his neck around and continues dusting along the shoe shelf. “Yes, I do.”
Kai looks at Dom’s backside, as if confirmation that he indeed had a train would suddenly make feathers appear out of nowhere. All he sees is Dom’s familiar backside - shirt and pants, nothing out of the ordinary. “So where is it?”
Dom’s neck straightens as stiff as a pencil. “Well, that’s a rather personal question.”
Crap. “Sorry, I didn’t -
“But if you must know, I keep it tucked away, under my shirt.”
Kai slides a little closer, just a little, and scrutinizes the back of Dom’s shirt. Sure enough, he can see faint bumps and lines pulling the fabric taut, and spots, nearly invisible, spread under the white cotton threads. His hand wants to leap out and touch it, run his fingers down Dom’s back, but he forces his hands to stay at his sides. They curl into fists in frustration.
He remembers from his Zoozling that peacock trains are long - nearly twice the height of their heads, usually. “How does it all fit under there?”
“I clip it short.”
“Why?”
Dom glares at him a moment before he returns to dusting. “Someone’s full of questions.”
“Sorry.”
Dom sighs. “If I don’t clip them, they get in the way, and I - well, I don’t want to appear too ostentatious.”
“Why not?” Kai says. “Your feathers are beautiful.”
Dom stiffens for a moment. His shoulders drop. “It’d be like a carnivore baring their fangs. It’s uncouth.”
Again, Kai wants to ask why. Why hide such beautiful feathers? But he thinks he understands why. There are creatures in this world that want animals they deem threatening to hide what they are. His hyena parents made sure to teach him that; they knew firsthand how important it was to their well-being to hold make their cackles. Society views the display of abnormal traits as a creature’s act of pride, when really, they’re just existing. A lion with a well-groomed mane isn’t boasting his feral instincts; he’s just caring for the body he was born in.
“Can I see them?”
Dom glares at him. The glare says Didn’t you hear what I just said, moron?
Kai jumps in to make his case. “Carnivores show each other their fangs all the time. And you said showing your feathers is like carnivores baring their fangs, so it’s basically the same thing, right?”
Dom raises an eyebrow. The eyebrow asks Are you serious?
Kai folds his arms and stands his ground.
Dom sighs. “If you really want to see them that bad.”
Dom sets down the duster and starts unbuttoning his shirt. Immediately Kai feels warmth spreading below his gut. No, no no no, it’s not like that! he tells himself. But his body doesn’t listen. He just gets warmer and warmer; with each button Dom undoes, Kai swears the temperature of the room increases another degree.
Dom shrugs his suspenders off his shoulders, and then the rest of his shirt with it. The peacock’s bright blue plumage flows all the way down his torso, right to the waistline, where it begins to darken.
Then he turns around.
Long feathers fall straight down, no longer bound to his torso by the confines of his shirt. They’re everything and nothing like Kai imagined. Extraordinary blues and greens and purples and golds and teals, whose radiant iridescence couldn’t be captured in the images he saw on his phone, flow from the base of Dom’s waist in a river. A river cut short - the train stops just below the back of his knees, cut off in a razor straight line. Just looking at it makes Kai wince. He imagines what it might feel like if his hands were declawed, or his canines ripped out.
He can’t stop himself from reaching out. “They’re beautiful…” he says, stroking his hand along a single feather the size of his palm.
Whoosh. The feathers fly out of his hand, nearly smacking him in the face.
They spread around Dom in an arc, shielding him behind the most beautiful fan in the world.
“Oh my goodness,” Dom whips back around, backside toward the wall, trying to push his feathers down. Outlined in the colors of his species, cobalt blue spots like eyes stare holes into Kai. Even with his train clipped short, Dom looks like a god.
“Wow.”
Dom tries to press his feathers down, to no avail. “I’m so sorry - this, this doesn’t normally happen - ”
Kai steps toward him. He takes Dom’s hands and holds them behind their chests, stilling his frantic motions.
Dom shivers, causing his feathers to quiver. Or shimmer, more like it, in a rainbow of bright colors. Fairy-like. Magical.
And Kai is 100% under their spell.
“You’re beautiful.”
Dom said he didn’t want to appear too ostentatious. Kai has a feeling he means it as more than a species thing. Everyone already knows Dom is gay, even though Dom himself never talks about it, or does anything that might draw attention to that fact. Maybe he feels that his feathers, with their large display of unavoidably bright colors, would draw that unwanted attention. It makes Kai angry that Dom feels this way, and it makes him feel that much more special that Dom has shown him this part of himself.
“Before, I thought I wanted to be around you more so I could eat you, but now I think I just wanted to see this,” Kai says. He licks his lips. “I wanted to see you.”
“Oh.” Dom smirks. “Are you sure you don’t still want to eat me?”
“Can’t say I have an appetite for bird,” Kai says. “Plus I think you’d kill me with that beak of yours before I had the chance.”
Dom chuckles. “You’re right about that~”
Their hands are still clasped. Kai’s hands are starting to sweat, but he doesn’t want to let go. He wants to make this moment last - just him, and Dom, in this moment, where they can be themselves, without any reservations or niceties or bullshit. “Thank you,” Kai says. “For showing me your feathers.”
Dom smiles. “I’m glad I could show this part of myself to you.” Then he lowers his head next to Kai’s ear and whispers, “I’d love to show you more parts of myself...if you would have me.”
Kai nods. He nods so quickly he thinks he sprains his neck. “That would - yes - I would like that very much.”
“Then you better make sure the door is locked, Kai-chan.”
