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Fellow can honestly say that he does not rouse when Gidel smacks him the first time. Nor the second, maybe not even the third. After the fourth he at least becomes aware of Gidel trying to get his attention- though he keeps his eyes closed and stays perfectly still and keeps his breathing perfectly even.
Please, please go away, Fellow thinks blearily. Gidel was only seven, but he was a terror in his own right and as much as he loved his little adopted brother dearly, Fellow would, ungratefully, like a few more hours of rest before he had to deal with a child, thank you. And anyways, Gidel slept like the dead- Fellow could probably pick him up and shake him and the boy would not rouse once he’d begun dreaming and took ages to wake fully- what was the boy doing awake in the middle of the night?
Quiet feet walk away, over-large pajama bottoms swishing as they brush together. Fellow yawns and stretches out his legs, dangling them off his mattress, and nuzzles into his pillow, content to fall back asleep.
Quiet feet come back. There’s a wide yawning quiet, like something reeling back—
Fellow’s eyes snap open. “I’m up, I’m up!” he cries, throwing an arm out. “Put the hammer down!”
Gidel stops his swing, catching his hammer a hand's width from the top of Fellow’s head. He tosses it to the side with a clatter, and then kneels on Fellow’s mattress and grabs his arm, attempting to pull him up. It’s a fool’s errand, Fellow was three times bigger than Gidel, but Fellow himself was nothing if not a fool, and could not raise a second person to be anything besides a fool as well. Gidel tugs, and Fellow yawns again, staying down with little to no effort.
“What is it, Gidel?” the elder asks, rubbing his eyes. Gidel pulls on his arm again, clicking and squeaking the way he does when he really wants something. Fellow’s eyebrows furrow.
“Come to your room?” Fellow parrots in confusion, and Gidel nods his head so fast Fellow is sure it’ll snap right off his neck like a shoddily made puppet.
Fellow climbs to his feet, and stretches his arms above his head, tail sticking straight out in a stretch. Gidel grabs his hand when he lowers it immediately, and tugs. Fellow can make it across the apartment without his cane’s assistance, so he leaves it beside the bed but allows Gidel to take a little of his weight as he’s led across the sitting room to their destination. Fellow leaning on him at least gets Gidel to slow down and settle back into his own skin.
Gidel’s room is cute. Tiny, but it’s friendly and cozy if not slightly deranged in its clutter and decoration. The floor is covered by no less than twelve rugs of all different patterns and quality, all overlapped and at ugly angles over each other, and there’s a pile of decorative throw pillows in the corner like a nest. He had a bookshelf overflowing with trash and knickknacks, all things that had caught his eye during he and Fellow’s many escapes down labyrinthine alleyways, but there’s one type of bauble that dominates his collection; ashtrays. Gidel’s taken to collecting them lately, which is odd, but there’s a strange amusement in his eyes whenever he sees them- like he’s tickled that a bowl could be so small and so shallow. It benefits Fellow, who now has a place to put the ends of his cigarettes instead of stubbing them out on the toe of his boot, so as long as Gidel cleans them out when he brings them into the apartment Fellow has nothing to complain about. Fellow himself keenly remembers being that age and collecting metal bottle caps because he liked to put them in his pocket because it felt and sounded like he had money, like he was a big deal. If Gidel thought ashtrays were funny, well, more power to him! They are funny! Funnier than bottle caps!
Fellow steps over a decapitated stuffed toy. Gidel is tugging him to the bed.
“Did you have a nightmare?” Fellow asks, yawning again. Gidel blinks his eyes and shakes his head, and does not stop leading them to his bedside. His sheets are that of a child, patterned with trains, and his blanket is a thick thrifted quilt. His pillowcase does not match, an obnoxious orange- Fellow has the matching case on his own pillow on his bed.
Gidel grabs his pillow and shoves it to the side.
“Well now,” Fellow says, and Gidel’s ears keep flicking from perked up in enthusiasm and slicked down against his bedhead in a different but parallel enthusiasm. “Would you look at that?”
This morning Gidel lost his first tooth- one of his front ones.
“I don’t want it,” Fellow had said when Gidel, earnestly confused on what to do with a piece of his body that had fallen out, had offered it to him. He waved a hand, shooing, going back to the want ads section of the local paper. “Go put it in one of your silly ashtrays so you don’t lose it before tonight.”
Gidel gets up, but hunkers back down against Fellow’s side,
“Why, that’s when the tooth fairy will come for it, of course!” Fellow exclaims. When Gidel blinks at him, he realizes his mistake. “Ah, you wouldn’t know the tooth fairy yet, would you?”
Gidel has his lost tooth safely held in his hand, and he grips it tighter, just as Fellow taught him. Best to hold tightly onto something that he now knows someone else wants.
Fellow explains the mechanics and laws of the tooth fairy, a magical being who exchanged baby teeth for money, to his young charge and Gidel’s eyes get wider and wider as he speaks, fighting against the natural droop of his lids. His tail lashes in enthusiasm, knocking against the coffee table's leg.
Gidel holds out his tooth, or at least the hand that holds it.
“Money,” Fellow agrees, “I promise.” He grins wickedly, displaying his own sharp teeth. “I’ve my own, haven't I?”
At the word ‘money’ Gidel’s ears perk straight up. He shows Fellow his own grin, wide gap of his missing tooth making Fellow’s tail wag once in amusement, and the boy throws his arms around Fellow’s neck, smothering him in an embrace.
“Oi, off, off,” Fellow chides, but he can’t deny his tail wags again. “Go put it away, and wash the blood off your fingers.” Gidel slides off him, tooth still held securely in his fist, and Fellow goes back to his paper before he pauses, ears perking. “You haven’t been swallowing too much blood, have you?” he asks Gidel and then, when there’s no response from the boy beside sneaky feet tottering away from him, he gets up. “Gidel, what have I told you, you’ll upset your stomach!”
But that was this morning. Now the moon is high in the sky, still high even though so much night has passed, and the night’s chill is still seeping from the bad seals in the windows and there is not a tooth under Gidel’s pillow.
Instead there is a single coin of the smallest worth, a smattering of some sort of glittering substance, and a medium-sized glue trap. And on that glue trap; a single insect-like wing.
“Did you…set up a trap for the tooth fairy?” Fellow asks, incredulously.
Gidel nods his head vigorously. He looks very proud. He grabs the trap and Fellow has to jerk backwards to avoid getting the thing adhered to his cheek as Gidel brandishes it at him.
“How industrious!” Fellow compliments, and Gidel beams at him. Fellow takes the glue trap and examines it under the moonlight. The wing really does look like that of an insect, tinted like a fly but long like a dragonfly, but it’s larger than any sort of bug that Fellow has seen.
“Curious,” Fellow murmurs, ears pinned high in curiosity.
When Fellow takes a pacing step he feels something cold under his heel. Fellow peels another coin off the sole of his foot.
Fellow traces a line in his mind’s eye. From the bed, to the floor at his feet, to…
Gidel tugs at his sleeve. He points to the window. It’s cracked- that must be why it’s so damn cold in here- but more importantly there’s a smear of gold dust across the windowsill, the same kind that is sprinkled to Gidel’s mattress.
“Well,” Fellow muses, staring back at the glue trap. “She’s a wing down so she couldn’t have gotten far…”
He hums, eyes narrowed as he turns the trap from left to right. The wing lights up in different metallic colors. “What say you, Gidel, how about we—” but then all that leaves him next is a shocked squawk when he turns and the boy is dangling half out the window.
Gidel’s tail puffs in alarm when Fellow grabs him by the back of the shirt and hauls him back inside. Gidel fights against him, pointing out the window.
“Don’t do that!” Fellow exclaims, ears pinned back against his hair.
Gidel points at the window again, urgently.
There, under the street's lone light at the corner, is something shiny.
With Gidel scruffed by the back of his shirt, wriggling in Fellow’s hold, the beastman makes a quick decision.
“I pay good money for the luxury of a front door,” he announces grandly. Gidel pauses in his struggle, and stares at Fellow, eventually nodding gamely. “So we’re going to use it, not the window!” Fellow lets go of Gidel, the boy’s heels hitting the floor. “Come, Gidel, get your hammer,” he proclaims. “We’re going fairy hunting.”
Gidel throws up his hands in excitement, sleeves of his pajama shirt flopping from one side to the other.
Fellow gets his coat and his cane and Gidel clicks and chatters wildly, grabbing his hammer off the floor in Fellow’s bedroom- from beside his mattress in the corner of the living room. They march out the front door, Gidel practically dancing down the hall, and they spill out into the street in high spirits despite the time of day. It’s empty of all traffic as late-early as it is, and Gidel scampers to the fallen coin. Fellow makes his way more leisurely in that direction. Gidel’s tail goes stock straight, and he comically jolts, and points at the ground further out.
“More?” Fellow says incredulously. When he meets Gidel at the streetlamp the boy displays a silver coin for Fellow to see. Down the sidewalk there is a wobbly trail of similar currency, down the walk and around the corner.
“Seems Miss Fairy lost quite a bit of money,” Fellow muses. Gidel nods vigorously. Fellow smiles, fangs exposed so pleasantly. “We should, of course, save those coins for her for when she returns. Isn’t that right, Gidel?”
Gidel beams at Fellow’s allowance, and stuffs the coins in his pocket.
Gidel follows the coins like breadcrumbs, and when he bends to pick them up his little tail waves in the air in his enthusiasm. The coins bend around a corner into an alley, where Gidel stops. At the base of a dumpster there’s a larger pile of coins weighing down what looks like a few proper madol, and smeared on the dumpster’s outside is a long stripe of fairy dust. It’s splattered to the wall above the dumpster too, like she had lost control with her missing wing and thumped into the side of the building, leaving behind a smear of gold. Besides the little pile there were no more coins in sight. Gidel raises his hammer, cocking his head as his ears twitch; listening. Fellow listens as well, but he doesn’t exactly know what he’s listening for.
Gidel, on silent feet, sneaks over to the pile of coins, peeking around and under the dumpster fastidiously. Then he scoops up the little collection of coins and bills with a speed dictated by the dutiful greed Fellow has taught him and scurries to Fellow’s side.
“She’s gone,” Fellow says in some shade of disappointment. “We could have shook her down for more coin— I mean, given her a place to rest for the night, and an apology.” Gidel chokes up on his hammer and nods enthusiastically.
“What’s your takings, Gidel?” Fellow asks curiously. Gidel digs all his money out of the breast pocket of his sleepshirt- one of Fellow’s old daywear things. Fellow counts twenty three coins in total, though they’re all of varying worth, and four crisp madol. There’s even a regional coin from the Scalding Sands among them- they would have to hand it over to a money-changer if they wanted to get anything out of it.
Fellow sets a hand on Gidel’s back leadingly and turns them from the alley and begins to lead them back to their hovel. “And how much is all this worth?” Fellow quizzes. Gidel’s face scrunches in thought, and then he blinks up at Fellow eagerly.
“Very good, Gidel,” he praises at his brother’s correct answer. “We’ll make a scholar out of you yet!”
The next morning, dressed for the grift, Fellow sits cross-legged at their squat coffee table and scowls at his eyeshadow palette.
He only ever used the green- it clashed so nicely with his hair that it was impossible not to wear the color- but now all his gold was missing too, entirely used up, and its absence made the palette look shabby; empty and secondhand. He’ll have to buy a new one with his newly-meager savings.
“Say, Gidel,” calls Fellow. Gidel is watching him apply his eyeshadow with great interest, peeking around Fellow’s little squat mirror as he always does, but his ears perk when Fellow calls his name. “How about we hit the town? You, my esteemed colleague, have money to spend!”
Gidel points to himself, eyebrows raising. His eyes are blown out wide.
“Fairy money is money to spend, not money to save!” Fellow exclaims with enthusiasm.
Gidel was going to lose more teeth- and each tooth would call for more gold shimmery fairy dust and a more elaborate tableau.
Waving away all thoughts of exactly how many teeth a beastman had and how much money that’s going to be, Fellow grabs his cane and lets Gidel pull him out the door.
(Gidel buys an ashtray.)