So if the curse is transmittable, is there a way to - rather than breaking the curse with true love- transfer it to some other asshole who happens to be nearby? Because that would kind of explain why the enchantress decided to go knocking on the doors of dickish eleven-year-old princes on stormy nights, and also why she seemed to look hideous until she suddenly transformed and then ‘cursed’ Adam. Maybe the enchantress was also a beast, and maybe there are two ways to ‘get rid’ of the curse. One is to have true love break it, but the other is to just sort of pass it on to someone the curse decides is worse than you are.
And the curse, rather than seeing ‘ah well he’s just a kid’ and not taking, instead went ‘oh he’s a kid - so his dickishness is also the fault of his caretakers’ and then applied itself to the entire damn castle.
Enchantress was probably like ‘…uh, oops? Oh well lol not my problem anymore’ and skipped off, after feeling juuust bad enough to tell Adam about the True Love option. But not the transfer one because what if he comes after her and the curse decides that after a week of beastification, he’s less of an asshole than she is now? Not risking it.
So Beast and Belle hook up and Beast thinks it’s the True Love cure, but in actuality he gets cured after the fight with Gaston because the curse decides ‘welp this guy is DEFINITELY a bigger asshole’ and that’s why the timing is kind of… odd Belle really does love him, though, but maybe the shift back is supposed to be more gradual with a love cure, because true love really does linger more in gradual adjustments and quiet moments than in grand displays. It’s a slower process (the time limit was really just the enchantress trying to make sure that the prince would hurry up and go that route for curing himself, and not waste time trying to track her down - it’s total bullshit, she’s a con artist, that’s what got her into this mess in the first place).
The slow cure is what happens with Gaston, instead of getting a declaration and then a magical girl transformation sequence back into his sporty lumberjack self, he just, bit by bit, starts to look more Gaston-y again. It spreads out from the eyes. His fur starts to get a bit thinner, his claws start to soften, his teeth no longer fill up his mouth like a packet of razors. At first he thinks it’s just because he has a place to stay and access to, like, brushes and warm water and stuff like that. But then he wakes up one morning and his antlers are shedding, and he can definitely see more of his old face than he used to.
His woodsy herbalist ‘friend’ doesn’t really say anything. He’s heard of curses and things, and he doesn’t like to pry - he’s just the sort who sees a need and tries to help with it. In the end, it’s really not Gaston’s looks (in either form) that when him over. It his skill, either, because Gaston can’t really hunt much without risking being seen and having to leave and possibly getting his herbalist in trouble for housing a monster. It’s just his company. Talks by the fire. Quiet mornings spent side by side. Sheer boredom, and a begrudging sense of indebtedness, have Gaston asking about his host’s tasks, and then offering to help with them. He’s insufferable about it at first, of course. But after a while he finds that he likes the scent of herbs, and that gathering is as interesting as hunting, and he even paws carefully through a few of the herbalist’s notebooks.
Being trapped gives him a somewhat better appreciation for books, though he still never loves them.
At night he can venture outside, just so long as the moon isn’t too bright. He takes to sitting on the roof, and looking up at the stars, and remembers… it was his mother who taught him how to read the stars. In case he ever got lost. His father died when he was fairly young, and Gaston had done his best to try and make up the difference. And he had done; he’d been a good hunter, he’d kept the village fed through a lot of cold winters, but he’d never quite been able to escape the sense that he needed to absolutely make certain that he was following the right script. That there was something about him that didn’t… that wasn’t what his father would have wanted. Or his mother, either. He had a long list of things that made a man worthwhile, and maybe that was part of the reason why he had set his eyes on the one woman in the village who refused to give him the time of day.
Because that list included marriage and a house full of children, not quiet nights in a tavern, looking for too long at the woodcutter’s arms.
But even if he had never really wanted Belle, he had been angry enough at not winning her, too. Even if the script never really made him happy, he still wanted to follow it. Wanted to be the kind of man who could. The man who killed every beast and conquered every challenge.
He can’t go back to that life, now. It’s not even an option anymore.
The knowledge is an unexpected - but very visceral - relief.
The next morning, Gaston is about a foot shorter, and the cleft in his chin is back.
It’s more than a year, though, before he looks human enough to ‘arrive’ at the little village near to where his herbalist lives. He introduces himself as a friend of the healer’s family, an old friend who used share correspondence with him, who’s come looking for work. The townsfolk find him to be a quiet man, burly but skilled, and more boisterous if you can get a few drinks into him. Though, he avoids the tavern more often than not. Some folks talk about him and his herbalist, living out in that little house all by themselves; but Gaston’s skills quiet most tongues, and the way his eyes sometimes catch the firelight, and his teeth seem just a little too sharp, manage to quiet others.
Years pass. It is, funnily enough, only when Gaston looks almost entirely himself - though still different from how he used to - that trouble really comes, with the mayor’s son, who decides on a dare to vandalize the herbalist’s door and destroy some of his best plants.
Gason is only meaning to make the boy pay for the damages, when he goes and finds him out in the fields. But he’s barely had time to get impatient with the brat’s sneering - seventeen, god, he had nearly forgotten how insufferable he was at that age, too - when he feels a weight leave him. A weight he has grown so accustomed to, that he had long forgotten it wasn’t supposed to be there.
There are no witnesses to the change that happens in the field, though later, many people in the village will whisper that a werewolf must have savaged the mayor’s son. All Gaston can do is offer the boy some advice, before he flees in howling terror:
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