Rachel Hawkins - Grim

Beauty looked over at Chad. The children had got over their worries about being eaten very quickly when offered piggyback rides. One little boy was on Chad’s back now, laughing so hard she thought he might be sick.

“He is all goodness.”

“Hmm,” said Aimee. “They’re all made beasts for a reason, my dear boy. But come—I don’t want to spoil your day. Go play tug-of-war.”

Beauty’s team won at tug-of-war, and people clapped her on the back as if it was excellent that she was strong, and no man minded her showing them up at all.

She was walking across the castle lawn feeling well content with the world when she heard the scream come from the stables.

Beauty turned and ran toward the sound.

When she arrived, she saw no scene of carnage or villagers demanding the Beast’s head. What she saw was Chad, with a group of young men from the village all clapping him on the back, just like Beauty had been clapped on the back, and the little boy she had noticed before trembling on the point of tears.

Chad saw her. “Don’t worry about it, dude,” he said. “We just gave him a little scare, that’s all. It’s only fun.”

Beauty looked from the laughing men to the upset child. “Doesn’t look like much fun to me.”

She saw the boy’s mother coming toward them, looking angry: the boy saw her but did not run to her. Instead he tried to join in the laughter, as if he had not been hurt, as if denying he had feelings meant that he would stop having them.

Beauty had never been quite so angry in her life. She stamped off into the castle, wanting to cry like a woman or hit something like a man and refusing to do either because neither would help.

“Lighten up, dude,” Chad said from behind her, sounding worried.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me to do but I won’t do it!” Beauty snapped. “Nobody has to do anything just because other people expect it. How did you get cursed to be the Beast? What did you do to the witch before she cursed you?”

“Nothing!” Chad shouted. “Well...look, I was just kidding around.”

“While everyone was laughing,” Beauty said. “All your frat brethren. Not the witch.”

“Frat brothers.”

“I don’t care!” said Beauty. “You are not a villain, but what does it matter if you playact like one? If good men pretend to be villains, how is anybody supposed to know the difference between them?”

“What am I supposed to do?” Chad demanded.

“Think,” said Beauty.

“Anyone could tell you I’m not good at that!”

“Think and be kind,” said Beauty. “You are good at that. You’re much better at that than being vicious to impress other boys you’re hanging around with.”

“Jesus, were you homeschooled?” asked Chad. “They’re just being guys. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, Dad always said—”

“What a stupid thing to say!” Beauty exclaimed. “You’re not an animal.”

Chad made a violent gesture with one clawed hand. “Oh, no? We can’t all be heroes discharging the debt for our father’s lives or whatever. You don’t have to stay here, you know—you can ride off on your white horse and do good deeds and be better than everybody somewhere else!”

He turned and slammed out of the room. Beauty went and flung herself in an armchair. She felt tempted to resort to liquor, but Aimee had basically drunk the castle dry.

Instead, she sulked in the armchair. The curtain hanging by her elbow lifted itself tentatively and patted at her arm, and Beauty felt slightly better.

By the time Chad slunk back into the room, it was dark and Beauty could hear the clatter of some guests leaving, and the music as those remaining danced.

“I said I was sorry,” Chad said. “I guess I was being kind of a jerk. It isn’t funny to upset little kids.”

“It isn’t funny to upset anyone,” said Beauty.

Chad shrugged, which looked like furry mountains shifting in an awkward miniearthquake. “I guess.”

Beauty kicked at the hearth rug, which slapped her boot back. “I didn’t offer to stay because I’m so noble,” she said. “I wanted to have a different life. I wanted to have adventures, and prove I was a different person than everybody thought I was, and I would’ve been embarrassed to go straight back home. I was always disappointing them. I shouldn’t give lectures to anyone about caring too much what people think.”

Chad sank into the armchair next to Beauty’s. “You were right about my dad, though. I know a thing or two about disappointing people.”

“It must be difficult, to be the son of a king.”

“He’s a CEO,” said Chad. “He’s a bit cutthroat.”

“Does he order a lot of executions?” Beauty asked sympathetically, and Chad choked. “Think how happy the people will be when you ascend the throne and temper mercy with justice.”

“Uh, I don’t think...” Chad began, and trailed off with a beastly sigh. “It doesn’t matter anymore. But it’s hard to stop thinking about what people think of you.”

Beauty thought of being in a glittering gown at court, and dressing in boy’s clothes to climb on her white steed.

“Today was the only party I’ve been to in my life that I actually enjoyed. It’s all different kinds of performances,” Beauty said miserably. “But I don’t perform well.”

“It’s not just putting on an act,” Chad told her slowly. “I know you did this to make other people think about me differently—so they’d be kind to me. That was you being kind to me. That wasn’t an act.”

Beauty hesitated. “Oh, well. I just thought—they were wrong not to accept you. And now you can get a different stable boy when the time comes.”

Chad hesitated in his turn.

“I don’t want a different stable boy,” Chad said at length. “You—you are kind to me and you’re brave and I don’t want you to pretend anything. You’re my friend. I wish you’d stay.”

He was the only person who had ever said to Beauty that she was enough the way she was. Beauty looked over at him, at his kind dark eyes: he was closer now. Neither of them had moved; it was the chairs who had edged together.

“Uh,” said Chad. His voice cracked. “No homo? Dumbass interfering furniture.”

Beauty leaned forward. She didn’t understand everything Chad said, but she thought she understood enough.

She leaned forward, in the silence just after midnight, and pressed a kiss somewhere in the vicinity of Chad’s fangs.

The arm of the chair splintered under Chad’s claw.

“Uh,” he said, and his voice cracked. “Maybe a little homo?”

Beauty smiled at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I have to go?” Chad said. “Yep. I have to go and sit in my room and have a think and hope the wardrobe doesn’t try to give me relationship advice. Okay, bye!”

He ran, leaving claw marks on the door. The door creaked a protest at him, waggling back and forth reproachfully.

It was Chad’s decision whether or not to accept her courtship. Beauty tried not to worry about it and to focus on her job, so the next day she rose bright and early to curry the horses. She was finishing up on Vin Diesel (Chad had named the horses after heroes in his own land) when she heard the half growl, half stutter of Chad’s cough behind her.

“Dude, can I have a word?”

“Of course,” said Beauty, and got up from the straw.

The horses all shied away from Chad, still uneasy even though Beauty had been doing her best to accustom them to his presence. Except for Snowball, who had taken a fancy to him and went over to butt his arm in a mute demand for apples.

Chad patted Snowball’s nose, careful of his claws.