Fic: A Monster To Be Slain

Title: A Monster to be Slain
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Rumpelstiltskin is woken in the night by an intruder in his home. An assassin, a bounty hunter sent unprepared to kill him in his sleep. Rumbelle smut.

A/N: I stole Fyre’s bounty hunter!Belle and dirtied up the place. And then this became an AU from my (already AU) fic ‘Rabbits on the Run’, where Belle is locked in a tower for falling pregnant before marriage, ashamed and left to rot. This Belle escaped on her own. Fic-ception.

(reposted because the tags won’t work)

Rumpelstiltskin is awoken in the middle of the night by a loud crash from downstairs.

It’s the first unexpected noise that has echoed in this place since he moved in over a hundred years ago: needless to say, it’s fairly alarming.

He waves a hand and is dressed in moments: another snap of his fingers, and he’s in the front hall, staring down the intruder as the Dark One he truly is. He expects an Ogre army, or perhaps a band of avenging warriors, come to completely ruin his night’s sleep.

Instead, to his surprise, a woman stands in the doorway, her dark hair pulled back in a long braid, and a long scar down the side of her pale face. She is dressed like a man, with leather breeches and a loose white shirt; there is a long belt slung around her waist, with two sheaths and several less-identifiable little pouches hanging off it.

She carries a long blade in her hand.

And she smiles when he enters, which in itself is enough to set him on edge.

Because no one smiles at him. Not properly; not really. And if that’s what it takes for people to leave him alone while he works on ending this entire world, then so be it.

“Anything I can do for you, dearie?” he asks, hoping that perhaps she is another princess like the last - sweet Snow White and her irate little friend - here to ask for guidance. Perhaps she can be useful.

“I don’t think so, no.” she says, and her voice is smooth and strangely accented, like a woman from the Marchlands in the East.

Then she lunges at him, all blades and energy, and he is forced to respond with a minor hex to throw her off to the side.

She lands catlike, rolls, is on her feet again in moments and Rumpelstiltskin is almost… impressed.

She gives a smirk, a challenging little expression, before she’s back, and this time her blade grazes his arm as he physically dodges her attack. She’s quick, this one, but he is quicker. No one can defeat the Dark One, not with a simple mortal knife.

She aims a quick punch to his stomach, but he grabs her wrist and forces it back - he doesn’t see the palm flying from his other side, that smacks his temple hard enough to rattle his brain in his skull.

She flips her knee up between his legs, but he catches it in time and forces it out and away, so she nearly stumbles, and has to quickly back away to stay on her feet. He is rather ashamed when she goes straight for his nose with her fist, and he falls for it and blocks, not noticing the booted foot flying for his head.

She catches him around the skull, hard enough that he is reeling for a long moment, and she gets a decent punch in his stomach for good measure.

She takes no risks: before he can react, she hurls a small pouch from her belt to the floor, and for a moment everything is red smoke and confusion.

Then there is a dagger at his neck, and his arms are twisted behind his back, and her voice is in his ear, “Last words, Dark One?”

“My name is Rumpelstiltskin, dearie,” he replies, as he eases the knife from his throat, hand on her wrist “What’s yours?”

He flicks his arm and she is thrown off, over his head and across the room. She lands with a hard smack on her back, and lies still, curled on her side and moaning in pain on the stone floor.

He should turn her into a snail or a beetle, and crush her beneath his boot.

But Rumpelstiltskin needs to know who sent this little assassin to his home. So he walks toward her, stands over her prone little form and says “Come now, dearie, who are you?”

Her face, hidden in the crook of her arm, appears, and she’s not grimacing, nor crying in pain: she’s still smiling, a wicked kind of smile.

She whips her legs round without warning, and hard leather boots smack against his shins with enough force to throw his legs from under him. He crashes to the floor before he can think to stop himself, his arse hitting the flagstones with all the dignity of a drunken ogre.

And she’s on her feet, their positions reversed, and there are needles and fiery arrows in her blood red smile.

She throws another charm at him, and he is motionless, bound to the floor with bonds of invisible magic. He cannot move nor speak, and Rumpelstiltskin, for all his powers, cannot use magic without expression.

“Much better.” she nods, approvingly, as he fumbles with the roots of this hex, trying to undo it as fast as possible, “Now hold still, honey, this will only take a moment.”

Her blade is back at his throat, and he’d laugh if he wasn’t being strangled by her clumsy little spell. She can cause him all the discomfort she likes, but without the dagger that bears his name - hidden in the safest place he could think of, and lost to the world’s collective memory - she can never actually destroy him.

“You can’t kill me, dearie.” he whispers, as he finds the root of the spell and twists,
hard enough to break. His hands come up from his sides to grasp on either side of her abdomen, and he uses a little burst of magic to throw her like a ragdoll off of him, so she crashes into the dining table. Her flying body dislodges the tea service he’d left there the night before, and one of the cups falls to the stone floor with an anticlimactic little sound.

She crumples into a pathetic little heap, and this time he can tell there will be no getting up.

He picks her knife up from where it clattered to the floor during her brief flight, and approaches her limp little form where it has fallen by the table. He kneels, plays with the blade between his fingers, smiles at her in a mocking parody of concern.

“That was unkind, don’t you think?”

“Shut up,” she groans around a bleeding mouth, “Just kill me already.”

“Who sent you?” he asks. He will kill her, of course he will, but he needs to know this first.

“No one.” she replies, around gritted teeth.

He shakes his head “Wrong answer, dearie.” he picks her up in his arms and throws her onto the table, relishing her moan of pain when her broken body hits the hard surface.

“Now,” he drums his fingers on the tabletop, head leaned right over hers, menacingly manic grin in place, “Tell me again: who sent you?”

“I told you, no one.” she groans, teeth gritted. He can feel the tension in her jaw as he traces a hand down her face, cups her chin in his fingers, and their faces are so close that he can smell the blood on her breath.

“You’re lying to me; that’s not a good idea.” he whispers, and then watches in concealed astonishment as her eyes dilate, her face flushed in something quite other than fear.

She isn’t going to budge: a woman trained in combat, in war magic, who would come to kill the Dark One in his own lair must be prepared for physical torture. He imagines that she will probably be willing to die first, before revealing her employer. One doesn’t hire such an assassin without a reassurance of anonymity should the mission go awry.

She won’t reveal the information, no matter how much agony he inflicts.

So if not pain, then what about something else?

Slowly, wondering if this is a gigantic misstep, he moves his hand down from her jaw and across her collarbone. The woman shivers, as if he is some prince in a bedchamber, as if he is something other than a monster to be slain.

Smirking, he slips his fingers down further, under her loose white shirt, and brushes along the swell of her breast, so lightly it might have been the wind.

She is staring at him, wide and entirely dumbfounded eyes, “Will you tell me who sent you, dearie?”

She shakes her head, but she looks a little less pained, now.

And it won’t do for the poor, murderous creature to be in pain, now would it? Not if his plan is to succeed, at any rate.

Gently, he sends a stream of healing magic from his palm under her shirt, easing her aching muscles and setting her broken bones. She trembles violently for a moment, but her eyes never leave his face.

He’d thought she would lie there, waiting for the healing to be done, intelligent enough to know that she has lost and is lucky that she is still human, whole and breathing all at once.

But she is a stubborn, brave and stupid little thing, so the next thing he knows she is sitting upright, and his face has been cracked against the side of the table, and he is seeing stars as she kicks him backwards, so he is sprawled on the floor and dazed.

He catches her when she throws herself down on him, her sharp red nails like claws against his face, before his hands can catch her wrists and restrain her.

It is then, staring at each other and breathing hard, that he notices that is straddling him.

“Who are you?” he asks when she doesn’t move and, in fact, shifts a little to make herself more comfortable.

“My name is Belle.” she replies, all smiling sharp teeth and smugness.

And everything clicks into place. He laughs a little, manic and trilling, and her smile fades into an annoyed little frown. She pulls a second knife - smaller, but still deadly in the right hands, and those are lovely hands she has - and presses it against his cheek.

“What’s so funny, beast?”

“You’re a princess!” he chortles, “Princess Belle of the Marchlands, who was imprisoned in a tower for all eternity.”

“Evidently not.”

“Indeed.” he says, and shifts his hips just a little. Her eyes close at the friction, her leather pants obviously providing more than just protection from the elements. “Traded your pretty golden dresses for blood and knives, dearie? What would dear old daddy say?”

She slaps him across the face with her non-knife wielding hand, “Shut up!”

Really, what is it about trained killers and father issues?

That thought leads to unwelcome hypothesising - what if one’s father were a coward and a liar, who sent you alone into another world without so much as a goodbye? - and he stops.

It’s much more fun to watch her try not to shiver as he shifts just a little more, and there is suddenly pressure between her legs, and a sigh trying to escape her lips. Lips a shade of red that is both entirely gorgeous, and a little bit familiar.

Could she be the Queen’s creature?

“He would probably say ‘Gods, Belle! Put your skirt back on!’” she says, and then grins, “Not that that is any of your business.”

“Then kill me.” he says, and bares his teeth, becoming the monster she so obviously expects, “Or are you unable to?”

“I’d say the same about you.” she says, “How come I’m not dead yet?”

“I need to know who sent you, dearie.” he says, “Believe me when I say that that information is the only reason why you breathe right now.”

And that was a completely stupid thing to say, now wasn’t it?

Now she’ll never tell him: knowing that one’s life depends upon keeping a secret tends to help keep one’s lips sealed.

But she’s still smiling, and an achingly beautiful smile she has, even with a blade pressed to his face and the intention - although thankfully, not the ability - to murder him within moments.

Is it still murder when your prey isn’t human?

“Are you sure that that’s the only reason?” she asks, one eyebrow raised, and she wriggles - this fucking wonderful little hip-shimmy that he wishes he could understand - down on his lap.

Okay, maybe she’s not the only one inappropriately affected by this situation.

There’s just something intoxicating about this woman, who swaggered into a monster’s home and didn’t even flinch, and who even now, even with the monster right beneath her, has time to smile and laugh and tell the truth.

That, and the fact that she looks incredible in her tight leather trousers, and her hair smells like woodsmoke and cinnamon.

It’s no wonder that he’s affected by this situation, that as she wriggles herself down on him he’s getting hard, and his eyes almost fall closed at the sensation.

“Yes.”

“I wonder.”

He reaches up and scrapes his claws down her face, leaving red lines in his wake on her cheek, an answer to the scar that mars the other side.

“Who sent you, Princess?” he asks, and she slaps him again, hard. He shouldn’t enjoy that as much as he does.

“I came by myself.”

“Then who’s paying you? Pretty little thing like you, completely unprepared… someone was having a laugh, dearie.”

She punches him on the nose, and in her enraged distraction he rolls them over so she’s underneath him, so that he can glare down at her with barbed and pointed teeth, “I wouldn’t do that again, if I were you.” he warns.

She shifts, struggles, tries to break free.

“Tell me who sent you, and I’ll let you go.” he says: a simple, straightforward bargain.

“I have to kill you or die trying.” she replies, “So nice try.”

“Well, I’m not planning on killing you any time soon.” he says, as he lines them up again, so he’s pressing right into her centre and her breath hitches, “So I suppose we have a problem.”

He doesn’t know at all what could have happened to this woman to bring her here, to a point where she can be so enthusiastic about the advances of a monster. There’s something in her eyes that isn’t quite right, that isn’t whole and pure and sane. This woman who demands to either kill or be killed, who swoons in the arms of a beast such as he.

He’s curious, such an odd emotion for such an old dragon, but it doesn’t matter.

He reaches down, back under her shirt, and there is no tentativeness, no hesitation this time. He spreads his claws under her breast, flicks her nipple with the sharp edge of his thumb until it hardens and puckers. He grins when she makes a pathetic little mewling noise, and then glares at him to hide it.

“Eager, dearie?”

“You’re disgusting, you know that?” she growls, but her eyes are dark and she’s smiling, such a tempting, wicked kind of smile.

“I wonder…” he hisses at her, her own words thrown back, as he lunges at her throat, lips and teeth hard enough to bruise, placing hard, sharp little kisses along her neck, as his fingers flex under her shirt.

He plays her like an instrument until she trembles beneath him, and she gasps into his ear, such a wanton little sound.

“Will you tell me, dearie?” he murmurs, “Who wanted you to kill me?”

“I did. On my own.” she lies so prettily, but they’re lies all the same. Still, he’d hoped she would do so: it won’t do to finish this so quickly.

He grunts into her skin when he feels her hand - small and hot and strong - on the front of his pants. He’s already getting hard - how could he not be when her eyes hold such dark desire, and she’s so obviously broken, and in such a lovely way? - and her fingers against him, cupping and squeezing, the friction through the leather something close to unbelievable.

He groans, reaches down and grabs her wrists, pins both of her hands above her head.

She could break away, but he doesn’t think that she will.

He thinks she rather enjoys defeat, restraint, being the weaker of the pair. If her shallow breathing and dark eyes and flushed skin are anything to go by, at any rate.

She gasps - seems surprised, foolish little thing - when he waves his hands and their boots and trousers vanish. As if this were a time for the slow removal of clothing, as if either of them had the patience for the hours it would take to get his boots off.

But she gasps, and it’s cold in here, and he absently warms the air around them: no sense in making her any less comfortable than she is already.

He grinds against her again, skin on skin, hot and hard and insistent, right between her legs, where she’s bucking her hips and wriggling against him trying to force him to start already, to finish what they’ve started.

“Tell me…” he whispers, mouth burrowed into her cheek, and she shakes her head. He smirks, bites hard on her earlobe, right as he flicks her claws through the wetness at her centre.

She cries out.

How long has it been for her? he wonders, for her to be so enthusiastic, so eager for the touch of a monster?

She glares at him, fire in her eyes, and oh, she would murder him if she could. But she can’t, and she has spent enough time trying, and so she does nothing more than glare, as if she could turn him to ashes with just a look.

He increases the motion of his fingers, scratching over her moistened lips, rough cool skin on soft, wet flesh. She’s trying not to moan, gritting her teeth, her head arched back revealing such a beautifully pale neck, marred by the bruises from his mouth.

“Tell me what I need to know…” he murmurs, as his fingers increase their pace, flicking and rubbing hard at such sensitive flesh. She lets out a long moan, low and throaty, as her hips start to buck against his hand almost without meaning to. She’s grinding against him, eyes squeezed shut, but still she says nothing.

So he stops, moves his hand to rest on the flat of her stomach, and waits.

She glares up at him, all fire and anger and desperate, burning need. “Fuck me.” the words come out of nowhere, impossibly erotic tripping off her tongue, rounded by her lush and perfect red lips.

He can’t be blamed for shifting against her, grinding down just a little, and sneering at her helpless little whimper; for thrusting up hard and without warning, sheathing himself deep inside her. She’s so incredibly tight, so hot and wet and how in the name of all the Gods is he supposed to stop now?

“Tell me.” he mutters, trying to hold his mind together.

“I came alone.” she replies, eyes still closed, voice high and strained, tight as a bowstring, and oh, he’d hoped she’d say that. She has remarkable talent, this woman, for holding an untruth and keeping to it.

He pulls most of the way out of her, and then rams back in, hard, hitting some sweet spot that makes her moan something low and deeply obscene. He sets up a punishing rhythm, pounding into her without mercy, hard and deep, and it should be hurting her, she should be screaming him and struggling for freedom. Anyone other woman, any sane woman, would be running for the door, screaming about the beast in the castle who tried to rape her.

But she’s been loving this as much as he from the very beginning, and she’s dewing up and swooning with every thrust, shifting her hips in this little pattern that’s driving him insane.

His hand holds her wrists over her head while the other swoops over her almost-naked body, back under her shirt to pull and pinch at her breasts, her nipples hard and sensitive to touch, and he wishes he could take one in his mouth, bite and suckle until she screamed.

His fingertips then work their way down her ribcage to her stomach, to whisper over her taut, smooth skin.

And she is ticklish, squirming with a smile trying to form on her perfect lips, and he feels an unbelievably strange urge to run his fingers over her ribs, to tickle her like a child and see if he can make her laugh.

But then he shakes it off, and slips his hand lower, and scrapes his nails against her centre, finds her little nub of nerves and rubs hard, alternating rough, scaly fingertips and sharp claws.

She screams, some little dam inside her breaking, and her control is lost. She’s bucking against him, matching him thrust for thrust, back arching and Gods above, where did she learn to stretch like that?

He can feel how close she is, how tightly wound, and she’s panting, little breathy, mewling cries that shoot straight to his groin. He’s painfully, impossibly hard, but he’s not forgotten his mission: he has to know who sent her here, who hates him enough to send this little lightning crack of an assassin.

“Are you close, dearie?” he asks, punctuating his question with a roll of his hips. She gasps, her thighs tightening around his hips, and he sneers down at her.

She stares at him a moment, and he stills inside her, using all his thin and fragile control to hold still and raise one eyebrow at her, waiting for her response.

Then she nods, uncertainty giving way to vigor, and he smiles in approval, whispers his lips over her cheekbone and down to her ear, murmurs “Well, then: I’ll make you a deal.” He runs his tongue around the shell of her ear, smirks at her shiver, “Tell me who sent you, and I’ll let you come.”

She holds out, brave little thing, but she’s trembling and staring at him, all pleading eyes and poppy-red mouth, and desperation rolls of her in waves.

All it takes is one quick movement, a pinch to her clit between his sharp claws, and she makes a little squeal, a tiny whimper of defeat. “The Queen!” she cries, “She put a price on your head!”

“Aaah,” he sighs, satisfied, and smirks, “Well, a deal is a deal.”

He pulls out and thrusts up as hard as possible, impales her soft, shaking body again and again, as hard and deep and fast as possible. He grits his teeth, intent upon driving her into the fucking ground, so she won’t be able chase monsters or slay dragons for a week.

She lets go, comes with a long loud shriek like he’s stabbed her. Her muscles grip him so hard, clenching so he’s seeing stars, so he’s groaning her name, hips snapping in jerky, erratic thrusts as he rides out his own climax.

He doesn’t collapse on her, boneless and limp, although suddenly it’s all he wants in the universe.

In fact, he has the curious urge to roll them over, to wrap his arms around this beautiful, broken little bird and hold on tight, nuzzle her neck and kiss her lips, softly, all tenderness and exploration.

But he chalks it up to post-coital madness and the scent of her cinnamon hair, and instead waves his hand, clothing them once again. He releases her hands, and jumps off of her, sweeping a deep and mocking bow. He even helps her to her feet.

She doesn’t smile. She just stares at him, bites her lip in a curiously shy little gesture.

“Will you kill me now?”

“Do you wish it so?”

“I don’t think you could even if I did,” she smirks, bravado covering any shame or confusion “I think you’d spare me even if I begged you to end my worthless little life.”

She sounds mocking, almost teasing, and he’s supposed to take her words as humour, as lies and nothing more. He’s supposed to believe her proud and capable, strong as iron and old leather boots.

But there’s a little too much sadness, too much shame and self-loathing, in her eyes and the falseness of her smile for him to believe her tone.

Her words are truth: she believes herself worthless.

This shattered woman can stride into his home, fight him as well as any knight he’s encountered, convince him to fuck her rather than kill her, and still feel no pride at all.

Those cracks in her massive stone walls, in her mind itself, shouldn’t be as attractive, as appealing and downright lovely as they are.

And she looks at him, with a sneer and mocking smirk, because she believes him even lower. Because he could kill her, he could turn her into a snail and grind her beneath his heel, he could destroy her soul and purge the land of any evidence that she had ever lived, and yet he doesn’t.

He lets her live.

“We made a deal,” he reminds, “Our work is done.”

And with that, he spins on his heel and walks away, leaves her staring after him. He vanishes in a puff of golden-grey smoke, and watches through the crystals in his room as she stares after him. She shakes her head, allows a tiny shard of her wall to come down enough to trace a trembling hand over her lips, and smile, a smile of thorned roses and spurting blood.

And then she shivers, and grabs the chipped cup from the dining room table. He watches, in something close to astonishment, as she slips her souvenir into an empty pouch on her belt, and strides from the room.