"Do you wanna be next?"
"Yes." LeFou calmly answered, his glimmering eyes staring at flaring Gaston's.
"Wha-?" The berserk hunter began before he was stopped by soft lips.
A few villagers gasped and others started to murmur.
LeFou… he was… KISSING HIM? Why did these lips felt so… smooth… and… delicious? And why were Gaston's cheeks feeling so… hot? WAIT! That faggot he had for a friend was kissing him in front of the whole village? Who did that repulsive poofter think he was? He wanted to present him; the great and manly captain Gaston, as a fairy?
Now, it REALLY was too much for Gaston! He gave LeFou the toughest and strongest punch he could give. Some of the villagers screamed.
"LeFou!" Stanley who looked as enraged as Gaston a few seconds ago suddenly called.
"Oh my God…" Belle whispered, her hands gripping the carriage's bars.
"What is it, Belle?" Her father worried.
"Gaston… just punched LeFou. He really is madder than I thought." She replied, a few tears blurring her eyesight.
She thought Gaston, as bloodthirsty and warmongering he was, at least cared for his best friend!
"What?" Maurice rushed beside his daughter.
The dishonored captain had thought threatening LeFou with revealing his tastes for men will prevent that repelling sodomite from questioning his orders and get him to obey his rightful superior. But that insolent fatass had decided to use that threat against him. Gaston could shoot him dead right here right now if there wasn't a more important matter: a demonic Beast. And there was a fitter way to get rid of that sissy subhuman.
"As you wish, la folle." Gaston spat in a disgusted scowl before he gripped harshly on his friend's collar.
LeFou yelped.
"Leave him alone!" Stanley begged more than ordered.
"Stanley." Tom warned him.
If Gaston could behave in such a dreadful way with his best friend, who knew what he could do of everyone else?
"Lock that good for nothing too." He ordered his henchmen.
Stanley didn't move. Only Tom and Dick reluctantly went towards LeFou. Why were they doing that again? Why did they have to throw their own friend in an asylum? Because some so-called magical object had showed a kind of ghost? Belle always had been a bit odd, maybe it just was her imagination, maybe she'd wish for a weird friend so hard she now was convinced of its existence! As for the mirror, surely it was one of Maurice's supernatural inventions for his lonely daughter! He and his daughter were a bit odd, maybe they both had made up this beast story, maybe they were crazy, but they weren't dangerous! Not at all!
While Gaston…
"We're sorry, LeFou…" Dick started.
"Don't be. After all I'm Le Fou, right?" The heartbroken man pronounced loud and clearly so Gaston could hear. "I am crazy! This is my very name! So I do belong in an asylum, don't I?" He wept.
Maurice's fingers joints turned white around the bars.
"Papa? W-what's going on?"
"That spiteful boy…" He grumbled.
Who was Gaston exactly? Harassing his daughter for years, trying to murder then throwing Maurice into an asylum to blackmail Belle into marriage, insulting the woman who'd saved the old man's life, heating a whole village into war –a pointless war according to Belle, using poor LeFou's feelings at his advantage and now he was using them again along with stomping them in the dirt to be sure no one would stop him? Such a… low, despicable man!
"Gaston!" Maurice shouted.
Don't you know ANYTHING about love?
"Maurice?" LeFou looked up.
"Papa?"
Gaston slowly turned back.
"What do you want, Maurice? Finally came to your senses and decided to give your daughter's hand to me?" He mockingly smirked.
"In your dreams! How can I allow my daughter to marry a man who bullies his own friends?" Belle's father replied.
The crowd turned chattier. The heated hunter noticed it by glancing here and there. His self-confidence dangerously lowered. He glared at Maurice; then at LeFou.
"My friends?" He snorted. "This is no friend of mine."
LeFou whimpered at that horrible sentence.
"My friends are supposed to obey me, not question me. And above all… they're supposed to be pure."
A couple of "what" and "what does that mean" and "pure?" started to buzz between the puzzled villagers.
The proud captain received a furious punch in his face.
"LeFou is the purest man I know, you piece of crap!" Stanley finally snapped out of it. "What wrong had he ever done? Huh? Except following and obeying you?"
"Ha… You've hardly done differently, Stanley!" Gaston retorted before he punched back his follower.
Tom and Dick caught their young fellow courtier.
"Stan!"
"You alright, pal?"
"Stanley!" LeFou stared at him. With these so beautiful glittering brown eyes… "Don't. Stop it." He begged.
"But…!"
"The only wrong Monsieur LeFou has ever done was to believe you could be a good man, Gaston!" Maurice scolded.
"Will you ever shut up, you old geezer?" Gaston flamed up.
"Don't talk to my father that way, Gaston!" Belle screamed.
"I talk the way I want to a bunch of crazy loonies like you, Belle!" The captain snarled, showing his pointed teeth.
"You don't have friends, you have servants, Gaston! Not really the same thing!" Maurice told him.
"Maybe I don't need friends!"
"Maybe you don't know what being a friend is!" The old inventor retorted.
"That's right. When have you ever treated us like anything else than servants?" Stanley glowered at Gaston as he was wiping blood off his lips.
"And how many times have you threatened us if we didn't do as you told?" Tom accused him.
"Surely because he doesn't know other way to 'make friends'." Dick added.
"You…!" Gaston's whole face cringed; like all his veins were about to blow up.
"You always steal my flowers! LeFou always paid them!" The florist charged him.
"So you did try to kill Maurice, you madman!" The bartender busted him.
"Now you even throw him and Belle in an asylum!"
"The woman you've ever loved, my ass!" A scruffy drunkard cursed.
"You can't even treat your friends properly!"
"You psychopath! You'd throw the whole village, even your best mate, in an asylum for an imaginary beast?" The old Clotilde blamed him.
"Are we even sure it exists?"
"Of course it doesn't! Such creatures can't possibly exist! Maurice is merely confused by his recent trip!" Père Robert explained.
"Wha-what do you do of that, then?" Gaston shoved the mirror in the vicar's face.
"That weird mirror's surely one of Maurice's inventions!" Tom shouted behind the hunter.
"What?" The inventor whispered. "Yes… yes! I made that mirror!" He almost yelled so the whole village could hear. "I've made it for Belle!"
"What are you say- ?" Belle murmured. "Oh! I get it." She suddenly understood her father's plan.
"You didn't have enough brains to guess that, Gaston?" Dick laughed at him.
"Yeah! There is only one beast here!" The florist screamed.
"And only one crazy guy!" The bartender added.
"And it's you, Gaston!" Belle roared to the extent of surprising herself. Had she ever screamed like that before?
"Right! You should be thrown at the Maison des Lunes!" Clotilde bluntly suggested.
"Leave LeFou alone!" Stanley hugged the small tavern entertainer.
"Leave everyone alone!" Tom ordered his captain.
"You… dare to command me?" Gaston gritted his teeth.
"We're like 15 years older than you! We should have been your captains since the beginning!" Dick patronized him.
"No one… No! One!..." The hunter pulled out his gun and aimed it at Tom. "…will deprive me… of my WAR!" He roared before he glanced at the carriage. "Or my wedding."
Most of the villagers gasped while a few screamed their hearts out. Tom didn't move or even look away. Stanley hugged his soft doll even tighter as his eyes became to blur. He was terribly scared but just couldn't abandon LeFou with this… monster. Belle was right. How could he have followed this crazy war bitch for years?
"You really are sick in your head, Gaston!" Dick spat out.
"But a sick man who ALWAYS gets what he wants!" Gaston loudly reminded him, his gun still right in the middle of Tom's forehead. "Move aside. Or I'll shoot your stupid face apart." He threatened.
"Go fuck yourself in a loony house, Gaston." Tom calmly replied.
"You've asked for it." The more than done captain pulled on the trigger.
"Tom!" Stanley yelled.