Spinning always comforted him, and rarely did he allow any despairing soul to enter his house beyond his workspace, but one must make an exception for Maleficent. Regal looking as always, she watches him spin, he ignores her, and Belle polishes the candlesticks with more stealth than she ever has before.

"Did you hear what I said?" Maleficent hisses at him. "I want a sleeping curse!"

"You'll have to speak up, dearie. My housekeeper, all the way over there, couldn't hear you." He curves his hand around his mouth. "She wants a sleeping curse!"

"Don't do your little imp tricks with me," she threatens. "Not with me, the Mistress of all Evil."

"Who didn't get invited to a birthday party. A child's birthday party at that," he whines to her, pouting. "It's as if you didn't have anything better to do."

"If you're not going to help me..."

"Oh, I can help you, dearie. I have exactly what you need." He gnashes his teeth at her. "But I'm not a something-for-nothing. All magic comes with a price."

"My magic can pay anything as long as that simpering little family gets what it deserves. Now hurry along. I've waited sixteen years for this. I vowed this!"

"Ha ha! How wrong you have it, Evil Mistress! What I want from you has nothing to do with what you can do, but rather what you can't do."

"Can't do? You insult me."

"Then I suppose all the rumors of you not being able to have a child of your own are just idle gossip?" Tears prickle Maleficent's face. With more bitterness than he remembers having, he wonders if all women grow as envious so easily.

"Are you going to give me that curse or not?" she chokes, her eyes hard, her hand gripping her staff tighter.

"This curse?" He manifests it into his hand. "If you'll owe me a favor."

"A favor? What game are you playing, Rumpelstiltskin? You just said all magic comes with a price."

"And it does, it does! You take this and curse that beautiful maiden to your heart's content, and I'll be at your castle, by and by, with a little something for you to protect...since you don't have anything of your own."

"That's it?"

"Easy-sounding, isn't it?" To see her face when the time came to get it back. He'd almost make a deal with himself for that. Dabbing the spindle of the spinning wheel with her finger, she sneers before leaving.

"What is she going to do?" Belle asks, rushing over to him once Maleficent is gone. Soon. He'd have everything he needed soon enough and now a place to keep it.

"Probably use a sleeping curse to put the little princess to sleep." That should have been self-explanatory, he thinks, recalling a few curses do have strange names, but most are precisely what's on the label or parchment.

"And you're fine with that." It's not a question, which brings his head up to stare at the coldest expression he's ever seen on her.

"It's a deal. I don't keep track of the magic once it changes hands unless it's in my interest to do so."

"You make all these deals and it doesn't matter to you who with and they can just go do whatever they want with all this?" She's near screaming and he debates whether to shout or placate her.

"Just what exactly did you think I do?" he asks.

Belle storms out.

"Belle?" He climbs the stairs to the hall where her room is. "Belle? Where are you, dearie?" Not a trace of her since this morning, and it wouldn't matter to him except that it is time for tea and no one is in the kitchen taking the teapot off the stove because no one put it on in the first place. No one is pulling the teacups out of the cupboard, either.

He knocks on her door, the gentlemanly approach first.

"Sick?"

"No," comes the muffled answer from behind the door.

"Best be coming out then."

"It's not time yet."

"Oh? We're on your schedule now? Which must not include having tea?"

"I don't have to make you any tea at all."

His mouth hangs open, aghast and sadistically tasting just how sweet her eventual apology and forgiveness-begging will be.

"May I remind you of our deal?"

"You told me the first day I was here what my duties were and you said I will serve you meals. Tea is not a meal."

"You can't argue the fine points of a contract with me!" he growls through his teeth, feeling his blood boiling. "You were brought here to serve, and in what capacity is up to me."

"Then you wouldn't have needed to clarify afterwards with a list of chores!" she yells.

"You can't stay in there forever!" he bellows.

"Yes, I can!"

"Fine!" Rumpelstiltskin barges back down the hallway and down the stairs, swearing at himself for not just killing the help, if he could call her that.

A/N: Yes, borrowing just a little from the Disney movie here. I can't believe what I have to look up sometimes, but gas stoves were invented as early as the 1820s, although they weren't mainstream until about the 1880s. In 1859, they issued a patent to a guy who invented the electro-heater. So why am I putting a stove in a setting that seems to be based on a period of time much earlier? Because the Disney version had a stove and I'm assuming that's how Mrs. Potts' tea was warmed up. There is no other reason. If there is any confusion, I had Maleficent curse Sleeping Beauty sixteen years ago, and, because she must have a lot of other heinous things to do, is just now coming to get the actual curse since it's time to enact it. No, Rumpelstiltskin obviously does not have the bottled True Love now, but he knows he will and he knows the perfect, and somewhat ironic, place to hide it until the opportune moment.