Work Text:
They met by chance while hunting the same creature—a rabbit.
"Now look what you've done," he chided, lips twisted in an amused smirk. "You've made me lose my quarry."
"Funny," Merida shot back, "I was just about to say the same thing to you."
He was a foreigner, a traveler through the area, making a living by hunting game. He had a rather shoddily-made bow, but he made it work, proving himself as deadly with it as Merida was with her favorite bow. Once she saw his skill, Merida impulsively made the decision to invite him home, to shelter in Castle DunBroch for a night or two—or however long he felt like staying.
Grinning, he took her up on the offer and the two of them wound their way home, each carrying their own rabbit in a sack.
*
Fortunately for Merida, the stranger, Gaston, was in no rush to move on.
Gaston wasn't like the other men she knew. He was tall, strong-chinned, muscular, self-assured—when he stood, he stood straight-backed, drawn up to his full height, hands clasped in front of him in the confident stance of someone who knew their worth. Merida liked him—he was the only one who could keep up with her in the forest or on a horse; as good a tracker as he was a bowman.
Hunts were much more fun with him; Merida hadn't realized how lonely her excursions into the forest had been before, without someone to share the silences with, the mistakes, the triumphs.
As the two of them stopped by a stream to drink some water, a mischievous urge came over Merida and she scooped water and splashed Gaston's face with it as he leaned over the stream for his drink. The splash shocked him at first but then he let out a bark of laughter, and lunged forward to have revenge. Merida nimbly leapt out of the reach of his arms, and then the hunt began.
The two of them ran through the forest, circling around trees, feinting. Several times, Gaston came close to catching her, but she managed to evade him by ducking under a low tree branch, or sliding down a hill. A couple of times when the two of them were very close, Gaston made some purposely clumsy grabs, Merida thought, to keep the game going a bit longer. She didn't blame him.
Finally, though, he managed to throw his arms around her waist and the two of them tumbled down into a bed of leaves.
"No, no!" Merida cried as they laughed, breathless. She tried to slip out from under Gaston, but he held her down, thoroughly pinning her against the ground.
Merida could feel her heartbeat thudding in her chest and face and ears as she looked up at Gaston, wondering how he intended to pay her back for her wee bit of mischief. His mouth was turned up in that canine-tooth-baring grin of his that reminded Merida of a wolf.
With a hand, Gaston reached down and Merida heard a soft clink of metal as his belt fell to the ground.
She tried to raise herself to a sitting position, but Gaston held her fast. He continued to adjust his clothing with his free hand.
"Wait, what-what are you doing?" Merida asked in a voice that sounded uncharacteristically small and pinched to her ears.
Gaston didn't answer her question, only laughed, and the lack of an answer somehow sharpened her unease.
When Gaston grabbed hold of her thigh, gripping it through her thick skirts, Merida tried to kick him off. But it didn't do anything—he just grabbed hold of her ankle mid-kick and then used it to spread her legs open. She struggled with him then, using her full strength, twisting. With her whole weight she tried to shove him off of her, no longer laughing, even though Gaston still was.
Gaston loomed over her, and Merida could see the thick cock between his legs, stiff and erect. The head of it was a dark, flushed red that looked somehow absurd, in this place, on Gaston, given how normal and ordinary everything had been just moments earlier.
"No..." Her voice sounded weak and thin, and she had stopped struggling, somehow knowing what was happening, what would happen, already knowing it was too late now to stop it.
"Don't you think you've teased me enough, girl?" Gaston asked as he pushed her legs up.
Teased him? Is that what had happened? Merida could feel the chill of the autumn air hit the entrance of her sex as Gaston held her legs open. She twisted, trying to slip out from underneath him, but he held her in a vice-like grip, adjusting his hips to line up with hers.
When he forced himself inside, Merida let out a cry in pain. He was huge, and when he rammed inside, Merida felt like she was being split in two. If the entrance hurt, what came after was worse as Gaston drove his hips into her hard and fast, her body just barely able to accommodate his manhood.
"Please—stop—it hurts—" she begged him as he jerked his hips, but if anything, he only slammed into her even more forcefully in response.
At her side, Merida's fingers gripped handfuls of fallen leaves and dirt; her teeth dug into her lips, biting there to distract from the pain between her legs. It was too late to stop it; all she wanted now was for it to be over, for it to have happened rather than it to be happening.
Finally with another hard thrust, Gaston let out a groan and collapsed on top of her, sweat lining his forehead as he rested his head against the leaves above Merida's shoulder. His cock slid out of her, and Merida trembled as she felt the uncomfortable sensation of liquid sliding from her entrance and pooling on the ground underneath her hips.
Gaston lay heavily on top of her, covering her body with his own. She could feel each of his deep breaths against her own chest, slowing until it became a slumber-like rumble. Merida's eyes flicked nervously in the direction of Gaston's head; when he didn't move for a while, she tried to slip out from under him, trying to move gradually so as to not wake him, but he wrapped his arms around her and she found she couldn't lift him or roll out. He was even heavier than he looked, all muscle, as heavy as a bear.
So she lay there in silence beneath him, trying to control the shaking of her body as tears sprang to her eyes. In her mind, she saw her mother's creased brow, her downturned, disapproving mouth whenever she saw Merida and Gaston talking. She thought her mum had disapproved of the way Gaston nurtured Merida's love of hunting and the outdoors, the way he'd made Merida freer, made it easier for her to brush off her mother's thousand "No"s. But maybe her mother had seen something else in their guest that had perturbed her.
Merida didn't know she slept until she felt herself being roused, her body shaken. When she opened her eyes and saw Gaston's face looking at hers, she almost thought he might apologize. Instead, he pulled her into his lap with one arm and with the other, began to fish his erect cock out of his pants, and then Merida understood what was happening. Again. He lowered her onto his cock, his member forcing her open again, forcing her to take his full length. For a moment, he held her down on him, both of them still, her body stretched, aching, and trembling around him.
Then he moved, his hand pawing at her breasts as he took her a second time, squeezing them roughly through her dress as he shoved himself inside her. This time, she didn't fight the intrusion but tried to move in time with his thrusts, to ride him as best as she could. If she couldn't stop this, the most she could hope for was that it was brief, that she could try to open herself up, find a way to take him without so much pain. If she closed her eyes, if she wanted it, if she reached for that desire that her companion had once inspired in her, then maybe...
Gaston sped up, and Merida could tell he was close. He came in her with a ragged growl.
Luckily, this time, when Gaston slept, he slept on his side, his arms wrapped around Merida. She lay stiff and frozen until she thought Gaston was fast asleep and then slipped out from his embrace. She picked her way quickly through the leaf-covered floor of the forest as the sun slid lower in the sky.
It was only when she had managed to put quite a bit of distance between her and Gaston, finally spotting the edge of the forest, that she stopped to check herself. After checking and fixing her dress, she stooped to reach under her skirts to touch gingerly between her legs, finding not just the stinging presence of Gaston's seed but also her own blood. Merida bit the back of her hand to hold back her tears. It wasn't the physical pain so much as the feeling of loss, the panic at what all of this meant.
Taking a deep breath, Merida pressed on, knowing she had to get home—quickly before Gaston woke and found her first.
As she walked, she momentarily closed her eyes, remembering that when Gaston had chased her in the woods, for a moment she had imagined that when he caught her, he might give her a kiss. She hadn't expected that this day in the woods would end with her losing her virginity, with her limping her way back to the castle, alone, bleeding.
The worst part of it was that she had always felt a kinship with Gaston; had liked how he was the only one in the household who had treated her like a peer, a hunter like him.
It hadn't occurred to her that the whole time, she had been prey.