The story of Odin, an inept bartender with a famous cousin, and Murph, the new boy in town, and their embarrassing mutual crushes on each other that just keep getting interrupted by all those bandit attacks on their home of Great Scar. Featuring awkward teenage sexuality, terrible flirting, accidental exhibitionism, jerking off, hair triggers, incest with a spunky little brother who is the only one who knows what he’s doing, and a secret dragon.
“Hey,” said Murph, arms wrapping around Odin from behind.
“Hey!” Odin hadn’t noticed Murph there in the kitchen, and he dropped the glass he was holding.
Murph’s hands were already there to catch it, and he sat it on the counter as he kissed Odin’s neck. “Hey,” he said again. “I had a feeling you might be horny, so I came to see if you were.”
“Mm,” Odin agreed, liking Murph’s hands on his mostly bare chest. “Yeah, I am, actually.”
“Okay but they know you’re not really going to kill us,” said Odin, who really felt that the knife pressed against his neck could be pressed just a little bit less hard against his neck. Or actually that it could be pressed anywhere else, like against a piece of cheese. “Because once you do that then there’ll be literally nothing to stop them from coming in here and beating the shit out of you and they aren’t even going to care that you have backup, which you don’t, actually.”
“Shut up,” Crossbones said, jostling Odin a little, nicking him with the knife. “They care about their kids. They won’t want them to be hurt. Open the window and tell them not to come any closer.”
“Okay,” said the boy nearest the window, who Odin somehow remembered was called Bloodrune. “But, Crossbones…”
“There’s no but,” snapped Crossbones. “Just do it.”
“I will! But there’s a monster out there with them!”
“Wait!” Odin said, holding up his hand for a second before realizing that was exactly what the boy wanted. “Don’t cut our fingers off!”
“Yeah, you can’t!” said Murph, getting up onto his elbows. Odin’s dick was still inside him. “We need them, because we’re boyfriends.”
Right, that was the plan they’d come up with. Odin tried to remember that and not take Murph so seriously that he would cum inside him again, but seriously enough that the boy would believe them. “Yeah, we need fingers so we can hold hands.”
“And give each other handjobs,” Murph added. “It’s really hard to give someone a handjob without fingers.”
Odin nodded, agreeing with that. “And also my sister is deaf, so I need my fingers to speak sign language to her, and it would be really mean of you to prevent her from ever understanding me again. So don’t cut our fingers off, please.”
Odin woke up thinking that he’d really like to stop waking up with his head hurting.
Why did he keep waking up with his head hurting? He didn’t drink and wasn’t really prone to migraines, but it seemed every other day lately he’d been waking up with…
“Pierre!” Odin sat up, wincing. “Ow.” The back of his head was throbbing where the Brotherhood of the Nickel had hit him to knock him out. Which they’d done because they’d been in the process of kidnapping Pierre, holy shit…
“Odin?” That was Murph, who Odin just now realized was sleeping beside him. “Ow, oh fuck, ow, my head.”
There was a plan to deal with the bandits. Odin didn’t really know what it was, but it involved patrols and watching and something else, maybe masculinity or something.
None of those were things Odin was very good at, so he was happy to let everyone else deal with it, going about his days, steadily getting back to work. He’d gotten several days off because of his nose being broken and everything hurting, but he was fine now and everything was going back to normal, and there hadn’t been any more Brotherhood of the Trickle attacks.
“You can finish for the night, Odin,” Uncle Oscar said. They’d been more careful about not having him close the inn alone, which was probably because they thought he’d screw up, but that was fine.
Odin was never one to protest being let off work, so he nodded. “Okay. I might have a bath, is Pierre still out there?”
Odin woke up with an oof as someone heavy landed on him. “Odin!”
Pierre was whispering, but he was doing it in that loud way he whispered where literally everyone could hear him. “Odin!” he whispered again. “Wake up. It’s Christmas!”
Odin nodded, still really asleep. “Yeah. Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas!” Pierre said. “Everyone else is still sleeping. Can I wake them up?”
The first thing Odin noticed when he woke up was that his head hurt. The second thing he noticed was that lots of his other body parts hurt. The third thing he noticed was that his head hurt a lot.
“Ow,” Odin said, hearing his voice come out funnier than usual. He tried to sit up and failed. So instead he said “ow” again but more pitifully this time.
“Odin,” said a nice-sounding voice. Odin managed to open his eyes a little bit, and there was nice-looking Murph, sitting beside his bed. “Are you okay?”
“Goodnight, Otis.”
“It’s Odin, actually,” Odin told Tommy, cleaning up the cups from his table, trying to decide if he could hold all of them so he didn’t have to come back. He could probably pick them all up, but he was less sure about them all getting to the sink, so he only took one in each hand.
Tommy blinked, peering at Odin as if he’d never seen him or his hair before. “You sure? I was there when they named you.”
Odin shrugged. “So was I. Goodnight.” Tonight was the night the bandits were going to burn Tommy’s house down, so Odin should probably be nicer to him, but he didn’t really want to. Plus, it was really late and nobody had come running to say anyone’s house was on fire.
“So,” Pierre asked, kneeling on a bar stool and leaning way too far over the bar. “When are you and Murph going to get married?”
Odin dropped a glass, which fortunately only hit the counter and didn’t break. “Shut up. We’re not getting married, we’re just friends, you dumb loser.”
“Don’t call me a loser!” Pierre said, scowling, but only for a second. “And you’re not just friends if you get a boner every time he walks in the room.”
“It’s not every time, it’s only most of the time,” Odin muttered. “We’re friends. We hang out sometimes. And talk about stuff, like bandits and carpentry and eggs.” They both agreed that eggs were weird.
Pierre nodded. “And when you’re not talking about swords and wood and making babies, you imagine you’re kissing him, right?”
Great Scar’s town hall was a long building the size of two houses that was across the town square from the mayor’s house. Usually people just gathered in the square, but because it was cold, the hall was filled up, crowded with everyone Odin knew.
Unfortunately, Odin’s family’s red hair was common in Great Scar, and none of them had dyed their hair like he had last year, which made it harder to spot them. “Odin!” said Pierre, emerging from nowhere to take Odin’s hand, which was strangely reassuring. “There you are. Are Murph and his family coming?”
“Yeah,” Odin said, looking over his shoulder as if to see them. “He went up to get his dads and said they’d be right behind me, so they’ll probably be here in just a minute.” As he said that, he saw them come in, Rodrigue and Lev in the front, Murph behind them with his other two dads. Odin waved like a loser, then felt even more like a loser when he remembered this might be a huge emergency.
“Do you know what’s going on?” he asked Pierre, to disguise what a loser he was by asking his favourite little brother about important town affairs.
How Best to Use a Sword 