Lionel was done pretending this was okay.
“There’s no time to summon Owen,” he said with a growl, leaning on the table. “Even if this letter gets through, by the time he arrives, it could be too late.”
Bandits had been plaguing Great Scar, his home, for the past few weeks now. They’d threatened harm if the townspeople tried to ask for help, and were too well armed to fight back against. Or at least they claimed to be—nobody had dared challenge them yet.
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?”
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.
atever they were going to do, so Odin always liked to be doing that in case someone new came into the Trapper’s Hunt, and it turned out to be the start of some grand quest where he could maybe be a supporting character. He’d been practicing his swordplay lately, so he thought he’d make a good adventurer, or maybe even a knight like his cousin was, according to his letters.
(Reposting the old Other Boys chapter as chapter 1 of this new story!)
“Your parents are here,” Gavin called out.
Owen nodded, then remembered he couldn’t nod when they weren’t in the same place. “Okay, I’m coming.” He lit a match, got the barbeque going, and shut the lid. He grabbed his phone off the side table and texted Darby on his way in. Your grandparents are here, get dressed.
Then, to Greg, he sent, Grandma and grandpa are here, can you please guilt Darby into getting dressed?
As he was hitting send, he got a response from Darby. You can’t make me get dressed in my own house!
Okay. We’ll be down in a minute, said Greg.
Bartenders in stories were always washing glasses behind the bar when the main characters came in to do whatever they were going to do, so Odin always liked to be doing that in case someone new came into the Trapper’s Hunt, and it turned out to be the start of some grand quest where he could maybe be a supporting character. He’d been practicing his swordplay lately, so he thought he’d make a good adventurer, or maybe even a knight like his cousin was, according to his letters.
Odin couldn’t really justify leaving his aunt and uncle to run the inn on their own even if they insisted he wasn’t beholden to them, though. But if there like, some kind of emergency that forced him to embark on a life of adventure that just coincidentally meant he had to sleep with a bunch of like, hot sorceresses or noble girls or something, that would be totally different.
So Odin liked to wash the glasses.
Greg was confused. He’d been confused for a long time, probably his whole life. The world didn’t make any sense to him. Being confused wasn’t new.
But he was especially confused now. Nobody had ever been nice to him. Not like this. He’d been housed and fed and fostered and sent to school and all that. But always grudgingly. Or because someone had wanted something from him. Or for some reason. It was never just because people were nice. People weren’t nice, not to Greg.
And yet Darby and his family were being nice to Greg for no reason. He didn’t understand.
“Do you want more potatoes, Greg?” Mrs. Trapp asked, offering him a bowl.
“I feel like we shouldn’t have kept going.”
Owen grinned, took Gavin’s hand in his. “You didn’t enjoy it?”
“I did, but there’s no way it took us this long to come down for any other reason. Your parents are totally going to know we were up there having sex.” Gavin sounded uncharacteristically worried.
Owen kind of wanted to flee the country and never look back, so he knew where Gavin was coming from. But Gavin being visibly nervous made him want to project confidence—Gavin was always confident when Owen was worried. “I think that ship might have sailed when dad walked in on us having sex, dearest.”
How Best to Use a Sword 