“You lie with all your lies!”
Example two:
“Gary, why Sam sweating?”
“Well you see, my dear Tiggy. When a boy loves another boy very much, it makes him awkward and have feelings in his penis and mmmphh!”
“Sam, why you use magic and glue Gary’s mouth shut?”
“Is that what that was? Gosh! I just thought I was singing to myself!”
“MMMMPH!”
Example three:
“Hey, Sam. Want to join me in the river? We can bathe before the sun sets and it gets too cold.”
“Sweet molasses.”
“What?”
“Stay back, foul temptress!”
“What?”
“Er. Not you. Uh. I… sensed the presence of a succubus. Like, near here. Ooooh. So very near.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes. Yes I can. Because I have magic. And my succubus-tracking abilities. It’s a thing. A real thing. That I do all the time.”
“Riiiight. Your magical succubus-tracking abilities.”
“Shut up, Gary!”
And on and on it went.
To make matters worse, the road between Meridian City and Tarker Mills had had absolutely nothing on it. No people. No cities. There were villages here and there, but the flatlands here were mostly farmlands in service of the Crown, and they stretched on as far as the eye could see. Meaning no distractions. No chance for escape.
Just me and Ryan.
(And Gary and Tiggy, who were doing their damnedest to make things significantly more difficult. I told them both once while Ryan was relieving himself behind a tree that I would make sure they’d be pooping in buckets for the rest of their lives when we got back to Castle Lockes.
They, of course, had just smirked at me and implied certain acts of an obviously deviant nature that I might consider practicing on Ryan Foxheart. This had led me to blush furiously when Ryan came back to the road and I couldn’t look him in the eye for two days.)
But we were almost there! Minutes away! My spirits were high! I hadn’t said a damn thing embarrassing and/or remotely sexual in at last twenty-four hours. I hadn’t even had any inappropriate thoughts about Ryan. Sure, there was a bit of pining going on (Why won’t you love me?) but it was nothing I couldn’t handle. I was an apprentice to the King’s Wizard, for fuck’s sake. I was on my way to slay (hopefully) a dragon. I was going to save the Prince and then when I got back to Castle Lockes after successfully training with Randall, there’d be a welcome home party and I would meet the (new) man of my dreams and his name would be Sloan Fontaine or Wesley York IV and we would dance until the early hours of the morning (much like I’d done with Ryan at the tavern, but whatever) and then he’d take me back to his estate and I would find out if I was a fan of rimming or not (spoiler: I was probably a fan of rimming).
I had plans.
Things were looking up.
“What are you so happy about?” Gary asked me suspiciously.
“Everything, my good man,” I said. “I have plans.”
“I don’t want to know what they are if the manic smile on your face is indicative of anything.”
“I’m probably into rimming,” I told him, and Ryan tripped and almost fell down. Sometimes he was so graceless for a knight.