Willow
"Damien, you're not seeing anyone, are you?"
She didn't know what she'd do if he'd ever lied to her. What she'd do if he did have some secret love affair hidden away in the folds of his life that none of them were aware of.
But the words she did utter did not, at any point in her mind, even begin to carry that particular possibility. And neither was she prepared for the possibility.
"Mom, how long do you think I could keep a secret from a house of women? You've monitored me since the day I was born, literally."
Willow's mouth opened, then closed.
The question had been meant as a trap, or at least, a gentle probe dressed as one.
And he'd just dissected it so calmly, as if the nature of the question itself was ridiculous on many levels.
"No." She said finally, more to herself than to him. "No, of course not. You're right."
"I usually am." He replied. Not smugly. Not even arrogantly, but with that playful lilt that denoted he wasn't really meaning it.
Freya made a sound that could have been a cough or a laugh, depending on which direction you were listening from.
Willow shot her a sharp look. Freya examined her fingernails with great interest.
"Damien." She leaned forward slightly, her elbows resting on her knees, her eyes fixed on him with a directness she rarely deployed. She was a patient woman. Had always been. But her patience was being choked, hung by a rope, struggling not to collapse from the pressure. "I am your mother. I've known you since before you knew yourself. I have watched you sleep. I have watched you eat, and cry, and read, and sulk, and dream out loud when you thought no one was listening. I know every version of you that has ever existed in this house. And the version sitting in front of me right now—"
She stopped.
He waited.
"—is not the one I saw in bed last night."
Damien regarded her for a long moment.
"People change, Mom." He said. "Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?"
"Not overnight."
Definitely not overnight. She could understand change, but such a drastic one? In the span of less than 24 hours? What had really happened? That was what she was worried about.
"Maybe I was overdue. Or maybe I've long been this way, and just... didn't want to disappoint you..."
"Damien..."
Willow swallowed, rubbing her mouth.
Freya uncrossed and recrossed her legs. "Son." Her voice was stripped of its usual playful lilt. "No one in this room is accusing you of anything. And no one here wishes to make you feel cornered. But your mother is not wrong. You have been... different. And yes, you could've hidden this from us, but isn't it too much a seismic change, dear? This morning you had a mental breakdown of sorts, then you took your shirt off in the living room. Then you brought a police officer to our home. And now you speak of falling in love as if it's the natural, ordinary next step of the equation. When we know very well that for most people, marriage is a choice made well into adulthood. And that choosing one's partner isn't done on a whim, nor is it something men would even think while in their twenties. You've always frowned at that thought. Surely, you understand how concerned we are...?"
"You might as well just give us some warning, Damien." Willow spoke, sighing.
"Yes. Something, anything..." Freya pleaded.
He regarded them quietly.
"What if there isn't an explanation?" Damien leaned forward as well and rested his elbows on his knees, mirroring Willow's posture with such precision that she momentarily forgot what she'd been about to say. "What if I just... woke up... and decided to finally be myself?"
"Woke up." Willow repeated, numbly.
Freya looked at him. "Be yourself..."
"Yes." He nodded.
"Damien, that's not—"
"I mean it literally, Mom. I had a long nightmare, opened my eyes, and decided that spending the rest of my life being afraid of my own reflection was a waste of a perfectly good face." He said it like he'd switch from tea to coffee. A minor lifestyle adjustment. Barely worth the conversation. "Was that the wrong call? Being myself."
Willow opened her mouth.
Closed it.
The infuriating part wasn't what he said. It was how he said it.
The Damien she was used to would have apologized three times before she finished her sentence.
Would have looked at the floor.
Would have agreed with whatever conclusion she reached, not because he had no opinions of his own, but because having them out loud had never seemed worth the effort to him.
This one was looking directly at her.
Not defiantly. Not with any of the theatrical rebellion she might have braced for from one of the girls at his age, but with a direct honesty.
He had never spoken like this before, like he was the one waiting for them to make sense.
Willow rubbed her temples as she turned the possibilities, and her thoughts, around and around her head, until a loud throbbing took root.
Finally, she drew a breath.
"Let's forget, for a moment, that I can't fathom why the philosophy behind all that involves denuding yourself in front of your family and displaying uncharacteristic familiarity with an unknown police officer." She spoke quietly, staring at her tea-cup. "The truth is, Damien, I'm just not sure it's an appropriate action for you to think your actions would, automatically, not cause some worry in other people who live under the same roof. When those very same actions might be perceived as rude, improper, and very, very inappropriate. It's like you turned on and off a switch with no regard for anything else. Maybe you can, maybe you have, but we as your family members... we can't."
Was it too early to have this discussion? She didn't know. She saw a problem and she wanted to deal with it, as soon as possible.
"I'm sorry."
The apology came so instantaneously that she actually didn't catch what he'd said. "What…?"
"I'm sorry… for causing concern, Mom." Damien said, looking genuinely apologetic. Or perhaps not, and this was another subtle change in personality. A mere formality to get a mother's worries out of the way. "I wasn't feeling well. I was confused and absent-minded. It won't happen again, I promise."
Willow and Freya blinked, momentarily taken aback by how quickly he was to apologize, the sincerity or lack thereof aside.
Then he continued...
"Just, I mean, I admit I didn't handle today well. It was a combination of things. I wasn't in my right headspace, and..." He paused. "I want you to not to expect me to behave same way I did in the past."
"......"
A few seconds passed as Willow and Freya looked at each other, clearly reading the same thing in each other's eyes.
It was a delicate situation, and she figured she'd take a wait and see approach. The kid had apologized, promised he'd do better. Would his actions live up to his words?
"Alright..." The woman nodded, an index finger tapping pensively against her lips. "Just... don't do that anymore, alright. And be more aware that there are women under the same roof, and you being naked and acting... out of your boundaries is bound to cause misunderstandings, whether you intend them or not. I know you haven't had much experience outside the house, but take that same respect you have for us and use it elsewhere too, alright? Never show skin without good reason. No, even in that case, don't show it."
Her tone sounded like that of a stern mother giving advice on dating etiquette, yet this whole time her mind was busy calculating where the scale tipped. What constituted 'good' reasons and where would this new 'good reason' of his start.
Freya stared at Damien as well. Perhaps thinking the same thing as her sister.
But to her, 'being confused and absent-minded' felt like an excuse at best. The image of Damien was still clear.
His head tilted, exposing his pale, beautiful neck. The lean line of his collarbones leading, in a smooth slope, into his broad, but still well-defined shoulders and chest...
Freya closed her eyes for a moment. "As long as you understand, dear. We're not asking you to go back to who you were yesterday. We're asking you to give us time to catch up, and try not to do anything that would... cause unrest. Your mother and I are too young and still unmarried to have a heart attack."
A defusing laugh from both sides.
"Alright, it was a simple misunderstanding." Willow muttered. "Let's drop the topic for now."
As long as there were no consequences of note, best not to push any further.
They weren't going to force him to explain, or delve more into the issue, especially not with something so subjective, and the result would likely be the same even after a couple hours-worth of interrogation, especially since Damien appeared adamantly set upon using the 'I've always been like that' card, whether that was true or not.
Damien nodded as he quietly stood up. "I'll go back to my room, then. I'm feeling a little tired."
His smile was angelically charming.
Willow's gaze remained glued on him for a few moments, but she, too, relented eventually. "Yes. You do that, honey. I'll call you once we've got lunch ready. Be sure to come down later."
Freya and Willow both kept their thoughts private as they watched Damien head out of the living room.
They only spoke after Damien's light footsteps died away, along the hall, up the stairs, and toward his room.
"... That was better than expected, overall."
Freya broke the silence with a weak attempt at humor.
Willow massaged her throbbing temples with the thumb and forefingers of one hand. "You reckon, I have any cause to be worried about that boy?"
"Certainly, you do."
Freya sighed, gazing in the direction where Damien had left.
"But not, I would suppose, for the reasons you're worried about."
"......"
xXx
Damien
I didn't expect to be cornered this quickly, though that was to be expected. While I didn't have the original Damien's memories, it was easy to infer his life thus far hadn't been eventful in terms of close interactions with others, let alone incidents involving women.
So, they'd want an explanation.
The fact I offered one up immediately threw them off the trail and reassured them enough they could leave things for now without pushing any further.
When presented with a solution they preferred over the uncertainties the 'unusual change of behavior' suggested, people often leapt to it with open arms, at least as long as said explanation was within the realm of acceptability. Now, I just had to be careful not to overdo things.
If I mis-estimated and caused some huge scandal, the collateral would fall back on my own family too. Though, wouldn't that also be restraining myself? Reshaping and remolding my original self in line with this world's values.
Sensitively and prudently dealing with other women and all that.
Of course, 'sensitive' and 'prudently' weren't exactly my forte. And could I even pull off a convincing performance of the role of 'gentle, sensitive and bashful young man', especially one as pathetic as the original?
For a good 3-4 decades?
How faithfully could a wolf pretend to be a lamb?
Only, in this scenario, it would appear a young ram was being tutored by wolves to act like a dog.
"What now?"
I walked around the room, briefly scanning Damien's items.
Laptop, several game consoles, comic books, clothing, a few folders with what looked like school assignments, a guitar, notebooks with musical scores and handwritten notes, textbooks, paperclipped research materials for the research essay on English literature—
"Hmm..."
It was quite the room for a 19-year old in these conditions. God, did I have to go back to school? I could probably quit and pursue music or just laze around like some spoiled prince if I really put my heart into it.
I took off my shirt, this time within the sanctuary of my own private space. And stared at my body. Skinny, pale, unblemished. If I were a girl, I'd nod in approval at the face, but the physique wasn't something that'd inspire safety. Or much lust, at any rate. It had potential.
A lot of potential.
Even so, this physique wasn't complete shit, even with its thin, almost sickeningly feeble look and twigs for limbs.
Was this world one of reversed aesthetic ideals? Because the fuck if I'd understand what made someone ogle.
I certainly hadn't seen well-built women roaming the streets, and a quick look online told me that, thankfully, the general sense of aesthetic taste here wasn't totally brain-dead either.
Men with good bodies were appreciated by both sides here. Just that, most men, owing to the highly selective environment and the female-biased circumstances that shaped everything, weren't in great shape at all. They didn't have to be.
While, on the contrary, women had to constantly make an effort and invest their time and money to look more 'beautiful' and 'alluring'.
So, the average woman tended to be way more attractive than the average male.
You'd be hard pressed to find a shabby-looking woman, unless she had totally given up on life. Whereas the male version was entirely justified. After all, just being a breathing human male counted as a big success, right?
Of course, my aesthetically pleasing-appearance-oriented mindset made me jot a note in the mind-screen.
> Note - Set 1st priority: Frequent exercise, along with dietary and other proper methods to gain a healthy, well-developed body as early as possible.
I grinned, hitting that Zyzz pose in the mirror.
It was time to get these dormant muscles of mine pumping some sweet, hot, testosterone-rich blood.
'In fact, why don't I start right now?'
Gotta squeeze that burst of motivation dry.