Autumn Pt. 01 Ch. 01

Curious, then, that she was looking at him the same way.

No, that had to be wishful thinking; his mother's expression conveyed nothing more than amusement. The wind might have changed the way they looked but not how their minds worked. If Frank wanted proof of that, he need only consider his inability to gaze upon the sexiest woman alive without reflecting upon possible inconsistencies in his gender politics as revealed by his reaction to not-makeup. Clearly, he was the same geek he'd always been, with the same need to over-analyze everything. That meant his mother was still the standard-bearer for responsibility, maturity, and not-having-fun-until-your-chores-and-homework-are-done. There was no one less hedonistic, less corruptible, than she was.

Which was good, because Frank wasn't sure he'd want his mom to look at him like that.

Or maybe he was sure that he absolutely did want her to. That was a strong possibility.

Shit, what guy wouldn't want the most attractive woman he'd ever seen to show a little interest in them? To suggest, through the focus of her eyes and the curvature of her lips, that he might be in the same league as her? Might even stand a chance with her?

Frank wasn't depraved enough to pursue such an opportunity, of course. The mere thought closed his windpipe and made his head spin. He didn't mind knowing that the option was there, though. The body he occupied might not be his, but her appreciation of it was still gratifying. What a curious thing the human psyche was.

Whether she was checking him out or not, though, his mother could reduce a man to primordial ooze with that intent stare. Her eyes were so big and dark. So powerful. They were like miniature black holes, pulling all mass and energy towards their vortices.

"At first, I was alarmed," his mom said as she stepped up to him, wasting no time in placing a hand on his abs. Did Frank tense them, making sure they'd feel chiseled from stone? Only because that was instinctual, not because he was actively trying to impress his mother with his hard body. Or so he'd maintain under oath. "I have to admit, though," she continued, "this isn't the worst thing that could happen." Was she talking about Frank or herself? "I think I could get used to this," she added, hand sliding up to a swollen pectoral.

A shiver ran down Frank's spine. He couldn't even have said whether that was from excitement or embarrassment. Probably both. Part of him welcomed her touch, yet he still wished her hand would drop back to her side, because he didn't need the temptation.

More than anything, though, he hoped she didn't notice his raging hard-on.

Granted, it seemed that he'd gotten a few improvements down there as well, so she probably couldn't have missed it. Frank almost couldn't believe the tent in his pants.

He told himself that her light caress didn't mean anything. If it had been years since his mother had touched anything other than his his hands or his shoulders, that was just because she knew him well enough to sense his discomfort with his own body. To know that self-consciousness would have made him recoil. For her to do so now didn't mean that she wanted to have sex with him—only that she found the changes aesthetically pleasing and wanted him to know that. The hand on his chest wasn't so different, ultimately, from the rote compliments she'd always pay him whenever he did something different with his hair or his beard. It was physical rather than verbal, but was otherwise the same.

Shit, she might not even have meant that much by it. Perhaps it was as impossible for his mother to keep her hands off him as it had been for Frank to keep his eyes off her. He was there, bare-chested and built more like an action figure than an actual person, and that was that. It had only happened because there was no way for it not to.

Frank leaned forward a bit and inhaled through his nose. That was a poor substitute for touching her, as he desperately longed to, but it allowed another of his senses to interact with the sexed-up version of his mother without requiring him to cross any real lines.

"I suppose I could too," Frank said, closing his eyes and savoring her scent. It reminded him of flowers and black berries. Nothing of the sort had ever been bottled, though, which meant that his mother was no more wearing perfume than she was makeup. The delightful smell was something her body gave off naturally in this form.

As much as Frank would have liked to know whether he produced his own cologne in this form, he wasn't about to raise an arm and sniff his armpit. Not with his mother standing right in front of him like that. He totally would have otherwise, though.

She titled her head back and cleared her throat.

With an embarrassed wince, Frank stood up straight and exhaled.

The most intriguing grin spread across his mother's face. She didn't say that it was every bit as hard for her to imagine how Frank could look better as it was for him to find flaw in her physique, but that sentiment was written plainly across her face. That wasn't wishful thinking. Frank definitely had a powerful need to impress his mother, he realized, but anyone seeing that look on her face would come to the same conclusion. Lust practically rolled off her in waves, thick and palpable. And, for just an instant, her brown eyes lit up—literally.

The flash of amber light nearly blinded Frank, though it also made his cock twitch.

Only an asshat would compare his mother's appreciative gaze to the leering so many women were forced to endure on a daily basis. Frank didn't feel dehumanized, let alone threatened—just a little self-conscious. Yet some part of him felt that he finally understood what objectification felt like. Sort of, anyway.

That was all the more absurd because he didn't have anything to feel anxious about. Thanks to the wind, Frank was as perfect an embodiment of masculinity as his mother was femininity. Or at least certain conceptions thereof. And while Frank sort of hated himself for even having opinions about what a man "should" look like, he had to admit that he really liked the way he looked. In fact, while no one had ever asked what he'd look like if given complete control over his appearance, he figured there was no better answer than the body he now inhabited. Which almost certainly wasn't a coincidence.

Was that any less true for his mother? Frank supposed that he'd heard her say that "real women" had curves and make the occasional disparaging remark about the celebrities her favorite magazines kept putting on the cover. The more interesting question, though, was how closely he resembled her vision of the perfect man. His father had a slender build, though no one would call him a pretty boy. Was that his mother's type? Or did she secretly wish that the man she'd married was a bit more muscular? Maybe even a lot more?

No, that wasn't what he needed to focus on. Frank had to ask himself whether they'd exerted some influence over their transformations, if only subconsciously, and what it would mean if they had. He had to figure out what the heck was—

"Were those there a moment ago?" his mother asked, turning her head to the side.

"The painting?" Frank asked, his mind catching up to her eyes.

"No, the envelopes stuck in the frame," his mother clarified.

Hence the plural. "I don't think so."

The hand he wished would never leave his body, even though he'd mentally banished it just a short while ago, fell away. His mom went and collected the mysterious arrivals.

That gave Frank a chance to check out her backside. So, of course, he took it.

A quick glimpse was all that he could handle, though. Her ass was even more amazing than he'd expected. It was big and round, jutting out behind her where it had once sagged towards the floor. Frank figured he could balance a tea tray on that thing. Stark lines of cleavage separated her cheeks from her thighs, and those alabaster orbs swelled impressively with each step she took. That might have been a little less obvious if her babydoll could have been bothered to fall past her freaking hips, but Frank doubted it.

It would have been nice of her to try, though. Now that she'd stepped away, and her perfume no longer clouded his nostrils, he remembered how wrong incest was. Frank might not have felt the visceral disgust that any normal person would have upon realizing that they were salivating over an immediately family member, but he knew that he should have.

So why didn't he?

A voice in the back of his mind whispered, "That battle was fought years ago."

"Looks like there's one for each of us," his mother said, looking back over her shoulder.

"Makes sense," Frank said as he took the envelope from his mother's outstretched hand. It didn't, though; ever since the wind had blown, nothing had. He was doing his best to roll with the punches, but part of him realized he should have been freaking the fuck out.

"You sure this is for me?" he asked, staring down at the gold script.

"The 'Orwin' part throwing you off?" his mother asked.

"A bit, yeah," Frank said. He'd never met anyone with that surname. "Can I see yours?"

His mom shrugged and handed the envelope over. It had "Ellen Orwin" written on the back, as Frank ought to have expected. He had no idea why the author had gotten their last name wrong, but there was no doubt the letters were meant for him and his mother.

With a defeated sigh, he returned it. Then he removed the letter from his and read aloud.

"No harm shall befall any who heed these strictures:

Thou shalt not spill;

Nor eat of the gold or silver fruit;

Nor plant a seed in the field from whence it came."

"No different here," his mother said.

"Dafuq's that supposed to mean?" Frank asked no one in particular.

An answer came, but not in the form he'd have preferred. Leaves appeared at their feet then began to swirl around them as a wind that had not passed through any window picked up. In the blink of an eye, it carried them back to the farmhouse.

When it departed, it took their memories with it. For a brief instant, Frank felt it happening. He struggled to hold onto the palace and the painting, the body he'd always wanted, and the ominous letter, yet all knowledge thereof vanished. The next thing he knew, he was staring down at his hands, wondering what it was he'd been grasping at.

#

"What about incest, then?" Frank's grandfather asked with a half-hidden grin.

Frank knocked back his whisky then immediately regretted doing so. Half the peat smoke in Scotland had evidently made its way into a single bottle. That made for a rich flavor, but it didn't go down easy—especially if one was stupid enough to gulp it rather than taking slow sips. He did his best to ignore the dryness as he asked, "What about it?"

His grandfather shrugged, though the look on his face remained smug. "Seems like you'd have to condone it, given what you just said. I'm probably missing something, though."

Brianna hid a snort behind her fist. The argument between Frank and Grandpa Dick hadn't chased her back inside, the way it had everyone else, but neither was she about to wade in herself. A few short years ago, his cousin would have been the first to storm the ramparts, but somewhere along the way, she'd learned how to choose her battles. She was now more likely wage them inside a courtroom, after countless hours of research, than marching in the streets, armed only with fiery passion and a catchy slogan.

Frank admired her restraint. He'd never shared his cousin's passion for activism, and grad school had changed him as much as law school had her, but he sometimes found it hard to bite his tongue. On most issues, he was content to say that he'd need more reliable estimates of the costs and benefits before taking a position—as far as Frank was concerned, reasonable people could disagree about the minimum wage, tax rates, and trade agreements—he did not, however, see much room for disagreement about whether it was okay for people to do as they pleased when it had no impact on anyone else. From sex to drugs to free speech, Frank was in the "anything goes" camp and did not think highly of those who weren't.

Such as their grandfather.

"Um, yeah, there is," Frank replied, in a smarmier tone than he'd meant to adopt. Grandpa Dick probably thought that meant he'd scored a point. In the eyes of men like him, nothing discredited an argument more thoroughly than the slightest display of emotion from the one who'd advanced it. Because, hey, argumentum ad hominem is fun. "The whole 'consenting adults' thing pretty much rules out child abuse," he added.

"That would be your only objection? Nothing wrong with a brother marrying his sister and having a bunch of deformed kids as long as they're both over eighteen?"

Frank had actually read up on the link between incest and birth defects and found that it was far weaker than most people thought. It was there, to be sure, but it was also highly conditional. Rare conditions could be kept dormant by marrying outside the family, as that dramatically reduced the odds of both parents carrying the recessive gene that caused it, but that was pretty much the whole story. Yes, that was why hemophilia had run rampant through the notoriously inbred royalty of Europe, but healthy genes didn't suddenly mutate when a brother took his sister to bed. Except in pop culture, where incest inevitably led to physical deformities, cannibalism, and psychopathy within a single generation.

"Okay, forget birth defects," his grandfather said, making it sound charitable to retract the obvious cheap shot. No wonder Frank and Brianna were the only ones left on the porch. "Should parents start giving their kids condoms and lubricant as pumpkin stuffers?"

Frank did not dignify that with a response.

"You're probably the smartest person in the family," Grandpa Dick told him, making Brianna's eyes go wide. She was, for the time being, the only one with a post-baccalaureate degree, and no one was threatening her status as the only high school valedictorian. She also held the only Ivy League degree, though Frank was not convinced that a bachelor's from Dartmouth was all that special. "Smarts and sense are not the same, though."

"I know the line about Harvard and the Boston phone book," Frank preempted. Sometimes, he wondered if his grandfather was William F. Buckley, rather than just an admirer.

"Seems to me that you Ivory Tower types defend the craziest of claims," Grandpa Dick said, cordial as you please, "just to see if you can come up with an argument that doesn't get shot down right away. Give someone like that control of a classroom and certain students will parrot their views just to get an A. Then others glom onto them, because no one likes to be in the minority. That whole process just keeps snowballing until what began as an exercise in vanity becomes the next front in the culture war."

He wasn't about to admit it, but Frank partially agreed with that. His grandfather was blowing things way out of proportion, as was his wont, but there was no denying that the academy had its share of trolls. Paul Krugman couldn't really believe all the shit he wrote in The New York Times; he had to be on a quest to determine what it took to tarnish the reputation of a first-rate economist and Nobel laureate. It also seemed clear to Frank that professors who staked out bold positions and defended them vigorously won more converts than those who were honest about the limitations of their claims. The one thing student evaluations did not incentivize was actual learning.

That hardly meant that people should do things the way everyone had always done them just because everyone had always done them that way, though.

"When that happens, it's not enough to be smart, because no one has the intellectual firepower to start from scratch and get it right," their grandfather continued, sounding more like the pompous professors he held in such low regard than he must have realized. "It takes real hubris to cast aside a system of values that's been with us for millenia."

"The thing is, Grandpa," Frank said, "our hyper-aversion to incest isn't millenia old. It's still legal to marry your first cousin in a lot of states. It's not as common to actually do so as it once was, obviously, but you don't have to look very hard to find evidence that we used to think it wasn't such a big deal. That we not only permitted it, legally, but practiced it."

There were also lots of countries where incest remained widespread. Frank didn't bother mentioning that, though, as his grandfather would only say that they were uncivilized.

"Seriously, though, where does anyone get the idea that the institution of marriage has existed in its present form for anything more than a few decades?" That was mostly a rhetorical question, but Frank really did wonder why people said that.

"Sorry, I'm still stuck on the 'hyper-aversion' part," his grandfather replied.

"One of the hottest topics in economics these days is the rise of assortative mating," Frank continued, causing both his grandfather and his cousin to snort.

"So you all are experts on mating now, too?" Brianna said.

Their grandfather accused him of using big words just to sound smart, and did so without actually using any of his own—big or otherwise. Frank cringed. He hated when economists threw around jargon that no one was familiar with. Some things became second nature when you spent all your time around people who had their own little language, though.

"Nowadays, people tend to choose spouses with similar levels of education and income," he said, ignoring both their reactions. "They didn't always, though. Searching for one's 'soul mate' is an awfully modern thing to do." He'd conflated two different things there; one was the ideal everyone aspired to, the other a fairly accurate description of what they actually did. But that didn't change his overall poin. "Marriage used to be an economic necessity, and not just for women. A man who was still a bachelor after he'd been in the workforce for a few years was seen as unreliable and would be passed over for promotion. Go a little farther back, and you find it being used to improve social standing or forge alliances. The institution as we now know it has really only been around since the seventies."

"That may be," their grandfather said, "but I think we're getting offtrack." Of course he did. Everyone always felt that way after they started to lose an argument. "I still want to know whether you think it's okay for a brother to have sex with his sister."

"Assuming they're both of age, both into it, and use protection?"

Their grandfather nodded.

Though he sat on the railing, with nothing but open air behind him, Frank suddenly felt as though his back was against the wall.

"The word 'okay' can mean a lot of different things," he observed. "Are you asking whether that would give me the heebie-jeebies? Or whether they should be locked up?"

"Is this guy headed for a PhD or what?" Brianna said, jabbing him with her elbow.

"Right, because lawyers never equivocate," Frank shot back.

"Well, I guess your grandfather is just too small-minded to tell the difference between being grossed-out by something and it presenting a legitimate threat to society."

"I didn't say that," Frank replied, "but it makes a difference which one you're asking."

Grandpa Dick took a sip of whisky, his gray eyes locked on Frank. "If you think you're the only one capable of drawing those distinctions, at least be man enough to admit it."

Had they gone a full five minutes before the first gratuitous appeal to masculinity? In an argument about what forms of human sexuality were defensible? Amazing.