"Sorry," Debbie said, her eyes refocusing. "I was miles away. What were we talking about, again?"
"Hypnosis," Kurt prompted, an indulgent smirk on his face. An entirely unfair indulgent smirk, Debbie thought as she straightened up on the couch and tried to look attentive. Frankly, there were two possibilities involved here, and Kurt had automatically jumped to the one that involved him being a charismatic and captivating speaker and her being a chronic woolgatherer, as opposed to the one that Debbie privately favored (which involved Kurt having a speaking voice like a Mister Rogers record played at slightly the wrong speed, and a habit of twiddling a charm bracelet around his fingers while he talked.)
"Right, hypnosis," Debbie said. She should have guessed; it had been Kurt's hobby-horse for the last few days, ever since he took that online course. Honestly, how much did he really think he could learn from the Internet, anyway? Three days, and he was behaving like he was Svengoolie or something.
Her eyes narrowed as she remembered a bit more of what he'd been saying. "Right, hypnosis," she said in a slightly harder tone of voice. "You know, I really do wish you'd stop telling me how easy I'd be to hypnotize. It's actually kind of insulting."
"And I wish you'd stop feeling insulted when I tell you that you'd be a very good hypnotic subject," Kurt responded mildly, fiddling with his charm bracelet. "It's not about being weak-willed or easily led, it's about being imaginative and being a good listener. You have a natural ability to focus, Debbie, to listen and..." Debbie's heart sank. She'd been hoping to head him off at the pass, having grown pretty thoroughly bored with the lectures on hypnosis over the past...she glanced at the clock on the cable box. Three hours? Dear suffering Lord, he went on. But it appeared that all she'd done was trigger another one.
He continued futzing with the bracelet as he droned on, snagging each charm with his thumb and sliding the chain along his fingers, then reaching out to pull the next one into reach. By this point in the conversation, the little gemstones were almost more familiar to her than the topic; Debbie practically knew their order by heart. There was the little turquoise crescent, which meant that the amber circle would be coming around next, followed by the little pink triangle, followed by the red square, followed by the...the...what came after the pink triangle? Was it the purple diamond, or was there something in between the purple diamond and the pink triangle? She knew that the last one was the little black star, the one that looked like it was made of obsidian, but--
"Debbie?"
Debbie looked away from the bracelet with a start. "Sorry," she said. "I was just sort of distracted for a moment. Um, you were talking about hypnosis." She actually didn't remember what he'd been saying right before he'd called her name, but hypnosis was a good bet. She couldn't wait for him to find something else to fixate on, but that was how it was with Kurt. Once he found something he was interested in, he threw himself into it. For a while, at least.
"Yes," Kurt said, his voice suggesting infinite reserves of patience that nonetheless took tremendous amounts of effort to draw upon. "I was asking if you were ready to let me hypnotize you yet."
Debbie tried to pretend she'd gotten intensely interested in Kurt's charm bracelet for a moment. (Ah, there it was! The quartz rectangle, between the red square and the purple diamond!) "I don't know," she said, pretending to at least mull the idea over in her head. "I mean, I really should be getting out of the apartment and meeting with Liz, soon..." Actually, they didn't really have plans for the night, but Debbie knew that Liz would back her up in an instant if Debbie said something about a prior engagement. It was an iron-clad excuse, marred only slightly by the fact that Kurt had known Liz almost as long as Debbie had and knew perfectly well when she was lying. And knew when Debbie was lying, too, for that matter.
"It doesn't hurt," Kurt said. "In fact, it feels really nice. It's sort of like sinking into a soft, warm bath, letting the water soak into every pore of your body and relaxing each and every muscle." It took a lot of Debbie's self-control not to roll her eyes, but focusing on the charms as they went past helped. "You feel all your stress, all your thoughts, even the passing of time itself just melt away, Debbie. It feels so good..." Debbie let out a small sigh, resigning herself to another one of Kurt's monologues.
The truth was, Debbie was a little reluctant (not nervous, she mentally clarified to herself, just to make sure she wasn't getting any funny ideas. Not nervous at all. She was just...) reluctant to let Kurt hypnotize her because...well, because she couldn't help thinking that it might somehow shift the balance of power in the apartment a little. She and Kurt had been room-mates for a long time, and everything felt...settled. They'd gotten over the little tensions of being mixed-gender room-mates a long time ago, they'd sorted out their feelings for each other, and things were all...settled. But if she let Kurt make her do...things...Debbie shifted nervously, admitting to herself that she wasn't quite sure what hypnosis could make you do beyond making you cluck like a chicken and dance like Madonna...well, who knew where that could end? Best not to find out, really. Best to just let Kurt know in no uncertain terms that she had no interest in being his 'perfect hypnotic subject' and--
"Debbie?"
Debbie looked up rapidly, trying to pretend she'd been paying attention all along. "Yes?" she said.
"Did you hear what I asked you?" Kurt replied, his expression suggesting he already knew the answer to his question.
