It wasn't a suggestion. It couldn't have been a suggestion, because Louis wasn't hypnotized yet. Louis knew he wasn't hypnotized yet, because his eyes were still open and he was still paying attention to every word Tommi said. He was sure he was paying attention to Tommi's words, because Tommi just told him to keep staring at the spiral and following the lines around and down, deeper and deeper, and Louis remembered hearing it so he knew that he was still awake. So it couldn't have been a suggestion, at least not a hypnotic one. Tommi was just reminding him to pay close attention to the spiral and not to let himself get distracted. By Tommi, probably.
Just thinking about Tommi almost made Louis glance over at her, but then he remembered that he was supposed to keep looking at the spiral and following the lines. He couldn't help picturing her in his mind, though. Those warm, soulful brown eyes, so deep and dark that Louis couldn't always tell where the iris ended and the pupils began. The adorable, pixie-cut brown hair that seemed to invite tousling and petting. That bright, dimpled smile set in that adorably pale face that always lit up the room whenever she grinned. She was probably smiling right now-he could hear it in her voice as she said, "That's it, Louis. Just let the slow, twisting pull capture your gaze, pulling all your thoughts down to the heart of the spiral for me."
Louis didn't really know if it was working-his only real knowledge of hypnosis came from late-night channel surfing, cheesy old television shows and black-and-white movies left on as background noise during marathon cram sessions. They always featured pretty young women trailing off into silence as they gazed into flashing lights or spinning hypno-discs, becoming blank and empty and ready to be programmed to rob banks or poison Magnum, PI or something. Louis didn't feel blank at all. He felt very aware of his body, acutely conscious of Tommi's presence in the room. But he watched the spiral anyway.
It seemed to make Tommi happy. "You're doing so well," she cooed, her hand gently reaching out to stroke along the deep brown skin of Louis's forearm. His breath hitched momentarily at the unexpected sensation-not unwelcome at all, just unexpected-but then returned to a slow, steady, rise and fall as she ran her fingers up and down the muscles of his forearm in perfect time to his gradually deepening breaths. This couldn't be hypnosis, could it? Hypnosis was supposed to make you relaxed and sleepy, not... Louis tried to describe the strange, tingling energy that washed over his scalp and down his spine to make his whole body shudder, and failed.
"Just let the rest of the world fade away, Louis," Tommi said, as though she didn't even realize that her presence was the most potent distraction of all. "The center of the spiral is all you can see now, you can't possibly pull your gaze away from it. It's like a magnet on your eyes, a magnet on your mind, pulling all your thoughts into alignment with the sound of my voice. The more you watch, the more you want to watch. The more you listen, the more you want to listen to me. Isn't that right, Louis?"
Louis nodded absently, but his mind was already racing a mile a minute as a sudden revelation hit him. What if she did know? Louis didn't really think of himself as a ladies' man-he was a line cook at a vegan bistro, that wasn't exactly the kind of thing that made women throw their panties at a guy. But it occurred to him that Tommi never told him what this 'hypnosis experiment' was for. She didn't say it was for a class, or a certification or something. She just asked him to come back to her place after work because she needed someone to help her out with this thing she wanted to try. And Louis said yes because he crushed so hard on Tommi that she could have asked him to come back to her place and test poisons and he would have agreed to it.
"That's right," Tommi purred, her voice thick with praise and approval, and Louis found his lips curling into a tiny smile. "You can't stop staring, your gaze is perfectly fixated on the spiral now. Every time you think about looking away, the effort tires you out before you can make those heavy, lazy eyes move. And it makes you so much more exhausted every time you try. Every time you try to look away, you only go deeper for me, don't you?" It somehow seemed too much like effort to respond in words, but Louis wanted to show Tommi that he was listening. He nodded again, even though he felt pretty certain that he could look away if he really wanted to. He just didn't want to right now. Not when it was making Tommi so happy.
"Of course you do," Tommi said gently, her fingers stroking down his arm to his wrist, then drifting further down to rest on his thigh. "And you know that you can just relax and enjoy that feeling, relax and enjoy everything that's happening to you as long as you feel safe and comfortable. And if there's anything that makes you feel less than perfectly safe, less than perfectly comfortable, your deep self is going to let me know. You won't need to think about it, you won't need to think at all. It's just going to happen, all by itself. Like a sneeze or a cough, Louis. An automatic, unthinking reflex whenever you feel anything other than safe and comfortable with what I'm doing. Do you understand?"
Louis nodded. It felt so easy to keep nodding along to everything Tommi said now, like he'd just gotten used to the way his head bobbed up and down whenever she asked him a question and he'd stopped even trying to think about what she was saying. Which was absurd, because he was listening closely to every word and paying careful attention to the sound of her voice... but it still felt so warm and comfortable to agree. So nice to just keep watching the spiral and wait for her to finish hypnotizing him.
