The bar was quiet for a Friday, but Miranda didn’t mind; it had been a long day, and she was very much looking forward to a bit of beer and some mind-numbing sports on the TV.

What she was not looking forward to was a strange man coming to sit too close to her to chat her up.

“Hi there,” he said after ordering his own drink, friendly enough. “I’m Tom.”

“Miranda,” she said, not quite as curt as she had wanted.

She was never very good at deflecting conversation.

“Enjoying your night out?” he asked.

“Sure,” she said, sipping her beer. “Been a long week. You know how it goes.”

He laughed. “I do. At least it’s early, though. You have the whole weekend ahead of you.”

“Yeah,” Miranda said. He was kind enough, at least, and wasn’t immediately hitting her with terrible lines. She realized that she had no idea what time it was, and started rustling through her purse to find her phone, muttering explanation: “Bars never have clocks…”

The man went into his pocket and drew out a – a silver pocketwatch, and opened it.

She felt her heart thud, loudly, and stilled to suppress any reaction; it was just a watch, just a way for him to check the time. It was so embarrassing that she was wired this way, that objects of her fetish were so overwhelming to her, even in such ordinary contexts –

“7:30,” Tom said, smiling.

She smiled weakly back. “Thanks.”

To her alarm, he lifted the watch fully out of his pocket and unclipped it from his belt to show it to her.

“Do you like it?” he asked. “I saw you noticing it.”

Miranda cleared her throat. “Not a lot of people carry them. It’s pretty.”

“It was a gift,” Tom said. “It sounds a little weird, but actually, well… I’m a hypnotist.”

…Fuck.

“Oh,” she said, but it was almost cracked, so she tried again. “Oh, that’s… cool.”

Thankfully, Tom laughed. “Yeah, that’s about the reaction I usually get. It’s just a hobby. I won’t turn you into a chicken in front of people, or anything.”

Her face was burning; he must see it. Miranda wanted nothing more than to leave, and started thinking of excuses: forgotten plans, sick family member, um, washing her hair, walking her dog –

But the man, damn him, got an attractive little glint in his eye and leaned in, and said, “Unless you want me to.”

She felt a hot flush, tightness in her stomach.

“I –”

“Just kidding,” he said, smiling, leaning back, but she was too frazzled to really recover. “The chicken thing is so overdone. Although, you might make a cute cat.”

“Ha-ha,” she deadpanned; it was all she could do to stay afloat.

“Usually, the ‘I’m a hypnotist’ is a good pick-up line, actually,” he said, holding the watch up by the chain to look at it dangling, nonchalant, all while she willed her heart to stop racing. “A lot of girls want to try it out.”

“Well,” Miranda said, “I guess I’m not like other girls.”

“No,” he agreed, and turned to look at her, still holding the watch in the air as it spun and swayed gently, and in that moment, it was too close to something pornographic; a strange, handsome man and his pocketwatch, trying to hypnotize her at a bar. If he knew – if he knew that she was weaker than she looked –

“But you want to try it, don’t you,” he said, quietly, not really a question, and her voice caught in her throat. “It just means something different to you than it does to ‘other girls’. Something more powerful.”

“Um –” she choked out.

He started to swing the watch back and forth purposefully now, and the eroticism of it was so striking that it started to capture her…

“You can’t hide it from me. I know this turns you on,” he murmured, and she gasped at his brashness, but felt stuck, pleasurably trapped, losing the fight. He leaned in, letting the watch swing in front of her, but closing the distance and whispering into her ear: “I know it because we’re at a hypnosis con, and you’ve just forgotten about it.”

A spark of something went off in Miranda’s mind, but her eyes were fluttering and her head was lolling and sinking down…

–

“I love you,” she said, breathlessly, in the hotel bar. “‘A gift.’ I guess that was true, at least…”

Tom beamed at her and admired the mirrored surface of the watch. “Yep, and a wonderful gift it was. Come on, hon, it’s time for the party upstairs.”