Story Notes: Written in April 2007. Prompt: helpless. Established relationship, ever-so-slight kink; sequel to Reminder.

SequelTo: Reminder

It's fifteen minutes before my "statue duty," as Ray calls it, is over. And it feels like I have a barbed-wire bracelet on.

Which is psychosomatic, and just silly. I checked my wrist on my lunchbreak, and it was hardly red any more, even then. But it kept distracting me, itching and prickling while I stood with the refrigerator door wastefully open. I was unable to work up an appetite for any of my precooked meals, unable to think of any useful work I might do while in the air-conditioning, unable to concentrate on my library book or even recall what it was about from page to page. I kept stepping into the storage room, looking at my cot, stepping quickly out again. Not in the middle of the day.

It was almost a relief to go back out into the heat of the afternoon.

But now I've had my hands clasped behind me for hours, and I can't see them, and more and more all the irritations of the day seem to be centering themselves in that one circle where Ray's hands twisted. The heat rising off the sidewalk, and the backache from long standing; the kids who make faces at me and the teenage girls who try to get me to talk; the occasional sweat droplet that makes it into my eye because I can't wipe my forehead. It all goes there, and it feels raw and red and Ray.

It's thirteen minutes before my duty is over, and Ray walks up. Dear God. I have told him not to touch me when I'm on duty. Please don't touch me.

He doesn't. He just stands very near me, side by side, and starts talking, in a very soft voice and switching subjects every time someone walks close by on the sidewalk, so what comes out is something like, "Didja think about me today? I was thinking about you, about getting you home and getting that uniform off and pulling you into the shower with me, and that's a nice Mustang going by, good paint job, see that? Soap you up slow and rinse you off and I'll get down on my knees in the shower, I know you like that, what do you want for supper? We can pick something up on the way home, Chinese maybe... I can make it last a long time, make you have to hold onto the shower head to keep from falling over, make you noisy, Fraser, I like your noises..."

It is twelve minutes until my duty is over, and it is possible that I will die before then. If I survive I plan to kill Ray. After the shower.