Pairing: Nathan/Audrey
Rating: G (K)
Disclaimer: There'd be plenty of things that would be different if I owned Haven, despite its near perfection.
Spoilers: Maybe. I suppose if you haven't seen "Ain't No Sunshine", you might be surprised.
Summary: A whole different type of programming. Drabble. Part of a nine-part series of one-shots for a scifiland challenge. They're unrelated drabbles, but written and published as a group. This one is a tad more abstract than the rest. Prompt: ROBOT.
He'd nearly forgotten, until very recently. The warm, gentle electricity of skin, how much simple pleasure could come of touch (handshake, brush, lick, bite). The worst part was that he didn't always have this…affliction (disease, inadequacy). If he tried, with a little bit of imagination, he could muster half-memories (the rest pleasant hypothesis and conjecture) of what it felt like. What feeling felt like. That was the (proverbial) agony, knowing that sensation (only in little fictions of memory, of course) and being denied actuality. But after years of deprivation, his mind had dulled his recollections (probably in self-defense). As time passed, he fell into a robotic reality (wake up, grab coffee, come to work, avoid the Chief, argue with the Chief, make some peace, go to sleep, then do it all again). Patterns, repetition (simplicity, unchallenging). All the more like cans of metal for how little humanity he felt (paradox) without the benefit of touch. How human could he be?
With a simple (anything but) touch (kiss), Audrey Parker had jolted nerves that should have never felt joy (thunder) again. Now, his life was still rather like that of an android in those cheesy sci-fi movies she liked to watch after a long case (payment for making dinner, she insisted). His programming was simple: touch. Every balmy rush her skin induced brought him closer to the final subroutine.