Title: A Wordless Kind of Love
Author: Mina Robins
Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Pairing: Camerah
Rating: T
Summary: She uses Cameron, she knows that she does.
….
Cameron likes to touch, a lot, too much at times.
All the time actually.
The tin miss enjoyed lightly tracing patterns over Sarah's skin. When they were alone, Sarah can still withstand it, but it bothers her when Cameron lingers and touches when she should know better.
….
Sarah was in the midst of wringing out Derek for taking John out for an impromptu weekend camping trip. The pair had pretty much just vanished without informing her. The only reason Sarah hadn't chased after Derek with guns a blazing was the last minute note duct taped onto their fridge. John had scribbled out the details of his where abouts and begged for a chance to bond with his uncle.
The pair had feigned unavailability due to bad reception. It made Sarah furious that Derek would just undermine her authority and had most likely talked John into turning off his cell phone.
Cameron had walked in at the moment to start dinner. When the cyborg had silently drifted pass Sarah, it had the nerve to brush a hand against her backside. The movement was discreet but enough to make Sarah loose her train of thought and to reminisce on memories that caused her to blush an ashamed scarlet. The caress had caused the fuming mother to stall in her rant and altogether freeze.
Sarah trained her gaze forward and tried to read the two male's reaction only to find that both John and Derek had entirely zoned out on her. They had most likely missed the last portion of her talk.
Sighing, Sarah ran a hand tiredly through her hair and climbed up the stairs without another word.
As she was closing her bedroom door she could hear the boys angrily whispering between each other and trying to blame Sarah's disappointment on something other than themselves.
…
Sarah knows this is wrong, but she needs it. She had to have some kind of release, to be unafraid of any repercussions. She didn't have time for lengthy, binding relationships. She needed an outlet of some kind and as fun as target practice is, sex would still be her first option for tension venting.
And as twisted as it was, she was getting it from Cameron. Not Derek. Cameron
She has had therapy, and drugs. Never anything too harsh on her system, she had to remain capable of functioning a gun and to fight for her child's life. Even when she was in the psychiatric ward, she stayed away from the mind numbing narcotics prescribed for her. Hid them under her tongue, threw them up after when they found out she was hiding them. She still has nightmares of suffocating hands pressed over her nose and mouth.
She remained vigilant for escape. Always nervous, strained. A neurotic lion in captivity.
She has tried therapy with drugs, Cameron's tongue against her throbbing clit just happens to be better than both combined. This was probably the most fucked up situation she has willing gotten herself into.
Sarah shoves Cameron off her body and rolls them roughly over until she's on top. She plunders Cameron's mouth and it pains some small almost non-existent something in her to feel the robot willingly accept her sharp treatment, never resisting; only responsively offering.
Derek is downstairs, probably still chumming around with her son. Being the "fun" parent Sarah can never be. Not when the future had it sights on John's death.
It angered her to know the truth, to be faced with something that was unchangeable. To be fucking a piece of a future that she has sworn to annihilate.
Her fingers enter in a bruising pace, Cameron just mews.
…..
The cybernetic ran her finger tips over Sarah's recently dried nail polish; the terminator had persuaded Sarah to indulge in a French manicure.
"I'm just going to end up chipping them on the next mission." Sarah mentions.
"I know." Cameron replies, unperturbed by that outcome. She trails her hands over Sarah's hands and then up Sarah's arms.
"I won't allow you to wastes so of my much time again." Sarah warns, apprehensive that Cameron would try to convince her again. She wasn't even sure how Cameron had managed to coax her into something so frivolous in the first place.
"I understand." Cameron is dancing an intricate design over Sarah's shoulders and is now leaning in to ghost her lips over Sarah's clavicle.
They are in Sarah's room. Cameron tilts her head down to listen to the relax thumping of Sarah's heart. Her hands trail back down the path she has made; there are goose bumps beneath her fingers. When she has Sarah's calloused hands in her own she rubs her thumbs over the smooth nail polish.
Sarah sighs and pulls her hand out of Cameron's grasp. She wonders if the robot really understands. She doubts Cameron's processor can fathom anything pass tactics and inception. The faux daughter of hers was a robot and always will be one. An emotionless metal contraption built for calculated killings and now reprogramed to serve her son.
And recently her.
…
Cameron's kisses are whatever she wants to be. The machine can be told to be unyielding and pressuring.
But she had to be told.
If Sarah didn't ask or command Cameron to be crass with her, then the tin miss would be only the lightest connection of lips and a night of endless caresses. The kind that made her think her heart was going to break.
The terminator had a tendency to treat Sarah like she was fragile China and it made her feel weak instead of cherished.
Nonetheless, she knows why Cameron does this. But does Cameron realize? Is she intentionally allowing Sarah to be an insecure, flawed and exhausted, to be a human woman? Cameron doesn't judge. Sarah wants to believe she isn't capable of judging.
But every time they lay together it gets hard to ignore, the longing way the machine looks at her. One would classify it as adoring, bordering loving. But Cameron wasn't real. The soothing embrace of the terminator against her own sweating body shouldn't feel so good.
It made her stomach fill with honey drunk butterflies instead of rightfully churning with disgust at the doll's learnt deception. Cameron appears human, the better she was at pretending, the closer she had once come to killing the Saviour of Mankind.
Sarah is unsettled by her own emotions towards the protector of everything she holds dear.
She wants to go back to feeling absolutely nothing. So she pushes Cameron out of the bed.
And embraces narcotic's dulling fog.
…..
"Why do you let me do it?" Sarah states her question as an order.
"Because you need someone to be there for you, to allow you rest." Cameron lifts the comforter and wraps them around the other woman's shoulders but Sarah shrugs away from the touch.
"You can't be classified as a 'someone'." Sarah crosses her arms protectively in front of her chest. "You are a some 'thing' at best." Sarah has forgotten to kick Cameron out of her room after that last romp; she had let the machine remain in her bed…again.
A flicker of sadness creases the corners of the machine's lips and Sarah finds it harder and harder to remind herself that any emotion shown on that beautiful face is only a mimic of what Cameron has seen from the human's around her.
The robot doesn't feel, doesn't have emotions. Isn't anything near sentient nor human.
"I see, thank you for explaining." Cameron nods; she gets up to change into her school clothes and heads out to start her early morning patrol.
Sarah ponders if she has offended the terminator and scoffs at the idea of being in the dog house with someone she essentially sees as a… Cameron is only a 'thing'. Sarah consciously reprimanded herself; she's beginning to forget the distinctions she had classified Cameron into. The distinctions that allow her to use Cameron without any regret.
Every time she recognizes an emotion from the terminator it makes Cameron seem more, more than acceptable in Sarah's eyes.
If this creation of the future had actual feelings and emotions then Sarah should be feeling guilt. Guilt over treating something that could be feeling with such contempt. But Sarah is stubborn and since she has shown as much disregard towards the cyborg as one would to a particularly stubborn electric can opener, she refuses to acknowledge it. Guilt is distracting; it hinders actions and burdens the heart.
So she blocks out all proof of Cameron being anything more than a tool.
Nevertheless, she'll admit it's getting harder to do just that.
…..
Cameron knows better than to voice her feelings for Sarah. She understands that Sarah is not ready to accept sentience or love from something deemed as a ruthless killing machine. So she tries her best to be available for Sarah.
To be an outlet. To be a guardian. To be a listener. To be a source of unconditional love. She would never dare announce her emotions aloud. If she did, Sarah would surely pull away from her immediately. And even if Sarah denies her reliance and spurns her weakness for the feather lightless of Cameron's touch. The cybernetic can see a gradual though glacial paced shift in Sarah's reaction to her.
So she does the irrational and she prays to heartless unlistening gods. She hopes for that day of epiphany can come sooner instead of later. For Sarah to finally open up and to accept her love.
….
Cameron traces her hands over every ridge of Sarah's backbone and to tucks her head under that taller woman's chin, she feels Sarah's breath hitch at the sudden contact. Cameron has never initiated a full cuddle after sex. Always terrified that she is pushing Sarah one step too far and too fast. To pass the invisible, unspoken line and to never be allowed near again.
The cyborg feels her arms tremble with anticipation. She blinks up through her bangs and sees that mother of Salvation scowling down at her with bewilderment.
Without another word, Sarah makes herself breathe again and cautiously allows her eyelids to drift close.
Cameron may not be able to sleep, however, she can dream for when Sarah will accept her.
…..