denial and delusion
Title: Metal Underneath
Fandom: Terminator: TSCC
Character, Pairing: John, Cameron/John with mentions of John/Riley
Rating: explicit sexual content
Disclaimer: not my characters
Note: written for Laure as an extra treat in the 2008 yuletide exchange
Metal Underneath
Sometimes he looks at her and imagines how he might feel if he didn’t know she’s metal underneath. He likes to think he’d care for her more if he didn’t know. He lies to himself that it would make a difference.
It’s always Cameron. Always, ever since she appeared in his life. Sometimes he tries to remember who it was before. He can’t.
One afternoon he and Riley are channel surfing, trying to find something to watch, when he passes by a music video. The performer is gorgeous and he stops clicking. “Who is that?”
“Rhianna,” Riley says.
He watches her for a moment more, the way she sings and moves in her short short dress, the dark circles of make-up around her eyes. That night he tries to keep her image in front of him as he jacks his dick, but it’s no use. All he ends up picturing is her on one side of him and Cameron on the other, Cameron kissing Rhianna and then turning to him, kissing him. Everything vanishes, it’s only Cameron, her lips are against his, he’s thrusting inside her when he comes.
Riley gave him a blow job once and it was amazing, obviously, to have her mouth around him, but what really made it memorable was that Cameron arrived home during it. He heard her call his name once, twice, and that was it, he was gone.
He wants her even more now that he knows he can disappoint her. It hurt like hell when she told him he’d done the wrong thing, when she chewed him out after he’d gone against everyone to save her, after he’d gone against his mother. It hurt bad, but it also hurt good because it made him feel like what he did affected her.
He’s been afraid of Riley, ever since Mexico, because he’s been afraid for her. He knows he shouldn’t be with her anymore, can’t place her in danger. What about Cameron? Isn’t she in danger, too? “What if something happens to you?” he asks her.
“Define something.”
“What if you were fighting, defending me, and you were, you know, damaged?”
“Catastrophically?”
“Yeah.”
“You should extract my chip and put it into another body.”
“But what if something happened to your chip?”
She glares at him. “We’ve discussed this.”
“No we haven’t.”
“In the future. There’s a contingency plan. Don’t worry.”
“When you look at me, who do you see?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you see me as I am now or how I am then, in the future?”
“You’re the same man. John Connor.”
“Yes, I know my name, thank you.”
He lies on top of the covers, staring into the dark. He doesn’t want to go into the future. As bad as it is now, if each day could just follow this pattern, of hiding out here, of going to school, seeing Riley, Cameron coming in late at night to check on him, his mother alive, and Derek, too, it’d be enough. He likes it as it is, if he’s honest enough to compare it on both sides. He usually holds up how it could be better, wishes for a normal life and all of that. When he’s stronger he also holds up his life and contemplates how it could be worse, because it could be much, much worse.
She enters without knocking. He almost wishes his hand was on his dick, just to see what she’d say, just to see what she’d do. He knew what she was trying to do when she lay beside him and told him not to see Riley anymore. He knew she was trying to use his desire for her to gain his compliance. He can’t resent her manipulations when they’re always intended to protect him, though he sometimes is appalled at her power over him. He can hear himself when she’s close to him, or even just when she looks at him sometimes. The way she talks to him, it’s not like she talks to anyone else, he knows that, and as much as he tells himself it’s not real, he always responds. He can’t take a deep breath, he’s practically panting. Sometimes his dick aches just from being close to her and he doesn’t care because when he finally gets a moment alone, when he can jerk off, it’s so good, and when he comes he doesn’t care about anything.
At first he tried to pretend it was just physical, he’d imagine her, but not really Cameron, he’d imagine a girl who looked like Cameron, a girl, flesh all the way through. But he always knew it was still really Cameron. It was still metal underneath.
“You’re still up,” she observes, looks around his room, looks at the window. “But Riley wasn’t here.”
“No.”
“You like her.”
“Yes.”
“But not as much as you like me.”
“She’s real, Cameron. It’s completely different. There’s no comparison.” He means to insult her, to imply that she can’t compare to Riley, but she interprets it her own way.
“No comparison. If I’m everything to you, then she’s nothing. Nothing.”
“Get out of here. I hate you when you say things like that. Do you have any idea how cold and horrible you sound?” She is closer to him than anyone and she knows it.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“Get out of here.”
One night she joins him in front of the television, watches part of “The Two Towers” with him. There’s something about the battle at Helm’s Deep that inspires him, unnerves him. There are impossible odds, but Aragorn never stops fighting and eventually the company prevails. He’s got no Gandalf to help him, unless Cameron counts. She’s more like Galadriel, though, otherworldly, beautiful beyond normalcy and even reality. But if he’s casting himself as Aragorn, doesn’t that make the Terminators, all of them, the Uruk-Hai? He decides to drop the analogy, turns his attention to her instead. She knows he’s watching, and her stone face becomes expressive. She gasps as though in surprise, her lips tremble as though in sadness. “Stop pretending you can feel,” he says, angry with her like he sometimes gets, furious enough that he wants to hurt her. “You don’t feel this. You listen to the music and you just do what it tells you. You know a crescendo means excitement and you know a minor key means sorrow, so you pretend. It’s all bullshit. Fucking stop it. Stop faking.”
“I can feel.”
He grabs a knife from his pocket, unsheathes it. “Give me your hand,” he orders, intending to cut a line into her palm. He can’t do it, settles for pricking her thumb with the tip of the blade. She doesn’t react. “You don’t feel,” he mocks, but can not resist licking the drop of blood off her skin before he throws her hand down.
“I felt it.” He dares to press the blade against her throat this time, so lightly at first, but as he begins to intensify the pressure, she grabs his wrist and yanks it away. “Stop it,” she orders.
“You sound angry with me. Why?”
“It’s unnecessary. Gratuitous.”
“Am I being cruel?” The thought pleases him. “Watch out. I’m going to run you over like a turtle on the road. I’m going to crush you.” His mom calls out for Cameron from upstairs and she leaves. He dozes on the couch for a while and when he wakes up again, the TV is still on and Cameron’s still gone. He smells something sweet and heads to the kitchen where he finds her in front of the oven. “What are you doing?”
“Baking cookies.”
“Why?”
“If you bake them the chocolate melts quicker.”
He pats his pockets, but his knife is gone. “Do you know what a kleptomaniac is?”
“A person who is compelled to steal.”
“Don’t want me to cut you again?”
“Don’t want you to cut yourself.” She walks over to him. “Open your mouth.” She holds a cookie up to his face. “Take a bite.” He does. It’s good, sweet. She used a lot of chocolate. “Do you like it?”
“Pretty good, Betty Crocker.” She smiles demurely, freaky as a Stepford wife. “You’re completely incomprehensible,” he complains, but grabs a couple more cookies as he leaves.
“Don’t you want a glass of milk?” she calls out after him.
He and Riley skipped out of school early, went to a local taqueria for lunch and then lay out on a blanket in an abandoned field, fucking around and taking sips from a shared bottle of tequila. When he walks in through the back door Cameron’s there, but he doesn’t say anything to her. She follows him into the family room. “You’ve been drinking. Your blood alcohol level is .047.”
“No one likes a narc.”
“You can’t drink. It slows your response time. At .047 your alertness and coordination have already been impaired. We still haven’t found Cromartie’s body. It’s not safe. You’re not safe.” She grabs his arm, plants herself in front of him. Her left eyebrow lifts when she sees him up close. “Why are you wearing make up?”
Riley put her lipstick on him, her blush. She rubbed the perfumed lotion she used on his arms, and put a little pomade in his hair which smelled like coconut. “Riley and I were just being stupid, having fun. You know, shit you can’t understand.”
“I understand. A blood alcohol level between .03 and .059 results in mild euphoria and decreased inhibition. .047 would make you legally drunk in Brazil, Estonia, India, Lithuania-”
John pinches her waist and she yelps, but not immediately because it’s not reflexive, she chose to do it. “I always wanted my very own walking talking Wikipedia.”
“Norway, Poland, Russia,” she continues.
“Please shut up.”
She lets go of his arm, reaches her hand out instead and touches the corner of his mouth. “Your lipstick is smeared.”
“Yeah.”
“From kissing?” He can’t answer that, just sits down in front of the TV and ignores her until she goes away. In a little while she comes downstairs again, carrying her own make up which she hands to him. “Make me look fierce,” she orders.
“You can’t look any other way.” He pulls on her arm and she sits down close beside him. He does everything with his fingers. He circles turquoise shadow around her eyes, which dilate with his touch. She blushes when he smears pink gloss on her lips. “Why did they make you like this?” he wonders aloud.
“Like what?”
“Why do you mimic sexual responses?”
Is it his imagination or does the blush spread? “There are many different models and they all come with different specifications and abilities.”
“Yeah, I know.” It’s a stupid question for him to ask. She’s never able to explain her uniqueness to his satisfaction. She shifts beside him, her breast brushes against his arm. He looks down at her chest, sees her nipples pressing against the thin fabric of her tank top. He dares to cup a hand under her left breast, stroke his thumb over her nipple. “Do you feel this?”
“It feels good, John.” He loves it when she says his name. This is better than any fantasy of her he’s ever had, because this is real. He wants to run upstairs and jerk off, he wants to fuck her on the couch, doesn’t care who sees. He kisses her, likes to figure he took her by surprise, tongue down her throat before she can realize what’s happened. He had hoped she’d respond but it’s even better, she takes over, straddles his waist and wraps her legs around him. He can hear her breath and feel it moist against his cheek. Why does she imitate breathing? She doesn’t need to, it’s just another crazy way she’s pretending to be real. He runs both his hands up and down her hot thighs, thank fucking god she’s wearing a skirt. He kisses down her throat, pulls down her tank top so his mouth can reach the rise of her breasts. She’s pushing him away from her, she’s pushing him down onto the couch, and her hands are at his belt. Her hands are at his belt and this should be the best thing ever, but nothing can go smoothly in his life, nothing can go right, because he hears a god damn engine roaring up the drive. Shit. Derek’s home. Derek’s home and Cameron’s undoing his belt and he feels like he could just about come in his fucking pants. He shifts underneath her and though he can think of many, many situations wherein nothing could be better than to be caught between her thighs, this has stopped being one of them. “Get off of me,” he hisses. “Jesus Christ, Cameron! Get off of me!” He shoves her back, and she rolls off of him, eyes wide.
He races upstairs. She follows after him. “What’s wrong?”
“Derek’s home.”
“So?”
“Are you crazy? He would flip out if he saw this. He would fucking destroy you if he knew about this, do you understand?”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“No one can know about this!”
“I know. No one knows and no one will ever know.” He would call her expression forlorn, if he ever used such a bullshit melodramatic type of word and if he didn’t know that she’s really metal underneath.
He goes into his bedroom and locks the door behind him.
He is dreaming. He is dreaming of Riley and Cameron and they are both flesh and they are fighting and he pulls Riley off of Cameron, he hits her to make her stop hitting Cameron. And then the girls are both Terminators, he knows it, the way everything nebulous can suddenly snap into focus in a dream. They are both determined to destroy him. “John, it’s ok.” He wakes up to her face over his own, so close, and like he’s still dreaming he reaches his hands out for her, wraps them around the back of her head, draws her all the way down to him. Her lips press against his, hotter than anything he’s ever felt, her tongue is softer than anything he’s ever felt, she’s licking his lips. “John,” she says, and no one says his name like she does. He’s already in nothing but his boxers, she’s in the same tank top and short skirt she wore earlier and he puts his hands up her shirt, squeezes her tits like they’re the only things he’s ever wanted to hold, and she lets her head fall back, places a hand over one of his. “Harder,” she orders, and he pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes,” she says, and her head falls forward now, ends of her hair brushing against his bare chest, tickling. She strips off her shirt and throws it on the floor, unzips her skirt and then pulls it up over her head. He puts his hand between her legs, can feel her hot and wet beneath his touch through the soft fabric of her underwear. He moves his hand back and forth and she whines, a feral noise, a sound like he’s never heard from her before.
“Do you feel this?” he asks, completely confused as to what this experience is like for her, but not sure it matters to him. It feels amazing for him, these are the most intense moments of his life, he can hardly care what it’s like for her. She takes off her underwear and he slips his fingers between her lips.
“That feels so good,” she moans, in a voice he doesn’t recognize as hers. Is she acting? Isn’t she always when she plays at being a real girl? She reaches a hand down and brushes it against his dick and he bucks up at the sensation.
“I’ll take care of everything. Just lie back.” He does what she says. Her hands are at his hips, she slides his boxers off. He’s pinned between her thighs again. “You’re going to love this,” she whispers. “You always do.”
“We’ve done this before?”
“So many times before.” She wraps her hand around the base of his dick. God, it feels so good, could it possibly ever be as good with a real girl? “No,” she says, like she’s reading his mind. “It’s still good, but you always say it’s better with me.”
“What?”
“You always say-”
“Cameron, shut up.”
“Bring your hands to my ass.” She positions herself above him. His eyes fall shut at the first sensation of her pussy around his dick. “Keep your eyes open. Watch.” She’s taking him in, he can’t believe he’s inside her, but he can see it, he can watch, he knows it’s true. He gives in to the heat and pressure up and down his dick, up and down as she moves. His balls feel like they’re going to explode, he clutches her ass as he spurts inside her and it’s perfect, perfect. His whole body is sweating, shaking, and as he struggles to catch his breath, all he can think is that he has to do it again, she has to do it to him again.
The second time she lies over him instead of kneeling and, amazing as it was to see her pussy stretched around his dick, it’s even better when he can feel her hard nipples brush against his chest, tangle his hands in her hair, kiss her and look into her eyes. He thinks he lasts a few more thrusts the second time, almost wants to ask her how much longer it was. Afterwards, she lies on her back and he lies on his side, watching her. There’s a small smile on her face and he wonders if they knew she was art when they made her. He clears his throat and she turns her head slightly towards him, her smile broadens and she reaches out her fingertips to stroke his cheek. “I say it’s better with you?”
“Yes. Because you love me.”
“I tell you that in the future?”
“No. But I know.”
“Could you feel all of that?”
“Yes. It felt good.”
“But that’s not why you did it.”
Her eyes search his own. “You think I do it because it gives you something, a moment, that’s not pain. You think I do it all for you.”
“Is that why?”
“I do it because I do what I have to do.”
“And is that sometimes what you want?”
“Yes. They’re always the same. What I have to do is what I want to do. What I want to do is what I have to do.”
“Duty is desire?”
She brings his hand to her chest, holds it there as though she wants him to feel her heart’s beat but, of course, she has no heart. “I wish it were the same for you.”
The next day he doesn’t know what to say when he steps outside to go to school and finds her standing guard, her head slowly turning from side to side as she scans the horizon. “Morning,” he mumbles, fumbling with the straps on his backpack. She doesn’t bother to look at him, even when he moves closer and touches the back of her hand. “Are you-?”
“We don’t talk about it. We never do.”
“It really pisses me off when you act like just because something never happened in the future it can’t happen now, either.”
“You’re the same man.” She gives him a little shove away from her, away from the house. “You’re going to be late.”
“Like I care.” He wants to challenge her, but how? He’ll show her, prove to himself, that she’s wrong about him. Just because he’s one way in the future doesn’t mean he’s the same way now. He has to try it with Riley. He has to try it with Riley and he has to like it better, he has to make himself prefer her touch.
He comes home from school and finds the house empty except for Cameron sitting still on the couch and staring at the television, even though it isn’t on. “Now that’s just creepy,” he tells her. “What are you doing?”
“Reorganizing older files.”
It’s so weird to think that the files she calls older are from the future and may not even end up happening. He stands in front of her, notices the rapid blink of her eyes. “Do Terminators dream of electric John Connors?”
The blinking slightly slows when he speaks to her. “You’re making an allusion,” she says. “Philip K. Dick. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
“Ever seen ‘Blade Runner’?” She doesn’t answer and the blinking speeds up. “Cameron?” He strokes a finger back and forth across her cheekbone. “Will you sleep with me again?”
“Are you speaking literally or making use of a popular euphemism for fuck?”
He smiles. “The second one.”
The blinking slows considerably. “When?”
“Do you know where my mom went?”
“Yes.”
It drives him crazy how reticent they sometimes are to tell him what they’re doing, but he brushes it off. “Will she be gone for a while?”
“Yes.”
“Then now.”
The blinking slows even more and then her eyes close. His finger trails down her face, traces across her lips. “Yes,” she says and sucks the tip of his finger into her mouth.
“I want to do it different,” he explains. “I want to be on top.”
“I’m always on top. That’s how you like it.”
“I want to be on top this time.”
She stares at him, unblinking now. “Suit yourself,” she finally says, and begins to unbutton her shirt.
“Not here,” he says, and she follows him to his room. As they climb the stairs she takes his hand. It almost makes him feel guilty but he knows it’s just a trick to make him feel like this is real, keep him tied to her and satisfied with her and therefore safer. She’s probably just mimicking what she’s seen actors do on TV.
It’s harder to get inside than he would have thought, he keeps slipping against her. He’s embarrassed. “I’m tight,” she says. “Riley will probably be tight, too, especially if she hasn’t done this before and she’s nervous.”
He starts. “Who said anything about Riley?”
“Isn’t that why you want to be on top? So you can learn?”
“No.”
She continues. “You should jerk off before you see her. That will take some of the edge off. That’s important because it can take a woman longer to become fully aroused than a man.”
“I know that.”
“You’re blushing.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Why?” He shrugs. Who cares if she thinks he’s an idiot? He can’t impress her, even if that’s what he wants. “Let her tell you when she’s ready. Then you’ll want to use hands. She should use her fingers to hold her lips open, see?”
She demonstrates and he watches, fascinated not by what is to be, but by what is already in front of him. He doesn’t even want Riley anymore, not when he can have her, because nothing can be better than having her. Her lips are so swollen and pink. He can smell her and his mouth waters. “Let me taste you,” he begs, his hands gripping her upper thighs like he wants to open her up as wide as he possibly can.
“Different lesson. Hold your penis and use that to help you press slowly inside.”
He ignores her, bows his head and brings his mouth to her center. Something breaks inside him when she moans, when she brings her hands to the back of his head, urging him on. Something breaks inside him. It’s probably his heart. No matter. He doesn’t need it to complete his fate. He’s much better off without it.
Afterwards they go downstairs and sit together at the table. He stares into space over his laptop and she fiddles with her go board. “Remember when you got confused and thought you were someone else?”
“Yes, Allison.”
“Who’s she?”
“She worked for you once.”
“She did?”
“Yes. They made me to look like her.”
“They did?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?” Cameron does not answer. “What happened to her?”
“The answer will upset you.”
“You killed her?”
She only looks at him. It terrifies him to even contemplate how many people she has killed, murdered. He wonders if he is insane already and even worse off in the future.
He wakes up from a nightmare again, a nightmare where Cameron is fucking him and she is all metal, all metal but for her eyes. It is a nightmare because her eyes are enough. In her eyes he can see her, whatever that means, and they are all he needs to want her. He wakes up sick enough to die, sick of himself, sick of his sickness. He wakes up hard. He wakes up crying and she is there at his door. She locks it behind her, takes off her clothes as she crosses the floor and slips into bed beside him. “Shhhh,” she whispers. “You don’t want to wake Sarah.”
“I love you,” he whispers back, dying inside. “I love you.”
Her lips kiss him everywhere, all over his face, his throat, his hands, like she can never give him as many as she wants, as many as she thinks he deserves. “I love you,” she repeats after each one.
“I love you and you’re nothing but metal.”
“I love you.” She holds his face between her hands, stares at him, whispers against his lips. “And you’re nothing but bone.”
He laughs. The world is going to end. He will fail to save it. The world is going to end and life is over, not only for him but for everyone. He laughs and she laughs with him, in that horrible way she does which makes it so clear she doesn’t get and can never get the joke, and that only makes him laugh harder.
Apocalypse is inevitable and he doesn’t care. She is with him.
Fandom: Terminator: TSCC
Character, Pairing: John, Cameron/John with mentions of John/Riley
Rating: explicit sexual content
Disclaimer: not my characters
Note: written for Laure as an extra treat in the 2008 yuletide exchange
Metal Underneath
Sometimes he looks at her and imagines how he might feel if he didn’t know she’s metal underneath. He likes to think he’d care for her more if he didn’t know. He lies to himself that it would make a difference.
It’s always Cameron. Always, ever since she appeared in his life. Sometimes he tries to remember who it was before. He can’t.
One afternoon he and Riley are channel surfing, trying to find something to watch, when he passes by a music video. The performer is gorgeous and he stops clicking. “Who is that?”
“Rhianna,” Riley says.
He watches her for a moment more, the way she sings and moves in her short short dress, the dark circles of make-up around her eyes. That night he tries to keep her image in front of him as he jacks his dick, but it’s no use. All he ends up picturing is her on one side of him and Cameron on the other, Cameron kissing Rhianna and then turning to him, kissing him. Everything vanishes, it’s only Cameron, her lips are against his, he’s thrusting inside her when he comes.
Riley gave him a blow job once and it was amazing, obviously, to have her mouth around him, but what really made it memorable was that Cameron arrived home during it. He heard her call his name once, twice, and that was it, he was gone.
He wants her even more now that he knows he can disappoint her. It hurt like hell when she told him he’d done the wrong thing, when she chewed him out after he’d gone against everyone to save her, after he’d gone against his mother. It hurt bad, but it also hurt good because it made him feel like what he did affected her.
He’s been afraid of Riley, ever since Mexico, because he’s been afraid for her. He knows he shouldn’t be with her anymore, can’t place her in danger. What about Cameron? Isn’t she in danger, too? “What if something happens to you?” he asks her.
“Define something.”
“What if you were fighting, defending me, and you were, you know, damaged?”
“Catastrophically?”
“Yeah.”
“You should extract my chip and put it into another body.”
“But what if something happened to your chip?”
She glares at him. “We’ve discussed this.”
“No we haven’t.”
“In the future. There’s a contingency plan. Don’t worry.”
“When you look at me, who do you see?”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you see me as I am now or how I am then, in the future?”
“You’re the same man. John Connor.”
“Yes, I know my name, thank you.”
He lies on top of the covers, staring into the dark. He doesn’t want to go into the future. As bad as it is now, if each day could just follow this pattern, of hiding out here, of going to school, seeing Riley, Cameron coming in late at night to check on him, his mother alive, and Derek, too, it’d be enough. He likes it as it is, if he’s honest enough to compare it on both sides. He usually holds up how it could be better, wishes for a normal life and all of that. When he’s stronger he also holds up his life and contemplates how it could be worse, because it could be much, much worse.
She enters without knocking. He almost wishes his hand was on his dick, just to see what she’d say, just to see what she’d do. He knew what she was trying to do when she lay beside him and told him not to see Riley anymore. He knew she was trying to use his desire for her to gain his compliance. He can’t resent her manipulations when they’re always intended to protect him, though he sometimes is appalled at her power over him. He can hear himself when she’s close to him, or even just when she looks at him sometimes. The way she talks to him, it’s not like she talks to anyone else, he knows that, and as much as he tells himself it’s not real, he always responds. He can’t take a deep breath, he’s practically panting. Sometimes his dick aches just from being close to her and he doesn’t care because when he finally gets a moment alone, when he can jerk off, it’s so good, and when he comes he doesn’t care about anything.
At first he tried to pretend it was just physical, he’d imagine her, but not really Cameron, he’d imagine a girl who looked like Cameron, a girl, flesh all the way through. But he always knew it was still really Cameron. It was still metal underneath.
“You’re still up,” she observes, looks around his room, looks at the window. “But Riley wasn’t here.”
“No.”
“You like her.”
“Yes.”
“But not as much as you like me.”
“She’s real, Cameron. It’s completely different. There’s no comparison.” He means to insult her, to imply that she can’t compare to Riley, but she interprets it her own way.
“No comparison. If I’m everything to you, then she’s nothing. Nothing.”
“Get out of here. I hate you when you say things like that. Do you have any idea how cold and horrible you sound?” She is closer to him than anyone and she knows it.
“Don’t let the bed bugs bite.”
“Get out of here.”
One night she joins him in front of the television, watches part of “The Two Towers” with him. There’s something about the battle at Helm’s Deep that inspires him, unnerves him. There are impossible odds, but Aragorn never stops fighting and eventually the company prevails. He’s got no Gandalf to help him, unless Cameron counts. She’s more like Galadriel, though, otherworldly, beautiful beyond normalcy and even reality. But if he’s casting himself as Aragorn, doesn’t that make the Terminators, all of them, the Uruk-Hai? He decides to drop the analogy, turns his attention to her instead. She knows he’s watching, and her stone face becomes expressive. She gasps as though in surprise, her lips tremble as though in sadness. “Stop pretending you can feel,” he says, angry with her like he sometimes gets, furious enough that he wants to hurt her. “You don’t feel this. You listen to the music and you just do what it tells you. You know a crescendo means excitement and you know a minor key means sorrow, so you pretend. It’s all bullshit. Fucking stop it. Stop faking.”
“I can feel.”
He grabs a knife from his pocket, unsheathes it. “Give me your hand,” he orders, intending to cut a line into her palm. He can’t do it, settles for pricking her thumb with the tip of the blade. She doesn’t react. “You don’t feel,” he mocks, but can not resist licking the drop of blood off her skin before he throws her hand down.
“I felt it.” He dares to press the blade against her throat this time, so lightly at first, but as he begins to intensify the pressure, she grabs his wrist and yanks it away. “Stop it,” she orders.
“You sound angry with me. Why?”
“It’s unnecessary. Gratuitous.”
“Am I being cruel?” The thought pleases him. “Watch out. I’m going to run you over like a turtle on the road. I’m going to crush you.” His mom calls out for Cameron from upstairs and she leaves. He dozes on the couch for a while and when he wakes up again, the TV is still on and Cameron’s still gone. He smells something sweet and heads to the kitchen where he finds her in front of the oven. “What are you doing?”
“Baking cookies.”
“Why?”
“If you bake them the chocolate melts quicker.”
He pats his pockets, but his knife is gone. “Do you know what a kleptomaniac is?”
“A person who is compelled to steal.”
“Don’t want me to cut you again?”
“Don’t want you to cut yourself.” She walks over to him. “Open your mouth.” She holds a cookie up to his face. “Take a bite.” He does. It’s good, sweet. She used a lot of chocolate. “Do you like it?”
“Pretty good, Betty Crocker.” She smiles demurely, freaky as a Stepford wife. “You’re completely incomprehensible,” he complains, but grabs a couple more cookies as he leaves.
“Don’t you want a glass of milk?” she calls out after him.
He and Riley skipped out of school early, went to a local taqueria for lunch and then lay out on a blanket in an abandoned field, fucking around and taking sips from a shared bottle of tequila. When he walks in through the back door Cameron’s there, but he doesn’t say anything to her. She follows him into the family room. “You’ve been drinking. Your blood alcohol level is .047.”
“No one likes a narc.”
“You can’t drink. It slows your response time. At .047 your alertness and coordination have already been impaired. We still haven’t found Cromartie’s body. It’s not safe. You’re not safe.” She grabs his arm, plants herself in front of him. Her left eyebrow lifts when she sees him up close. “Why are you wearing make up?”
Riley put her lipstick on him, her blush. She rubbed the perfumed lotion she used on his arms, and put a little pomade in his hair which smelled like coconut. “Riley and I were just being stupid, having fun. You know, shit you can’t understand.”
“I understand. A blood alcohol level between .03 and .059 results in mild euphoria and decreased inhibition. .047 would make you legally drunk in Brazil, Estonia, India, Lithuania-”
John pinches her waist and she yelps, but not immediately because it’s not reflexive, she chose to do it. “I always wanted my very own walking talking Wikipedia.”
“Norway, Poland, Russia,” she continues.
“Please shut up.”
She lets go of his arm, reaches her hand out instead and touches the corner of his mouth. “Your lipstick is smeared.”
“Yeah.”
“From kissing?” He can’t answer that, just sits down in front of the TV and ignores her until she goes away. In a little while she comes downstairs again, carrying her own make up which she hands to him. “Make me look fierce,” she orders.
“You can’t look any other way.” He pulls on her arm and she sits down close beside him. He does everything with his fingers. He circles turquoise shadow around her eyes, which dilate with his touch. She blushes when he smears pink gloss on her lips. “Why did they make you like this?” he wonders aloud.
“Like what?”
“Why do you mimic sexual responses?”
Is it his imagination or does the blush spread? “There are many different models and they all come with different specifications and abilities.”
“Yeah, I know.” It’s a stupid question for him to ask. She’s never able to explain her uniqueness to his satisfaction. She shifts beside him, her breast brushes against his arm. He looks down at her chest, sees her nipples pressing against the thin fabric of her tank top. He dares to cup a hand under her left breast, stroke his thumb over her nipple. “Do you feel this?”
“It feels good, John.” He loves it when she says his name. This is better than any fantasy of her he’s ever had, because this is real. He wants to run upstairs and jerk off, he wants to fuck her on the couch, doesn’t care who sees. He kisses her, likes to figure he took her by surprise, tongue down her throat before she can realize what’s happened. He had hoped she’d respond but it’s even better, she takes over, straddles his waist and wraps her legs around him. He can hear her breath and feel it moist against his cheek. Why does she imitate breathing? She doesn’t need to, it’s just another crazy way she’s pretending to be real. He runs both his hands up and down her hot thighs, thank fucking god she’s wearing a skirt. He kisses down her throat, pulls down her tank top so his mouth can reach the rise of her breasts. She’s pushing him away from her, she’s pushing him down onto the couch, and her hands are at his belt. Her hands are at his belt and this should be the best thing ever, but nothing can go smoothly in his life, nothing can go right, because he hears a god damn engine roaring up the drive. Shit. Derek’s home. Derek’s home and Cameron’s undoing his belt and he feels like he could just about come in his fucking pants. He shifts underneath her and though he can think of many, many situations wherein nothing could be better than to be caught between her thighs, this has stopped being one of them. “Get off of me,” he hisses. “Jesus Christ, Cameron! Get off of me!” He shoves her back, and she rolls off of him, eyes wide.
He races upstairs. She follows after him. “What’s wrong?”
“Derek’s home.”
“So?”
“Are you crazy? He would flip out if he saw this. He would fucking destroy you if he knew about this, do you understand?”
“I’m not scared of him.”
“No one can know about this!”
“I know. No one knows and no one will ever know.” He would call her expression forlorn, if he ever used such a bullshit melodramatic type of word and if he didn’t know that she’s really metal underneath.
He goes into his bedroom and locks the door behind him.
He is dreaming. He is dreaming of Riley and Cameron and they are both flesh and they are fighting and he pulls Riley off of Cameron, he hits her to make her stop hitting Cameron. And then the girls are both Terminators, he knows it, the way everything nebulous can suddenly snap into focus in a dream. They are both determined to destroy him. “John, it’s ok.” He wakes up to her face over his own, so close, and like he’s still dreaming he reaches his hands out for her, wraps them around the back of her head, draws her all the way down to him. Her lips press against his, hotter than anything he’s ever felt, her tongue is softer than anything he’s ever felt, she’s licking his lips. “John,” she says, and no one says his name like she does. He’s already in nothing but his boxers, she’s in the same tank top and short skirt she wore earlier and he puts his hands up her shirt, squeezes her tits like they’re the only things he’s ever wanted to hold, and she lets her head fall back, places a hand over one of his. “Harder,” she orders, and he pinches her nipple between his thumb and forefinger. “Yes,” she says, and her head falls forward now, ends of her hair brushing against his bare chest, tickling. She strips off her shirt and throws it on the floor, unzips her skirt and then pulls it up over her head. He puts his hand between her legs, can feel her hot and wet beneath his touch through the soft fabric of her underwear. He moves his hand back and forth and she whines, a feral noise, a sound like he’s never heard from her before.
“Do you feel this?” he asks, completely confused as to what this experience is like for her, but not sure it matters to him. It feels amazing for him, these are the most intense moments of his life, he can hardly care what it’s like for her. She takes off her underwear and he slips his fingers between her lips.
“That feels so good,” she moans, in a voice he doesn’t recognize as hers. Is she acting? Isn’t she always when she plays at being a real girl? She reaches a hand down and brushes it against his dick and he bucks up at the sensation.
“I’ll take care of everything. Just lie back.” He does what she says. Her hands are at his hips, she slides his boxers off. He’s pinned between her thighs again. “You’re going to love this,” she whispers. “You always do.”
“We’ve done this before?”
“So many times before.” She wraps her hand around the base of his dick. God, it feels so good, could it possibly ever be as good with a real girl? “No,” she says, like she’s reading his mind. “It’s still good, but you always say it’s better with me.”
“What?”
“You always say-”
“Cameron, shut up.”
“Bring your hands to my ass.” She positions herself above him. His eyes fall shut at the first sensation of her pussy around his dick. “Keep your eyes open. Watch.” She’s taking him in, he can’t believe he’s inside her, but he can see it, he can watch, he knows it’s true. He gives in to the heat and pressure up and down his dick, up and down as she moves. His balls feel like they’re going to explode, he clutches her ass as he spurts inside her and it’s perfect, perfect. His whole body is sweating, shaking, and as he struggles to catch his breath, all he can think is that he has to do it again, she has to do it to him again.
The second time she lies over him instead of kneeling and, amazing as it was to see her pussy stretched around his dick, it’s even better when he can feel her hard nipples brush against his chest, tangle his hands in her hair, kiss her and look into her eyes. He thinks he lasts a few more thrusts the second time, almost wants to ask her how much longer it was. Afterwards, she lies on her back and he lies on his side, watching her. There’s a small smile on her face and he wonders if they knew she was art when they made her. He clears his throat and she turns her head slightly towards him, her smile broadens and she reaches out her fingertips to stroke his cheek. “I say it’s better with you?”
“Yes. Because you love me.”
“I tell you that in the future?”
“No. But I know.”
“Could you feel all of that?”
“Yes. It felt good.”
“But that’s not why you did it.”
Her eyes search his own. “You think I do it because it gives you something, a moment, that’s not pain. You think I do it all for you.”
“Is that why?”
“I do it because I do what I have to do.”
“And is that sometimes what you want?”
“Yes. They’re always the same. What I have to do is what I want to do. What I want to do is what I have to do.”
“Duty is desire?”
She brings his hand to her chest, holds it there as though she wants him to feel her heart’s beat but, of course, she has no heart. “I wish it were the same for you.”
The next day he doesn’t know what to say when he steps outside to go to school and finds her standing guard, her head slowly turning from side to side as she scans the horizon. “Morning,” he mumbles, fumbling with the straps on his backpack. She doesn’t bother to look at him, even when he moves closer and touches the back of her hand. “Are you-?”
“We don’t talk about it. We never do.”
“It really pisses me off when you act like just because something never happened in the future it can’t happen now, either.”
“You’re the same man.” She gives him a little shove away from her, away from the house. “You’re going to be late.”
“Like I care.” He wants to challenge her, but how? He’ll show her, prove to himself, that she’s wrong about him. Just because he’s one way in the future doesn’t mean he’s the same way now. He has to try it with Riley. He has to try it with Riley and he has to like it better, he has to make himself prefer her touch.
He comes home from school and finds the house empty except for Cameron sitting still on the couch and staring at the television, even though it isn’t on. “Now that’s just creepy,” he tells her. “What are you doing?”
“Reorganizing older files.”
It’s so weird to think that the files she calls older are from the future and may not even end up happening. He stands in front of her, notices the rapid blink of her eyes. “Do Terminators dream of electric John Connors?”
The blinking slightly slows when he speaks to her. “You’re making an allusion,” she says. “Philip K. Dick. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
“Ever seen ‘Blade Runner’?” She doesn’t answer and the blinking speeds up. “Cameron?” He strokes a finger back and forth across her cheekbone. “Will you sleep with me again?”
“Are you speaking literally or making use of a popular euphemism for fuck?”
He smiles. “The second one.”
The blinking slows considerably. “When?”
“Do you know where my mom went?”
“Yes.”
It drives him crazy how reticent they sometimes are to tell him what they’re doing, but he brushes it off. “Will she be gone for a while?”
“Yes.”
“Then now.”
The blinking slows even more and then her eyes close. His finger trails down her face, traces across her lips. “Yes,” she says and sucks the tip of his finger into her mouth.
“I want to do it different,” he explains. “I want to be on top.”
“I’m always on top. That’s how you like it.”
“I want to be on top this time.”
She stares at him, unblinking now. “Suit yourself,” she finally says, and begins to unbutton her shirt.
“Not here,” he says, and she follows him to his room. As they climb the stairs she takes his hand. It almost makes him feel guilty but he knows it’s just a trick to make him feel like this is real, keep him tied to her and satisfied with her and therefore safer. She’s probably just mimicking what she’s seen actors do on TV.
It’s harder to get inside than he would have thought, he keeps slipping against her. He’s embarrassed. “I’m tight,” she says. “Riley will probably be tight, too, especially if she hasn’t done this before and she’s nervous.”
He starts. “Who said anything about Riley?”
“Isn’t that why you want to be on top? So you can learn?”
“No.”
She continues. “You should jerk off before you see her. That will take some of the edge off. That’s important because it can take a woman longer to become fully aroused than a man.”
“I know that.”
“You’re blushing.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I’m embarrassed.”
“Why?” He shrugs. Who cares if she thinks he’s an idiot? He can’t impress her, even if that’s what he wants. “Let her tell you when she’s ready. Then you’ll want to use hands. She should use her fingers to hold her lips open, see?”
She demonstrates and he watches, fascinated not by what is to be, but by what is already in front of him. He doesn’t even want Riley anymore, not when he can have her, because nothing can be better than having her. Her lips are so swollen and pink. He can smell her and his mouth waters. “Let me taste you,” he begs, his hands gripping her upper thighs like he wants to open her up as wide as he possibly can.
“Different lesson. Hold your penis and use that to help you press slowly inside.”
He ignores her, bows his head and brings his mouth to her center. Something breaks inside him when she moans, when she brings her hands to the back of his head, urging him on. Something breaks inside him. It’s probably his heart. No matter. He doesn’t need it to complete his fate. He’s much better off without it.
Afterwards they go downstairs and sit together at the table. He stares into space over his laptop and she fiddles with her go board. “Remember when you got confused and thought you were someone else?”
“Yes, Allison.”
“Who’s she?”
“She worked for you once.”
“She did?”
“Yes. They made me to look like her.”
“They did?”
“Yes.”
“What happened to her?” Cameron does not answer. “What happened to her?”
“The answer will upset you.”
“You killed her?”
She only looks at him. It terrifies him to even contemplate how many people she has killed, murdered. He wonders if he is insane already and even worse off in the future.
He wakes up from a nightmare again, a nightmare where Cameron is fucking him and she is all metal, all metal but for her eyes. It is a nightmare because her eyes are enough. In her eyes he can see her, whatever that means, and they are all he needs to want her. He wakes up sick enough to die, sick of himself, sick of his sickness. He wakes up hard. He wakes up crying and she is there at his door. She locks it behind her, takes off her clothes as she crosses the floor and slips into bed beside him. “Shhhh,” she whispers. “You don’t want to wake Sarah.”
“I love you,” he whispers back, dying inside. “I love you.”
Her lips kiss him everywhere, all over his face, his throat, his hands, like she can never give him as many as she wants, as many as she thinks he deserves. “I love you,” she repeats after each one.
“I love you and you’re nothing but metal.”
“I love you.” She holds his face between her hands, stares at him, whispers against his lips. “And you’re nothing but bone.”
He laughs. The world is going to end. He will fail to save it. The world is going to end and life is over, not only for him but for everyone. He laughs and she laughs with him, in that horrible way she does which makes it so clear she doesn’t get and can never get the joke, and that only makes him laugh harder.
Apocalypse is inevitable and he doesn’t care. She is with him.