SCC Fic: Lipstick and Laundry
Title: Lipstick and Laundry
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG
Word Count: 958
Summary: Episode tag-ish for Self Made Man. John's early morning return from his, Cameron's and Sarah's perspectives. A lot less housewife harlequin than the title might suggest.
Lipstick and Laundry
I
Cameron returns in darkness and begins the laundry. John has many pairs of jeans.
She hears the crunch of the truck’s wheels on the gravel driveway before she hears the footsteps up the porch stairs or the squeak of the front door. So when John walks in, her timing is perfect, laundry basket balanced on her hip. (Objective: Complete.)
Visual sensors detect the pink hued contaminant on his neck, faded but the shape clear, even to the human eye.
He evades but surface contact followed by content analysis provides the information she seeks. She briefly, fleetingly considers purchasing a tube of lip gloss.
John nods and turns away without a word. He does not wish to converse further and she will not pursue the thread of discussion because he is already aware of her position on his association with Riley and unsolicited dialogue invariably results in an expression of displeasure with her.
The right corner of his mouth curls upward as he stares down at her from his vantage point on the staircase before he completes his journey to his bedroom. He closes the door and she counts the steps to the creak of the narrow bed, the thud - one, two - of his boots hitting the floor. And then, quiet.
Human expressions vary, laden with unspoken meaning and connotation. Cameron has a sub-routine built into her infiltration protocol to aid in the deciphering of this form of communication, but she does not engage it. She doesn’t calculate the degree and angle of the tilt to his lips, does not analyze the way it changes his face or factor in their brief conversation beforehand. She doesn’t compare it to his expression when he handed her the laundry basket ten hours prior.
Smirk. That is the name for what John did. He taught it to her.
She will not tell him about the T-888 hidden in the shed.
II
It’s daylight when he finally gets home - Riley deposited safely with her foster parents, pink lipstick kisses on her lips and his skin - bright enough for the sunlight to be warm on his neck but early enough that there’s a faint possibility that Sarah’s not up yet.
Cameron doesn’t sleep. She catches him coming in and he refuses to feel like some teenager sneaking in after an illicit night out, least of all with her.
He can smell the clean warmth of clothes fresh from the dryer. He smells concrete and plaster dust and makeup.
She reaches for him with invading digits that don’t stop to ask for permission, quick and unerring.
He bats her hand away half-heartedly - like he could stop her - and watches as she touches her fingers together. Sticky, he thinks, but she’ll get a lot more out of it than that. It’s fascinating and eerie, but mostly just irritating. She’s a walking forensics lab, he thinks, and then she looks up at him with eyes he wants to call dead, blank, empty, but can’t.
She presents her conclusions and he nods because he isn’t going to deny it and he isn’t going to feel guilty. He isn’t going to explain and he isn’t going to make excuses because he doesn’t owe her any. He doesn’t owe her anything.
He walks away, knowing she’s watching - she’s always watching - but can’t resist looking back at that impassive face. She’s still staring, watching, some unnamed emotion in that blankness that he tells himself he’s imagining. Silent.
The muscle at the corner of his mouth twitches. Good.
III
Sarah rises early; a byproduct of being an uneasy sleeper. Early enough to know when the family cyborg crept back in. Early enough to know when her son followed suit hours later in broad daylight. She isn’t sure if she ‘s proud or disturbed. Pissed, yes, but that simmers beneath the surface, feeding her constant anxiety about the man her son was becoming.
Briefly, she’d considered the possibility that wherever they’d been, they’d been there together and the thought of John with Cameron, out there, alone…the thought makes her fingers curl, longing for the feel of a weapon gripped in steady hands.
Cameron’s voice rises from the ground floor, clear and irreverent of who might hear. Sarah cracks her bedroom door open anyway.
Riley. The girl was trouble and was in trouble. Contact with the Connors did that. She doesn’t wonder how Cameron knows. The cyborg has her methods; they differ from her own but they don’t make her any less right. At least, this time, she amends. The stone-faced brunette didn’t know everything, she thinks fiercely.
There’s a long silence and she knows, she just knows that damned metal girl is looking at her son - her son - in the way that makes her blood run bitter and acidic, burning her, because when she looks at John, she knows exactly what’s going through his head, the questions, the intrigue, the dangerous attraction. Bewitching him with enigmas wrapped in girlish charms and stony solidity. Demon.
She is a nightmare, a silent plague, insidious and invading and Sarah breathes through chapped lips and shivers with cold sweat.
Sarah twists the bedsheet, white knuckled, the white fabric creasing and spilling from between brittle fingers. Down the hall, John’s bedroom door closes. Then she hears the too-even footfalls that punctuate the house with their regularity, the sound of the laundry basket being set outside the door.
She sits, tense and trembling, in stasis, unsure if she is awake or asleep, waiting for everything to be silent and she can breathe again.
Author: aelysian
Rating: PG
Word Count: 958
Summary: Episode tag-ish for Self Made Man. John's early morning return from his, Cameron's and Sarah's perspectives. A lot less housewife harlequin than the title might suggest.
Lipstick and Laundry
I
Cameron returns in darkness and begins the laundry. John has many pairs of jeans.
She hears the crunch of the truck’s wheels on the gravel driveway before she hears the footsteps up the porch stairs or the squeak of the front door. So when John walks in, her timing is perfect, laundry basket balanced on her hip. (Objective: Complete.)
Visual sensors detect the pink hued contaminant on his neck, faded but the shape clear, even to the human eye.
He evades but surface contact followed by content analysis provides the information she seeks. She briefly, fleetingly considers purchasing a tube of lip gloss.
John nods and turns away without a word. He does not wish to converse further and she will not pursue the thread of discussion because he is already aware of her position on his association with Riley and unsolicited dialogue invariably results in an expression of displeasure with her.
The right corner of his mouth curls upward as he stares down at her from his vantage point on the staircase before he completes his journey to his bedroom. He closes the door and she counts the steps to the creak of the narrow bed, the thud - one, two - of his boots hitting the floor. And then, quiet.
Human expressions vary, laden with unspoken meaning and connotation. Cameron has a sub-routine built into her infiltration protocol to aid in the deciphering of this form of communication, but she does not engage it. She doesn’t calculate the degree and angle of the tilt to his lips, does not analyze the way it changes his face or factor in their brief conversation beforehand. She doesn’t compare it to his expression when he handed her the laundry basket ten hours prior.
Smirk. That is the name for what John did. He taught it to her.
She will not tell him about the T-888 hidden in the shed.
II
It’s daylight when he finally gets home - Riley deposited safely with her foster parents, pink lipstick kisses on her lips and his skin - bright enough for the sunlight to be warm on his neck but early enough that there’s a faint possibility that Sarah’s not up yet.
Cameron doesn’t sleep. She catches him coming in and he refuses to feel like some teenager sneaking in after an illicit night out, least of all with her.
He can smell the clean warmth of clothes fresh from the dryer. He smells concrete and plaster dust and makeup.
She reaches for him with invading digits that don’t stop to ask for permission, quick and unerring.
He bats her hand away half-heartedly - like he could stop her - and watches as she touches her fingers together. Sticky, he thinks, but she’ll get a lot more out of it than that. It’s fascinating and eerie, but mostly just irritating. She’s a walking forensics lab, he thinks, and then she looks up at him with eyes he wants to call dead, blank, empty, but can’t.
She presents her conclusions and he nods because he isn’t going to deny it and he isn’t going to feel guilty. He isn’t going to explain and he isn’t going to make excuses because he doesn’t owe her any. He doesn’t owe her anything.
He walks away, knowing she’s watching - she’s always watching - but can’t resist looking back at that impassive face. She’s still staring, watching, some unnamed emotion in that blankness that he tells himself he’s imagining. Silent.
The muscle at the corner of his mouth twitches. Good.
III
Sarah rises early; a byproduct of being an uneasy sleeper. Early enough to know when the family cyborg crept back in. Early enough to know when her son followed suit hours later in broad daylight. She isn’t sure if she ‘s proud or disturbed. Pissed, yes, but that simmers beneath the surface, feeding her constant anxiety about the man her son was becoming.
Briefly, she’d considered the possibility that wherever they’d been, they’d been there together and the thought of John with Cameron, out there, alone…the thought makes her fingers curl, longing for the feel of a weapon gripped in steady hands.
Cameron’s voice rises from the ground floor, clear and irreverent of who might hear. Sarah cracks her bedroom door open anyway.
Riley. The girl was trouble and was in trouble. Contact with the Connors did that. She doesn’t wonder how Cameron knows. The cyborg has her methods; they differ from her own but they don’t make her any less right. At least, this time, she amends. The stone-faced brunette didn’t know everything, she thinks fiercely.
There’s a long silence and she knows, she just knows that damned metal girl is looking at her son - her son - in the way that makes her blood run bitter and acidic, burning her, because when she looks at John, she knows exactly what’s going through his head, the questions, the intrigue, the dangerous attraction. Bewitching him with enigmas wrapped in girlish charms and stony solidity. Demon.
She is a nightmare, a silent plague, insidious and invading and Sarah breathes through chapped lips and shivers with cold sweat.
Sarah twists the bedsheet, white knuckled, the white fabric creasing and spilling from between brittle fingers. Down the hall, John’s bedroom door closes. Then she hears the too-even footfalls that punctuate the house with their regularity, the sound of the laundry basket being set outside the door.
She sits, tense and trembling, in stasis, unsure if she is awake or asleep, waiting for everything to be silent and she can breathe again.