A/N: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is the property of Fox Broadcasting Company (for the most part) and certainly not me.

Thigmotropism – (n) movement or growth of an organism in response to touch or contact.

"I am so bored," was the last thing he'd heard before an incidental skin to skin (her forearm to his tricep) contact caused him to flinch in his seat. Thankfully, the passing girl known only to him as Amber didn't notice his bizarre overreaction.

John Connor lamented to himself all the time and once at least to his robot guardian angel about girls never noticing him. But a childhood/adolescence spent running from any real chance at normalcy…including discovering the wonders of the opposite sex had also lead him to another unfortunate discovery.

He just wasn't used to being touched.

Chased?

Sure.

Shot at?

You bet.

Too close to any number of explosions, gas fires, and overturned cars?

He called those 'weekdays'.

But touched? Touching was as foreign to John as compassion would be to a T-888.

After a moment, John just smiled in defeat, and continued to read his science textbook at the table out on the quad.

"What is so amusing?" Cameron asked, tilting her head quizzically.

"Cam, what did I tell you about shortening your phraseology?" he asked, trying not to get frustrated, since she was a robot and still couldn't possibly understand these nuances of human behavior. But on the other hand, he reasoned, she is a learning robot and should already know better.

"Don't be a freak," she replied pointedly.

Case and point.

"Exactly, next time ask 'What's so funny?' Contractions are your friends," he explains, smiling and waiting for a laugh that won't come.

"How can words be friends?" she follows up.

"It's an expression…Cam…God you're dense," he goes back to his book.

"My primary exoskeletal components are made of coltan," she replies with a weird emphasis on the 'are', causing him to look back up at her.

"Was that…a…joke?" he asks with mild disbelief on his face.

"I'm here all week," she answers, deadpanning again.

He shakes his head. Every time he thinks her limits of truly mimicking human behavior are being reached, she pulls something like this. This will teach him to leave Comedy Central on when she's around. But then again, she's always around, so why fight it.

"So what was so funny?" she asks him, forcing him to take a moment to remember how this even got started.

"She said something about being bored," he explains, pointing at Amber who had settled at a table with a couple of other girls at a table across the quad. "I would give anything to be bored, and to know I would be bored in the future."

"I don't understand, you complain often about being bored at the house."

"That's different…I'm trapped there all the time…she at least gets to be bored anywhere she pleases. The mall, a friend's house, all open for her to be bored at. I've got school and the house."

"She would appreciate her boredom more if she had your life," she deduces, almost as if it was an equation.

John just stares at her. Of all the time he has had to reflect on his life to this point, he never really put that together. Sure, his life was beyond screwed up, his future all but written and yet constantly in jeopardy every time he wakes up and steps out into the open. But then again, if Amber could know or understand any of this, she would welcome her boredom.

At least her boredom still had a 99.99 percent chance of survival.

The closest thing he's had to normal was the two years he had when his mom was with Charley. Slowly the life he so desperately sought seemed attainable. The same address, the same school, the same acquaintances. John had never been in one place long enough to call anyone a true friend. Acquaintance was the highest honor anyone could get.

And then it all came crashing down again.

For most people it's their past that comes back to haunt them, for John it was always his future.

"Am I wrong?" Cameron asks with the barest hint of pleading in her voice.

"N-No…actually you understand it better than I do…or did…until now," he smiles at her.

A short while later he made his way back, Cameron dutifully at his side. The second half of his day was as blissfully uneventful as the first. Cheri deflected even the simplest questions away, giving John no new clues as to the cause of her 'damaged goods' status.

How he wished he could tell her that it could probably be worse.

But he had to learn to stop weighing everybody else's problems versus his own. That would never be fair. Yeah, he was the one to save mankind from the robots. And yeah, anybody who would hear that would expect the pressure to be soul crushing.

"Ask you a question, Cam?" he blurts, still trying not to stare at her profile, and still failing.

"Of course"

"When you…when you first approached me…and you were like flirting with me…" he doesn't know where or how to phrase the question, but he can't help it. "Um…well…had we not gotten shot at by Cromartie…and had we still been wasting away in Red Valley…"

"Yes?" she inquires, as he stops walking with a pained expression of thought.

Spit it out already, moron!

"Would you have continued to be like…interested in me…like in a potentially sexual way…to stay close to me" he finally gets it all out, thinking fainting might be the next pathetic move he can pull after essentially asking a robot if she ever considered him as 'more than a friend'…in the pretend sense no less.

She stares at him for a pause that seems to last like an eternity. He swears he can hear the gears turning in her head. This wasn't worth it…

"Yes, in order to gain your trust, I would've continued to act with steadily increasing interest. The probabilities of how you received that interest were most favorable toward a 'potential sexual interest'" she finger quotes the last part in another subtle yet crazy moment of human mimicry.

"Was this a FutureMe recommendation as to how to approach the PresentDayMe?" he asks, shaking his head at how absurd that question sounds, and that if anyone overheard him it would be his turn in the psych ward.

Another pause.

"I can't answer that," she says with a tight smile…clearly trying to defuse the frustration he always experiences when she answers with those four words he hates the most.

But he loves that smile.

No matter how irritating it was to play this game, where he's technically not even allowed to know what his own thoughts are twenty plus years down the road, he loves that she knows instinctively how he'll react to it and respond with a kind smile.

Not to mention the subtle details of how her eyes eased with the smile…and he finds himself slipping away into a blissful quiet moment of reverence as he looks at her…disturbed only slightly by a slight warm fall breeze that shifts some strands of her hair across her face in a vain attempt to distract his view.

How such a magnificent face could be created with the sole intent (originally) of stamping out humans like so many roaches…

"John?" she asks, breaking him out of his reverie and putting a gentle hand on his arm for effect. He jerks away instinctively.

"Right…I know…we should keep walking," he can feel his chest tightening and the weight of her concerned stare as they make their way back to the house again. A toxic mix of sadness and resentment at the things he's been cheated of in his youth for being some God damn future leader of men began to work its way through his veins.

She is probably wondering why his pulse is up, why his respiratory rate is also climbing. She may be wondering if he senses danger or if he is upset about briefly endangering them by standing in the middle of a suburban sidewalk in broad daylight.

He wishes the answer was that complex.

He's just not used to being touched.

FIN