alocalband:

Written for the @nurseyweek prompt: “challenge.”

“I keep better time during hockey season,” Jack tells him once. “Easier to track a life in wins and losses than in idle days, eh?”

And Nursey can definitely relate, but he definitely doesn’t say so. Not when Bitty gets that look on his face at overhearing the conversation, like what Jack’s just said is the saddest thing to ever be uttered. The hockey robot who can’t quite human the way he should.

The thing is that Nursey is his own kind of robot, if he’s honest with himself. Which he tries not to be anymore. “Honesty” usually packs a punch that he would rather not suffer through if he can help it.

Robot Nursey is very good at projecting the appearance of a person that is the polar opposite of the person all of his internal thoughts and emotions want him to be. He can compartmentalize nearly any situational response that goes against this outward ruse. And he can neatly divide his own life up into a series of challenges that his careful mask has faced, and a collection of coping mechanisms to go with them.

Loving Dex has somehow become both.

Keep reading