[ Switched POV (Battat) on my page. ]

It started with a passing smile.

Nothing major, nothing much. It wasn’t really directed at Battat - more so, his presence. A polite instinct, he was certain of it.

He’d been dragging himself down the hallway with less of a pep in his step and more of a cement block in his foot. His nights had been long and sleepless lately, full of crumpled papers and shaky writing. Though, they always were.

Then, a look from another Pippins as he brought himself past made him stop in his tracks. He never really paid attention to the others - what did they have that he could want? - but something caught his attention that day.

A smile.

Pathetic, yes, and he hadn’t stayed long, but he stared. Stared for a second longer at those perfect pearly whites, at the way their lips curved into the epitome of a picture-perfect grin. Not cocky or too forced, as if it was natural and genuine, but he knew it wasn’t. It was the smile that all of the Pippins had learned.

Scoffing, he’d gone past and mentally complained about how annoying all of the constant smiling was.

And yet it hadn’t left his head all day. Not during his brief shift posing as Mike, nor when he was setting up equipment for the day’s show. Hell- when he was drawing in his sketchbook at Ramb’s bar on his free time, he unconsciously replicated the smile onto the paper, and he knew something was up.

Poring over it for hours did nothing. So when he glanced in the mirror as he brushed his teeth and it clicked? It was jarring.

He was a little later to bed that night. Said it was because he dropped his brush in the bathroom, said it was because there was a small mess to clean up, but he’d really been trying his own smiles. All of them were ugly. Fake. Strained.

Why couldn’t he smile like the other Pippins?

Why couldn’t he be like the other Pippins?

The sketch of the smile was pinned onto the corkboard in the Mikes room and he knew, just knew, that he had to get more. It was a shockingly short time before he’d begun to sneak posters from the walls of Pippins grinning and giving that bold thumbs-up. Be a good worker, they said in flashy letters. Be happy. Be happy.

So, he tried. He tried to be happy. His smiles, once small and sincere, became wide and showed off his gums. It wasn’t even bad, it was just- unnerving to most. He practiced them for hours on end in the mirror.

But smiling wasn’t enough. He had to be just like the others. And so he asked Ramb to sew some red clothes for him, like gloves and pants and even a new tie. While the bartender had reluctantly obliged, he’d mentioned something about ‘being unique’ and all, but Battat just ignored him and swiped the stuff.

Now he could look red, donning the clothing the moment he woke up and reluctantly removing it when - if - he went to sleep. Yet still it wasn’t enough.

The paint started. He snuck the bucket from one of the storage rooms and grabbed the biggest one-handed brush that he could find. Alone in the Mikes room, he coated his arms and legs in multiple layers of paint. Yes; finally, he could be truly red.

Smiles, and eyebags, and strain, and red. There was so much red. It got in his eyes, on his face, it went away too fast, it was uncomfortable. Was this really what he had to do to be like them?

…he’d do whatever he had to do to be like them.

Another sleepless night had dragged past. He didn’t even realize it was dawn, because he hadn’t moved from his standing spot since it passed midnight.

He was stationed in front of the corkboard, half-open eyes boring into it. His fingers twitched occasionally, flecks of red paint on them from his poor washing attempt.

The posters were mocking him. He could see the pointing, he could hear the laughter, he knew it. He wasn’t going crazy, he just needed this freedom. To be like them, to get out of this body-!

And he also heard the door open.

But he didn’t move. He had more important things to focus on.