A/N: I had been doing a "30 Days of Drabble" challenge when I wrote this. The theme of the day was "silver".
Disclaimer: I do not own Steam Powered Giraffe. The Spine belongs to David Michael Bennett.
Silver. That was the color that Pappy had chosen for him. From the beginning, even before all the upgrades, that was his identifier aside from his smokestack spine: The Silver Bot. Sometimes he wondered: why silver? The Jon was a shiny gold, Rabbit was sturdy copper, and he was silver. It made him look so much colder than the other bots, in his opinion.
He stared down his reflection in the mirror. Striking green stood out; his black rimmed photoreceptors drawing more attention than his other features. Features which, through several upgrades and modifications, had been arranged to be overall aesthetically pleasing. Features which caused even humans to call him… had the word been handsome? He thought it strange that anyone would consider him "handsome". He thought he looked chiseled. Cold. Hard.
Did humans really find him attractive? The number of girls who had agreed to go out with him would make it seem that signs pointed to "yes". However, none of them had stayed for long. It didn't take them long to discover that whatever was on the outside couldn't change what was inside. That beneath his metal skin was a boiler and clockwork and all things structured and mechanical. No matter how many upgrades he received, no matter how human he may appear, in the end the fact was that he was no more than an automaton. A child playing dress up. A fool pretending to be something that he wasn't.
He let out a long sigh and the mirror fogged from the steam that escaped his mouth. He frowned, the expression startlingly natural, and then turned away, trying to get his thoughts straight. He and the band had a performance to do, and he couldn't afford to be distracted. He picked up his guitar and his pick, and watched his hand as he strummed a few chords. It looked like a hand should. It moved like a hand should. But it was cold and silver.
Why silver?