You smile is a lie. It's wide and blindingly beautiful, but it's misleading. You have been trained to be deceptive so I should expect no less from you smile. Your eyes are a bit more truthful because you haven't mastered your newfound emotions yet to lie completely with your eyes. Instead you try to hide your feelings with your mouth, your lips in a permanent smirk and never ceasing to say the most irritating things. The maneuver almost misdirects my attention from the fact that you're not being real with me. You aren't even being real to yourself.
One thing you haven't figured is after living in the world for several years you learn to pick out the white lies from reality. Like all those white lies that Manticore taught you about being a soldier, being better than human. All those half-truths fell apart once you were on your own and realized for the first time what being human was all about. I can tell you're beginning to realize that you're mask is falling apart. The cracks began to show through the guilt that you felt about your involvement in loosing the cure for the virus, the heartbreak of loosing Rachel not once, but twice and also the compassion you showed over what happened to Ben.
I can see the dawning realization of it in your eyes, framed by perfectly by your brown eyelashes. I see the fear, the excitement, and confusion. Your crude words don't work anymore and you're loosing your devil may care attitude for something less aloof and uncommitted. The change unsettles you because you don't know where it's leading you. You're out of control of your developing feelings and as a result I find myself facing that big white lie. That ever present smile, as if to say that everything in your pretty head is all right.
I know that any reassurances will scare you and any offerings of a helping hand will just brush off your leather-clad shoulders. So I sit at Crash and watch you over my glass of beer and enjoy the show. The slow unraveling of a young man that has found himself in a big broken world. It's all-good though, since all your companions are broken too. The perfect example is sitting across from me laughing at some comment our boy Sketchy has made. She was a soldier just like you, hard and trained to view the world behind a solid cold glass window. She broke through that window and now she is revved up female with a warm smile and a heart of gold. You got a bit of glitter hiding within you too, but you're too stubborn to see it. Don't worry, I got your back boy and I will help you see what is so obvious to anyone who is really looking. I get up from my seat and bring the now empty pitcher of beer to the front where you're sitting nursing your glass of scotch.
"What's up boo," I asked after setting down the pitcher and money for another round.
Predictably you turn towards me and lie with your smile.