AN: Ooh the angst. This might be my favorite angsty oneshot I've ever written. And I definitely recommend listening to the song while reading again, because I reread it with a different song playing and it totally switches around the mood.

"Smile (Charlie Chaplin Cover)" Artie POV, during the tail end of "Wheels", post-confession but pre-"Proud Mary"


Smile (Charlie Chaplin Cover)

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's smiling. I do it constantly, more out of habit than anything. My mom always told me that if you keep smiling, it will sink into your soul and you'll really feel happy. I've had a lot of times in my life where my soul could use a little sunshine, (every single time my chair makes my life more complicated than everyone else's, for example) so I smile. A lot.

It's not always a fake smile, either. I usually am a happy person. Disability or not, I've got a pretty good life for the most part. At least I'm happier with it than a lot of people without disabilities are with theirs. I've adjusted, and while it's a little irritating how many things I've had to adjust, in the end it just makes me feel better about myself because I know I'm so much stronger than all of the people who've just had things given to them their whole lives.

For a long time I had managed to keep my life nice and orderly and under control, and I always had my smile. And then something just had to come along and rock the boat. Or more someone. A black-and-blue-haired someone, named Tina Cohen-Chang.

At first she was only a friend, and that was the most glorious feeling ever. We ate lunches together and helped each other study for tests. There was always someone to help the other wash off whenever the popular kids decided to remind us how low we sat on the social totem pole. Someone to cheer us up when things were rough. Someone so neither of us was alone anymore.

And my smile was faked less and less.

Then one day things started changing. Whenever she looked at me, my cheeks felt warm. When she helped me wash the slushie off, the feel of her hands in my hair and on my face sent a little pulse of electricity through my stomach. Every time her hand brushed mine I wanted nothing more than to grab it and hold on, take my gloves off so I could feel what her skin felt like against mine. She gave me what could only be described as butterflies, until finally one day I decided I couldn't take it anymore. I asked her on a date. She said yes.

And suddenly my smile was a whole lot more real.

When we met up that night, she was smiling too. I had more fun than I'd had in a long time, because it was having fun with her. Just her. We went out for pizza, because it's her favorite, and traded toppings when the orders got screwed up. She teased me about my love of mushrooms, and I made fun of how many bell peppers she piled onto her slice. Then we went back to the school and when we found out it was unlocked, the temptation was too much. We snuck into the choir room, Tina nicked one of the wheelchairs, and we had a drag race. I went easy on her, but I still won. She kissed me.

And my smile was one-hundred-percent genuine.

Then she started talking. A confession. The more I listened, the tighter my chest felt. It was sort of hard to breathe, and I could hear pounding in my ears. Was it my heart beat? No, couldn't be, because that pain in my chest must surely have been it breaking. Everything, every happiness and every smile I'd built up with her, had been built on a lie. She looked up at me, her eyes asking for understanding and for forgiveness. I didn't give her any.

And I wasn't smiling at all.

I left her there. I couldn't stay anymore, because the smiles were gone. She was my smile, and that had been a lie. I went home, thanked the Lord my parents weren't home, and I didn't smile again that night. My dreams, when I finally slept, were bad and I might have cried. I don't exactly remember. So this morning, when I woke exhausted and unhappy, I got ready for school the same as I always do. I left late hoping she wouldn't still be waiting for me at the street corner where we normally meet on the way to school. She wasn't there.

And I almost smiled with relief.

Now I'm heading down the hall to my locker, and there they all are. Kurt, Mercedes, and Tina, just like they are every single day. She meets my eyes and there's hurt and pleading and sadness and hope in them. And I think of last night, and all of the ways that she'd come into my life and switched things around on me. I was happy and satisfied before her. Sure, things might have felt better with her, but they also hurt worse.

And even though my heart breaks all over again when I meet her eyes, I fake a smile.

Because maybe, just maybe, if I smile hard enough it will sink into my soul, and then someday it will be real again.