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Toriel’s smile is soft and loving. You can see the tenderness in her eyes as she takes your tiny hand in her much larger paw and leads you through a puzzle, the gentleness in her face that seems to soften all of her edges. When she smiles with joy, her eyes crinkle at the corners, shining with her love. Her love is like the warmth and sweetness of a freshly baked pie, like a pleasantly warm fire you could stick your hand into without getting burnt.
When she laughs, genuinely, really laughs, she doesn’t hold back. She snorts and chortles and guffaws, and sometimes she laughs so long and hard that tears gather in the corners of her eyes and that grin stays adorning her face for minutes afterwards. Often over some pun told by Sans or yourself. You were so proud the first time you made her laugh like that.
She masks pain as if it were joy, sometimes, you know. Most monsters do, to some extent. They put on a brave face to brave the world in which they lived. She masks it with a sad, broken smile pulled onto her face, even as her eyes gather wetness like grass catching raindrops. A hysterical, cracked laugh, the high-pitched tremble of her voice as reality sinks in. You can still see it imprinted on the back of your eyelids like dust clinging to the floor, hear it ringing in your ears like the slash of a knife.
Flowey often laughs mockingly. Its face would stretch into a bared-teeth grin and it would cackle as it called you an idiot, a fool, stupid, as it ordered you to die. His face can contort into terrifying shapes. Leers that seemed to split from ear to ear, dripping down the edges like trails of blood as he taunted you. Wide grins with just a little too many teeth as he ridiculed you, took amusement in your pain.
Lately, after everything happened, after you all came to the surface together and you coaxed it up here with the rest of your family… He still smiles and laughs cruelly, meanly, but you can tell he doesn’t really mean it, now. It isn’t scary when he does it anymore. It’s just what he feels like he needs to do before he can admit any actual vulnerability.
Sometimes he is vulnerable, now. It genuinely laughs— a soft, high sound, or sometimes boisterously, cackling loudly, or snorting and guffawing like his mother, over some joke or memory or gift. You remember him trying to hide his startled smile when you gave him his bike, the shiny red bike with the golden basket, his excited laughter and cheers as you both rode around in it.
Sans almost never stops smiling. That laid-back, affable grin stays plastered onto his face at all times, whether he’s happy or sad or uncomfortable or any other range of emotions. Even when he’s upset, that grin stays unmoving on his face. His grin says a whole lot of nothing, just one of his many masks that he slips on depending on how he wants to come off to those around him.
Well, it slips sometimes. If you catch him off guard. You’ll see it strain around the edges, falter for just a second before being slammed full force back into place. You can still see the shocked expression on his face as his own blood paints his clothes, drawn out by the blade gripped tightly in your hand.
His laughter is usually a mostly genuine expression of emotion, though, if you know how to read it, which you do. He laughs when he finds something funny or amusing, oftentimes just a “heh”, but sometimes full-on tears laughing, if he finds something really funny. His laugh changes a bit more noticeably when he’s upset, too, unlike his smile— he’ll keep the “heh”, but it sounds tired, or done, or anxious, or bitter. You’re able to tell the difference between his laughs, even if it’s harder to distinguish between the different masks he wears.
Papyrus wears a different mask than Sans, and far less impenetrable. He smiles like he’s trying to project cheer like a beacon, like he can single-handedly make the underground a better place by the sheer power of his belief. It’s hard for someone who tries to be so great to show it when he doesn’t truly feel great. What is a sunray supposed to do when it doesn’t have the energy to shine anymore? When it feels dull, lifeless, and dark? It has no choice but to shine anyway.
So he smiles, and puts on a brave face even when he’s scared or sad or hurt, and he tries to spread goodness. He’ll give you a scared smile, a shaky “I believe in you,” even if you don’t deserve it. He tries to be cheerful and kind, because maybe he can make everyone else happier and more content by proximity if he does.
Maybe he can be the sun that the underground needs if he just tries hard enough, the sun that none of the monsters have seen for millennia, that they hadn’t thought any of them would get to see in their lifetime, ever or again. Maybe if he’s cheerful enough, kind enough, good enough—no, great enough—he can make everything better.
Undyne’s smiles are often genuine. Wide-open grins that flash all of her sharp teeth and scrunch up her eye, unabashedly happy or excited and not afraid to show it. Sometimes her smiles are incredulous or angry, with sharp corners and an ire-filled eye, the curl of her lip closer to a snarl than anything else. A baring of teeth rather than a flashing of them.
They’re always passionate, though, always fueled by the same flame that seems to burn eternally within her, never really faltering or weakening. The flame burns and burns and keeps her going, and she never seems to run out of fuel to keep the coals alight. It keeps her a pillar of strength for those around her, one made of heroism and bravery and sincerity.
Her fire, while it can be used as a weapon—you would know; you’ve been burned by it many times before, after all—more often than not serves to protect those around her, to keep them safe and warm in the biting cold of winter. She was a shining light when they were all underground, admired for her resolve, passion, and honesty. She gave them hope in times of despair, like the last strong tether on a fraying rope of belief.
Alphys has a wide range of smiles. Shaky, nervous smiles, often accompanied by an anxious laugh or fidgeting—pacing in circles around herself, wringing her hands—or rushed-through speech. Determined smiles, where she sets her mind and heart to something and smiles to bolster herself, and even if her smile is shaky, even if she sweats and shakes and fears, she tries to see her path through.
Genuinely excited smiles, too, with wide happy eyes and bubbling snort-laughs and long rants about anime. Shy, happy smiles, that are genuine and soft and gentle, when she loves and knows she’s loved in return. You like her happy smiles; they show up when you sit and watch anime and eat ramen with her, when you listen to her rant about what she loves. They show up when Undyne takes her into her arms and hugs her tighter than anything and spins her around, and their dual smiles shine brighter than the sun.
She’s smiled more since you all left the underground, since she’s gotten with Undyne and realized that there’s people who will love her unconditionally. Since she’s stopped keeping the secrets she was keeping and reunited all the Amalgamates with their families. She’s happier for not having to carry the burden on her own, and the Amalgamates are happy, too, now.
Asgore's smiles, as they were when you first met them, are often sad. There’s always some amount of pain burrowed behind his eyes. Pain hiding in the gentle, resigned smile he gave you when you first met him, when he told you he so badly wanted to ask if you would like a cup of tea, when you both knew how this meeting had to end. Pain in the smile he donned when he told you about his family; a nostalgic, sad thing, pulled down by the gravity of his grief.
He’s smiled more happily since we came to the surface, always gentle, always kind. You’ve heard him laugh at puns and knock-knock jokes and stories, in a booming way that you could only accurately describe as a dad-laugh, or perhaps a santa claus-laugh, and when he does the sadness that clings to him like coppery blood temporarily washes away. Mostly, but not fully; there’s always that little something behind it.
You can see it in his eyes, in the way his face doesn’t quite seem to know how to pull into a wide-open grin. The weight of his grief, of his deeds, of the knowledge of what he’s been through and what he’s done and that he can never go back to how it all was before— it weighs his smile down, like flowers crushed under the unforgiving weight of a trident.
Chara smiles in a similar way. You’re the only one who can see it. It isn’t ready to tell everyone yet that it’s still around. They may never be ready. You’ve accepted this. You’re okay with this. You’ll wait as long as they need you to for them to be ready, even if that means you’ll be waiting forever. Until then, you’ll stick around for them, and you’re content being their partner.
Their grin splits their face like it’s been carved there with their knife and refuses to falter. It smiles even when it’s in pain, and its smile only ever wavers when it breaks down, when it’s in so much pain it can’t keep it up anymore, when it’s already crying and screaming out to the uncaring void. Even then, oftentimes the grin remains, etched onto their face like it’s just as permanent as the scars on their arms.
It laughs softly and smiles at your jokes—you remember feeling so proud the first time you got it to, and it excitedly returned with one of its own—and Toriel’s jokes, and its own jokes as well. But they also laugh when they’re scared, or confused, or in pain. When they’re so overwhelmed that they don’t know how to deal with it, sometimes they laugh so hard that they cry. (You don’t think you’ll ever forget hearing its laughter ringing in your ears in the true lab. A sickened, high-pitched “You look horrible. Why are you even alive?” echoes through your mind.)
You didn’t smile much before you fell to the underground. Even now, it’s a small, weak thing, like a newly-born faun still trying to figure out how to get its feet under it. Your face doesn’t move a lot, even when your emotions do. You’ve been told you come off… Impassive. Bored. Emotionless. Weird. Kids used to find you creepy, or too little, or too much.
But your monster family doesn’t think that. They can see your emotions. When you smile at them softly, so slightly that someone might not catch it if they weren’t paying attention, when your eyes fill with warmth from pride or love or mirth. When you set your jaw determinedly and narrow your eyes, setting yourself down your path and refusing to give up until you reach your goal. They recognize it for what it is when you let out your soft, creaky laugh.
You know you still don’t facially express much now, but your family sees what little you do express and recognizes it for what it is, and doesn’t expect you to do more. They recognize it for what it is when you clench your fists determinedly or rub your sleeve anxiously or flap your hands excitedly. They know you, and they love you just the way you are. Not just as the savior of humans and monsters, or some small pitiable child that they think they have to save, or just as some kind of obligation, but as you, as Frisk. And that’s so much more than you ever would’ve, or could’ve, asked for before they showed you how it felt to be loved.