#sam:marlene

Toy Story Sentence Starters || Not Accepting!

He smiles good-naturedly; it’s not pitying or patronizing. It’s fragile, something akin to a tether to silently convey that, while he can’t give her the answers she wants, he feels her frustration and ambiguity. “I–I don’t know,” Sam admits, dimples peeking out even as his head bows and his face is lost in a curtain of hair. 

Sam has preferred to sit on the precipice of erasure for so long, he’s not even sure how to be an active participant in daily life. He suspects that when you’re world is always heavy - when there’s no where else to rise to because everything is literally Life or Death - he should expect conversations to have a certain weight to them, too. How’s the weather, just tastes chalky on his tongue; forced and mundane. 

He wouldn’t consider himself a philosophical person, but he connects to humans, and likes that universality. Speech makes him feel human.

He’s come to look forward to these conversations with Marlene, and he respects her curiosity laced with disenchantment. She’s a romanticized realist, and Sam suspects that might be what he is, too. 

“Because you want to be, you’re supposed to be.” He pauses, thinking. “Do you ever feel like you’re whole life is planned? Down to the breakfast you had this morning. Eggs or no eggs. Someone pointed at you and made that decision. But–but they also said, ‘here’s the gift of free choice, go play.’”

He smiles again.

Punchline / Rules of Rose || ACCEPTING

That hit such a specific button in Sam’s growing book of self-deprecation that, for a second, he didn’t know how to react. There was a time, years ago, when he would have been bashful, but warm and open; personable. Somewhere along the line Sam had come reproachful, despondent and recluse. He connected less - physically and emotionally. Sure, he still cared, but where he could, he would have Dean instigate with witnesses or placate a victim. Because where he needed some air of authority and ‘holier-than-thou’ demeanor to do his job efficiently, the years had eaten at Sam. He was exposed bone and minced meat, raw, unprotected.

He doesn’t think anyone even noticed he stopped trying to talk - really talk - to anyone.

“You seem pretty sure of that,” He starts.

He was flabbergasted by the neatly wrapped package of her words, delivered just for him as if by way of promise. He flexed his fingers, pawing them out like a cat into the fleshy part of a pillow, before retreating them back into wound fist. The human embodiment of a coiled spring.

The Lumineers Song Lyrics || NOT ACCEPTING 

There was a melancholy to her voice, a measured cadence that was some mix of sing-song gravel and staccato. Sam had found melody in tone, in delivery, from years of listening to grieving victims give testimony. He had sat, fingers clasped as if in prayer, dangling in pseudo-nonchalance between his thighs, while Dean probed for information from Ms or Mr or Sister or Brother. 

Sam, alternatively, his bleeding heart always made him lament with them, like he shared their song and with his tender, “I’m sorry about your daughter, Ms. Anderson,” they were sing, sing, singing in harmony for one fleeting moment. The families they talk to always knew Sam was listening, and those eyes that were sheltered under wisping bangs carried each of their losses like his own.