#thread: sam

Mo fiddled with the coffee cup in front of him, Martha had insisted on leaving a fresh pot and a few breakfast pastries at the table. He kept holding his breath the way Knightley seemed to do so easily to keep his cool. They'd gotten better about it over time, even if it was still a struggle. Hearing someone walk in he stood up and held his hand out, "Sam? You wanted to speak to employees at the nursing home, right?," they said. Everyone at work had been talking about the interviews, seemed the easiest way to get a conversation going. "Martha left coffee if you want some," they said sitting back down.

"Are you looking for Ollie?" Jacqui asked when they looked up and saw Sam, figuring that she was in the park looking for the at-the-moment-very-stoned mutual friend they shared, not that the also-very-stoned Jacqui knew where he was. But they didn't think Sam would be in the park to partake in the holiday celebrations of her own free will. Despite her friendship with Ollie, and, yeah, Jacqui too.

Sam Guthrie has a good life! Okay, he has an exciting life, but some things still catch a guy by surprise. Y'know? He knows. For example, the woman with a giant hat and a giant set of... flowers on said hat is bouncing toward him, her heels click click clicking as she does that strange little run of people who've spent far too much time in high heeled shoes. Click clop click clop! The early spring breeze catches at the hem of her bright purple skirt, causing the silk to flutter around her knees. There's a--oh, there's a feather on the hat, too. He can see it now! Boy, that's a big hat. "Samuel!" The woman calls his name gaily, raising her hand to catch his attention. Whoever she is, she waves like a beauty queen, and even from here, he can see her smile is toothpaste commercial white. "Are you Samuel Guthrie? Slow down, dearheart! Let me have a look at you!"

Sam had been lost in his own little world, when his attention was brought to the mystery woman waving him down. The first thing he noticed? Well, that hat. It sure, indeed, was a very big hat. Sam was not sure he'd ever seen a hat that big. The world was full of marvels.

The second thing? She seemed to know him, considering she was calling him out by name. Sam look left and right in confusion, pointing innocently at himself as if to confirm that, yes, he was indeed the Sam Guthrie she was calling to. You never know, the odds of their being another right next to him were slime, but not zero.

“Hey,” Sassa said, barely glancing up from her phone as Sam greeted her, eyes still on the text message - as they had been, since she received it. As much as Greer had made her miserable in the past, and as much as Sassa blamed her for her and Mitch’s...falling out, or whatever, she just couldn’t believe she’d actually be doing this. Playing this game as the first texts had called it. But she wasn’t about to risk it - whoever it was knew something, even if they didn’t know everything Greer had. And it was simple enough, right? Let someone else take her phone. Pretend to be her. Text someone as her. Not that big of a deal. 

Sassa was a bit of a control freak though, and the idea of someone else potentially fucking with the perfectly curated images she had developed nearly broke her out in hives. But at least - and this was something Greer wouldn’t have fucked up - it was Mitch. Who barely knew her anymore, with everything that had changed in the past year. And she trusted Sam. Mostly. Sort of. More than a lot of people, at least. “Would you do me a favor?” Sassa asked, finally turning her gaze up to the younger girl, a blink of long lashes accompanying the question. “I, uh...need help figure out what to say to Mitch. We haven’t really spoken in a while,” she said, shrugging up one shoulder, trying to keep her question casual, like this wasn’t the last thing she wanted to be doing. 

Sam #2’s drop pod, to put it gently, crashed.

The metal walls buckled with ear-splitting screeches, and if not the Gerti helping him with the rigging and the calculations, Sam is 100% sure he would have condensed into the smallest pile of bones possible. As it stands: he still has his tongue, his jaw hurts like hell, his ankle might have broken, and he pissed himself.

Not bad, for landing on earth the way a canister or twelve of Helium-3 should have.

He is having a hard time getting the latch open. The door’s reinforced, but these internal workings were supposed to be for emergencies pre-crash only— the pod was never designed to h.ouse somebody. Let alone for three days.

Sam gets the latch open and barely manages to roll himself out onto the ground before throwing up into his helmet. Oh, that was worse, and he did not want to do it again. Frantically, Sam unlatched the dome and sucked in his first, technically…lung-fulls of earth air.

Not technically. He’d never been here. He’d woken up for the first time ever on the moon. Damn.

That’s what he needed to sort out.

Legally. Cathartically. Violently.