lilacblossoms:

prettyboysdontlookatexplosions:

hey: in steve and sam’s conversation at the VA, it’s actually steve who initially brings up the concept of happiness. he does so, in fact, almost in response to sam’s confirmation that he too lost someone: steve says, “i’m sorry,” sam says, “after that, i had a real hard time finding a reason for being over there, you know?” with the kind of look that says you know, and then steve looks away as he asks, “but you’re happy now?” not are you happy: “but you’re happy now?” a phrasing that is less a question and more a request for a different kind of confirmation, almost like what he’s really asking sam is: is it possible? almost like the subtext of his questions to sam — “you lose someone?” / “but you’re happy now?” — is: are you like me in this way? is it possible that how you seem is how you are? is it possible that in some future time i cannot imagine i could become like you?

#yes this is exactly how i read this#i think that steve at the start of cap 2 is quite a sad person#not in an ‘i can’t go on’ sense#but in the sense of ‘sure i can go on#but i’m on this huge plateau#staring up at the unscaleable mesa of happiness#with literally no idea how to haul myself up there’#and like ‘well i guess i’ll just live down here then#in the scrubgrass’#‘that’s good enough i guess’#until sam comes flitting around and is like#’yeah i used to live down here’#steve: ‘what do you mean used to?’#and that’s a huge disruption#a huge revelation for him#the new idea of happiness in his reach (via septembriseur)