Chapter Text
Ben Arnold opened his email. He read the email from Merv. He read it again. One more time. He closed his email. Repeat.
That’s been all he’s done for the past hour since he first got the email from Merv. If anyone else saw him they’d probably be pretty concerned, but what else was he supposed to do?
From: [email protected]
Subject: New Radio Show
Good Afternoon Ben,
As you know, we have been looking to fill the late night/early morning show hours of 2:00AM to 6:00AM. While Chet Sebastian has been kind enough to fill this timeslot, we have hired a new radio host to occupy this timeslot.
The new show will be a late-night AM talk show hosted by out-of-town radio host Samuel Stevens. Mr. Stevens reached out looking for a job and will be arriving in King Falls on May 1, 2015. Due to his not being from around this area, we have made the executive decision to have you co-host this show as well as produce. Please see what the requirements of these roles entail in the attached guides. Please also see attached your contract for “The Sammy and Ben Show” to be signed at your earliest convenience.
If you have any questions, please reach out.
Merv
Station Management
Ben knows he’s an emotive person. He knows that he’s got a lot of feelings and doesn’t always know how to contain those feelings. However, he has no idea what he’s feeling right now. He thinks it’s good? Yeah, it’s mostly good. He’s going to have a radio show, one with an actual bona fide big-time big-city co-host. That’s—that’s a dream come true! This is, like, everything he’s ever hoped for!
But he’s also panicking. Because Merv only sent that email an hour ago, on April 29th. Only two days before this show starts. He only has two days to prep and outline a brand-new show he’s doing with someone he’s never met. God, how is he supposed to do that? What if this Stevens guy hates what he comes up with, or refuses to stick to the show notes? Or what if—
Deep breathes, Ben. Remember what your mom taught you. Oh god, call Betty Arnold!
He finally closes the email for real, this time pulling up different facts about their town and recent news events to cover. Just a nice, sweet introduction to King Falls for the new guy. As he starts pulling up some different websites and articles, he lets a grin grow on his face as he pulls up his mom’s contact. She’s going to be so excited, and he’s already feeling it’s contagion.
Anyone who knows Sammy Stevens knows that it’s not actually all that uncommon that he frequently asks himself “how the hell did I get here?,” but holy shit, how the hell did he get here?
After getting an email back from that Merv guy about a job at a radio station in King Falls, Sammy immediately set to packing up. Their—his apartment used to feel pretty full, but the past four months that feeling went away. Instead of feeling like a home, it started to feel like, like a memorial, or a shrine. A mausoleum. He couldn’t stay here anymore.
When he first realized he had to go, he had a moment where he considered heading back to Florida. For a split second, he forgot that he burned all his bridges there. He only had one person, and then he didn’t.
After too many days and probably too many liquor bottles thinking about it, he finally decided on King Falls. Hell, when you follow a man across the country once, why not follow him again, huh? Maybe he would get lucky, and Jack would be there when he arrived. Maybe Jack has been waiting for him to follow. Maybe Sammy is delusional.
It didn’t take him that long to pack the apartment away. The morning he woke up and saw the bag packed and the car running, well, it was kind of a blur. He called out that day and, in some weird cocktail of pure rage and deafening grief , Sammy packed all of Jack’s things, everything that reminded him of their best days, and threw it all into a storage unit. He spent the whole day oscillating wildly between screaming into/throwing pillows and bawling his eyes out. He gave himself one day before he went back to work. He gave himself one day before locking all those feelings away.
Leaving, going to King Falls, that wasn’t exactly him letting those feelings out. The idiot part of his subconscious may be holding out hope that he’ll find Jack, but he knows himself. This isn’t a sort of closure, this is torture. But, well, he couldn’t stay any longer, and he didn’t know where else to go.
He put his furniture and the boxes he didn’t want to take with him and the same storage unit, traded their his car for a new one with no memories, packed the last few boxes he had, and then he left. No goodbyes to make, no reminiscing to be done. He finished mourning the places in this big city he might have loved the same day he started mourning Jack. This place, it was never home.
You know what they say. Home is where your heart is. Sammy didn’t know if he had one of those anymore.