Chapter Text
Jack usually takes the stairs at work.
He’s one of the only people who does, since the building is over ten floors and there are three perfectly decent, working elevators. Jack’s always been one for moving though, especially since he’ll be sitting in the studio for the next five hours. Besides, he’d overslept today and hadn’t gone on his usual morning run.
Sammy will oftentimes walk with him – mildly complaining under his breath, naturally – but today they’d gotten here at the same time as Chris and Jerry, so Sammy gave Jack a half-salute when Jack gestured toward the stairs, and braved the elevator small talk for the two of them.
Jack generally doesn’t see anyone in the stairwell and when he does, it’s not anyone he recognizes.
When he gets up toward the upper floors today, however, he hears a slight sniffling noise followed by a few hiccupped sobs. Jack starts walking faster, immediate concern flooding through him. Maybe someone brought their kid to work today and they got upset or tripped and skinned their knee, or….?
The crying noises don’t sound like a kid, though. They’re too deep for that. Jack starts to hurry.
Jack isn’t exactly shocked to see that it’s not a kid at all. There’s a young guy, smallish, sitting on the stairwell with his head in his knees, clearly trying and failing not to make any noise. He’s got a mop of curls on top of his head that obscure most of his face from view.
“Um…” Jack says cautiously as he rounds the corner, not wanting to startle the guy who was clearly already having a bad day. “Hi? Are you alright?”
The guy bolts upward, looking over at Jack with wide eyes. Jack approaches cautiously, moving slower up the last half-flight of stairs to get to the eighth floor, where the guy is sitting and where Jack needs to meet Sammy and the rest of his cohort shortly.
“Oh God, I’m fine, I’m sorry, please don’t tell anyone,” the guy starts to babble. He looks like a teenager, or maybe a little older and just with a baby face. He has dark curls that fall to his ears and black square glasses. Even though he’s sitting with his knees scrunched to his chest, Jack can tell he’d still be tiny standing up.
“Hey, it’s okay,” Jack says, hurrying the extra couple of strides to get to the guy. After a second’s hesitation, he moves to sit on the stairwell next to him. The guy shifts away slightly, biting his lip, and Jack notices how red his eyes are. “I’ve seen you around before, right? You’re….you’re one of the interns.”
It clicks in Jack’s head as he says it – he’s seen the guy at lunch a few times, usually alone.
“Um, yeah,” the guy wipes his eyes. “Um, I’m Ben. Ben Arnold. I probably shouldn’t have told you my name, I guess, but…”
“Hey, we all have rough days,” Jack puts a hand on Ben’s shoulder and Ben’s eyes practically light up. God, the poor kid must be having a really rough time. “You’re on Morning Caffeine Rush, right? With Derek and Phil?”
Ben practically winces the second the names come out of Jack’s mouth. “Uh, yeah. That’s me.”
“You’re…not having a good time on the show, I take it?” Jack asks. He doesn’t look down at his watch to check the time – he knows that they were early getting here this morning, Sammy won’t need him for another ten minutes at least even if he’ll have to hear some whining later about Jack abandoning him.
“I – uh – no, no – it’s a great – um, opportunity, I’m very, uh grateful,” Ben stammers his way through platitudes and Jack hopes an encouraging smile will be enough to get him to stop. He does, eventually, almost deflating as his nervous energy dissipates. “Um. It’s just. They’re not the….the nicest to me.”
“Oh,” Jack says, immediately feeling more protective of Ben. It’s one thing to cry from stress, another to have the stress be completely tied to another person, especially a boss. Jack’s been good at pretending not to let anything bother him for so long that he sometimes forgets how thick of skin he has compared to most. “I’m sorry, that’s awful, Ben. You don’t deserve that.”
“I mean, I’m just an intern,” Ben says quickly. “I get that’s pretty standard. I’m not – I’m not complaining or anything. It’s just – I came to LA just for this internship, and I’ve never lived away from home before. So on top of all the shit I get here, I’m in this awful sublet with five roommates who act like smoking pot is a personality and there’s never a moment’s quiet, and it’s so expensive anyway. I just really miss my mom, this is the first time I’ve lived more than a few miles from her, and the town I’m from is just so special to me and I’ve never been away for longer than a week – oh God, I’m rambling, I’m so sorry -”
“Ben,” Jack moves to squeeze his shoulder, recognizing the symptoms of a panic attack after years of helping Sammy through his. “Just breathe. In and out. You’re gonna be okay.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben’s eyes are filling up with tears again, and Jack can tell how involuntary it is by the blush Ben gets when they do. “You must think I’m such a moron –”
“Hey, I don’t think that at all,” Jack tries to be firm while still keeping his voice soft. “The guys in this station – most of them are complete imbeciles who don’t have two brain cells to rub together.”
That gets Ben to very nearly smile, so Jack keeps talking. “And as for homesickness, of course that’s understandable. I went to college across the country, so don’t even worry about me not getting it. That just means you love your mom, man! Nothing wrong with that.”
“Thanks,” Ben blinks a few times, clearing up the water in his eyes. “You’re really nice.”
“I’m just doing what anyone would,” Jack says, knowing all the while that those words are deeply untrue, especially in this building. Ben knows that too, if his grateful smile is any indication. “I wish I could help more. I could talk to Derek and Phil, make sure they’re –”
“Oh, no,” Ben interjects immediately, eyes growing impossibly wider. “They’d never let me live it down if they knew I…I mean, they already hate me. Like, despise me. They think I’m such a baby. If they knew they made me cry – it wouldn’t be pretty.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says, truthfully. He’s deeply thankful for his own thick skin developed after years and years of being on the radio, but Ben’s clearly not that experienced, or probably even the same personality type. He’s probably much more sensitive than most. Jack almost envies him for that. It must be freeing, in a way, that clear sensitivity. It’s certainly not something Jack sees much of from the guys he meets at the station.
“Thanks for talking to me, though,” Ben wipes at his eyes. “I – I should probably go, I don’t wanna be a bother –”
“Not at all, I was happy to help,” Jack says, thinking that this is honest to God probably the most productive and fruitful thing he’s done at work in the past six months. Maybe even full year. There’s not much that goes on here that makes Jack feel like he’s a good person, but helping Ben certainly did. A thought occurs to Jack, one that he should probably dismiss but his brain has already latched onto as the Best Possible Plan.
“Hey, my show doesn’t have an intern,” Jack says slowly and Ben blinks at him a couple of times as if he’s having trouble comprehending. “I could probably ask and see if you could get transferred. If Derek and Phil hate you as much as you say, I’m sure it won’t be an issue.”
“To…to your show?” Ben’s mouth falls open just a little. It makes Jack smile. “Oh, God. I couldn’t. That’s – that’s so nice of you, holy shit. You literally don’t know me at all. All you know about me as that I’m a complete crybaby.”
“Better than an obnoxious dick,” Jack makes a full gesture toward the door that leads from the stairwell into the studio that makes Ben bite down a grin. “You’d have to give up your Saturday nights, but…”
“Saturday…” Jack knows it the moment it clicks in Ben’s head. “You’re – oh, shit. You’re the producer of Shotgun Saturday Nights.”
“Jack Wright,” Jack holds out a hand to shake and Ben takes it, bemused and more than a little shocked if the way he glances between Jack’s hand and his face is anything to go by. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to – to meet you, too,” Ben echoes, voice a bit faint. “Wow. You’re so much nicer than I expected.”
“Most radio hosts are generally nicer in person than they are on the air,” Jack tells him, figuring it’s the closest thing to the truth he’ll get out. “At least that’s the goal.”
“Even…even Shotgun Sammy?” Ben asks, biting down on his lip nervously. Sammy’s reputation, as always, precedes him.
“Well…” Jack wonders what he should say – and what Sammy’s reaction will be to Jack informing him that he recruited an intern. “I’m nicer in person. And I can talk Sammy into being on his best behavior.”
“I…well…okay, if it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to help on your show,” Ben’s words all come out in a rush once he gets started, and his genuineness makes Jack chuckle. He doesn’t see much genuineness these days, unless it’s the unfiltered awful kind.
“We’d love to have you,” Jack tells him and Ben beams. Jack hopes Sammy will be a part of that we soon enough, but even if he’s not, he’ll get there with a little nudging from Jack.
“You recruited an intern? To be in our studio? Where we work?”
Jack figured it would be best to treat telling Sammy about their new intern like ripping a Band-Aid. The transfer had been approved by their station manager Carl, and Jack immediately texted Ben to meet them in Studio C with twenty minutes to go before they’re live. And then went downstairs to tell Sammy only about ten minutes before Ben was due to get there.
Sammy, as somewhat expected, has a betrayed look on his face as he hunches in his shoulders inward like he does when he feels threatened. He glares at Jack overtop the table and soundboard separating them, pointedly taking a long drink from his coffee.
“Don’t even worry about it,” Jack says, slow and measured. “He’s just gonna help me out with patching callers through and lining up commercials, alright?”
“But he’ll be here,” Sammy says, glancing at the doorway that separates them from the rest of the world right now. “For the show.”
“Yes,” Jack nods. “That’s generally a prerequisite for having an intern.”
“Don’t make jokes,” Sammy frowns, taking another long drink of coffee. “I – what if he notices something? This is why I hate when we have guests. You know this, Jack.”
“When we have guests, they’re usually macho bullshit whoevers that the studio pulls in,” Jack reminds Sammy. “Ben is a nice kid. He’s a senior in college, and he’s only in LA for the summer. He’ll only be in the studio with us until the end of August. He’s very sweet, and sensitive. Derek made him cry six times since he got here.”
“He told you that? Or Derek bragged about it?” Sammy’s face gets a little less perturbed and offended, softening into one of what Jack thinks is probably understanding. Before Sammy started putting on the show of a century, he’d been on the receiving end of a lot of bullying.
“He told me,” Jack says. He and Ben have talked twice in the four days since Jack requested his transfer, and Ben was seemingly incapable of not telling the truth. “He’s a good kid, Sammy. He’s not anything like the other guys here. And I promised him you wouldn’t be a dick, so don’t be mean when he gets here.”
“Shotgun Sammy is a dick,” Sammy points out, but it’s with a grumble which means Jack has already won.
“Sure, Shotgun Sammy is,” Jack says. “Sammy Stevens, however, is going to be nice to Ben when we’re off the air. Shotgun Sammy can do whatever you want him to when the light’s on, but you are going to be nice to Ben. Got it?”
“I am nice,” Sammy says, looking at the ground and not at Jack. “It’s just….it’s hard to be nice here, Jack.”
“I know,” Jack sighs, and resists the urge to put his hand on top of Sammy’s. That’s one thing they definitely can’t do here. “Just - be as good as you can, okay?”
Sammy hesitates for a second before he says “I’ll try.”
It’s genuine, though. He’ll try, at the very least for Jack’s sake, but Jack knows Sammy will be much better once Ben actually gets in the room and Sammy can see that he isn’t an asshole out to get them.
There’s a knock on the door a few minutes later, and Ben pokes his head in. He looks to Jack first, nervous energy apparent but clearly excited too if his wide, white smile is anything to by. It dims a little when he looks at Sammy, but his gaze immediately flips back to Jack.
“Hi,” Ben takes an awkward couple of steps into the room. Even though Jack and Sammy are both seated, he’s barely taller than them at his full height. Jack chances a look at Sammy, who smiles at Ben though Jack can tell there’s plenty of nervous energy that Sammy’s just doing a better job at hiding.
“Hey, Ben,” Jack smiles easily at him. He gestures to the seat to his right, which Ben practically sprints to take. “This is my cohost, Sammy. Sammy, this is Ben.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Ben’s voice practically spills over with enthusiasm as he sticks out a hand over the soundboard. He has to stand up again to reach. Sammy takes his hand and shakes it firmly for all of two seconds.
“Nice to meet you, too,” Sammy says, and his voice at least genuine enough. “Jack says you’re a college senior?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Ben smiles over at Jack in relief as he sits back down in his seat. “I will be in the fall, at least. Just one year left.”
“Where do you go to school?” Sammy asks and Jack silently congratulates his good behavior with a nod in his direction.
“Oh, you wouldn’t have heard of it,” Ben blushes without making eye contact with either of them. “It’s just a community college in Washington, where I’m from. I have no idea why I even got this internship.”
“Probably because you had a great interview,” Jack smiles at him encouragingly and Sammy nods along. “Alright, so the show starts at 6PM sharp. Our first segment is just the two of us bantering about the Olympics coming up, so just keep an eye on the levels for me, yeah? We’ll take calls after that, which you can vet and then patch through to me. Those will be more topic-specific, but we’re doing a concert ticket competition at seven so that’ll be a little more intense. I’ll help with the calls then and Sammy can handle the talking.”
“That’s a lot of faith in me,” Ben says, but he doesn’t look nervous this time. His bright eyes and tentative smile seem much closer to thrilled. “Phil barely let me touch the board.”
“That’s ‘cause he’s a control freak with a superiority complex,” Sammy mutters under his breath, rolling his eyes. Ben smiles at Sammy, the look on his face one of pleasant surprise.
“Well, I think you’ll be great,” Jack tells him and Ben beams at the compliment. Sammy casts Jack a look like whatever you say.
As it turns out, Jack’s more than right. He’s extra right. Ben’s an absolute gem, and patches calls through with absolutely no problems. No bad callers get to Sammy – Sammy has a torrid history of various bad callers – and by the time they reach their first long commercial break, even Sammy’s smiling.
“You’ve definitely done this before,” Sammy says to Ben off-mic. “You’re too good not to have.”
Ben turns pink, clearly pleased at the compliment. “Um, I’ve interned at my local radio station since high school. That’s all."
“Clearly it’s a good station, if they’re teaching you that well,” Sammy says and Ben looks about ready to burst with joy. “He’s better than you were at twenty-one, Jack.”
“Oh, shut up, you didn’t even know me until I was twenty-two,” Jack rolls his eyes, but can’t help but smile when he sees how excited Ben looks at the compliment.
“You guys have known each other that long?” Ben’s clearly only curious, but the question is enough to make Sammy break eye contact with Jack and probably regret saying anything in the first place if his scrunching shoulders are anything to go by.
Jack covers with a blasé “Oh, we’ve been broadcast partners for ages. We were hired here together.”
“Wow, that’s cool,” Ben says, and he doesn’t seem like he’s overthinking that. Still, Jack’s all too familiar with the paranoia that comes from working in this studio and he knows it won’t help anything.
“And you’re back on the air with sh-sh-Shotgun Sammy this fine night, and we’re about to make your dreams come true with two free Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets,” Sammy adopts his usual slimy persona as he leans toward the mic, now not looking at Jack or Ben. “Call in and tell us what you’re doing to beat the heat this summer and ladies, if your answer doesn’t involve showing off your tits, you can bet you won’t be getting those tix.”
It’s a bad line, one Sammy’s used before, and Jack looks over at Ben as he bleeps out the word tits.
Ben’s very clearly taken aback at the quick change, his eyes widening incrementally – Sammy hadn’t been quite as gratuitous in their first hour on air. Neither had Jack for that matter. The show had been relatively tame, probably subconsciously for Ben’s benefit.
Jack watches Ben’s momentary confusion clear up as he bites his lip, looking from Jack to Sammy. He’s a smart guy, Jack was certain when they met, and he’s definitely clued into the fact that Sammy’s just as much of a method actor as he is a radio host.