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1: 1955
It’s a good thing there aren’t many folks around to see this. This is Rick’s first thought, alongside the usual storm of panicked excuses for things he hasn’t done yet. He’s saddled up on his barstool, ankles pressed against Cliff’s, their pinkies on the countertop practically linked. The nearest patron is across the bar (too occupied in whiskey sours and sorrows to pay them much mind) and it is, after all, a bartender’s job to turn the other cheek. Still. His collar feels tight.
His stomach gets that rotten, moldy, plummeting feeling that accompanies most everything he does. He wants to freeze like a deer en route of a semi-truck, wants his tongue to tie up or fall out, or stitch his lips shut so he can smile all Raggedy Andy. He’s trying to take back things he hasn’t even said. He’s powerless to stop himself from saying them. “Bet those hands of yours’ve done somethin’ real unsavory.”
“Well, sure.” Cliff drawls, cigarette dangling loosely, puffing smoke like Steamboat Willie. “War’ll do that. Stunts.”
“No, I mean. I mean-” Rick sighs, thick and watery. He’s drunk. Of course, there’s nary a time he isn’t plastered off his ass (or at least comfortably tipsy), but this time he’s dragged Cliff halfway into the weeds with him. This is not the first time the pair has closed a bar. “You ever…”
“I ever what?” Cliff asks, but he knows. He has a way of that. “Go ahead, Moneybags, get on out with it.”
“You ever…with- with a…” His eyes are on Cliff’s hands, his hands are drifting toward Cliff’s knee, his feet are one kick away from footsie. He’s leaning in. Don’t think about it. Don’t blink. Swallow. Shudder out a breath. This is, approximately, when Rick slumps forward and lands face-first (drooling and half conscious) into Cliff’s chest.
Cliff fills him in come mid-afternoon, which is when he deigns to wake. It goes something like this:
A stuntman and an actor walk into a bar. A stuntman and an actor get shitfaced in said bar. Actor passes out, wakes up, pukes on Stuntman’s boots. Stuntman calls a cab, puts Actor to bed, and promptly holds down the fort on Actor’s couch until the sun comes up, at which point Stuntman leaves to feed his dog and buy Actor a bagel and some aspirin. Punchline. Ba-dum-tss. Yada yada.
Rick eats, obediently, after toasting the bagel and applying a gluttonous amount of cream cheese. He pops the aspirin with an appreciative smile, and waits until Cliff’s back is turned to wash it down with a little hair of the dog. Not that Cliff would be surprised. He never used to drink much back home, but he’d been little more than a kid back then. He’d been palming beers from the garage refrigerator every now and then since fourteen or so, and even then he suspects his old man knew a whole lot more than he let on about what Rick’d been up to those days.
“How you feelin’, partner?” Cliff sets a firm hand between Rick’s shoulder blades, that easy, grounding presence Rick is trying harder than anything not to build a dependence on. (Booze. Cigarettes. Cliff.)
His head is pounding something awful. “Fan-fuckin-tastic.”
Cliff hums around an amused smile, flicking the ash off a cigarette Rick hadn’t noticed he’d lit. “I seem to recall you meant to ask me something.”
“Oh?” His collar is too tight, choking him, smothering him, squeezing the life from him- “Tell you what, I just can’t remember.”
2: 1957
Rick doesn’t fool around much. In fact, he hasn’t really had a girlfriend since he was seventeen in the middle of Buttfuck-Nowhere Missouri. But that was when the only thing his mother held higher than a wooden spoon was a cross, and he kept in line as best he could. It wasn’t like he was waiting it out until he got hitched, but he was a rowdy enough kid and going-all-the-way was damn near impossible without the pretense of going steady. He never got much when he did, anyway. Go steady, that is. Anyway. It was Lisa Mae for a month or so in eleventh grade, and a couple others he can’t quite remember in his short-lived college career, and not much to say for himself past that. Unless you count the two week stint with an extra on Bounty Law, which went up in quite the flame.
All of this to say he has no fucking clue what he’s doing right now.
The woman across from him is no less than gorgeous, dark hair better kept than his own, lips stained wine red and eyes like Betty Boop. He’d bumped into her on the street while taking Brandy for a walk so Cliff could fix the pipes under his sink. Her name is Janice. He doesn’t feel like he should be here. His knees knock against the table with his jitters.
“Are you alright?” She asks, pausing in her picking at the…some sort of fish she’d ordered, he doesn’t quite remember. He was busy perusing the wine selection.
“Hm? Y-Yes. Yeah, I’m alright.” He offers a short, tight lipped smile and gulps half his glass. Her brows are furrowed. Shit. Can’t even make it through half a date, Dalton. Pull yourself the fuck together.
Janice purses her lips. “You seem…distracted.”
Line? Please, dear God, line?
“Sorry, darlin’, you just got me all flustered.” He winks almost theatrically, and tries to swallow down the instant regret with another swig of the overpriced wine. She seems skeptical, but preens at the flattery and is content to make short work of her Filet-O’-Something.
They run through the usual small talk, Rick all the while working up a steady sweat, and by the time he walks her out to the Caddy his hands are clammy on the wheel. Janice sits prim and proper with her hands folded in her lap. “Do you need me to guide you back? To my house, I mean.”
“That’s alright. I’ve got a sharp memory.” He chuckles, taps his temple. Prays it doesn’t sound strained. “Steel trap, this is.”
Janice laughs soft and lilting, and sits in only mildly uncomfortable silence (all aside from the radio) most of the drive back. It’s not terribly far, and he takes them on all the right turns, if not with a bit of hesitation here and there.
Predictably, she does not invite him in for a drink.
But she leans forward across the dash, close and close and closer, until he can smell her perfume and his own desperation. She kisses him goodbye, soft and pliant, probably painting his mouth wine red. He keeps his hands on the wheel and there are big, calloused palms and scarred collarbones dancing behind his eyes like faeries out of something Shakespearean. When she pulls away, he hasn’t quite pried his eyes open. He’s half-drunk with the strangest feeling that if he does, he’ll be in bed alone, or passed out on his couch watching Annie Oakley. And the even stranger feeling that it’ll be Cliff bracing his elbow on the dash, Cliff with his eyes always squinting like he’s been staring at the sun all his life, Cliff saying why don’t you stay the night, partner? and he doesn’t have a third of the mind to think too hard about why that might be.
He opens his eyes and it’s Janice, still there. Janice who smiles and clambers out of the Caddy to walk up her driveway. He does not follow. He doesn’t even stay to watch her unlock the door.
He drives straight home and drinks until he’s not sure he could open his eyes if he tried.
3: 1960
“What’s got you all gussied up?”
Rick is adorned in the nicest button-up he owns. Newly pressed pair of slacks, polished shoes, a neatly trimmed blazer. He’s been turning in his reflection and his turmoil for half an hour at the least. Changing in and out of this or that, parting his hair to the other side and back, smoked about half a pack already. “Too much? Too formal?”
“Depends. You still haven’t told me what you’re up to.” Cliff gives him a slow, curious once-over.
“Cliff.” As suddenly as the nervousness had gripped him, Rick is grinning so hard his cheeks burn and stretch. His face must be cherry red with all of it. He crosses the limited space between them and cups Cliff’s jaw in his comparatively small hands. “Cliff, I got a meeting with P-Paul Wendkos. Paul Wendkos! Can you- can you believe that?”
“Sure I can!” Cliff is beaming now too, big hands gripping Rick’s forearms tight. One slides up to brush at the wrist still raised to his face. “You’re Rick fuckin’ Dalton!”
“I’m Rick-fuckin’-Dalton! Rick goddamn Dalton in his very first R-rated picture, Cliff! Shit!”
“Big screen man, huh?” Cliff teases, fingers poking at Rick’s inordinately pricey watch.
“Well. Well, Wendkos…” He deflates like a runaway birthday balloon. “It’s a step up from his made-for-TVs. But…it’s no Western. Somethin’- it’s somethin’ different.”
Gidget had just taken off bigtime, but Rick was lucky enough to dodge a gig on a beach-fun romp. Wendkos is a quiet master with action flicks, as far as Rick is concerned, even if his shit didn't often make it to the big budgets. Still, if he snagged it, it is no small feat to work alongside Rod Taylor. Picture that. Him and Rod Taylor. He squirms at the thought.
“Yeah. Yeah buddy, different.” Cliff reaches up to pull Rick’s trembling hands from his face. He pats them comfortingly, then gently lets them fall back to Rick’s sides. “It’s a steppin’ stone, is all.”
“Right. Right, that’s all it is, it’s-it’s a steppin’ stone, that’s right.” He wipes his sweaty palms on his nice slacks. “And say, I could- maybe I could negotiate…I could see if- if they’re in need of a stuntman? No one- you’re the best match there is. And, well, Bounty Law-”
“Don’t go gettin’ ahead of yourself there, Ricky.” He lifts his glass of scotch from the coffee table and tilts it enough to wag his finger scoldingly. “You book it first, then you worry about me, capiche?”
Cliff takes care of him well and good. Has since they met, will as long as Rick can keep him trailing. He worries, though. Once Bounty Law is finished (and he’s really not sure how much gas he’s got left in the tank for it) Cliff will have much less reason to stick around without reliable work on Rick’s end. They’d stay friends, sure, maybe go out and drink once in a blue moon or see each other’s gigs, but it would fade the way any relationship derived from shared circumstance does. He can’t remember the names of most of his high school friends, or the boys he used to smoke with at auditions. He could weep at the thought of Cliff slipping out like that. Booze. Cigarettes. Cliff. Goddammit.
“Sure. S-Sure, alright.”
“You’ll do just fine.” Cliff says, matter of factly, not a shred of doubt in his voice. Rick feels the all too familiar stinging behind his eyes.
“Think so?”
Cliff just levels him with a look. “Don’t start fishin’ now, boy.”
Rick ducks his head to laugh, and Cliff is still looking at him when he raises it. Always looking. He can never decide whether he loves or hates it. It never feels judgemental. Exasperated, sometimes, or amused, but Cliff doesn’t have the effort or interest in him to judge anyone much. Rick has been watched as far back as he can remember. It’s different, though, a camera and Cliff. Cliff doesn’t capture the moment, he just sees it. “What’re you lookin’ at now?”
He shrugs nonchalantly and sips at his scotch. “You look nice.”
Rick sputters like Cliff’s beat up old car. “Yeah?”
“Damn right! You clean up good, they’ll be smitten.” Cliff grins all cheshire. “Buy ‘em dinner, wine and dine…”
“Why Cliff, what do you take me for?” He laughs with his tongue between his teeth, the habit he’d shaken off once he made it bigtime, but a belly full of drink and a night full of Cliff always had a way of bringing stuff out of him.
Cliff looks down, licks his lips. Then he leans forward, closer, closer, so close Rick can feel his breath. He lets his eyes slip slowly shut, basking in the scent of pine and sun and Brandy. He tenses, bracing himself, and part of his brain is going into fight or flight, so it’s not unlikely he’ll throw a punch when Cliff throws him a bone. But then the warmth is gone, and he’s left sitting there dumb with his eyes squeezed shut.
Cliff shakes the box of cigarettes he’d leaned to grab. His eyes are trained on Rick’s mouth. He can feel it. “Want one?”
One. He could run through a pack and a half now if Cliff’s weren’t such shit. His tongue is drier than the Sahara.
He cracks an eye open. “Yeah. Yeah, hand it over.”
4: 1963
“I’m goin’ to the lake house for a couple weeks. Th-the cabin, I mean.” Rick stammers, toying with his fingers. “It’s real nice in the winter.”
“So you need me house sittin’?” Cliff hums, nursing a beer as he flicks through the channels on Rick’s brand-spankin’-new television. “Brandy and I are happy to stick around. Need a ride up there?”
“Well. I was-was thinkin’ that- you could…y’know- you could tag along?”
Cliff blinks for a moment, taken aback. Brandy whines as his fingers stop their scritching. “That right?”
“Yeah! I’ve never been too good at stokin’ up the fireplace and it gets damn cold past the mountains. Well, not cold -cold. California cold. Nice weather’s got me all spoiled. Now fifty degrees feels ten below.” He laughs half-heartedly, eyes still anxiously trained on Cliff’s relaxed surprise.
Eventually, Cliff shrugs and wipes his hands on his jeans. “If you’re sure.”
“Sure I’m sure, old buddy. Mi casa es su casa. And such."
Cliff stares at him for a beat. Bows his head. Chuckles. “You’re a character, Dalton, y’know that?”
And so it’s settled. They spend the rest of the week packing their things and reasoning what emergency supplies to drag out there, although the main concern leans toward how much food they’ll be needing to bring up for Brandy. Cliff finds a cooler in the shed Rick hadn’t even known he had laying around, which Cliff decides will be filled to the brim with steaks and chicken and beer and all sorts of shit for him to grill up or cook in the cabin’s little cast iron stove Rick never really bothered to use. He’d only had the damn house for a year or two, and aside from a singular summer trip that was far too lonely and far too sweaty for his liking, most of its usage was loaning it out to friends for industry brownie points. The thought of bringing Cliff up was a common one, that it might be better out there with a friend, (and there’s no other friend he’d spend more than a couple days confined in the woods with) but something about really asking, making something like that real and grounded, irked him too much to ever go through with. Now, though. Cliff is smiling like he’s shining, thrilled to get the fuck out of L.A. and back to something that feels a little more like whatever country bumpkin town he’d crawled his way out of. Least it ain’t Missouri. Lucky bastard. And even with Rick’s longgone history of farm life and ranch-hands, Cliff had always been the man’s man of the two of them, better suited to chopping up the firewood and fishing out on the lake. Rick’s hands had gotten too manicured for all that.
The drive consists mostly of Rick’s legs kicked up on the dash of Cliff’s beater (which runs like a stallion with lung cancer, but takes snow better than Rick’s small selection of sports, which will be the first to go when the last of the Bounty Law checks run dry) and an argument or two about which gravelly stereo channel to stick to. Brandy sits comfortably in the backseat, intermittently napping or resting her head on the console to nudge at Rick until he caves and scratches behind her ears. Driving is Cliff’s duty, for the most part, aside from the two hour stint at the end in which Rick takes over and gripes about the engine the entire time. Cliff cranks back the passenger seat, lazily huffing out smoke like that goddamn caterpillar with the hookah and cracks open a beer he’d snagged out of the cooler, sipping at it when the bumps in the road smooth out.
Rick sticks his neck out, eyes darting off the messy dirt road. “Gimme some’a that.”
“Ah-ah-ah!” Cliff tsks and holds the can out of his reach, smirking something awful with his shades slipping down his nose while the sun’s still peeking out. “Eyes on the road, c’mon now.”
“Hog.” Rick grumbles, and smiles when he hears Cliff’s retorting scoff.
“Eyes on the road, what’d I say, Hell Driver!” Cliff nudges at his arm propped up on the console, but obliges in at least trading his cig off into Rick’s outstretched fingers. “Don’t know why they let old men like you behind the wheel.”
Rick watches from the corner of his eye as Brandy yawns and whines and noses her way into clambering onto Cliff’s chest, to which he responds with a huffed out laugh and a Christ, darlin’, warn a guy! He finishes off most of the cigarette, but is kind enough to set it back between Cliff’s teeth for the last couple puffs. His mouth stretches into a smile beneath Rick’s fingers. His collar feels tight.
It’s the most upbeat he’s seen Cliff in…
It’s the most upbeat he’s seen Cliff.
The only thing rivaling his excitement is Brandy’s, who jumps out of the car as soon as it’s parked and runs around sniffing every tree and patch of dirt in sight. Cliff follows behind her, various iterations of what you got there, girl? and hey! leave it! that have Rick watching through the side mirror and laughing into his fist.
He leaves Brandy to mosey around the lake, opting to spruce up the cabin and get himself settled (and out of the light snow.) Lord knows the thing’s got enough cobwebs to pass for a mausoleum. He scans the place, all weathered and empty and underused and cold, and something about it seems so devastatingly human. He’s reminded of his summer fling with the house, back when it was new and exciting, and he’d ridden over expecting a nice, solitary get away. He’d hated it. Mosquitoes aplenty, hotter than the devil’s armpit, and wading out on the lake left much to be desired that could’ve just as well been accomplished by his pool back home, and mostly just left him feeling grimy and sweltered. None of the decorations he’d set up afterward had been to his taste much, and looking at them now, he finds he’d picked them out in the hopes that whoever he sent down to borrow the place would find them appealing. He paid an inordinate amount of cash for this fucking shell of a cabin, so he could have a moment away from the glitz and glam and Rick-fuckin’-Dalton of it all, and he’d dressed it up for other people. And there they’d come riding back like well fed strays, telling him how nice it was, how lovely, how much fun they’d had with their sweet fucking families and pretty fucking wives and cute fucking dogs in his fucking cabin. Ain’t that Rick Dalton so generous?
He doesn’t suppose it’s all too surprising for Cliff to find him curled on the moderately comfortable couch, muffling cries into his woolen winter gloves. Cliff doesn’t seem to notice at first, just ushers Brandy into the house and brushes the snow off her fur before she shakes it everywhere. He stomps his boots on the mat and yanks his gloves off, frostbitten smile forming around a “Rick, pal, what do you say I get the fire goin’?” and then his eyes seem to register the shake of Rick’s shoulders, the red-rimmed eyes, and Cliff’s face drops and man, he just ruins everything, doesn’t he?
“I’m sorry,” he says, once Cliff has made his way over to set a hand on his shoulder, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to- to-”
“I know. I know, kid.”
“I just- I wish it looked better for you.” He laughs, all watery and hoarse. “It’s a little pathetic.”
Cliff squats a little, enough to be even with where Rick is half burying his face in the couch cushions. “Don’t be too harsh on her. She’s a bit of a fixer-upper, but she ain’t gone yet. Good bones, huh?”
Rick nods, which leaves streaks of tears wetting the cushion of his dusty old couch, and then Brandy is hopping up to nudge into his arms and lick at his chin, and he can’t help but laugh and kiss her head right back. “Thanks, Cliff.”
“Sure thing.”
Cliff wanders off for a bit, long enough for confusion, but not so much that Brandy starts bugging out. Rick sits comfortably smoothing down her fur, murmuring little praises at her and trying to imitate Cliff’s commands and clicks enough for her to do a trick. Leave it to Cliff to have her eating out of the palm of his hand but never teach the damn dog how to roll over.
He comes back around, eventually, towing behind him an axe and an armful of kindling with an air of pride that would not have been detectable had Rick not known the man for years on end. He drops them to the ground unceremoniously, tied up with some string he’d gotten who knows where, and sets to tending the glamorous fireplace at once. (This had been the selling point for the cabin, the swanky fireplace and the huge windows, and he’d never really had the opportunity to use it.) It’s amazing, really, when the fire’s going. It lights the whole place up, making it warm and inviting and remarkably less like an exoskeleton of wealth.
Cliff looks back at him over his shoulder. “Cool it with the waterworks, Ricky, what’s got you goin’ now?”
“Oh- am I…?” He touches his cheek. Sure enough, his fingertips come back with evidence of his sensitivity. “Sorry ‘bout that, friend.”
Cliff stands and brushes his hands off, and suddenly he’s scooching Brandy out of the way enough to sit beside him on the couch. His hand moves, and for a moment Rick thinks he’s going to pet Brandy, but then it reaches up and brushes the hair from Rick’s face. “You feelin’ alright?”
He feels like the world is shrinking in and swallowing him. Rotten, moldy. “Yeah! Yeah, yeah, tired is all.”
“Funny,” Cliff raises a brow, “you slept damn near the whole way here.”
“..I don’t come up here often.” He toys with the slightly moth-bitten throw blanket covering his legs and half of Brandy. “I wasn’t…expecting- but you…I’m just glad you came.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear that.” Cliff smiles, hand unconsciously messing with the same few strands of Rick’s hair.
Don’t think about it. Don’t blink. There’s no one out here. You’ve had a beer or three, that’s enough to blame it on. Look at the fire dancing on his skin. Remember the fire when you met. Always fire, that Cliff. Don’t blink. Don’t think about it. Lean in-
“I oughta start on dinner.” Cliff murmurs, fingers giving one last gentle, reassuring run through Rick’s curls, still a little damp from snow. “That okay, cowboy?”
“Yeah,” he says, shaking, “I’m starving.”
5: 1965
“Alright, wait,” Cliff holds his hands out like he’s taming a rabid animal. Maybe he is. “what’s the issue?”
“The issue , Cliff, is that I’m hosting Hullaba-goddamn-loo!” Rick has been in an inconsolable fit for upwards of thirty minutes. This has been somewhat aided by his adding counter of five vodka sodas, but he’d started it as close to stone cold as Rick Dalton gets.
“Well, that’s…good, isn’t it?” He looks exhausted. One of these days, Rick will throw the tantrum to end all tantrums and have him heading out for good. Sometimes he wants to. Just to see what would happen.
“Not when you can’t sing for shit!” Rick cradles his head in his hands, fists balling up in his hair so tight they threaten to tear it right out. “Oh, and you haven’t heard the best part, shit, Cliff! I’m hostin’ the week after- after Michael fuckin’-sonnuvabitch Landon! Yeah, real funny puttin’ me right after Little Joe. Tryin’ to make a fool outta me. I’m an old dog, Cliff, I’m all outta new tricks.”
“So, they put you after Bonanza boy. Don’t mean you’ll bomb.”
“You know damn well I’ll bomb! Fuck!” He throws something close to him across the room to hear it shatter. Collision by proxy. “Fuckin’- music show. Y’know they got The Zombies playin’ right after me? Won’t be a hard act to follow, tell you that.”
Cliff, deathly silent, stares at the broken mess of whatever he’d chucked at the wall. “...Gonna apologize?”
Rick scoffs. “Excuse me?”
“Damn near hit my face. Gonna apologize?”
“Oh, I’ll hit your face.” He says, and sways when he tries to stand.
“You try it, Dalton.” Cliff crosses his arms over his chest, standing firm and authoritative as ever. He’d never been on the receiving end of one of Cliff’s outbursts, and both know well enough he (probably) would never lay a finger on Rick, but he squares right up anyway.
“Or what?” He keeps himself straight enough to shove, to curl one of his fists in Cliff’s stupid denim Billy Jack bullshit, and throws him the meanest look he can muster. Whatever is in a broken heap on the ground, it’s not enough. His fingers tremble. He needs to break. “Or you get away with me, too?”
Cliff sucks in a sharp breath. Clicks his tongue and sighs a shaky laugh. “I’m gonna let you sit down, now, because I know you don’t wanna say that again.”
“Gonna let me, huh?” He sneers, curls his lip like Cliff is something on the bottom of his shoe. “Who’s payin’ who?”
They both tense.
They never really broach the subject of their boss-employee relationship. They’re friends, that’s all, just friends with a monetary precedent. Rick will toss him an envelope or a check or a wad of bills, and Cliff will nod and wordlessly tuck it into his back pocket, and then they’ll go somewhere to waste half of it on booze and a good time. Now, though. The tantrum to end all tantrums. Now it’s sometimes.
“I’d like to talk to Rick, if you don’t mind.” Cliff gritts, hands stuffed in his pockets. Likely balled into fists. “Not Jake Cahill, tough guy.”
There is a flash where he considers punching him. The better part of his brain says that will end very, very badly for him. But like this, gripping him by his collar, Cliff looking down at him all smug, he wants to do something worse than hitting him. It is seductively simple to commit this act of career murder-suicide, to grab him by the neck and gnash their lips together, to know that nothing Cliff could do to him past that would reach the threshold of honest treachery Rick would set. Part of him has always wanted to do it. Just to see what would happen.
Rick Dalton is a coward at heart.
He crumbles, mushes his face into Cliff’s chest and hides there. Does not cry so much as he whines and clings. “Sorry- I’m sorry, I’m sorry-”
“Enough of that.” Cliff snaps, and he shuts his mouth because even he knows when not to push his luck too far.
“I like you around.” He says, letting his dignity slip enough to nuzzle the slightest bit into where he’s made a home in the sitchwork of Cliff’s denim. “I pay because I like you around, you know that, right?”
“...Tell you what Bonanza boy doesn’t have,” Cliff says, resting his still rage-shaking hand on Rick’s back, “a boss fuckin’ stuntman.”
Rick laughs, still clinging to Cliff’s jacket, mostly to hold himself upright. “You’re goddamn right.”
“What song they got you singin’?”
“Green Door.”
“Hoo boy,” Cliff wheezes a little, and Rick can feel when he rummages in his pocket for a lighter, “yeah, alright, you might be in some trouble there, man.”
He laughs so hard he falls into Cliff a little, and Cliff laughs so hard he falls into the door a little, and then he’s pulling Rick further into him so he can bend and laugh into his shoulder, and it’s a miracle they didn’t kill each other years ago.
+1: 1969
He’s got a bag of bagels. As per request.
“Cliff? Cliff?” He pokes his head into various empty rooms, desperate by this point. They’d told him the room number but he just couldn’t- he can’t- “Cliff, goddamnit, where are you?”
He doesn’t know what to do anymore he just- shit, what if he’s real hurt, what if he lost too much blood-
“Sir are you- alright, breathe, sir, are you looking for someone?” His eyes are too clouded to see them just right, but there’s some kind of nurse or staff or doctor or fucking something standing there, arm half raised in concern while he chases himself around in circles.
“Cliff- I’m lookin’ for- for Cliff Booth, he uh- he was stabbed and- and-”
Long story short: this is how Rick’s hospital visit turns into Rick’s Hospital Visit, on account of a rather severe panic attack.
His leg shakes as he swallows down the dixie cup of water they’d given him. Him in his cramped little hospital chair. His heart skips every other beat. Double dutch.
“Mr. Dalton?” He snaps his head up, and the man who’d found him earlier (presumably) stands with a neat clipboard, pen dangling helplessly off the side on a silver plastic chain. “I’ve got the room of your, ah-” (he skims the few papers clipped into the board) “sorry. Mr. Booth. If you’d like me to take you.”
“Oh, uh- Yep, yeah, lead the way.” He stands on wobbly legs, brushes his sweaty palms on his corduroys. Hastily collects the bagels. He can get that right, at least.
“Can you…” The man reaches to help him stand, setting a careful hand on his elbow.
Rick promptly yanks his elbow away. “I can stand on my own, thank you very much. Christ. I’m a grown man.”
Remarkably, it is much easier to find a hospital room when one isn’t aimlessly wandering up and down the same damn hall.
“Hey there, partner.” Cliff drawls, ostensibly not dead. Rick breathes a sigh of relief so heavy he can hardly stand.
“Oh, Cliff.” He sets the bag on the nearest counter, eager to sit beside the narrow bed and grip Cliff’s forearm, mostly to be sure he’s there. Cliff smiles and settles his hand atop Rick’s, and his face violently contorts. He swats at Cliff’s arm with a sudden, insurmountable rage. “Oh, Cliff! Don’t you ever do that to me again! Had me worried out of my goddamn mind, what is wrong with you? Are you tryin’ to kill me? Gonna turn my hair all grey, shit.”
Cliff laughs until he coughs and grips his hip, one hand held up in surrender. “Easy now! Alright!” He grabs Rick’s hand, after a beat, and drags it down to rest on his hip. He winces a little, but doesn’t flinch. “See? I’m okay.”
“Thought you- I thought you might-” Rick blubbers, his thumb rubbing unconscious circles into Cliff’s belly.
“But I didn’t, did I? So what’s the use of worryin’? Gonna take a whole lot more than a hippie with a jackknife to take me out.” He nudges Rick’s chin up with his forefinger, tilting his own chin down to look him in the eye. “Or don’t you have that much faith in me?”
“...Course I do.” The thing about stuntmen is you forget they aren’t indestructible. You watch them set themselves on fire, jump off buildings, take enough hits, it’s like they’re made of steel. And now, well. Cliff’s in a hospital bed. Turns out: steel can bend. “But don’t you do that to me again.”
“Don’t go pissin’ off any more hippies and we won’t have a problem, will we, ranger?” Cliff pokes at his side teasingly. “Where’s Fran at?”
“Hotel. With Brandy. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Nah, best she has someone lookin’ after her.”
“Shame it ain’t you. You’re almost as good a guard dog as ol’ B.” Rick grins, feeling Cliff’s laughter through the skin he’s still touching.
“Mmm, high praise.” Cliff stares at him lazily for a moment, seeming just to take it all in. “Hotel you said?”
“Until the house stops bein’ an active crime scene, yeah.” Rick sighs, drags his unoccupied hand down his face. “Best we got out of there anyway. Don’t think she’d step foot inside after all that. Hell, I barely can.”
Cliff’s smile is empathetic, more genuine concern than Rick’s typical wailing draws out of him. Rick’s chest twists and plummets. “More time to spend keeping me company, huh?”
“Lucky me.”
Cliff cracks that stupid smirk, and Rick’s hand is still on his hip, and there’s a bag of bagels that are probably less than appetizing by now, and he’s still sort of remembering how to breathe, and suddenly he’s leaning in. Don’t think about it. Don’t blink.
It lands like a fist.
It’s chaste, all things considered. Sort of close-mouthed and awkward, and half contaminated with the salt of Rick’s residual waterworks. But he can feel Cliff’s smile (along with his stubble) and it’s like the weight of the world is redistributed. Two sets of shoulders.
“If that’s what it’ll get me,” Cliff murmurs, sounding for all the world like a guardian goddamn angel, “I’ll get stabbed by hippies more often.”