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Cliff knew he shouldn't.
It was early in the morning -7.15 am to be exact- and he knew he really shouldn't but Cliff wasn't used to fucking drive without some crappy pop songs sounding in the background, although he had to admit that some of them were damn good, not that he would say that out loud.
As they filled his ears with nonsense lyrics but catchy melodies that helped him to start his mornings with the right foot, Cliff suddenly remembered that famous saying 'Songs bring back memories'. Now, he was aware of that saying worked for some people so he wasn't going to bring it down. It's just that it never happened to him, maybe because he didn't pay enough attention to the music around him when these memories were forming or maybe his good memories didn't have any music involved. Either way, he never experienced something like that to tell if that was true or just a dumb saying.
Until this particular morning where he stretched his arm to reach the little volume knobe and slightly turning it to the right to switch it on and, in that precise moment, hearing a song that called his attention making him turn the knobe slightly to the right again to hear it properly. Not too loud, not too quiet.
That song.
He was sure he heard it somewhere before, he knew this tune and, hell, he even knew some of the lyrics which was unusual for him. It was so unusual that he smiled in a sloppy way as he softly tapped his fingers on the wheel feeling the rhythm of the song while in his mind he was trying to figure out the mystery of why he knew this song like the palm of his hand.
Don't chase me around,
you're bringing me down
I don't want to play by your rules
He tried to shake off that thought because, it was just a stupid song, why he was feeling as if he had to remember something related with that? He tried again unsuccessfully. It was impossible and it was eating him alive and ge felt like he was going to explode if he didn't remember it in the next five minutes.
Although, he kept on smiling because it was so fucking stupid but in a way, he was thrilled for experiencing what exactly ten second ago he was claiming not to have experienced.
Don't chase me around,
you're bringing me down
I don't wanna play by your rules
My life is my own, so leave me alone
I don't wanna be your fool
And with that last sung word that came from the radio, he fitted the last piece of the puzzle that his mind was and felt a wave of relief by remembering it.
But of course.
Of fucking course.
Spahn Ranch.
He hadn't thought about that in months. In a couple of days it was going to be the anniversary of the attack and he, now and then, recalled the incident but just the incident itself and nothing more. But that song managed to made him remember that day at Spahn Ranch where he punched the shit out of some hippie because he had damaged Rick's car and the whole thing with George and Pussycat.
It was all so amusing that he started to laugh softly, quietly wheezing.
Just look at that, Cliff just proved that the saying was true. It did brought back memories.
"What's so funny, huh?" A sleepy Rick Dalton asked as he slowly turned to Cliff and carefully scratched his eye, just like a child who woke up from his nap. Rick always did that and Cliff always found it endearing.
Cliff released the last chuckle "I'm sorry partner, didn't mean to wake you up" Now there was some old Bing Crosby shit on the radio, good moment to turn the volume down Cliff figured.
"I hear you laughin' on your own and I thought you had gone fuckin' nuts" The actor laughed.
They were driving to Colorado because, surprisingly and by pure coincidence, both had gigs to do. Rick has got a very good part for some drama role, like he always wanted to do and Cliff got called last night for some of his services as a professional car driver for some action movie.
"Not my time to go completely nuts yet, maybe in the future." He joked.
"Well, now that you woke me up you b-better tell me what was so funny" He said with his mouth holding a cigarette. Cigarette before breakfast, that was very Rick Dalton.
And then, Cliff quickly turned to Rick looking him from head to his thighs with a playful smile on his lips.
If he knew, he would be the one going completely nuts. Cliff thought.
"Nah" Cliff said quick and dry
"B-but-"
"Is for your own good"
"W-what the hell does that m-mean?" Rick snapped and the stuntman only shrugged in response. "W-what the fuck, Cliff? J-just tell m-me!" He chuckled.
Cliff never got tired of hearing Rick's stutter and he always loved the fact that Rick stutter all the time, but not when he was acting and that was something fascinating to Cliff.
Rick always thought, well, he still thinks it, that apart from being the worst thing that happened to the world and being the biggest menace for the human race, he thinks that nobody would want an actor that stutter. But what Rick didn't seem to realise is that, when he is focused on his lines he doesn't stutter, not a single time. But he quickly forget it, because as soon as the director calls the final cut, he starts to stutter again.
"I don't know, you probably will get mad at me and I ain't going to be rolling on that dirty road because you pushed me out of the damn car" Cliff said all relaxed as ever, suave as ever, as Rick liked to say. A little hint of sarcasm was there and Rick could hear it and that only meant that Cliff was actually dying to telling Rick.
"H-hell Cliff! Is not a joke isn't it? Is something you fucking did!" Rick laughed and Cliff immediately mirrored. "And you are laughin'! You fuckin' bastard, c'mon, what did you do?" Rick has now turned his body towards Cliff resting his shoulders on the window and supporting left elbow on the cushion of the copilot seat, focusing his whole attention to Cliff.
"We are feeling curious today, aren't we?" Cliff said with his eyes on the road. "You ain't gonna like it, but I will tell ya." He made a pause for actually thinking where he was going to start, because now that he think about the whole situation, it was a lot. A whole fucking lot. "Remember that day, last year when I dropped you at the Lancer set?"
"Bit blurry but yes"
"Well, let's say I gave a ride to this hippie girl-
"YOU WHAT? I- I mean, you l-let her s-sit here? I-in my motherfucking car? I-is that w-what you do when I l-leave you alone with the d-damn car?" Cliff only smiled, he knew that this was the type of reaction he expected from Rick.
"Told ya, you weren't gonna to like it" He said as he heard some low mumbling coming from Rick's side as he watched how the actor started an inspection of his seat as if he was trying to find that Pussycat under it and actually expecting to find her.
"But of f-fucking course! W-what did you do that f-for?" Rick screamed and Cliff knew he was in his right to be angry, but it was also funny because he knew exactly how the actor was going to react and he didn't miss.
"Wha'do you wanted me to do? She was hot stuff and I must admit that I did it just to see if I still got it you know?" Cliff replied with his usual I-didn't-do-anything-wrong tone. "Besides, is just the beginning of the story man, it will blow your brains out how it was all connected with that night in your house, it blew mine" Cliff heard Rick's sigh and that was his cue to continue with the story.
"Okay, but you are scarin' me there, what does your story about how you gave a hippie girl a ride has to do with those fuckers's attack a year ago?" Rick threw the remaining cigarette through the window.
"Well, if you let me finish you will know, partner" Cliff looked at him as he lowered his sunglasses to catch those, now confused, baby blues. "She told me she was going to- you remember Spahn Ranch right?"
"Yeah, George's little cowboy town, how could I forget it?" Rick replied with a voice full of ephemeral melancholia.
"Well she told me that is where she was headin' and I don't know you but it was strange for me to hear that someone was going to George's knowing he retired after Bounty Law you-"
"Probably she was filming somethin'? A stupid hippie lucky shot to the business?"
"No no" Cliff shook his head slowly "She said she was there with some friends but anyhow I just let her in and she started to get all flirty with me, not that I was complaining it was my idea after all but she was so young and I noticed how young she was when she rested her head all over my lap and asked if I wanted her to suck it" Cliff let go a little chuckle before turning to Rick to catch his reaction. The actor froze and was looking at him with his eyes wide open just like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car at full speed.
"S-she what? Fuckin' classless man" Rick replied quickly gazing over Cliff's lap and then to the road again. "And in my fuckin' car! Tell me you cut her off"
"Rick, that girl wasn't even 21, don't do that to me again" Cliff said with his voice raspy, typical of him when he wanted to get a serious point through.
The actor just closed his eyes and breathed in. Yeeeaah, pobably that last comment was a bit unnecessary he just couldn't bare the picture that his mind created as soon as Cliff said those words. It wasn't jealousy, he was sure it wasn't or at least he wanted to believe it wasn't? Or maybe he wanted to pretend that it wasn't. Suddenly Rick started to imagine how it would be resting his head on Cliff's lap. They were close, very close but he didn't know if close enough to do that.
"Shit, sorry, you're right, I-I didn't mean to s-suggest anything, ol' buddy" Rick apologised but not looking at Cliff as he was somewhat embarrassed of his poor choice of words.
"You're alright." He said leaving some pats on Rick's shoulder. "When we get there she told me that I should wait for some friends because they were going to like me and shit like that, I asked if I could see George and that's where everything got real weird. I tell you buddy, they said all sort of excuses of why I shouldn't see George and I started to notice things." Cliff's eyes were focused on the road but his mind was miles away trying to recollect every detail of that day, Rick noticed that.
"But that girl and her friends were living with George or?- I don't fucking understand man" Rick tried to connect the dots but there was some missing, probably because he kept interrupting Cliff.
"Yes, it seemed like they were living there and they were a big crazy bunch, but at the end I managed to see ol' George and the poor bastard was blind and his kitchen was a mess, I mean I know my ex trailer was a mess but George's kitchen had rats everywhere and those hippies were spread all over the living room watchin' tv, something bad was floating in the air" At this moment, Cliff took a cigarette and before he could tap his pockets for the light, Rick already lit it up by using his "Thanks. After I greeted George, the hippies started to get real creepy man, I mean they acted like possessed or shit like that and when I got to the car to get the hell outta here, I saw that the tire had a knife on it and-"
"t-t-t the- W-WHAT? I-I mean, I kinda u-understood the hippie girl p-part, but now you're tellin' me t-that my beloved car was damaged b-by some dirty hippie fucker?" Rick nearly jumped from his seat and Cliff swears that he could see a cloud of smoke upon his head of how angry he was, it was still cute for Cliff's eyes. "You just n-not only gave a li-lift to a hippie but also you let so-something happen to m-my goddamn car! I should I should...-" The actor was angry and Cliff could definitely tell, mostly because he knew that when Rick was angry he didn't mind his words so well, but unconsciously he knew when was the moment to stop and what specific words he knew he could regret later.
"Fire me?" Cliff finished where Rick left, and he wasn't happy that Cliff finished that off so he stayed silent. After the hippie attack Rick went completely paranoic for a whole month thinking that there were more hippies waiting for him outside the house. Now, Rick tried to reassure Cliff that everything was alright but Cliff can't be fooled that easily.
He entered the house with a light foot trying to not scare Rick but Cliff didn't know that was exactly what he did.
When he closed the door behind him, he could hear the unmistakable sound of bare foot coming from the kitchen.
"Rick?" He said quietly popping his head into the kitchen looking from light to left, searching with his eyes for the actor. When he realised that Rick was not in the kitchen, he thought that maybe he was in one of the rooms. At the moment he turned to the living room, he was surprised by Rick with a baseball bat yelling at him but thanks to Cliff's reflexed, he was able to stop an unfortunate situation.
"S-shit Cliff, I'm- I'm sorry I didn't k-know it was you" Rick dropped the bat as if it was hot. His eyes were red, Cliff figured he cried or he was going to.
"So that's why you don't answer the phone, you're hiding." Cliff took his time to actually take a look around.
All the windows and doors were closed except for the front door, and he didn't notice when he walked in but there were switchblades all around the living room in specific places but that wasn't all, even the son of a bitch had brought the fuckin' flamethrower inside the house.
"You would feel more safe If I came around on a daily basis?" Cliff asked again but Rick stayed silent. "Don't mind playin' the bodyguard a little bit"
"I- I can't pay-"
"Who said I was expecting some pay?" Cliff smiled and only in that moment, Rick smiled back.
"Goddammit man, it was almost a year ago now, you can't be mad at me for this. Besides, if you fire me now, you will miss the best part of my story" He turned to Rick again, looking for his blue eyes that had a big frown above them.
"I don't blame ya for not tellin' me back then anyways" Rick still had his frown but he let go a chucke. "You ol' dirty sneaky snake"
"Okay now, when I found that knife on the tire I turned around to see that creepy-hippie fuck sitting on that fence looking at me playin' the confused. I accused him right? Because there was no way that one of the girls could have done that and the bastard just laughed at me so I knew it was his doing." Cliff took another drag of his now dead cigarette and throw it through the window and before speaking again, he wheezed making Rick smile, both knowing that the "funny" part of the story was coming. "So I just grabbed the spare tire-
"Oh, so that's w-why-"
"Let me finish!" Cliff said laughing. "Well I threw the spare and some tools and ordered him to fix it but then the creepy-fuck just laughed at me and swore me. Now, you know that I don't like when someone swears at me without any reason given so I just stood in front of him and I punched the hell out of him and knocked his lights for a couple of seconds." Cliff could hear the actor laughing. "Wait because there's more. When I punched him the second time, the girls started to screaming he was a flower or some shit, it was hilarious man. In the end the he fixed the car and I finally got outta there."
"Cliff Booth being w-wild" Rick laughed " 'he was a flower'? He probably was more like a pot leaf." And now Cliff was the one who was laughing loudly. "But what does this have to do with t-t-the attack?"
"Well, when these hippies got in the house, I recognised them from Spahn Ranch, especially that Rex"
"Tex" Rick corrected. He knew his name because the police officers had told him the names of the three of them.
"Tex!" Cliff snapped his fingers. "Yeah, he was on a horse the day I met him back in Spahn Ranch, I doubt he knew something about horses." Cliff said with an unusual disgusted tone.
"S-so you are tellin' me that you knew th-these bastards before the attack at my house?" Rick tried to follow. He now kinda understood why Cliff said it would blow his brains out, it was actually a big coincidence and maybe it didn't have anything to do with the fact Cliff knew them and what happened, but still, it was a creepy chain of events.
"It seems so, partner. All those hippies that were living in Spahn Ranch were part of that Manson fucked up family, I knew that something weird was going on there"
"Cliff Booth, full time stuntman, part time detective" Rick joked and Cliff laughed softly, then, they fell in silence for a good part of the trip.
---
By the moment they both saw the sign saying "Colorado 2 miles" they turned to each other. This was one of the many jobs they got after the attack. They didn't knew if they were being hired because of their skills or just because the story around the incident but they didn't care, work was work and they were slowly reaching the top of their game again.
When Cliff turned the radio on again, there was some good ol' Otis Redding.
That is food for the soul. Cliff thought.
But his soul feeding was abruptly spoiled.
"Still I-I can't believe you let some dirty h-hippie rest on y-your lap" Rick broke the silence, catching Cliff's attention.
"Really? You're still angry at that? After everything I told you?" Cliff smiled with disbelief and that was when Rick started to panic because he just let that thought slip from his mind and that made him said it out loud by accident.
"I-is just that p-picturing you with that smelly hippie-" He was desesperatly trying to mend the situation but he was cut off by his stuntman.
"So that was what you were thinking so much, huh? So busy picturing me and that girl" Cliff said nonchalantly, almost purring his words. "She smelled like flowers to be frank, bit like you"
It was well expected that Rick was going to blush violently and turning his head to the window to prevent Cliff to see that blushing, but Cliff knew it was there.
"N-no! I-I mean, it just f-fucking disgusting how d-direct she w-was, I wouldn't-" Then, Rick Dalton shut his mouth abruptly.
"You wouldn't what? You wouldn't have done it like that?" Cliff purred again.
Rick stayed in silence, still looking through his window trying his best to ignore that Cliff was there. He knew Cliff was joking, teasing him, but the problem was that Rick wasn't and he now regretted opening his mouth.
"I get it, you're jealous aren't ya?" Cliff joked half hoping that Rick would play along saying that he indeed was or something like that but what happened next, well, he can't say he was expecting it. "Don't be, partner, you still are-" and that's when Cliff froze like he didn't usually do.
To make Cliff freeze, you probably would need to put him through or either a traumatic situation or a completely unexpected situation.
And Rick fucking Dalton's head, the most good looking actor of his generation, the golden cowboy boy who came from nowhere to knock everyone out of their fucking chairs with his looks, being carefully placed on his lap was enough, and even more than those two previous mentioned options, to make Cliff fucking Booth, war hero, Mr. I-Am-Not-Scared-Of-Anything, freeze.
Well, he was now. He was damn scared of looking down and not finding Rick's eyes and realising it was all a nice daydream that his mind made up, but since the weight he was feeling in his lap felt very real, the stuntman slowly lowered his gaze to find those unique blue eyes looking up with a slight blush across the actor's nose and Cliff thanked the sun that didn't let his own blush show.
Both of them realised the same feeling at the same time: Peace.
Cliff felt his own mind being at ease second after Rick did what he did. This yet unknown satisfaction feeling made him let out a long sigh for then smile as he kept driving as if nothing was happening and it was nothing for him, it was just Rick resting in his lap.
As for Rick, he immediately regretted not doing this before. The truth was that Cliff's laugh didn't wake Rick up, the real reason was a goddamn nightmare he was having about that night but as soon as he felt Cliff's warm thighs under his nape, he felt safe again.
"W-what was the name of the movie you're making the stunts for, again?" Rick asked with his voice a little bit lower than minutes ago, without mentioning he had his eyes closed but not before taking a good, and long, look at Cliff from this new angle.
"Vanishing Point- hey, don't frown like that, what's the matter now?" Cliff softly chuckle when he saw those brows getting together upon his nose.
"You're supposed to be my stuntman" Rick mumbled quietly and almost pouting.
"I am! " Cliff defended himself. "They don't need stunts for the guy, Rick. They just need someone to drive the car like a maniac and do some crazy tricks with the car and you know that's the job for me man" Cliff looked quickly looked down to admire Rick's relaxed face being hit by the sunrise's golden light, spread all over his lap. He felt grateful that the road was kinda empty so he could distract himself to not missing this view of Rick.
"Let me know when we get there" Said Rick nuzzling his face against Cliff's tummy.
"I hope you're not planning napping all over me" Cliff said but he was actually joking, he didn't mind if Rick wanted to sleep on him, he was more than willing to do anything to contribute to Rick's comfort.
"Well, you fucking woke me up, remember?" That was a lie, a dirty goddamn piece of lie but Rick was only trying to find a really good excuse to stay like this for a good while. "So yeah, I will t-take a nap right here"
"Handyman, bodyguard and now your goddamn pillow? Geez partner, I think I'm more than your stuntman by now" Cliff finished with a whistle.
Then the radio, that was still on his whole time, kept playing Otis Redding.
I've been
Loving you
Too long
Yes, yes you are more than my stuntman, Cliff Booth.
And that was all Rick remembers before falling completely asleep on his more than a brother and little less than a wife's lap.