Work Text:
The year was 2001, and NBC had, in Cliff’s opinion, made a terrible decision. Jake Cahill, they had said, would ride again. Scratch that, it wasn’t really NBC, they’d just decided to sell off the rights to Bounty Law to the highest bidder, who just so happened to be Warner.
It was a reboot, because that was the kinda thing that made money. It was also the kinda thing that Cliff hated, because it was uninspired. Now, it wasn’t like the original run of Bounty Law had been comparable to Citizen Kane or anything, but it had at least been original. They’d had that going for them. But this…
Well, Bounty Law: The Reboot had some kid who’s never played the lead in anything before, a handful of scripts, and Rick, who had agreed to play a side character for a few episodes. It was nothing important, but the director had said that people who knew the original would like it, and Cliff knew Rick liked the idea as well. Of course, that meant he’d have to drive Rick to set, and probably stick around set all day, so long as no one kicked him out. Nothing new there, nothing he minded.
They were due on set——Rick was due on set——tomorrow, at around noon. Cliff wasn’t supposed to be there. Strictly speaking, he wasn’t involved at all, but he went wherever Rick did, and someone had to drive him to set. It was the kind of thing that had made an awful lot more sense when they’d both been working, but Rick never had gotten his lisence back, and they’d been in this routine for too long to bother changing it. Besides, Cliff had always liked driving Rick around.
They’d given Rick the scripts for the episodes he was in, which meant Cliff had seen them, and he was right about it being shit. It wasn’t the worst thing out there, but it was still far from the best.
Rick thought it was pretty alright though, and that was enough to make Cliff happy. Overall, Rick really just had one problem with it, and it was that Jake——in his words——seemed a little like a homosexual. Jake Cahill, Rick said, one morning, in a tone of voice that implied contempt, isn’t a homosexual.
And Cliff said sure, Jake’s not homosexual, and handed Rick his coffee and kissed him like he’d done every morning for the last few decades. Sure, he said, that would be ridiculous. Then he laughed, and Rick swatted him with the script, and was that.
- - -
Then the first day of shooting came, and Cliff dropped Rick off at the entrance to set before he found a place to park their car. Strictly speaking, he didn’t have permission to be on set, but if this director knew anything about anything he probably knew he should have a Rick Dalton wrangler, at least as far as Cliff knew, he was the only one around.
Knowing that, he just had to hope that the director wouldn’t put up a fuss at the idea of some scarred old stuntman sitting around his set all day, and that he could get onto set in the first place. That second thing, Cliff quickly discovered, wouldn’t be so easy as just walking in, like he was able to do when he still didn’t stunts for Rick.
Instead, he had some kid turning him off set, telling him he needed to be on the call sheet, and probably resisting the urge to say “beat it, old man.”
“Who are you?” The kid, probably younger than 20, asked Cliff with a kind of scrutinizing look. Well, it was fair, no one was gonna know Cliff, now when he’d been nothing but a footnote in the story of Rick Dalton for the past thirty years, but it was still irritating.
“Cliff Booth,” he said, and then got stuck, because that didn’t help him. “I’m here with Rick Dalton.” He leaned a little on his cane as he spoke. His leg had been acting up worse than usual, and right then it was aching badly.
“Rick Dalton?” The kid asked, and Cliff sighed. He didn’t want to have to pick a fight with some PA, even if they were dumber than a box of rocks. The PA was about to speak again, and probably say something stupid as shit, like who’s Rick Dalton? when Rick decided to show up at Cliff’s left side.
“Cliff,” he said. “There you are.”
The kid took on kind of an embarrassed, and mildly confused expression, and Cliff silently reveled in it.
“Cliff Booth,” Rick said to the kid. “He’s my stuntman.”
Cliff had to stop himself from laughing, because he hadn’t done stunts since 1971, when his leg finally gave out on him. The way he saw it, at this point he was just Rick’s man, but that hadn’t stopped Rick from introducing Cliff as his stunt double for the last 30 years anyway. At this point it was a habit that Rick was never gonna break. Cliff was okay with it, though. Over the years, he’d become endeared to it.
Besides, Rick had this complex about his and Cliff’s relationship. He wouldn’t put a name to it even though they’d been living together for almost three decades. Even though they were obvious to anyone who took more than a couple seconds to look at them. So Cliff figured that he would probably keep on being introduced as a stuntman ‘till the day he died, and he was okay with that. Whatever kept Rick happy.
At the end of the day, that was really all that mattered.