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One time, Morty kissed a boy.
Or, well. A boy-like thing. A humanoid-ish alien that resembled Earth’s male species. It had spiky hair, and was. Muscly. Very muscly. And tall. Kinda like a hotter Brad.
Morty’s sort of amazed that it chose to kiss him. Admittedly, it was for a traditional apology since Rick and Morty ended up saving their species, and the choice to get cultural needs out of the way was between him and Rick. And Prince Unintelligible Name Because Human Tongues Don’t Work That Way said his grandpa smelled like the worst kind of dumpster, but still. Morty isn’t exactly the kind of boy that gets picked first for kickball.
Let alone /kissing/.
But still. A boy. Kinda. More boy than not.
He thinks it might not count, since it was an alien and most of the societies and Rick fuck up don’t have the same idea of gender anyway. Then he thinks of all of the times he’s drooled over vaguely-female-shaped anything because he thought it was vaguely female-shaped and he figures nah. It counts. He shoved the prince into the male-half of the gender binary he was comfortable with and that shouldn’t change just because he kissed it.
(Wait that sounds kinda bad now, misgendering is bad and forcing his culture on others is bad according to Rick, shit——)
The point stands: Morty kissed someone(thing) masculine(ish) and it was pretty great.
And the prince said he was cute and to visit again. And Morty flushed and stammered and Rick dragged him through the portal before he could look any dumber. And then he stood there and touched his lips briefly before Rick turned around and started making fun of the kings and their son.
It becomes a Thing. No matter how much Morty tries to shrug it off with a, “The universe is gigantic and having gay thoughts and a gay experience is nothing in comparison to stars exploding and life forming in nearly infinite ways” type of thought, but he’s always been less nihilistic than Rick. He’s sentimental and moody and more than a little traumatized and part of him is a little excited to have a relatively normal crisis rather than a “this planet will literally explode if you don’t press that button in twelve seconds” crisis.
The rest of him is going through his normal porn, frantically trying to find something that interests him more than Prince-Unintelligble Name did. It’s been weeks and he’s had no luck. The wind got him going more than his usual go-to’s did.
Things feel kind of wobbly, so he goes through his porn stash and hopes at least one part of his life can be straightforward and normal. It might be too much to ask for, with a family like his, with experiences under his belt like what he has, but.
Regardless, he might be panicking and going back and forth and feeling like crap for panicking when he’s not a homophobe or anything, and that’s when Summer pops her head into his room.
Summer’s walked in on weirder stuff, but this might be the weirdest scene of the week. Morty can admit that.
His floor’s covered in every magazine he owns, and he has his laptop and the family tablet right near him with at least twenty tabs open between the two. He has tissues and some washcloths, and he even stole a couple of candles out of Mom’s room to uh. Set the mood.
(Listen. He’s a little bit of a sap. He knows that. He deserves a little bit of dorkiness and sentimentality to counteract the trauma he’s accumulated over the past few years. And lavender has some. Associations with it. He likes those candles, and that’s his business.)
Anyway. Summer’s walked in, and before she can really take in the nonsense, Morty blurts out, “I might be gay?”
He can see the moment she regrets walking in. Regrets forgetting the Golden Rule of having a teenage brother—Knock before entering, and if there’s no response, don’t go in because that just means he was ‘engaged’ and didn’t hear the knock. She’s been burned enough times that really, this is her own damn fault for not learning from her mistakes.
“Um.”
“But I mean, I don’t know!” Morty says, tugging at his hair. “He wasn’t really a guy, he was—He had three feet, it’s not like he was human, but he was—-Look, a kiss doesn’t mean much, right?”
“Right.”
“But it was really good, and—-“
“Oh my god.”
“And I mean, maybe it’s just like. Like. I. Want to be around someone who isn’t related to me, s-so maybe it’s not a gay thing or, or or, maybe it’s just a. A lonely thing.”
“This is. This is a lot, Morty. Male sexuality isn’t exactly my forte. This might be a ‘Talk to Rick’ thing—-“
“No way!” He shrieks, scrambling to his feet. “No, no, absolutely not. Rick’ll just make fun of me for being worried about something that’s—-He’ll think this is dumb and that I’m dumb and then he’ll just drag me on another adventure and I’ll—-I’ll never actually get to figure this out!”
Summer looks pained, and Morty would feel bad, except he sat through her getting drunk and crying over Alan Rickman’s death, AND he sat through multiple realities’ Harry Potter movies with drunk-Summer. She owes him an awkward experience. (If anyone asks, Morty’s favorite version of Harry Potter was the one where his parents were secretly Dumbledore and Grindelwald, and he had to kill his brother, Lucius, to save the world.)
“Okay, so. You think you’re gay because you kissed an alien that was sorta like a guy?” She cringes. Morty cringes as well.
“I mean. It’s more—It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“If you can’t tell me why it’s more complicated without talking about your masturbatory habits, please don’t.”
Morty keeps quiet and Summer groans.
“C’mon, Mort, you’re definitely old enough to realize that self-love is about fantasies and fake crap. I’ve seen your internet history—-“
“Aw, Summer—“
“Not willingly, you turd. But that weird shit—The one with the feathers—“
He recoils, feels like she just stabbed a cattle prod into his gut, and yells, “OH MY GOD CAN WE NOT—“
“ANYWAY.” She slaps a hand over his mouth and glares. “You don’t actually want that to happen to you, right?”
He looks at his feet and, into her hand, says, “I mean. No.”
“You can think something’s hot in theory and not want it in practice. Get it?”
“Yeah, I. I guess.”
“Good. So. Maybe you’re gay. Maybe you’re bi. Maybe you’re straight. Or none of these at all.” She lets it sink in before saying, “If you live long enough, you might get to figure it out. Grandpa Rick seems like he’s not going to give you the chance, so it might not even be worth worrying about.”
“Wow, uh. Harsh, sis. Just a little harsh.”
She smirks and ruffles his hair. “Bottom line, bro: You’re my gross little brother no matter what, Rick’s going to take you on adventures no matter what, and Mom and Dad are way, waaaaaaaay too self-involved to give a shit.”
“That’s not. I mean, thanks for the ‘we love you no matter what speech’, it was. Uh. Touching. And nice. But.”
“But what?” She prompts, when he stops short.
“Look, that’s not what I’m worried about. I’m worried that—-Look, it’s hard enough for me to find a girl who doesn’t think I’m—-I dunno, twelve, or a dork, or gross, or. A million other things. But if I’m into guys, how the hell am I ever—There’s no chance. None. I know maybe one gay guy.”
Summer says, “Yeah, I mean you are you. I wouldn’t set my standards too high, but there’s a secret every woman knows, bro.”
“Secret?”
She leans close and whispers, “Men are really, ungodly easy. Gross and nasty, but easy, with low standards. You’ll find one dumb enough that even you, as an easy man yourself, will be able to snag. It’s statistically impossible for you to be the dumbest boy when you have Rick’s genes, so you’ll have a decent chance of finding a moron who’ll think you hung the moon, and your own standards are at average male-level so. It’ll be a match made in heaven.”
Morty cocks his head at her for a moment. After a pause, he says, “That’s actually pretty comforting. Insulting, but it helped. You’re not too bad at the whole—the whole older sibling thing. When you actually. You know. Try.”
“It’s never happening again,” She declares brightly. “And I’m going to forget this happened, after one last comment.”
“And that is?”
“Everyone in this family’s a little gay, Morty. All of us.”
“W-what? Like. Everyone?”
“Everyone.”
“I mean. Rick’s sort of expected. And Dad, because of the whole tired Gary thing but—-You?”
“I had my Big Gay Freakout before Grandpa Rick even came back, you know. It was about time you had yours.”
“Jeez.”
“Yep. Welcome to the club.”
She grabs his arm and drags him downstairs for dinner, and Morty feels better.
(He asks Rick to borrow his phone and calls the prince, ignoring Rick’s hooting and hollering in the background. Rick waggles his eyebrows at him when he hangs up, and Morty reluctantly spills the details.
His face is flaming red as Rick mocks him, but it’s. Not gentle, or anything like that, but there’s a conspicuous lack of “fag” or “gay” comments. At the end of the ribbing and some boogies, he asks for the keys to the spaceship for the weekend so he can go visit.
Rick says, “No fucking—No way in hell you stupid shit.”
But he doesn’t take the keys with him to bed, leaving them conspicuously on his work table, so Morty assumes he didn’t mean it and he goes to kiss his boy-ish-friend.)
(He didn’t mean it, though he gives Morty hell later.)