Archive of Our Own ^beta

Since the Bill Cipher Incident when a lot of Stanley's memories had gone up in blue and white flame, regaining them was a strange and kind of awkward process for him. He couldn't help but feel like a voyeur in his own spaces sometimes, his own study, his own bedroom.

Not saying there was anything wrong with being a voyeur. In fact, it was sort of fun, sometimes, rediscovering himself like this.   

"Come on, come onn..." Stan grunted, tongue peeking out, trying to twist the pick into the lock just right this time. He pressed his ear up against the wood in his desk from where he crouched beneath it. He heard a promising-sounding click, and tried to pull the secured drawer out one more time. It slid out easily, finally, after Stan had been tinkering on and off with the lock for a few days as his own little personal project.

"A-ha! Yes!" Stan pumped his fist in the air in triumph, and accidentally hit the bottom side of the desk. Rubbing his throbbing knuckles, Stan braced himself and finally looked inside of the drawer, not knowing what to possibly expect. Something similar to the snow-globed dimensional rift, something dangerous and alive that would face-hug him, maybe a deep, black nothingness bending physics and falling out of the bottom?

Stan let out a sigh of relief when he realized it was just a stack of letters, organized pretty meticulously for, another thing Stan had realized about himself, a pretty messy person. For a brief moment, Stan wondered if maybe these were really Ford's, that maybe this had been Ford's desk before Stan had moved himself in, and he'd never actually opened the drawer before. 

Well, better to make completely sure, then, right? 

Stan took out the first letter, it was written on yellow notepad paper and was softy wrinkled in a spot, the lines of blue ink fuzzier where liquid had spilled on it and long ago dried. The date in the corner was from nearly three months ago, from before all that Weirdmaggedon craziness had happened. The header said "Lee", which wasn't a familiar name, but it clearly couldn't have been a nickname made out of Ford's name. So, Stan let out his pent-up breath and dove in to read what he hoped was truly meant for him.

Lee--

I know I haven't sent you one of these in a while, so try not to cry like a little bitch when you get this and realize I'm not dead. I got into some trouble with the G. Feds and was locked up for a bit. Nothing to worry about, they're still dumb as rocks so I got out. Piece of fucking cake. I went through withdrawal in that stupid prison so I'm seriously ready to get off my face.

You know my number. 

-Rick

"What the..?" Stan clutched the letter and rose up from his crouch, extending it and squinting at it, finally bringing it up close and lowering his glasses to look at it. Now, this was a total mystery. He placed the letter on the top of the messy desk and swiftly went for the next one, which was a date even further back. His curiosity was eating away at him. 

This next note was on the same type of yellow paper, it was just with red pen this time, and the scrawl seemed a lot looser. 

Lee,

I'm a little a lot drunk right now but I'm all by myself so I'm writing to my fucking pen pal because I'm a pretty much a pathetic girl scout. 

God, I miss my wife. She was the most beautiful woman in the world, you know.

I really fucking miss you, too. 

-Rick

A friend of his, Stan realized. A longtime friend, maybe. Stan placed that one on top of the first and got even more desperate, snatching up the next one. This one was even shorter, and written in the very middle of the page.

Lee,

Stumbled into Unity.

I need you.

-R

Whoa, Stan thought, slamming his hand down to the desk and accidentally crinkling the note a little as he caught his balance. Stan had no idea what any of this could be about, but the emotions pouring through the letters only added fuel to the fire of his curiosity. He reached into the drawer and lifted from the bottom, pressing the hefty stack of papers against his chest, and plopped the stack down at his desk. He figured he'd be in here a while, so he pulled up the desk chair, switched out his glasses to his thinner reading ones, turned on the reading lamp and got started.

Stan devoured letter after letter, grasping at straws about what they could possibly be about when he was missing so much of the information. He didn't have his half of the conversation he'd sent back, and a lot of the things Rick referenced only drew more blanks. Space, Time-travel, Schmeckle, Council, Plumbus... were these all some type of codewords? But Stan would be lying if he didn't admit that part of why he enjoyed it so much was he could feel the emotions behind the words. He found out the last name after a bit more digging: Sanchez. Maybe it was a friend of his from Colombia?

He guessed they must have been around the same age, and from all of the dates Rick brought up, Stan figured he must have known him as far back as the '80s, or maybe even the late '70s.

Stan had a sneaking suspicion in the back of his mind as he read letter after letter. No, Stan found himself thinking. You would know if this was... something more. You'd remember. It would be important enough, it would come back right away.

Stan didn't really realize what exactly he'd started reading as his eyes scanned across the page, until he realized he was right in the middle of some pretty steamy stuff.

Lee,

Remember when we used to live out of your car? Getting high all day and fucking all night. Really miss those days, if I ever wind up inventing time travel that's where I'm headed. Anyway, it's been a while. I miss your arms around me. I kind of miss having your cock in me, or in my mouth, more.

You already know my number, asshole.

Rick Sanchez

"Oh, my God." Stan whispered, his cheeks and tips of his ears erupting into warmth. It really was what he suspected it was. This Rick, they really had something--

He tore through letter after letter, trying to spark any kind of memory to come back, but it was still terribly blank even when he got to the end of the pile and the last letter left. Stan sat at his desk with his head in his hands, hating having that itch he just couldn't scratch. Who the hell was this person? 

Stan stared at his ceiling in bed that night, trying as hard as he could to recall, and he groaned softly when he kept on drawing only blanks. There was one strategy left to try, and he knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep properly until he tried it.

Stan flicked on a few lights in the dark house and made his way to his study, bringing the unplugged home phone with him. He plopped down in his desk chair, flicked on the reading lamp and slammed the house phone down, finally reaching back with a few grunts behind the desk to plug it in.

He drummed his fingers along the desk, eyes flicking from the messy stack of letters to the phone, over and over. He could do this with some numbers, all he needed was to dial that first number and the rest would follow naturally, like a muscle memory. 

The problem was, he couldn't jog his memory enough to even remember that stupid first number.

You know my number, the closing line on the letter on the top of the pile seemed to taunt him. 

"Arrgh, no, I don't!" Stan hissed at it.  

He fisted his hands into his grey hair, staring from letters to the phone, phone to the letters, trying to just get that very first number on the tip of his tongue, but it never happened. After what felt like hours had passed, Stan grumpily decided to call it quits and went back to pass out in his room.

He tried not to let the mystery bother him too much in the next passing days, and let himself get caught up with life in the town, with Ford, and with frequent video chats with Dipper and Mabel. He lived in a place with so many unsolved mysteries, it should have been a lot easier for him to let this one go, right? But no, it still itched and itched in the back of his mind.

He tried putting them under blacklight, nothing. He went through them all again, trying to see if the dates meant anything and if the first letter of the first word spelled out something. Nada. He even went as far as asking Ford if he'd ever heard the name Rick Sanchez, but Ford was just as clueless as he was. That gave him a time frame at least, it narrowed it down to the... well, thirty year window when Ford was missing. Just peachy. Stan didn't know if he'd ever get an answer.

*   *   *

Stan was at his usual spot, in his La-Z-Boy in front of the television, watching a really terrible daytime soap and munching on a snack. 

"Of course I would never forget you, my sweet lemon tea flower." The pretty-boy hunk that, realistically, probably played for the other team clasped the young woman's hands in his. "I thought that the last thing I'd ever remember was that freak baseball flying out of the stadium, hitting me in the head and giving me that terrible amnesia. But I remember everything now, darling... and our love... is as strong as ever." 

The shot panned out as he took a knee in front of the glimmering lake. Then it showed the young woman, hands clasped over her mouth, eye-dropper fake tears sparkling in her very clear eyes. 

"Will you marry me, Catherine?"

"Ohhhh Larry, yes, yes, a thousand times yes!"  

"Laaaaaame." Stan booed and flicked a couple pieces of stale popcorn leftover on the side table at the screen. "C'mon, Cathy, he's playing you like a damn fiddle!"  

There came a soft knock at the doorway.

"Huh? Uh, what?" Stan scrambled for the remote and was able to switch the program to some wrestling and MMA just in time.

"Um, boss?" Wendy had that spooked look in her eyes when she approached him, the same look that she had when someone shoplifted from the gift shop and she wasn't fast enough to catch them, or when some cranky mom demanded to speak to the manager. "I can't get this one old dude to leave. He keeps asking for you. And I think he's, like, reaaally drunk." 

Stan clapped a hand to Wendy's shoulder, and puffed up his own chest. "Alright. No worries, kid, I'll take care of it."  

Great, Stan thought. Now he'd really have to sell the show and be a real tough guy for this one, especially if Wendy was watching. Wendy was cool as a cucumber, that was just the way she was naturally, and she hadn't seemed to catch on yet that Stan was really just a big loser who'd been enrolled in boxing and built up layer upon layer of this whole 'tough guy' act.  

It wasn't like he could go outright with a bat, so Stan chose their broom instead. When Stan went out into the Mystery Shack's gift shop equipped with his broom, he saw him almost right away. The guy had knocked over a lot of his tube-rolled posters, and was leaning heavily onto the cash register counter. His limbs were all thin as poles, he was wearing a lab coat, and he had wild, bluish hair. 

"Heeey, urrrp, heyyy buh-buddy!" He slurred, his reddish, dry eyes lighting up when he saw Stan. He straightened up as best he could, but he kept his elbow firmly propped to the counter for support. "Y-You're here! Le-oourrrph--let's g-go get some ice cream, bay-bee!"

"I don't care if you escaped from that old folk's home in town or not, but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave my store." Stan said gruffly, stepping forward but always keeping the broom in front of him and between him and the old drunk. 

"What in the-- what the flying fuck are y-y-you talking about, Stan?!" Rick rubbed at his forehead, utterly confused.

"Hey, watch your language." Stan grunted again, taking another step closer and narrowing his eyes.

"Ah, shit." Rick disregarded him completely, and pulled a device out of his pocket, tapping at it rapidly. "Th-this happens sometimes, w-wait just a second." Rick quickly checked to make sure he had the right dimension, even though his vision was going a little spinny. He crumpled his unibrow in confusion: it looked right, same as always, good old Dimension 46'\. Wait, maybe that was a quote mark instead of an apostrophe? Was this 46"\? He squinted at it, but it was sort of hard to tell.

"Hey, uhhh, bud, do me a favor, can yu-you tell me if this is thing reads as one little dash in the corner or tw--whoa! Hey, wh-whoa, what the fuck Stanley?!" Rick yelped as Stan not-so-softly began to shove him out of the door using the handle of the broom. "Hey, hey, just ch-ch--take a chill pill, jeez!"

Stan managed to shove him out of the door, where Rick tumbled drunkenly down the few wooden steps up to the shop, propped on his hands and knees on the ground.

"And stay out!" Stan bellowed, eyes quickly scanning from side to side and locked on the hose, curled up in circles. He yanked at the end and held it pointed at the man who was still on his hands and knees on the pine needle dusted ground, spinning the faucet with rusty squeals until water gushed to jet over the scrawny older man's head.

"Now, get the hell off my property or you'll get a lot more in your face than water!" Stan tossed the dripping green hose aside and put up one tightly curled fist and shook it in warning. "If you're sniffing around for money, read the sign, pal! No refunds!" 

Rick smeared the water down his face and flicked it off of his hand, his poofy hair had deflated to plaster against his forehead, he moped and hunched his back, shivering with his arms clamped together. The water seemed to have sobered him up, and it soaked and darkened the topmost part of his shirt, He resembled a soaking wet and pissed off stray cat. 

"Fine! I'll just fuck off, because someone doesn't want to try the b-best scoop of ice cream in the entire fucking galaxy!" Rick clung hard onto his arms and shivered. "Message received, asshole!" He pivoted on his foot and stamped away, flashing the bald spot on the back of his head, middle fingers held high over his head. 

It was just then that it occurred to Stan. There was something awfully familiar about his choice of words, the flurry of insults and swearing, the aloof attitude. Could this skinny, blue-haired old guy actually be the very same Rick that had wrote him all of those letters? Letters that Stan had discovered that he kept in perfect condition, sorted by date, organized neatly in the only desk drawer with a lock and key?

"Wait! Wait, uh, what's your name?!" Stan hesitated but took a few steps toward him, the man showed no indication that he would slow down. 

"Hey, wait up!" Stan huffed, the guy's long legs seemed to make him surprisingly swift. "Wait, uh..." Stan decided he'd just test it, because there was still the possibility. "Rick!" 

That got him to stop.

Stan stopped just behind him and huffed hard with his hands on his knees, wheezing a little. "Man, am I out of shape." When he lifted his eyes, Rick was standing over him with a tight scowl on his face that made his lower lip jut out. Droplets of water swelled and fell from the frayed tips of his blueish hair. Stan just wheezed for another second, his eyes never leaving Rick's, and he finally straightened up and with a groan pressed his hands to his lower back and sighed at the creaky pop and release in the pinching pressure. 

"Are you him? Rick Sanchez, I mean?" Stan asked uncertainly. The two of them stood facing each other with a significant amount of uncomfortable space between them.

"What?! Stanley, what do you--"

"I... uh, I read your letters. All of 'em. Not gonna lie, with a last name like that, I was sort of picturing someone more..." He gestured vaguely at Rick. "Y'know." 

"You really don't remember me, do you? What the hell happened to you?" Rick swiftly slipped forward, way too far into his personal space, and Stan stumbled backwards, overwhelmed. 

 "Look. Things from my past have been sorta fuzzy since..." Stan trailed off, his eyes trained to the ground and he nervously tapped his fingertips together. "It's a lot to explain." 

"Then, you can start talking on the way." Rick grabbed his hand, easily as anything, and started toting him toward the end of the driveway, and Stan jerked out of it and planted his feet.

"Rick, I... crap." Stan ran his hand down his flushing face, partly to get rid of the lingering sensation of having Rick's hand in his. "I don't even know you. Er, well, it feels like I don't know you. I can't remember you, alright?" 

Rick scowled at him from the comfortable few feet of distance between them again, his eyes hanging low and he almost looked pissed.

"My memories... they have to be, uh, I dunno, guided out. But I think they're still in there." Stan scrubbed at the back of his head. "I was really trying, but the letters didn't seem to do the trick. Maybe I had to see you in person, or-or something." 

Stan couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw just a flicker of relief pass across Rick's features before they shut down and became stoney and unreadable again. Rick crossed his arms across his chest and trained his eyes on Stan. 

"Well, you should know some simple things about your personality by now, at--at least. Do you like ice cream?" 

"Yeah." Stan couldn't help but crack a smile at that question. "Maybe a little too much. I'm pretty sure this chub is, like, eighty-percent ice cream." 

"Then, we'll catch up, over some ice cream." Rick was very condescending, and clapped onto Stan's shoulder instead, guiding him to where he'd landed his ship and put two branches across it, the measly branches did nothing to actually hide it.

The thing looked like a piece of junk. The door squealed like it was in pain when Rick opened it, and two crushed beer cans tumbled out to the forest floor.

"I'm not getting into that thing. It looks like it could break down at any second!" Stan planted his feet and tried not to think about if it could fly or not. Just imagining looking out over the side of that dome windshield, and seeing the miniature town and cars and little trees below like they were in a diorama: he already felt his stomach lurching. 

"Y-Yeah, well, that piece a' shit Stanmobile looks like it should have bit the dust twenty years ago, but you've never heard me complaining about your car." Rick swung into the front seat, it had yellow stuffing spilling out from one of the shoulders. The lights flicked on and blared into Stan's eyes, and he put up his hand to shield them.

"D-do you want to remember me or not, buddy?" Rick beckoned. "This ice cream isn't going to eat itself! Well, a-actually, they have kinds that do that kinda kinky stuff but personally I don't really get off on that kind of thing, I mean, unless you do, if so, then, y'know, m-my bad,"

"Let's just go." Stan grumbled and slammed his passenger side door closed, and Rick cut himself off and just bobbed his head once, biting down on his lip to stop himself from laughing. He turned on the ignition, and the junky space ship wobbled and rose unsteadily into the air. 

"Rick!" Stan's hand shot out to clamp onto Rick's bean-pole of an arm, and he squeezed tightly, teeth fully interlocked. He squeezed his eyes shut too.

"What's'matter, tough guy? You don't want to look out the window and see how high up we are?" Rick taunted him, expertly flicking and flipping on all kinds of switches on the dashboard.

"No, no, I really don't!" Stan had to swallow back a shriek when he felt every little shudder of the engine that could give out at any second. The turbulence only lasted for another few seconds, before Stan felt himself floating, weightless, out of his seat, only his seatbelt holding him pressed against it.

"Let this be a lesson in Stan, for ya here, Stan. Newsflash, you're afraid of heights." 

"Uh, yeah, I sort of got that!" Stan replied, gripping hard to the seat, still keeping his eyes firmly shut.

"Artificial Gravity, on." Came a soothing, female robot voice from the speakers on both sides of the dashboard, and Stan felt his body drop back into the seat, his heart in his throat.

"Y-yeah, thanks for that there, Ship. And hey, uh, uh, Ship, what's my name?" Rick bantered to it, flipping a few more switches and sliding up dials. Stan ventured to open his eyes, only to see a vastness of black, pinprick stars, and--

He couldn't believe it. The hazy, glowing curve of the Earth's atmosphere. They were off of the Earth. In space.

"Holy smokes," Stan breathed, leaning up against the dome window to press his nose against it, staring at the blue, green and brown planet wide-eyed. His breaths glowed white against the glass. 

"Of course." Came the soothing robot voice once again, and Rick elbowed Stan in anticipation.

"Hey, hey, Stanley, listen to wha-ouurrp--what I made this stupid idiot robot say." 

"You're Rick. But you asked me to call you: vagina-vagina-vagina-vagina-vagina--"

"Rick this is amazing." Stan exhaled in an awed breath, he didn't even want to blink, because that would sacrifice the time he had to stare at the planet floating massive and serene beside them.  

"Ugh. This is gonna be annoying." Rick burped and swiped some of the green drool from dribbling down his chin with the back of his hand. "This is the same reason why it's not hot to have one night stands with-with virgins. You're their teacher all of the sudden, like, did I w-want to show this chick the ropes tonight? Did I sign up for this? No, I'm just trying to have some fucking fun here, right, and all I'm doing is all the prep work for some other guy down the--like, like, am I the prep cook or-or something? Like, am I chopping the onions just so--so that some oth--urpp-ther guy can eat some amazing stir-fry? I mean-" 

Rick cut himself off, and instead just stared at Stan as Stan stared, enraptured by the planet. Rick reached out and buried his hand into Stan's thick grey hair, scritching at his scalp affectionately for just a moment before taking it away. 

"Y-Yeah, alright, fine. Look all you want, newbie." Rick tipped back his flask to mask his smile. "Drink it in." 

"I think I can remember something." Stan whispered, a large white haze had formed below his nose on the window now. "I remember seeing this view of the planet before. I think.... it was when you took me out on a test drive! The first test drive in this thing!" 

"Yeah." Rick gazed out at the atmosphere of the planet too, suckling down more from his flask. "That was... a pretty long time ago, Lee." 

Stan could remember it, now. Rick had looked much different than he did now: much less wrinkles on his face, his eyes still had some light and liveliness in them, his hair was brown. It must have been summertime back on Earth, Rick was tanner and a little freckled on his face and shoulders. The seat with the stuffing coming out of the shoulder had been brand-new and shiny, hell, the thing even had that new-car smell. Rick had even kept some plush dice and a tree-shaped air freshener hanging, it wasn't a complete, stinky mess like it was now. 

Kiss our asses, Earth! They'd thrown their arms around each other's shoulders and both mooned the planet at once, bare butts pressed up against the dome window that was to Rick's left now, laughing their heads off together.

Looks like Earth's got three mu-moons now, boyyee!

Fuck yeah! Stan had cheered, cracking open and tossing back a beer, and then going to press the opening to Rick's mouth, tipping it back so that Rick was forced to drink the remainder of what was in the can. He'd crushed the can down on the dashboard, and tossed it to roll at their feet. Both of them were giddy on alcohol, on the fact that they were in freaking space, on each other's company. 

Y-You know what I was thinking? Rick's sultry brown eyes had slid to meet Stan's, his lips stretched into a sneaky smile. W-we could...

Already wayyy ahead of you, pal. Stan had replied, tackling Rick across the seats and smushing their lips together, sucking and smacking wet and slow, Rick's hand combing through and twisted into his mullet hair while the other hugged his back and pressed the two of them close together, their hips rolling against one another's, gasping into each other's shiny lips as the gigantic blue planet floated just outside the window. 

They turned the artificial gravity off after that, floating blissfully in the afterglow inside the spaceship as they shared a cigarette, passing it back and forth to one another. 

We're fuckin' pioneers, Stan. We just had the first human intercourse ever to occur in space, Rick had extended his long, piano-player fingers in Stan's direction, the cigarette pinched between two, the anti-gravity doing the strangest things to the smoke. And it was GAAAAAAAAAY, bitch!!! Haha, eat a fart, planet EA-urrpphh-ARTH!! 

"Hey, whoa, you okay?" Rick waved his hand in front of his face again, snapping, and Stan blinked out of it. "Earth to Stan! And I mean it, literally, it's right there!" 

"Whoa. That was... intense." Stan blinked out of it and rubbed his eyes. "It was like I was really there." 

A blush erupted on Stan's face. The Rick across from him now was worn down, he held his shoulders in the beginnings of that telltale old-man hunch, he had deep lines around his mouth and under his weary eyes. His hair looked brittle and colorless compared to the dark and oil-slick-shiny, thick hair he'd sported in the memory. 

"I lost you for a second, there. Yu-You were in your own little world." Now that the concern had vanished from Rick's face, his mouth stretched into a scoundrel of a smile. "Waitwaitwait-- don't tell me-- ha! You were remembering when we fucked in here, weren't you? The first human beings to fuck in space! Haha, you totally were, weren't you!" He playfully poked at Stan's chest. "Ha! I haven't thought about that in-in years." 

"Maybe." Stan coughed into his fist, still a little embarrassed at the memory. At least Rick felt a little less like a stranger to him, now. "Jesus, Rick, I mean-- we go way back, don't we." 

"Yep." Rick smoothed down his hair and returned to the control panel again, gripping onto a clutch that looked like it was taken out of a jet and eased it slowly forward, and Earth began to shrink rapidly behind them. "You gonna tell me what happened to wipe your brains now, or what?" 

"Bill." Stan nearly growled, hugging onto his arms uncomfortably and facing away from Rick to look at the stars whizzing by, hoping to not let his hands tremble this time. Of course he worried, almost constantly. A lot of his memories were still locked away in a haze, in that thick white nothingness that was his past. And slowly, almost every day, something would emerge again from that fog and settle in his mind again, making itself remembered.

If Bill was erased, existing behind that white curtain, forgotten... how many memories would Stan need to regain until he'd dug too deep, until Bill was the one who came back out of that heavy fog once again?

Rick clamped down hard enough on his teeth for Stan to see his jaw ripple. He strangled the controls, too, and even though Stan was only viewing his face in profile, he could almost feel the anger ruminating from him.

"Not that little fucker again." Rick growled, his eyebrows drawing down hard over his eyes. "Damn, Stanley. I'm just glad you're in one p-piece." 

"You know him?" Stan couldn't believe it, blinking owlishly. "I... told you about him?" He couldn't imagine telling anyone about the dream demon, besides Ford or his grand niece and nephew. The less people who knew about that dumb yellow triangle, the better.

"Of course you told me about him, Stan!" Rick threw his hands up in dramatics. "I'm-I'm your best friend, for fuck's sake!" 

That shut the both of them up for a moment, as the silence blared between them and they both just stared straight ahead. Stan cleared his throat, Rick sloshed back more from his flask.

"...Why'd you have to go and lose your stupid memory? We coulda been talking about our usual stuff like all the funny ways our grandkids embarrassed themselves recently or how television's been pure crap but no, you just had to-" 

"Are we friends, Rick?" Stan interrupted him quietly. " 'Cuz from what I'm seeing? It doesn't really look like that's all we are."

Rick stared straight ahead, his clenched hands giving everything away. "Y-You get one little memory of us screwing from, what, twenty-five years ago and suddenly you think you know the whole st-story, smart guy? It's-- look,  we don't talk about it." Rick snapped. "So, why should we start now."

He groaned, low in his throat, when Stan didn't reply. Rick threw up his arms in frustration. "Look, we just... we don't talk about it, ever, o-okay?" 

The two old men glared at each other, neither of them wanting to back down first.

"What am I to you, Rick?" Stan finally asked, and Rick rolled his eyes, scoffed, and threw up his scrawny arms again.

"Of course. Heeere we go with this bullshit again."

"Are we friends? Fff.... fuck buddies? What?" Stan demanded gruffly. "It feels like I just met you, okay, so I think I have the right to know." 

Rick said nothing, just pointed down at one of the planets swirled with pink clouds. "Oh, no! Well, wouldja look at that, it looks like w-we don't have time to talk about it because we're already here! What a coincidence!!"

"Tshk," Stan scoffed, crossing his arms and just watching out the window as the planet grew rapidly as they flew in.  

They landed at one of the docks, and Stan pressed very close to Rick's side, overwhelmed at the strange aliens walking, crawling, pulsing, floating, slithering, or flying by. The place was grimy too, it sort of resembled the parts of town that almost everyone was too afraid to go to. Stan would recognize that part of town anywhere, even if it was off-planet, since he'd spent enough time living in those kinds of parts to know.

"Um, no offense, but, uh, why does it look like this?" Stan hissed over Rick's shoulder.

"Because we're getting the ice cream from the Intergalactic Black Market." Rick answered, nonchalant. "The best ice cream in the galaxy now only gets served with insects in it. It-it's a long story, Lee, but long story short, my granddaughter is the wo-woorrrph-worst."

The two of them shuffled through the crowds, until Rick finally spotted the exact janky booth he'd been looking for. 

"Just wait here while I do a li'l sweet-talkin'," Rick whispered, yellowed teeth clenched together, to Stan from under his hand. 

"I mean, we are talking about ice cream ice cream here, Rick, right?" Stan similarly spoke under his hand. "Because I kind of just remembered that we used to snort, huff, gum, inject, smoke... pretty much anything we could get our hands on back then. Wow. We were pretty wild, weren't we?"

"Hell yeah, we were. But shhh! Keep it on the down-low, Stanleeey, and yeah it's ice cream ice cream, so relax and sit your ass down and let me do all the talking, alright?" Rick waved him away and approached the ramshackle booth. 

"Hey, uh, yeah." Rick leaned very close over the filthy counter, over his propped elbow. "Me 'n my buddy here, we're lookin' for some of the good stuff. Wink wink, nudge nudge. You get me, right?"

The squat, little toad-like alien shuffled around for a second, before producing an opened case with two very deadly-looking ray guns nestled perfectly into their impressions in crimson red velvet. It croaked softly, blinking its bulging brown eyes.

"No, no!! Not that, idiot!" Rick shoved the case backwards and the creature's startled eyes flew wide as it caught it and snapped the case it shut, letting out a little whimper as it shoved it back underneath. 

"We want insect-free ice cream, man! Jesus, do I-I-I have to spell everything out for you?!" Rick rolled his eyes and drummed on the table, eyes flicking over the suspicious crowds of aliens as he waited impatiently. "I'll have a banana split with extra fudge sauce and my buddy wants a triple-scoop Neapolitan in a waffle cone, rainbow sprinks. Ya got that down? And both better have cherries on top!" Rick ended with a point of his finger and half-raised eyebrows, leaning back onto the counter and just looking to Stan where he waited at one of the tables, under all the smokey haze.

After a habit of dipping his fingers into pockets and taking whatever he could for years and years, when something shiny caught Stan's eye, he still felt that urge bubble up after years of dormancy. 

The guy was a pirate. An honest-to-God, tricorne hat-wearing, gold-toothed and gold-earring'd, bearded, eye-patched, peg-legged pirate with an exotic bird perched on his shoulder. In outer space. He wasn't very tall but he made up for it in stout bruteness, he wore a thick, dark burgundy cloak with shiny buttons and his wicked, wide smile looked like it could wilt flowers.

Dipper would be absolutely freaking out right now if he were here with him, and Stan felt a pang of just how much he missed the kid pass through him again. He wished his grand-nephew could be there to fanboy over this unreal person with him. 

The space pirate shoved in handful after handful of brilliant, lustrous, gold coins, and Stan's pick-pocketing palms itched. He could hear them clinking against each other with a glorious sound like a choir of angels singing. It was only going to be a little souvenir, something to show to Dipper and Mabel before he'd stick it in a little glass case and put it up on display along with all the other oddities. A real, live, space pirate doubloon. Dipper would never forgive him if he didn't at least try for it, right? And the guy's pocket was bursting with them, they were practically spilling out onto the floor! He wouldn't notice just one, measly little coin was missing until he counted them out later, right?

Stan stalked up closer, feeling his nerves twist excitedly in his gut. True, it had been quite some time since he'd done this, but he didn't earn the title Ol' Feather Fingers for nothing. Stan stood right next to him, pretending to be looking intensely at the shiny rings and amulets, letting it seem like the crowd was what caused them to press nearly flush side-by-side. And man, this man stank.

Stan wriggled his fingers in anticipation, loosening them up. Finally, eyes trained forward and focused on the jewelry, his fingertips dipped into the pocket, and his heart skipped a beat when he brushed the cold metal. Stan could feel some sweat drip down the back of his neck when the pirate's shoulder animal seemed to notice something was going on, and it blinked and turned its hostile gaze to Stan.

The closest Earthly animal it resembled was a beaded vulture, with a crest of sharp-looking reddish feathers with blood-red, intense eyes and a nasty sharp, ebony-black beak. It had a brown prehensile, lizard tail not unlike a chameleon's that curled under the captain's armpit and wrapped in spirals around his upper arm. It's eyes bore into Stan, and it clicked its beak a few times, making a strange guttural growl, cocking its head to the side curiously.

Stan slipped the coin between two fingers, and pulled upwards, feeling more sweat bead at his hairline. He'd very nearly made the transfer to his own pocket, when a metallic glint from the coin must have tipped off the pirate's shoulder pet. It shrieked noisily, cawing and flapping out its massive wings. Stan's wrist was suddenly snatched into a bone-crushing grip, the pressure forcing his fist to open and the coin clinked back into the pocket with all the others. 

"Oops," Stan whispered. 

"Oooo baby, that's right, come to Papa!" Rick grinned toothily at the two perfect specimens of ice cream being handed across the counter to him, looking like cut-outs from a culinary magazine. His was served in a gleaming silver boat dish, a fresh white banana lay in a smile-like curve across three perfectly spherical dollups of ice cream, deep brown chocolate fudge dripping down the sides, topped with spiraling white whipped cream and a gleaming red cherry. Stan's triple scoop was stacked perfectly, chocolate on the bottom, vanilla in the middle and a pretty pink one on top covered in rainbow sprinkles. This one, however, didn't have a cherry.

"Hey, get my date a fucking cherry, asshole, stat! Don't make me have to ask again, or you'll really be in for something!" Rick refused to take the second ice cream being handed to him, and scooped off some of the banana split with his spoon, popping it into his mouth. He turned around to tell Stan that his would be ready in just a second, but Stan was no longer at his usual seat.

"What the--" Rick rapidly whipped around to search for him, and barely caught a glimpse of him, his nose bloodied, being dragged out by two men much burlier than him before he was swept away and disappeared into the mass of the crowd.     

"Great." Rick huffed, popping the 't', nabbed the banana split and fiddled around with something on his wristwatch. He pressed a button with a small beep, and his image shimmered and disappeared completely.

The toad-like vendor turned back around with the triple-scoop, complete with a cherry this time, but without a trace of the blue-haired man it sighed before unhinging its jaw, wrapping its ultra-long tongue several times around the dessert, and swallowing it whole.  

Invisibly, Rick caught up with Stan and the guys hauling him off. Stan was struggling, kicking his legs that lifted off the ground, grunting and hurling out insults. It seemed that they'd already used some kind of fabric to bind his wrists together behind his back, and another to gag his mouth, but Stan was no rookie. The gag hung loosely around his neck now, and he was hollering his head off.

"My friend's a psycho, I hope you know that, bucko! He got locked up by the G-Feds and escaped, yeah, that's right! You better be scared! I'll call him right now-- RICK!!" Stan's eyes were wide and fearful as he scanned the crowd, trying to pick out Rick's signature blue locks anywhere. "RIIIIIIIICK!! SANCHEZ!!!" 

"Uh, uh, anyways, he'll be after you, yeah, he'll rip those ff...fuck..fucking eye-stalks right off your head and fry them with a little garlic and-and serve them to your family! Yeah! How'd you like that, you jackhole?!" Stan fired out rapidly, shoving hard against the arms and appendages that held him in place.

Rick couldn't help but feel his chest sort of swelling. Stan was so cute when he got spitting angry like this, especially since he'd conditioned himself out of swearing; he used to have a regular sailor mouth. It was sort of hilarious to see him struggling to say those words again.

"They don't speak English." Stan said aloud, his face falling with his epiphany, tossing his head back and groaning loudly. "Ughhh, of course they don't speak English. They're aliens, Stanley! Come on, think!"   

"RIIICK!!!" Stan tried hollering one more time before sinking his teeth hard into one of the pink tentacle arms around him, gnawing down, but it did nothing. Stan wrinkled up his whole face at the taste after he realized it wasn't doing much good. 

Rick snickered into his spoon when he took his next bite of ice cream. This right here was fantastic. 

Stan continued to buck, bite and struggle, as Rick silently followed along and chowed down on his ice cream. He followed the squirming Stanley up the plank up to the pirate ship, with gigantic masts hanging with all kinds of ropes and rigging, the wooden vessel was gigantic and not to mention a thing of beauty, especially the way it pitched and bobbed slightly on the cosmic winds.

"RIIIIIICK!" Stan tried just one more time, before he was hauled below deck. Rick just managed to slip in with him before the trap in the ceiling slammed shut, cutting off most of the light. Stan immediately began to pace, muttering frantically under his breath. Rick found a nice place to sit, and clicked the button on his watch to become visible again.

"Y'know-" Rick began, leaning cooly up against some crates, but was interrupted at Stan's girlish shriek. Stan hung his head and breathed heavily. 

"Rick, don't do that! I'm not joking anymore when I say that could have given me a heart attack!!" 

"As I was saying: y'know, of all people in the entire galaxy, you decided you could get away with pick-pocketing a goddamn space pirate? Wh-what-- seriously, what the hell were you thinking, Lee?!" Rick scraped up the last of his ice cream with his spoon and popped it into his mouth, speaking over the glob on his tongue. "I muhn, surioushly." 

"Just- I wanted one of those cool doubloons to show my grandkids and then put on display in the Shack, okay? Now, can you get me out of these binds already?" Stan looked pretty spooked, and a lot of his grey hair had fallen over his eyes. Rick just smirked, set the boat dish down and sauntered up to him, slowly (and weirdly, sensually?) sliding his glasses that were nearly falling off back up to the bridge of his nose. Rick cupped his face, the corners of his mouth still curled up into a little smirk, and Stan's eyes darted across his features, soaking them in.

"Sure thing, Lee." Rick whispered, slipping up behind him and plucking at the binds on his wrists, while Stan stared slack-jawed off into space, his eyes darting back and forth. Rick's face, being that close to his, seemed to be just the little spark he'd needed to finally remember.

It reminded him a lot of a viral video Mabel had showed him a little while ago, because she thought he'd think it was neat. It was a montage of selfies, a man had taken pictures of his face every single day for years, the backgrounds flipped by rapidly and his face very subtly changed before your very eyes. 

This was sort of like that, but it included smells and sounds and sensations like sunlight or cold or sticky blood, and Rick wasn't always making the same, neutral expression. Young Rick, with brown, wild hair, laughing elatedly with his head thrown back, Rick snorting cocaine loudly out of his snuffbox, a sickly-looking Rick with blood streaming out of his nostrils, Rick's rolling wild eyes behind the eye-holes in a black ski mask for a heist, Rick sobbing with snot and tears smeared across his ruddy face, Rick smirking with sleepy nearly-shut eyes, Rick's mouth opened wide as he came, Rick with a black eye and scabbing split on the bridge of his nose, Rick with greying hair at the temples, Rick with the green end of a bottle stuck into his scowling lips, Rick crying in a rage, Rick orgasming again, half of Rick's face painted in a splatter of red blood and just a splash of alien green on one of the cheekbones--

"Stan, Stanley!" Rick crouched right in front of him, shaking his shoulders again. He'd been propped up with his back to one of the walls, Rick's hands squeezing his shoulders hard in concern.

"Wh-" Stan mumbled, gritting his teeth and clamping down hard on his head. The new information pulsed and gave him a splitting migraine. "Ah, crap this really hurts!"

"You collapsed." Rick explained, jamming two thin fingers under his jaw and timing the pulse. "For a second there I thought I actually did give you a heart attack."  

"Rick, I'm remembering." Stan's teeth interlocked from the pain and his head tipped back to rest against the wooden wall. He hissed through his teeth and winced, breathing hard. A million experiences all poured in in an instant: nearly every little inside joke, every fight, every adventure, their nights spent sleeping tangled together in the backseat of the Stanmobile, every kiss, every fuck, the times Rick made Stan cry, or laugh, or vice versa... "It's coming back to me, Rick. It's all coming back! But this-- ah God-- this whole thing kind of hurts."

Rick approached him nearly cautiously, knees to the floorboards, and his expression broke and gave him away. His mouth, usually sporting a sagging frown, wobbled and his bottom lip quivered, only for a moment.

"Rick," Stan sighed, reaching out to him and clapping his hands over Rick's arms, which he held stiffly pinned to his sides. Stan gathered him in to a rough bear hug, Rick still kept his posture stiff for a moment before relaxing into Stan's embrace, snaking his thin arms around him, too. "I could never forget about you, sweetheart, all that information, it was just... hidden, for a little while, that's all!"

Stan held him close in his arms, petting at his hair, and Rick sighed in relief and ducked in close, hiding his face in his neck and slowly breathing. Stan rested his cheek against the top of his head, snaking his fingers into his hair and holding him close. Rick hid a kiss below his jaw. 

"Yeah, we go back." Stan whispered. "Waaaayy, way back." 

When Rick pulled away, Stan was looking at him with a small smile on his face like he put the sun in the sky. 

"What do I always tell you about giving me that look? Enough of this sappy shit. C'mon, we have to-- to escape from this fuckin' thing." Rick made a very half-assed attempt at pulling away, but Stan was already sporting a dopey smile, and Rick knew exactly what that meant.

"That portal gun isn't going anywhere anytime soon, riiight?" Stan grinned, curling his fingers to dimple into Rick's arms. "You're not about to miss out on bragging to all the other Ricks about how you punched your mile-high club card on an actual space pirates ship, are you?"

Rick hesitated, eyes flicking to the door first, before landing back on Stan's face. The corner of his mouth lifted just enough for Stan to know he'd sold it.

"Mm-hm, I knew I still got it." Stan pulled him in closer, the tips of their noses nudging against each other. "Space pirates, Rick, space piraaaaates." Stan whispered elatedly into Rick's lips, a huge grin stretching across his face.

"Space motherfucking pirates, dawg." Rick hissed in excitement before closing the gap between their faces and pressing a chaste kiss to Stan's.

"Oh gross, did you even brush your teeth this morning or did you think d-downing that cheap instant coffee shit was going to just take care of that for you?"

"Shuddup, not like I knew I was having company!" Stan shot back gruffly in his defense. "...And I wear dentures anyway, so it's not like I have to worry about getting cavities or anything--" 

"God you're disgusting." That didn't stop Rick from capturing his lips in his again, a barely there curl of a smile hidden in the corner. Stan's hands wandered up, one finding a place curled behind Rick's neck and the other rested in the dip just under his ribs at his side.

"If you drop it, I won't say anything about how you taste like stomach acid and alcohol and--"

"Fiiine!" Rick groaned, sporting a toothy smile as he settled into Stan's lap and reached under his stomach paunch to undo his zipper button. Stan grinned right back, and Rick pulled down the zipper slowly just as Stan guided their faces together once again with his hand on the back of Rick's head. 

*   *   *

Summer's phone buzzed from her back pocket in class. Waiting for her teacher to turn her back to face the whiteboard, Summer slid it out of her pocket without looking, unlocked it under the desk, and finally darted her eyes underneath to see what it was. A new snapchat notification, from

 SUCKMYRICK69 

Summer rolled her eyes and opened it up. It was a selfie Rick had taken with himself and some other really old, gross guy Summer didn't recognize, both of them grinning like idiots. It was very dark in the background, but it looked like wood paneling. 

"just got laid on a space pirate ship, losers! Kiss my ass !!!!"

Summer squinted at the phone, pulling it further away and the picture expired, leading Summer back to her history list. 

"Ewww, what the hell." Summer shuddered and wrinkled her nose, locking her phone again and slipping it into back the pocket in her jeans again. She wondered what it would be like to just have a nice, kind of senile, normal grandpa who was into something boring like birdwatching or something, and sighed in annoyance, propping her head up with her elbow to her desk. 

She tapped her pencil eraser against the desk, mind-numbingly bored. Finally, she gave in and took her phone back out. She took a swift picture under the desk aimed out at the teacher's back and a few kids sleeping at their desks, stuck up her middle finger with her other hand, and hit the button. 

"Lol wtffff!!!!!! Super gross. Anyway, really bored, fuck history class"

She sent it to reply to Rick and returned her phone to her pocket, and couldn't help but have a little bit of a smile on her face when she continued to stare of into space at the corner of the whiteboard. Ugh, her grandpa was so weird.

*   *   *

Rick tapped rapidly on his phone as Stan got re-dressed, buttoning up his blue Hawaiian shirt. He looked very debauched, his hair was a mess, even his glasses were somewhat askew. He pinched the corner and lined them back up on his nose, finally pinching closed the last button so that a small V formed, displaying his grey chest hair and the gold chain around his neck. 

"Who are you talking to on that thing?" Stan asked, amused. "If you're getting service all the way out here, are you asking for help?" 

"No, I'm talking to my granddaughter." 

"And, er, she's going to send us some... help, right?" 

"She's in history class, Stanley, I couldn't evveerrr drag her away from something as important as that." Rick rolled his eyes, thumbing rapidly at the keypad. 

"This is seriously not worrying you, is it? The fact that I'm a hostage and you're a stowaway on this thing?" Stan peeked over his shoulder.

"I just broke out of the highest security prison in the galaxy, Stanley, so... let me think. No. I'm not worried." Rick replied, continuing to type at his phone as it cast a white-blue glow on his face.

SUCKMYRICK69 

 F.Y.I summer my date got kidnapped by pirates bc someone just HAD to go and have her boobs hanging out and ruin perfectly good icecream and make it for spiders too now didnt they


SUMMXRSMXTH

 not my fault!!! i already told u, that was all your dumb ship 

SUCKMYRICK69 

 suuuure whatever helps you sleep at night kid

 "guns don't kill people, people kill people" bullshit rite

 ur mistake inadvertently helped me get laid tho so maybe i should be thanking u

 jk!! ur still a little piece of shit summer 

SUMMXRSMXTH

 well anyway hahaha grandpa ur date looks rlly old and gross and like sweaty who even is that?????

"Ha! Look at what my granddaughter just sent me," Rick waved the screen in front of Stan's face. "She thinks you're old and gross and sweaty. Haaa!" 

"Yeah, well, you're older and grosser!" Stan pressed his hand to roughly Rick's cheek and shoved him aside. "Let me see that." 

"You told me you couldn't use this app because the last time you used it, you sent a picture of the inside of your hairy nostril for the entire town of Gravity Falls to see for 24 hours. Didn't Dipper or Mabel tell you how a regional story works?" 

"Wow, thanks for reminding me, not like I conveniently forgot about that or anything!" 

"C'mon, that's funny." Rick snatched his phone back. "Oh hey, my grandson just sent me something."

MORTYISSUPERC00L

 GROSS GROSS GROSS!!!!!!!!!!!

  Seriously Rick I'm blocking you if you send me anything NSFW again when I'm at school I almost got in big trouble and now Jessica knows that my Grandpa has sex with other gross old guys I opened it in front of her thinking I could show off maybe because it would be a cool picture of a galaxy or an alien or something this is actually the worst day of my whole life omgomg

mortyissuperc00l is typing

"Well! Yep, now I'm over it." Rick locked the phone and slipped it back into his pocket. "That's enough socializing with the shitty grandkids for one day. What do you say, Stan, you wanna get outta here?" He hiked his thumb over his shoulder. His phone continued to buzz and ding within his pocket with one notification after another from Morty.

Stan's immediate thought was a resounding, begging YES! after everything he'd been put through that day, but then, another thing floated up from the depths and occurred to him.

Why? 

Why, indeed.

What did he have to look forward to, exactly? Spooning out some chocolate chip mint ice cream and pouring out the bottom of a Doritos bag into it, stirring in all that nacho-flavored cheese dust and crumbs into his gross ice cream concoction? Then watching Cathy and Larry's messy divorce after Larry finds out Catherine's pregnant with the mailman's baby? Ugh, Stan kind of did want to get to the bottom of what the hell was up with that guy Mailman Damian. And Susan sort of was looking at Larry in a weird way for the past couple of episodes, right, so what was going on with that, exactly?

No! He had to pull his head out of the clouds. He hadn't seen this much adventure since Weirdmageddon, and that had been nothing but stressful and scary, and not really fun whatsoever. Plus, he wanted to brag to Ford about some of his own intergalactic tales, for once. He met Rick's eyes, and it seemed like the other man was thinking the exact same thing.

"Okay, ye-yeah, I'm with ya there, buddy." Rick smirked. "C'mon, let's crack open some of these barrels. I bet we could find ourselves some real, authentic pirate grog in at least one of 'em." 

*   *   *

When someone from the crew lifted the trap door for their pick-pocketing prisoner, it found not just one but two old men, leaning against an opened barrel, making out messily, both hiccuping drunk and passing the silver banana split dish full of grog back and forth. It was the same alien who'd hauled Stan in, the one with many pink tentacles and its eyes like a snails' on eyestalks, it held a scary-looking electric prod that buzzed with blue bolts.

"Oh-uh-f-fuck-shit--Lee!" Rick pointed at the incoming crew member, and the two tried their best to stumble to their feet. Stan stood with a low center of gravity, hands balled into fists, ready to fight with fists flying if he had to. Instead, the alien let out a burble and rushed out, slamming the trap behind him.

"Haha, yeah! Run away like a little biitch!" Rick taunted, pulling in Stan's shoulders, squeezing and massaging them with the hype like before a boxing match. "He was t-t-totally shitting his pants in fear of you, Lee." 

"Uhhh...yeah, punk! You better run!" Stan called up to the trapdoor in the ceiling, shaking his fist at it. Rick chuckled and the two drunkenly lost their balance again, and Rick slipped on top of Stan on the floorboards.

The next time they returned, it was almost the whole crew that poured in first, then slowly parted down the middle. They heard his footsteps before they saw him, one clunk of his peg leg and one softer, quieter sounding footstep.  

"I was told that we have Rick Sanchez aboard." The pirate Stan had tried to steal from back at the market parted through his crew and approached them. His voice was surprisingly very low and wheezy. Stan and Rick's eyes slid to meet each others, and Rick just shrugged back at him.  

"Y-yeah, th-that's my--my--ourrrp--that's my name, don't wear it out." Rick said, leaning with his elbow onto the barrel and trying, with maximum effort, to look cool. "Wh-uhhrrp, what's up?" 

"I have heard legends about you and your incredible inventions throughout the multi-verse." The captain continued walking, slowly pacing an arc around the two of them. "I will allow your release in exchange for a favor."

"Y-Yeah, uhhh, see, that's not gonna work." Rick slipped his portal gun from his pocket, and many of the crew flinched away at the lime green light inside of the dome at the top. Even the captain himself just barely flinched. "That's right. I can portal myself out of here whenevvver I want. So." Rick did some fancy twirling of the gun before he stuck it back in his pocket, extended his hand palm-up and flipped his fingers. "Somethin' else. Ante up. C'mon, wh-what else ya got?" 

The pirate narrowed his eye, flicking between the two of them. 

"Gold." He finally said simply. 

"Hmm, and the catch?" Stan blurted, actually needing the hold onto the barrel to keep his balance.

"Lee! W-W-Why'd you say that?!" Rick hissed at him.

"Just wait, Rick, there's always a catch, okay?!"  

"The only gold on this vessel that doesn't belong to anyone is in the form of a pair of matching matelote rings." The captain explained grimly. "The two drank themselves to death in a lover's suicide."

"Oh, ouch. Dead guy rings. Heh, h-hey, Lee, that drinking part, kinda sounds li-like us, right? Right?" Rick elbowed Stan hard in the ribs with his very pokey arm.

"The rings were not assigned as plunder to anyone." The captain finished explaining. "But you cannot have them, if you are not joined in matelotage." 

"Uh, uh, yeah, suure we are, whatever you say!" Rick leaned a little too far over the barrel and slipped, splashing and going armpit-deep into the alcoholic drink inside. Stan clapped his hand over his mouth and snickered at the way he pulled it out, shaking it off violently.

"I assure you, this is no joke." The captain tapped his peg leg to the floor twice like one would a staff to get their attention. "The rings will be unwearable if you--" 

"You keep saying this word, but what the hell does it mean?" Stan interrupted and asked gruffly, now that gold was on the brain it was going to be impossible to shake off how much he wanted it.

"A union between the two of you would have to occur." The captain began, before being violently interrupted by Rick.

"Ohhh, hahaha, no. Not happening. I've been down that terrible fucking road we call marriage before, NOT for me." 

Stan tapped him on the shoulder, encouraging a private meeting. The two turned around, speaking quietly underneath their hands to each other. 

"Come on, Rick, it's just a stupid fake marriage thing. Remember that stunt we pulled in Vegas in '79? It would be just like that. Easy-peazy." Stan clapped his hand over Rick's jutting shoulder blades and gave him a brief rub. "Let's just do this thing. Eventually, Morty or Summer are gonna ask you what you're wearing, I mean, imagine the looks on their faces when you tell them what it really is, right?" 

Rick clapped his hand over Stan's back in return. "I-urrrrrp-I like the way you tick, Lee. Fine, let's pull this off. Just like old times."

"Just like old times." Stan agreed, and the two of them turned back around.

"Y-Yeah. We agree, Captain." Rick smiled like a dope. "Let's see those beauties."   

"Don't you want to know what the reward is for?" The captain seemed like maybe he'd pull out from the deal, seeing how much of a dolt the legendary scientist Rick Sanchez was acting. 

"Sure. Wh-whatever," Rick dipped the dish back into the grog and took another hefty swig, ending in a loud burp.

"I'm hoping to find a specific Void Leviathan that I've been chasing for years. I've heard rumors--" 

"If you're going to tell me you want to kill it because it took that leg of yours, I'm out." Rick suckled down more alcohol, it dribbled messily down his chin. "I-urrp-I think we all can collectively agree that we're all over the whole Moby Dick trope by now, I mean, come onnn, it's been what, a hundred f-fifty years? I'm gonna let you in--in on a little secret, here, it wasn't that great." 

"No, I lost this leg after I was bit by a venomous snake as a child." The captain deadpanned.   

Rick and Stan both sucked in a harsh breath, looking anywhere but the pirate's face for the time being. 

"Oh, yikes, Rick." Stan muttered to Rick.

"That's not fair, Stanley, tell me I'm wrong fo-for assuming. Am I fucking wrong for assuming?!!"

"You find me the Whale first." The Captain finally turned around, and began to clunk back up the stairs. "Then, the reward." 

*   *   *

"Piece of fuckin'...cake," Rick huffed and licked his lips for the hundredth time, dabbing at his perspiring forehead using part of Stan's Hawaiian shirt. He connected another wire, moved another clamp and popped his thumb into his mouth after getting zapped by a tiny bolt of white electricity. "Okay. I promise you, this thing will get you within two miles of whatever DNA is in this hunk of whale meat here."

The invention looked highly unstable, with lots of crazy, unorganized wires and a motherboard that was jumping with electricity, jumbled wires connecting to Rick's handheld dimension device on one end, and connecting to a chunk of gelatin-like meat jiggling on a steel tray on the other end. The meat itself was an interesting thing: it shone with purplish motes embedded inside of it like a cosmic nebula, the substance itself a translucent, smokey black you could see right through.

The captain held out shining twin gold rings within his squarish palm, and the old men's eyes grew lit up and grew hungry with want, especially Stan's.

"Ah," The captain curled his hand around them once again, concealing them with a smirk. "Once I see the results. Only then, I will uphold my end of the deal."

"Noooot a problem. This right here is some state-of-the-art technology," Rick went to pat it but barely bit back his yelp at the minor electrocution. "It's got your coords right here."

The pirate squinted with his one eye, memorizing the numbers that appeared on Rick's rectangular handheld device. Finally, he grinned wide, flashing all the rotten and gold teeth in his mouth.

"All hands on deck!" He bellowed, and the crew all cheered in whatever alien language they spoke.  

Stan and Rick bubbled over with excitement and clasped each other's hands, pulling each other in close.

"He said it, he fucking said it!" Rick hissed under his breath.

"Man, Ford's gonna be so jealous." Stan chuckled back.  

The two men were escorted onto the deck, finally, and watched the stars whizzing rapidly by, saw the large sails billowing. The crew member up in the crow's nest scanned, and finally pointed with one of its wings, and the massive ship slowed down and stopped, bobbing to settle.

"Holy shit!" Rick and Stan gawked at the massive creature way down below the ship's hull. Now they understood why it had been easy to obtain the meat Rick had used to create the makeshift DNA locator: that basketball-sized lump must have been a shedding skin cell to the gigantic thing.

It floated very far below, the see-through black casting a faint shadow around all of its massive pumping white organs, shimmering with purple bioluminescence along a ridge right down the middle of its back. It was completely streamlined, a minimalist whale without any of the fins or flippers, just one side with a larger head that tapered off to a thin point at the other end. The thin part of its tail extended to be extremely long, probably three-quarters of its entire length. It was more like a cross between a whale and a tadpole. The thin and extremely long tail whipped in beautiful oscillating figure 8's, propelling the massive creature along at a snail's pace.

"And just how the fuck are you going to kill this thing?" Rick walked up to and met the captain as Stan continued to hang off the side of the ship, staring in awe at the massive Space Whale underneath. 

"Kill it? I never said anything about killing it!" For the first time, the captain laughed. "I want to study it. I'm an astrobiologist!" At this, it reached up to stroke at his bird creature, it clicked its beak and nuzzled up affectionately against his hairy face.

Rick wasn't fully falling for it.

"Fine. And it's rumored that one of its organs excretes gold."

"Yeeeah. Thought so." Rick held out his hand. "So, speaking of gold..." 

The captain looked from his closed fist to Rick's smirking face, then again. Finally, he opened up his large palm and let the rings tumble into Rick's waiting hand.

"Pleasure doing business with you, Captain." Rick fanboyed hard, curling his fingers around the identical rings and biting down on his lower lip to stop his smile from climbing any wider. He started making his way across the deck to finally show Stanley that he'd finally collected the reward.

He went to slip one on his finger, but he would have had better luck trying to wear a coin. Every time he stuck his finger through it, his fingertip smushed against something hard and unyielding. 

"What the...?" Rick brought up the circle to his eye to inspect it. He tried pushing his finger through yet again, and he just saw his fingertip go white from the pressure like he was pressing it up against a piece of glass. He tried again and again, practically finger-banging the thing, but it never worked once. Of course, never trust a pirate! The stupid guy had jipped the two of them with completely unwearable rings! 

Rick had nearly reached Stan to tell him the news, when the boat lurched and groaned. 

Rick could barely register it, it all happened so fast. The Whale must not have wanted to be bothered, and their entire vessel must have been like a tiny, annoying gnat to it. It treated it like a cow would a gnat, too: it just flicked its long tail like a whip, and the ship cracked in half, masts splintering, planks spinning off into anti-gravity.

"Stanley!" Rick's scream was swallowed up by all the other noises, by the blare of empty space, by the loud knocks and crashes as the wood ripped apart and scraped against each other, tumbling in a mass of dark planks. Rick watched helplessly as Stan tumbled further and further away, flipping in flailing circles, cartwheeling head over heels over and over towards the stars.  

Rick sacrificed looking at his figure shrinking and getting further and further away to jab in some settings into his portal gun. It was still in the experimental stage, and he had no idea what the accuracy would be: he normally shot portals close enough to step through a few feet in front of him, not dozens of meters away.

"Okay, okay--" Rick egged himself on, nearly there with the settings. "It's all going to be fine. You've done a few test runs, at-at least-- fuck... Stan..." He whimpered, his hand curling hard around the hilt of the gun. He aimed, pinched one eye closed, and fired off the long-distance portal to meet Stan's trajectory. The recoil sent Rick into motion, falling backwards and putting even more distance between the two of them.

The lime green whistled as it shot out and left a stream in its wake, like a firework yet to explode. It finally opened up, it was so far away that it was just a small, star-like green dot to Rick. He was too far away to see clearly, but the glowing green dot winked out, meaning that something had been caught by it and gone through it.

There was only one way to figure out if it had really worked. Rick changed the settings once again, the nerves making his fingers tremble hard and it took much longer than it should. Rick input the exact coordinates to the front seat of his ship, parked back at the marketplace, and shot the glowing green just below his back and his ongoing backwards force sucked him into it. 

When Rick dropped into the front seat of his spaceship, he was immediately wedged by the numerous dark brown planks of wood that had accompanied him in through both his and the long-distance portal. Still, there was no sign of Stanley anywhere. Where was that old bastard? Did the portal close after just a few planks of wood had traveled through it, missing Stan entirely? Shit, what if he was still tumbling through the void of space now, the lack of oxygen by now would definitely have--

Rick dug like a madman through the jumble of planks, tossing them out of the ship one by one out of the door, his heart rate climbing every second that he pushed one aside to reveal nothing but more broken planks of wood. Finally, he got just a flash of deep blue with yellow hibiscus, of a thick hairy arm...

"Lee-!" Rick yelped and scrambled to shove himself through the smallest of gaps in the planks to wrap his arms around him, Stan looked like he was barely conscious, but he was alive and he was back in the ship, and that was all that mattered. Stan wheezed and clapped his hand to Rick's back twice.

"Nice... catch..." Stan managed to wheeze, and Rick shoved more of the planks away from him and kissed him hard, settling into his lap.

"I love you Lee." Rick's hand secured and squeezed his neck, the other hand cupped his cheek and dragged down to caress his sandpapery jaw. "There. I said the stupid thing. So, d-don't expect me to say it ever again. I mean it. One and done. Happy?"

Stan said nothing, just let his smile beam across his face, and he dragged Rick in by the scruff of the neck for another kiss.

When they finally parted, Rick fished deep into his lab coat pocket to produce the twin gold rings. 

"Here, matey." Rick grinned and took Stan's larger hand in his, and slipped the ring onto the finger easily as anything. He'd almost forgotten about the bewitched way the ring had resisted earlier. He tried to put it on himself again, and it slipped past the knuckle and settled at the base of his finger without a problem. Rick almost thought he'd imagined that invisible preventative force from before. 

"Do you..." Stan trailed off, staring at the gold sparkling back up at him from his hand. "I mean, pretty much everyone on that ship probably died. We don't have to uphold that stupid... union thing, anymore, you know, if you don't want to." 

Rick paused for a moment, hating that sag in Stan's shoulders. He wrapped his arm around them, hooking the back of Stan's neck into his elbow. "Y'know, wh-why not. We'll keep it. For now." 

Stan smiled unsurely up at him, the smile breaking and flashing a few teeth when Rick jostled him playfully. "Y-Yeah. I think we'll keep it." 

 "Y'know, overall, I'd say that was a pretty good date. Except for the whole ship getting smashed thing and that we both almost died in the cold, unforgiving vacuum of space." Stan smiled at him, twisting the new ring on his finger, getting used to how it felt to wear it.

"Y-Yeah, I've definitely had worse." 

"Only one problem, though." Stan grinned. "I never actually got to eat any ice cream."

"Ahhhh, SHIT!" Rick clapped his hand to his forehead in realization.

"There's, uh, there's this place in town-" Stan had barely finished saying before Rick was already firing up the spaceship again.

 *   *   *

"You just got dined and dashed, mothafucka!!" Rick snickered and walked backwards out of the front door that Stan held open for him. "Suck it, bitch!"

The ice cream parlor door closed with the cheerful dinging of the bell at the top, and the two old men scurried off to a rusty red convertible. The car did a terrible 3-point turn, at one point it was temporarily snagged on the concrete divider and revved before skidding out nosily in a puff of exhaust, leaving black burnt rubber tracks in arcs on the cracked parking lot pavement.

The sullen dark-haired teen, who looked a little too ridiculously emo for the cheery striped uniform he wore, slid his dark eyes to his co-worker and heaved out a sigh. "So... do we do something about this?"

Her eyes never left the grey mop as she swished it in circles across the checker tiled floor. "They're just elderly old men, Robbie, let them have at least a little excitement for once in their boring lives." 

 The End