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There are teddy bears in grandpa Rick's room.
Summer knows it well. She's been on laundry duty for nearly three years, it's the only reason she's allowed into Rick's room to begin with.
And now there are teddy bears in there. She's never poked her nose around, always let everyone have their privacy and space and shit. But this one's out in the open, half-way tucked in under grandpa's cot, as though it'd fallen off the mattress, forgotten.
Summer reaches out, tracing the little bowtie curiously. She recognizes it, it's Rosa, Morty's birth gift from mom.
What the hell is it doing here?
She decides to just ignore it for now - maybe Rick's been experimenting on it or something, you'll never know with that stupid ass - picking up the last clothes and leaving the room.
But the next time she checks, there are more teddy bears. Newer ones, looking freshly-bought with clean fur and sparkling eyes, piled up in a thoughtless heap by the pillows and looking for all the world as though they belong there. "What the hell," she mutters, looking around the room with squinted eyes.
It's so weird. Why the hell are there teddy bears in grandpa Rick's room? They can't be his. No way; she would've seen them before if that was the case.
Throwing a quick glance out of the room, Summer makes sure she's alone before she inspects the teddies further.
Oh.
One of them has a name tag, and it reads, in childish, colourful letters: Morty.
But why does Morty have teddy bears?
Chewing on her lip, Summer hurriedly finishes up in Rick's room before she moves on to Morty's - he's not home, out adventuring, probably, not that she cares.
And, fine, she'll never go looking through grandpa Rick's room, but Morty's her little brother, and she kind of hates him out of spite, so.
She moves his blankets and is immediately faced with four more plushies.
She whistles. "Jesus."
Kneeling, she checks beneath the bed to see if there are more that have fallen beneath - instead, she finds a cardboard box. In crayon, it says 'Morty's gear.'
It better not be butt plugs.
She pulls it out.
It isn't butt plugs. What meets her is an assortment of pacifiers, baby toys, rattles, crayons, pencils, colouring books, bottles, sippy cups, and colourful socks.
A bit disturbed, she slowly pushes the box back beneath the bed. This is... weird. Yeah. A bit weird. She knows about adult babies, but this is... well, Morty isn't an adult. What the hell is he doing?
And why is Rick on it?
Summer finishes in a daze, dumping the dirty clothes in the laundry basket for mom to deal with. As for Summer herself? She has research to do.
*
Two hours, a lot of BDSM forums and several chats with various friends later, Summer comes to the conclusion that Morty is most likely an age regressor. There hadn't been any sex toys in the box, and the presence of teddy bears in Rick's room...
To be fair, Summer won’t actually, totally mind if Morty and their grandpa are in some kind of BDSM daddy dom relationship dynamic. Like, it isn’t the weirdest shit she's seen, and after some of the traumatic shit they've gone through together, it makes some kind of twisted, fucked up sense.
God, what the hell. The fact that Morty is an age regressor is, like, the least weird thing she's heard in ages.
Whatever.
*
She spends some of her next paycheck on a soft rabbit plushie. She leaves it on his bed with a little note reading, with love from Summer. You little shit.