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“H-hey, Morty?” Rick said as Morty started to leave the garage, just a few seconds after the two of them had come hurtling through the portal.
Morty turned around. “Yeah, Rick?”
“Uh—come here, kid. I wanna get a swab of your cheek before you go in the house.”
Morty looked surprised, and more than a little bit suspicious. “Geez, Rick, what are you gonna do with a swab of my cheek?”
Rick put his hands on his hips. “Wow, you really don’t trust your old grandpa, do you? What, you think I wanna take some of your DNA and experiment on it? Clone you?”
“Uh, uh—“
Rick stretched out a hand. “Look, Morty, the planets where they still live a more, ah, medieval lifestyle, they’re not always the best germwise. I mean, I’m immune to most of that stuff, but you—I just wanna make sure you’re not, you know, patient zero for the new plague or whatever.”
Morty’s eyes widened. “Come on, Rick, th-there’s not gonna be—” he started to say, but then he let Rick put a hand on his shoulder and lead him over to the lab table.
“Up,” Rick said, patting the hard surface of the table. “This’ll only take, like, five minutes.”
He got out a swab and everything else he needed from a nearby drawer.
“You can really tell if I have a plague from just a swab?” Morty asked, his legs dangling in the air from where he was seated.
“Yep.”
“Huh. Hey, Rick, y-you can pick out the adventure next time. I mean, I just wanted to have a say sometimes, you know.”
“What, you think I’d let you pick the next adventure even if you wanted to? Not a chance, kid, not for awhile. I’m the one in charge here, in case you forgot.”
“R-right.”
Rick smiled, and was surprised when his mouth wobbled a little. He was glad he’d perfected a way to detect more than just the plague with a swab in the cheek. There was no way he’d be able to do a full rape kit on Morty this stealthily, and especially if what Rick was thinking might possibly have happened hadn’t happened it wouldn’t be worth embarrassing the kid like that.
And, Rick told himself almost frantically, the worst thing that could happen probably hadn’t happened. He’d swab Morty, and Morty would be totally fine aside from some psychological scarring. Right?
“Hold still,” Rick said. “Mouth open. Ahhhh. Good.”
Morty gagged on the swab a little bit when it went too far back toward his throat, but otherwise held still. He still looked really shaken, Rick noticed.
As the two of them waited for the results to be ready, Rick found himself tapping his foot uncontrollably, and occasionally reaching over to squeeze Morty on the shoulder.
Maybe a quick death, even if it was painful, had been too nice for that fucker who’d gone after Morty in the bathroom. It should’ve been slower, and the level of torture should have been determined after Rick knew exactly what had been done to Morty. It should have been directly proportional times ten.
Rick was taken out of his stewing by two sounds at once. A yelp from Morty—on his most recent shoulder squeeze, Rick’s thoughts had accidentally made him dig his fingernails into his grandson’s shoulder, hard—and the timer going off. The test was ready.
“A negative sign’s good, right?” Morty said hopefully, peering over at the test as he pulled out from under Rick’s hand. “I-I-I’m not sick?”
If Rick was a poet, which would be a completely useless and unlucrative career path, he would have used some metaphor to describe how he felt as he gathered Morty into his arms, spun him around, and kissed him on the forehead.
“Geez, Rick, it—uh, it could’ve been bad or something?”
But really, Rick was just happy. Relieved. Because maybe, just for a second on the way home, he’d known that if what he’d thought might have happened to Morty had actually happened, he would never forgive himself. And he didn’t need more of that.
“Yeah,” Rick said, surprised by the hitch in his own voice and disguising it with a cough as he continued to hold Morty close to his chest. “It—it could’ve been bad, but you—you’ve got a great immune system there, little buddy.”
And he was never letting Morty go to a strange bathroom alone on an adventure ever again.