Work Text:
Morty didn't like to admit it, but there were times when he could be pretty clumsy- particularly during moments of major emotion or if he was distracted. He would trip, stub his toes, hit his elbows, hips or head on random objects. Some times he would drop things, choke on his food or bump into people.
It was a force of habit he blamed on his dad. If anyone in this world was a klutz, it was Jerry Smith. Give the man a gold star; his poor, wimpy booty has earned it.
But no matter who or what force of nature he may try to blame, nothing could stop the ever-lasting fact from being true that Morty was clumsy.
And right now was a good example to prove it.
After receiving texts from three different kids in his grade- each asking if he would go to the school party with them- he had sprinted out of his bedroom with his nose stuck in his phone and his legs moving fast. He needed to show this exciting news to Summer and Rick; prove to them that he was capable of earning himself a date.
Having been so engrossed in the ongoing conversations with his potential dates, Morty barely got to walk down two steps of the stairs before his foot slipped and sent him tumbling forwards. "W-w-whoa-ah!" He hollered, his eyes clenching shut and body bracing for impact.
He expected to hit hard against the tough, wooden stairs, but instead of 'hitting' them, he 'bounced' off of them. Yes. Morty bounced off the stairs as if his body were a basketball made out of gelatin. Each time his back, side or bottom met with the unforgiving, wooden steps, he would collide with an almost surreal thud that sent him flying back a foot or so into the air. Aside from the uncomfortable positions in which he fell, it was a relatively painless experience.
By the time he was at the bottom of the stairs on level ground, he laid on his stomach in complete shock and disbelief. What just happened? How was that possible? How did he 'bounce' off the stairs?
Sitting up in a hurry, Morty felt his body over in search for scrapes, scratches or sores, but found none. Then he stood and faced the stairs as if there was some kind of phenomenal entity living within them. "Umm..." He hesitantly took a step forward, his fist lifting out to gently knock on a step.
And nothing. Nope. The step was made out of murderous, human-consuming oak, solid and layered with splinters like normal.
Ok. So... 'Weird'....? Too weird for Morty to conjure any answers of his own, but definitely not weird enough for a certain, mad scientist to know what the heck was going on.
Grabbing his unfortunately cracked phone, Morty rushed through the dining room and entered the garage, catching Rick in a hullabaloo with his own gadgets and projects. "R-Rick, mind telling me what's going on with the stairs?" He asked, getting straight to the point.
"Morty..." Rick grunted, his arms elbow deep in some kind of oily bucket, "I'm a little busy right now. I-if there's something wrong with the stairs, make it Jerry's problem, not mine. Is-isn't this 'his' house af-after all?"
"That-that's not it," Morty spoke almost anxiously, desperate to have a reasonable explanation, "I-I just took two steps an-and I fell but... But- I don't know, it was like I 'bounced' off the steps- like I was falling and bouncing at the same time. I-I thought it was the stairs- s-so what? Did you do something to make them... Bouncy?"
There was a moment of silence as Rick paused what he was doing, his attention on Morty as he looked him up and down with suspicion, a glint of concern barely noticeable to the human eye. Once he was done checking his grandson over for damage, he shrugged his shoulders and stated casually, "Childproofing."
Morty jerked in confusion, his eyes squinting, "What?"
"Maybe I should childproof your ears too so you don't go 'completely' deaf," Rick mindlessly snarked as he began digging through the bucket again.
"W-what do you mean 'childproofing'? Th-that doesn't make any sense," Morty whined, his unharmed body tingling with strange uncertainty. Why would Rick childproof the stairs for him?
"I guess you'll find out the next time your clumsy ass decides to fall off a building or cliff, or-or the 'stairs'," Rick gruffly responded, "Now unless y-you wanna help me separate millions of eggs from alien vomit, get out."
Morty looked at him, his mind still bedazzled with confusion. How was it possible that Rick managed to childproof every building, cliff and staircase in the world? And 'why' would he childproof those kinds of things? It didn't make any sense.
So, like most things, Morty just rolled with it.
For a while Morty forgot about the incident with the stairs and the whole 'childproofing' gimmick. It wasn't really all that important. Rick was always doing weird things with the most random objects. And Morty wasn't the type who liked to overthink too strongly about topics that most likely didn't matter.
Until today that was.
Today when a massive cruise ship was invaded by aliens, the president had requested that both he and Rick go save the people on board and retrieve whatever valuable goods they were after.
For the most part everything went fairly decent. Rick did his job kicking alien butt, and Morty transported a bunch of innocent civilians to safety by using the portal gun. Everything seemed to be a breeze.
Whenever Morty began his quick scavenging for any remaining passengers, the cruise ship suddenly began to turn sideways. And it turned sideways 'fast'. In the wake of his surprise, Morty dropped the portal gun and eagerly held onto a set of pool rails, screaming out for his life.
"Rick!" Morty's hair went wild as he stared in horror at the now sinking ship, his arms and the palms of his hands aching from trying to support his own weight, "R-Rick. Where are you? Ar-are you alright? Rick?"
One of his hands slipped. Morty's stomach dropped and he screamed in terror, "Rick! Rick, help me, I-I'm gonna fall-ah! Rick!"
His other hand slipped.
With a constant, drawn out scream, Morty fell and fell and fell, his body curling up to prepare for the impact of rough ocean waves. God, he was going to drown, wasn't he? Rick was no where to be found and the enormous ship was sinking. If by some miracle Rick was alright, there was no way he'd get to him in time before his oxygen ran out.
With a roaring splash, Morty sank deep into the ocean, his body engulfed in huge, hungry waves of cold water. He held his mouth as best he could before panicking and thrashing his arms and legs all around. It was when he began to mimic shouting that he realized...
He could breathe.
Morty was 'breathing'.
And he was breathing 'underwater'.
Startled by this unexpected but very subconsciously appreciated adaptation, Morty opened his eyes and looked all around, his body now only lightly sinking as he remained surrounded by endless, wet blue. Oil and ship debris drifted with him.
During his struggling observations, Morty managed to see a bunch of writhing figures in the afar, his eyes squinting before going completely wide in a mixture of horror, confusion and empathy. It was some of the alien terrorists. Like him they had sunken into the ocean- the only difference being... They couldn't breathe.
How was this possible? How was it that Morty could breathe perfectly fine but the aliens couldn't? What was going on?
As he was looking around, unsure of what exactly to do, Morty caught sight of something familiar that made him gasp bubbles. The portal gun. Thank Thor Almighty. He could kiss the fish that swam by, he was so happy.
Using all his body strength, Morty swam and paddled as best he could to get to the lone, glowing green device. Petting a rather sweet lemon shark on the way, he smiled in victory, shot himself a portal, and quickly swam through.
He was then washed up on the shores of a nearby island, his chest heaving for air although he had technically been breathing the entire time. He was just a little discombobulated was all. This entire day was happening too fast.
By the time Rick found him with the spaceship, Morty was shivering in the sand, glaring at his grandpa in slight annoyance. While he should be angry at him for leaving him to drown, he was even more overwhelmed about the lack of drowning itself.
"Rick, what just happened? The-the ship-it-it sank, an-and I fell into the ocean b-b-but I could breathe," Morty babbled as if it were the craziest thing on his 'to-lecture' list right at the moment, "How was I breathing, Rick? What is going on?"
"L-like I told you," Rick jumped out of the spaceship, throwing a towel in his grandson's face, "Whenever you're asleep I do childproofing shit. Now-urrp, help me search around for an old, smelly mayonnaise jar- apparently it has a bunch of gapagon graphite-7 hidden inside. We get our hands on that good stuff and- ooga-booga, baby! We're filthy stinkin' riiiicchhh!"
Lowering the towel from his face with a growl, Morty followed after his grandpa with angry, dissatisfied foot-stomps. "I-I don't understand, Rick. Why would you childproo-"
"'Mayonnaise', Morty," Rick was quick to cut him off, his voice loud, strict and obnoxious, "We are looking for a mayonnaise jar. Do you read me? Ar-are we good?"
He was never going to answer him, was he? Morty's shoulders went slack and he pouted, reluctantly agreeing, "Whatever, Rick."
As they began searching the beach for the washed up jar, Morty found himself disappearing into his own deep thoughts. Childproofing. 'Childproofing'... How many things was that now that Rick had childproofed?
Morty stopped and stared up at the gorgeous, glowing freckles of the night sky, his memories taking him to when they had been sent back to their own dimensions. Every person he had seen in space that night- House Beth, Space Beth, Summer and even Rick Prime- had all had some type of provided air solution keeping them safe and guarded... All except him and Rick.
Back then Rick had said that he did 'childproofing' while he was asleep, and Morty honestly didn't think much of it. It was just Rick being Rick. But if that were the case, then why was he taking it so far?
Space, heights, and now drowning? Why? Why was he doing this?
Morty gazed off in the direction of his grandpa, his heart throbbing in his chest. Did he childproof all those things because he was afraid of losing him? Was that it? He valued his grandson that much?
Covering his chest, Morty smiled to himself and decided to let the happiness consume him. Even if Rick only childproofed elaborate things simply to prove that he could, the thought of him looking after him so strongly warmed Morty's heart.
At least in some way... he knew that his grandpa truly did care.
Over the following months, Morty had gotten to experience a lot of Rick's 'childproofing'.
Any time he fell, whether it be from a small height or a great height, Morty always landed with a bounce. Choking, suffocating and drowning were no longer possible dangers for him to experience. He could happily breathe in space and any other low-oxygen environment. To top it off, he was even bullet-proof now! Yep. Any lasers, bullets or blasts that hit him ricochet right off.
It pretty much felt like he were invincible.
Well...
If only that were the case.
It happened fast one day. A stray bomb landed next to Morty. Rick had been too far away to respond in time, and it exploded.
Morty had blacked out in an instant, his body sent flying dozens of meters away from where the explosion took place.
By the time he began waking up, he was blinking open his eyes to see the familiar comforts of a black, blue and purple ceiling covered in multiple colored lights. Rick's lab. He blinked, trying to gauge what exactly was going on.
He remembered something big landing beside him- a long cylinder device beeping like a bomb. Vaguely he could recall hearing Rick's voice shouting at him followed by a half-second 'boom', but anything after that was all a blur.
With his eyes fluttering, Morty tried looking around, his body feeling paralyzed like he couldn't move it. What was going on? He peered down, seeing a tall figure sitting on a stool to his left. Rick...
Rick was sitting there with a fierce look of determination on his face, his arms briskly moving around as he used a multitude of medicines to help try and heal Morty's wounds. "How hard can it be?" He said, his voice sounding strained, worried and... Angry.
"Y-y-you're telling me you can childproof space b-but not a stupid explosive?" Rick scolded himself, his hands shaking as he applied medicine to another one of Morty's wounds. "You stupid, worthless idiot..."
He must not know that he was awake. Morty blinked, trying his hardest to use all of his strength to move even if it was only a tiny, little twitch. His mouth and nose was covered with a breathing mask, his stuttering, silent lips hidden within.
"H-how hard does it have to be?" Rick roughly bit his lip, obviously sober and fighting his hardest to beat his own emotions. "You're a God. Y-you can do anything you want. So-so quit being a useless dumb ass and childproof this shit already. Because if you wait..."
Wow. Morty had never witnessed Rick being this hard on himself, and all because he failed to childproof explosives. Morty blinked, remembering how in Rick's memories Beth and Diane were killed by an explosive. And now Morty had almost lost his own life in the exact same fashion.
He couldn't imagine how that must make his grandpa feel.
Morty laid there, staring at the ceiling and thinking about all of the things that Rick had gone out of his way to childproof. Stairs, heights, car wrecks, drowning, choking, space, gun-fire and poison. It was like he had tried to childproof the whole world, and now that he's failed... He was beating himself up.
Mustering all of his strength and willpower, Morty breathed in big and muttered out, "You can't... childproof the world."
"Huh?" Rick jerked, surprised by his grandson's weak response.
Scooting his stool further up beside the cot, Rick reached out and pulled down the breathing mask, his crippled eyes meeting with his grandsons, "What the hell are you doing awake? I-I gave you enough morphine to knock out a horse. You should be practically dead right now."
"You..." Morty's hand twitched, his aching eyes moving to look back up at the ceiling, "You can't... ch-childproof... the world, Rick."
Rick looked down at his grandson, the words he spoke hitting right through him causing his eyes to water and his teeth to clench. Little was Morty able to realize it, but his left arm was in the midst of being rebuilt, and his stomach had just been mended of all it's ruptured organs. There were dozens of other wounds that also needed tending to.
By all means Morty shouldn't be alive much less awake, and the first thing he has to say is that Rick can't do the one and only thing he knows deep, deep down that he can't do?
"Oh yeah?" Rick challenged, reaching over to push more morphine through his grandson's IV, "Well screw you, you little danger-magnet. I 'can' childproof the world and I 'will'. Nothing can stop me."
Once he was positive that his grandson was thoroughly back asleep, Rick placed the breathing mask over his face before leaning forward and resting his head on his chest so that he could hear his heart-beat- let it reassure him that he wasn't really gone, that he was still alive and safe and perfectly unharmed even... Even if it wasn't entirely true.
"I promise you, Morty," He whispered, tears blurring his eyes as he sat up and brought out the blueprints that would help him finish childproofing explosives, "I 'will' childproof the world."