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Morty isn't entirely sure of what to think of Rick when he shows up. Everyone else in the house manages to quickly establish firm and unshakable opinions on the matter, and Morty finds himself, as usual, a little behind on the whole subject.
His mother is happy, maybe. She seems to light up under Rick's attention, always ready to help however minute the issue might be, even if, during the first few weeks of his arrival, she has a bottomless wine glass and a distinctly redder face more often than not. Morty finds himself almost offended when Rick remains indifferent to her constant reassurance and assistance, but his mother doesn’t seem to mind, so he supposes he shouldn’t either.
Summer is very skeptical about the whole thing. Around the dinner table she gives Rick quick, curt glances over her phone screen, and around the house she stays out of his way. One morning when they’re on the bus, on their way to school, she says, “I bet he’s some deadbeat. Like, he only came back because he lost all his money to booze and gambling,”
Later she admits to Morty, some evening when she’s agreed to help him with his homework, that she thinks Rick's whole sci-fi shtick is pretty cool.
His father is very displeased. Rick completely wrecked the garage and the better part of half of the contents within it, and his father doesn’t tire of bringing it up. Rick says he’ll fix it, but this doesn’t do much to satiate him. It probably doesn’t help that Rick isn’t exactly kneeling at his presence, so most of their brief interactions devolve into an exchange of petty insults and low blows.
Morty’s thoughts on Rick remain pretty neutral. He seems closed off and, honestly, kind of rude.
When Morty first introduces himself, “Hello, I’m Morty,” with a polite smile and wave, Rick just says, “I know,” with a tone Morty knows to read as cold. This interaction, and subsequent similar ones, leave a pretty sour taste in his mouth. Rick seems to take any opportunity to avoid conversation and interaction with him, and any time Morty makes an attempt to engage with him to the best of his ability, Rick cuts the conversation off with the same speed and smoothness of his landing in their house.
So Morty resigns to do what he’s done with all his other attempts at forming friends, and gives up. He’ll see Rick every now and again before he goes to school, and every now and again when he comes home from school, but he's never really sure what to say to him, and it doesn’t really seem like Rick is exactly excited to talk either. When he isn’t hiding in the guest-room-turned-Rick-room, or wasting away on the couch, he’s off… somewhere. Morty has tried to ask his mom about where Rick goes or what he does, but she isn’t keen to answer, and tells him that he should do his homework. In any case he assumes Rick has already brushed him off as the bumbling idiot of the family, someone who doesn’t deserve his attention, and he, somewhat pettily, understands why his dad is so worked up over Rick’s unchallenged presence.
One night they bump into each other in the kitchen. Morty goes downstairs for a glass of water, avoids all the creaky stairs so his mom wouldn’t complain about him sneaking around again, when he turns the corner from the dining room and is greeted with Rick digging around the fridge, seemingly scouring the back of the shelves for something.
He notices Morty almost as soon as he walks in, stiffening a little while he focuses on the figure in front of him, before retreating from the fridge with a can of beer in his hand and letting the door slam against the frame, loudly. Morty cringes at the noise of glass bottles rattling around, hoping that it's late enough for his family to not register these noises in their sleep.
“He- hello,” Morty murmurs after he deems the silence sufficiently awkward.
“Hi,” Rick mutters in response, his voice flat. Morty finds himself inexplicably disappointed by the lack of any proper response or explanation or, really, anything, and a lot more disappointed when Rick walks past him to the garage door without another word.
Morty watches him go, almost entranced by this near-stranger freely walking around their house and rummaging through their fridge, and he wonders if Summer's deadbeat theory has some merit to it.
Rick opens the door, but doesn’t walk through, pausing with the doorknob still in his hand.
“Y-you wanna, uh. You wanna see the garage, M-Morty?” Rick asks finally, tilting his head in his direction slightly. He drags out Morty's name a little, a hint of sing-songiness to it. When Morty makes no attempt of any sort of reply, Rick continues, “I uh. I finished fixing i-i-it up,” and steps inside, pushing the door more closed, but leaving an invitational crack into it.
Morty takes him up on that implied offer, and makes his way after Rick.
He steps inside the garage, the dusty cold floor immediately reminding him that his shoes are sitting, courteously tucked next to each other, in the hallway by the front door, and he definitely should have grabbed them before coming here. He sees bits of miscellaneous gravel sitting on the concrete, and feels his gums itch at the thought of stepping on them. So he stays put, standing still by the door.
Rick definitely did fix up the garage, though. Everything looks just about the same as he remembered it. Maybe a little more of the foundation peeking through the walls, but the workbench and the shelves and washing machine are all just as they were. Rick had replicated it, as far as Morty was concerned, pretty perfectly, though he never came down here often enough to nitpick on any of the finer details being off.
The only notable difference, to him, was the way everything was now littered with boxes, wires, and tools. His father didn’t use the garage that much for handiwork, mostly just to store the lawnmower or shovels, so it remained a relatively tidy space. Rick clearly didn’t have any strong feelings towards organization, though.
“This looks- looks really good,” Morty squeaks out, and Rick turns to him. He looks around the room, before focusing on Morty again.
“I tried to- y’know, uh. I wanted to keep it- keep it the same. M-maybe then your dad- he wouldn’t- your dad wouldn’t have such a fat stick up his ass anymore,” he explains, plopping down on the old creaky office-chair that became the garage-chair after his dad bought a new one.
“But good to know that you, you like it. Too,” he adds, a little more quiet.
Morty isn’t really sure what else to do here. The garage has been peer reviewed, he’s done what’s been asked of him, and Rick also seemingly has nothing else to add. The social transaction is completed.
“I’m uh. I’m gonna go to- to sleep. Now. Um, thank you for- uh- for showing me,” he says, and steps out, rubbing his feet against his shins to get any debris off, and properly closing the door behind him.
After this, Morty starts noticing Rick rummaging around the house more.
He’ll join the breakfast table more often than not, and he engages in conversations when he’s prompted to, usually by his mother. She’ll ask him how he likes the eggs, or what he’s working on, or how he’s feeling this fine morning, and Rick replies, good, and just some thingamajig, and good. Sometimes he’ll throw in a little quip and nudge Morty with a crooked grin, as if to invite him into the conversation, as if to connect with him, specifically.
In these moments, Morty feels like his mom, drowning in the crumb of positive attention Rick so kindly spares for him and no one else.