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The knowledge that nothing really matters in the grand scheme of things was both an endless comfort and tremendously discouraging, depending on the mood that Rick found himself in. On the one hand you couldn’t fuck anything up if nothing mattered, then again you didn’t matter either. Knowing you’re little more than a speck in the universe at large, that were you to die nothing would change. Was that a good or bad thing, though? Nothing changes, no one would be hurt, possibly there’s relief because no one liked a mean, old drunk that, despite his brilliance, seemed to set fire to everything he touched.
Rick rolled over for what felt like the hundredth time in the past five minutes. He’d made the complete rotation of left side, front, right side, back, left side about a dozen times since he got in bed. Every time he moved the old cot he’d been given to sleep on would creak, making Stan twitch in his sleep… and wasn’t that surreal. Never in a thousand years had Rick thought he’d darken the doorstep of one Stanley Pines, again.
Yet there he was, bunking in his room because the rest were overflowing with brats and Ford would sooner have shot him in the liver than let him anywhere near his bed. Then again Rick would’ve rather been shot in the liver than be in the same room with the other Pines twin for an extended period of time so he guessed it worked out… sort of. He was still stuck staring at the empty space on the left side of Stan’s bed.
Rick wanted to fill the empty space, to be alone, to rekindle what he’d let burn out, to stomp out whatever feelings he had left in his shriveled old heart because feelings and people were just asking for trouble. He could do any of those things or nothing at all. In the end none of it would really matter. Just like that, Rick found himself back at square one.
With a flurry of agitation, the man threw himself out of bed, making sure to snatch his flask from under his pillow before he headed to the door. He couldn’t be in the room anymore, couldn’t just stare up at the ceiling waiting for the sleep that didn’t seem to be stopping in for him that night. If he had been at home he would’ve just gone to the garage, made something extraordinary. He wasn't home, though. He was in Gravity Falls and he wasn’t allowed in the lab because Ford didn’t ‘like or trust him’.
“Not going to get ice-cream, are ya Rick,” Stan asked from the bed, making Rick jolt and whip around to look at the other man. He hadn’t moved, still lying with his back to Rick and the blankets drawn up over his shoulders.
“Nah.. J--Just shit-faced, Pines. Can’t sleep,” he said, hand still on the doorknob. Stan craned his neck to look back at his friend, not that the could’ve seen anything without his glasses, especially in the dark.
“That really the best way you can think of to put yourself to sleep, genius,” he asked, and it wasn’t the first time he’d expressed some concern for the fact that Rick’s drinking had only seemed to have gotten worse since they last saw each other.
“Well unless y--you’re offering to tire me out some other way,” Rick replied, voice ladened with unwanted suggestion. Best to push people away than invite them in. When Stan went silent the spindly, old man snorted and pushed open the door. “Thought not.”
He had intended to sit in the kitchen, drink himself stupid, and maybe do something fun with the coffee maker so as to piss off Stanford. It was endlessly entertaining to watch that guy blow a fuse. Besides, since Ford wouldn’t let him ‘fix’ their cable, there wasn’t much else to do and Rick needed a distraction. Anything that would just keep him from thinking too much on should-haves and would-haves that were Can-Canning their way through his mind to the tune of ‘Nothing Fucking Matters So Stop Being a Bitch’.
For about an hour he got his silence and his distraction.
He had sat at the kitchen table, using what little he had at his disposal to mix together a concoction that would make whoever used the coffee machine hear things backwards for about an hour, or five he really wasn’t sure. The plan to tamper with the machine itself had changed into something a little more simple, which was painting a few coffee filters with the stuff. Rick had just finished the third one when the distraction from his task came shuffling by in the form of Mabel, one of Stan’s grand-nibblings that had blown into town shortly before he had arrived.
She didn’t even notice he was in the kitchen as she ghosted past the door, sniffling a little and carrying herself with an air of dejectedness. The girl disappeared from sight in an instant, the quiet clicking of the door opening and closing heralding her exit of the shack. Well now where was that little brat going? He could have ignored her, maybe should have. The kid obviously wanted to be alone, but then he had run out of things to distract himself with so there were more reasons to follow her than not to.
Whether he did or didn’t, it wouldn’t really matter anyway.