Chapter Text
Morty sighed, crossing his arms, head down.
Rick himself sighed, realizing there was something on the kid’s mind. He retracted himself from his current project and walked over to him, placing a hand gently on his shoulder. Rick pulled Morty’s hand up to his throat, placing his thumb on his chin and fingers on his cheek.
“Something wrong, Morty?”
Morty shook his head.
Rick sighed, not really in the mood to try and guess what was on his mind. He rolled over his own chair, plopping down next to Morty and grabbing his dominant hand. Rick pushed down his middle and ring finger, Morty’s thumb and pinky remaining extended. Rick tapped Morty’s hand to his mouth.
“What’s wrong?”
Morty relented finally, signing a quick clap and twisted his pointed and middle finger, interlocking his hands twice.
“School problem.”
Morty then frowned a bit and clarified, placing a hand to his mouth and rose his right hand by his face, his left hand touching his elbow.
Rick rose his eyebrow at that. What could be eating the kid up about lunch at school?
Rick needed more information. He grabbed both of Morty’s hands and carefully performed a waving motion before grabbing Morty’s pointer fingers and making them meet, finally he touched Morty’s dominant hand to his chest.
“Talk to me.”
At that Morty frowned and pulled away his hands, looking like he was contemplating something. Finally he opened his mouth.
“Okay.”
It wasn’t hard to see why Morty didn’t like talking, he probably didn’t have much confidence in himself. The cadence and inflection was odd, but Rick was used to it. Besides, if Rick needed to tell Morty something, he’d co-sign it with him. It was just more efficient for him to talk right now.
“I keep getting… gross food at lunch.”
Morty must’ve known that sounded odd and he continued.
“The-they’re supposed to send the menu to me- but they don’t.”
Ah. Looks like another trip and incidental threatening was in order with the principal. Rick had made it quite clear last time that it wasn’t exactly difficult to email someone something, and no it wasn’t a favor.
Rick sighed. He had known taking in a deafblind Morty would be quite the task, but he had no idea the biggest issues would be other people. He was fine with having to be patient, he was even fine with having to repair the braille display on his computer every once in awhile. Hell, Rick was even fine with learning sign language. The only difficulties that ever arose was everyone else.
Rick pulled Morty’s hand to his face and Morty intuitively allowed it, listening with his fingers.
“Leave it to me, Morty.”
Morty smiled at that, genuinely, and Rick almost swore his heart skipped a beat.
When he first was assigned this Morty he assumed he was miserable. He assumed he lived in a world of nothing, bored and under-stimulated. But he had been wrong.
He remembered “returning home”, Beth crying on his shoulder while Summer signed to Morty.
“Grandpa is here.”
Morty was the only one who didn’t cry. At least not until Rick held his hands and asked Summer how to co-sign. Summer helpfully guided their combined hands. Rick watched as Summer guided him to rub Morty’s open palms together, helping Morty form two fists and extend his pointer fingers, fists gently colliding. Summer took Rick’s hand for the last part, guiding Rick’s pointer finger to Morty’s nose.
“Nice to meet you.”
Morty’s nose twitched, unfocused eyes watering. He signed it back to Rick twice.
Rick stopped pitying himself for having a ‘defective’ Morty after a week. He began wondering what was wrong with council after two weeks.
Rick had been wrong to assume Morty was in some dark world, and had been even more wrong to assume ‘defective’ Mortys were miserable without them. Even so, Rick liked to think the kid didn’t smile as much before he came into his life.
Morty was very studious, for, well, a Morty. Rick supposed that was because most media was… less than enthralling to Morty. After a few weeks, Morty had settled in to reading his textbooks in the garage, happy simply to be in someone’s presence. A few weeks in, Rick helped him bring in his laptop and set up his braille display and set up a workspace on the left side of his workstation.
Rick wasn’t sure why, but it was intriguing to watch Morty work. Rick couldn’t help but feel somehow grateful as he watched Morty check over his work for the third time, making sure he hadn’t mis-typed his homework assignment, or when Morty accidentally closed out the window and became confused, wondering why the content was different.
To put it simply, his Morty was surprisingly persevering and it made Rick happy to see him working his hardest, even if the kid only got Cs.
Rick smiled in turn at Morty’s smile and decided to show Morty something. He tapped Morty on the shoulder thrice, an agreed upon signal meaning “stay here” and quickly located the box full of his and Morty’s most recent hobby.
He pulled over the poorly stapled together stack of embossed paper, and put it in Morty’s lap. Morty immediately beamed.
“Another comic?” Morty asked out loud.
Rick ran his fingers through Morty’s hair, ruffling it.
Morty pushed away his laptop, excitedly placing the stack of paper in its place and began reading, fingers running over embossed paper.
Rick had got the idea awhile ago when Morty was looking sort of down. Morty had signed that he was bored and there was no more recreational books in the library he could read, having read all of the small resources. Rick had tried yelling at the library, but as it turns out, buying a braille embossing machine was expensive and they had to buy their braille books individually. Rick decided then the only logical option was to build one himself.
Rick realized quickly that translating an entire book into braille on his own was too time-consuming- but the occasional comic book? No sweat. Just describe the action and dialogue. Rick felt his body tingle as he recalled the first time he’d shown Morty a comic he’d made for him.
Morty at first didn’t understand, fingers running over “Ballfondlers Issue 1” over and over. At first Rick wasn’t even sure if Morty knew what a comic was. Not until Morty said out loud, without any urging, “Y-you made this for me?”
Rick liked to think that Morty was touched by the gesture and not that Morty thought up to that point Rick would never make something for Morty.
After that, Rick couldn’t get Morty’s grateful smile out of his head. Without saying, he made more. And more. He had the idea that he’d only do it once a month. But in reality Rick made them whenever he wanted to see Morty smile, and Rick was beginning to face the fact there was rarely a time he didn’t want to see Morty smile.
Rick perched himself back in his seat, happy to be working alongside Morty, who was happily engulfed in the comic at this point. Rick grinned to himself at he hooked up parts of his current project to his computer, pleased by the results.