Chapter Text
Honestly a let-down. Not really worth the hype,
Morty thinks to himself, as he watches an empty bottle roll past his vision. The wall is moving a little funny, as is the ground that his side rests on. He feels sweaty all over, his own grubby little hands clutching his shirt.
A sharp pain digs itself into his stomach, making him wince. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken that much—much what? Wine? Whiskey? Beer? Weed?! Geez, he surely hopes it’s not weed. Last time he recalled, he was allergic to marijuana. Specifically the kinds on Earth.
When was that, again? Maybe when he was around 5 years old. When his mom still took him to doctor’s appointments, and would hold his hand when they crossed the street. The sun would make the white lines on the crosswalk beam through his skull with bright color, complaints spilling out of his slobbering lips. And Dad would give him a root beer lollipop to keep him from crying (even though it was his least favorite flavor, which the man often forgot,) before they stepped in the clinic. He wonders if this world’s Morty, too, hated root beer. He wonders if the world before that did. He remembers that neither the Mom nor Dad that would hold his hand and give him root beer lollipops are anywhere he can reach. He remembers that they are dead. He remembers that everyone is dead. He remembers that
He stops thinking about it. Who drinks to remember, anyways? It’s time to get SCHWASTED, or whatever Rick says.
It doesn’t matter. Nothing does.
“Ooor… everything does!”
He was wrong. He turned out the same as every other man with his exact DNA. It’ll always end this way.
Shit, he can’t stop thinking. The constant back and forth his mind bounces between is making him nauseous.
The memories start gouging deep inside his ribcage, an unwelcome intrusion, jutting into the blurred corners of his mind. They slip poison into his head like sand through hourglass, despite his desperate attempts to catch the grains with his hands.
He gets himself up off the ground, stumbling about from furniture to furniture. A light smile begins to split his lips. Okay, now it’s really kicking in. His eyelids feel heavy, body begging to be released back to gravity’s pull. Hands failing multiple times to grab his headphones on his desk, he decides to scoop them up like a baby. He can’t really seem to get them on right. He doesn’t really care.
“Bluetooth connected,” a robotic voice rings out through his ears. Time to get this party started.
He does not recall the next few hours, nor the few hours after that. Sleep catches him in its grasp, somewhere after the perimeters of midnight but before dawn breaches the skyline, and he falls, down, down, down, never reaching the pavement.
—
The morning sun splits his vision with a strong headache, accompanied by nausea. Glass bottles clink against one another as he makes his way to the bathroom. His knees wobble before giving out completely on staggeringly cold tiles.
Once his stomach is finished emptying its contents into the toilet bowl, his head raises to peek at his appearance in the mirror. His eyes widen, fingers reaching up to trace the creases of his face. Blood begins to rush through his ears, vision blurring.
He looks like Mom.
He rushes to retch in the toilet bowl again. He just wanted to try it, he tells himself. He’s never doing this again.
When he finally starts stepping down the stairs, Summer stomps up past him. He swivels around.
“H-hey, what—“
“Dad won’t let me go to Tricia’s birthday party and everyone will be there and I won’t be there and tomorrow they’re all going to look at me like I’m a loser because that pathetic sad sludge of a man that I’m embarrassed to call dad acts like I’m a prisoner in a piss-smelling concentration cam-mm-mp!”
Her words rush out fast with her last word being dragged out in a wail, tears welling up in her eyes. Morty simply looks up at her, frowning.
“But you wouldn’t get it, because you don’t have any friends! Also, you look like shit! Just leave me alone, Morty!”
She runs up to her room and slams the door.
“G-geez, okay…” he mutters to himself.
As he proceeds down the last steps, Beth starts briskly speed-walking out the door. Mom and Dad don’t fight as much as they used to. Maybe he should be grateful.
“Bye Mom,” he calls out, forcing the corners of his lips upwards.
She closes the door behind her. It seems that she didn’t hear him.
It doesn’t matter, anyways, because a swirling green materializes right in front of him just a few seconds later. His grandpa’s top half of his body slugs out.
“C-c’mon, little buddy, we, we gotta go. Gggotta go…go somewhere nice, okay?”
Rick has been more patient with him lately (or maybe more negligent), but the horrid stench of alcohol has been much more prominent. Morty supposes it’d now make him a hypocrite to comment on it. He scrunches his nose as he brushes past Rick to make his way into the portal, hands lingering at the man’s hip to keep him from falling down.
“Just t-t-tell me what, what you want me to do already.”
The passageway brings him right to the garage. Seeing that Rick’s other half is still on the other side of the portal makes him panic just slightly (despite the portal gun’s new no-dismembering function), so he drags him by the waist down to the ground.
“What is this attitude y-you’re given—givn—giving me right now? Who shat in your cerheeallll…luh..”
Beneath him, his grandpa is raising an eyebrow at him with a squint, swaying as he gets up on his feet.
“I didn’t even h-have cereal, or any breakfast, actually, since you decided th-that today would be an awfully great day to drag—“
“Shhhhh….shhhh, g-g-grandp—Dad… loves you…ya, ya know that, Morty? Dad…you’re, you’re real good for him, y’knohh..? Iii…said, I said I was your fuckin’ ddad, and I, I haven’t changed mmy mind..”
Morty goes quiet with a wince as Rick slings an arm over his shoulders, leaning his full weight on the boy whilst his other hand raises to shoot another portal to, what he assumes, is an adventure. His head hurts a little more. He suddenly wishes that the day would just be over already.
“Th-thanks, Rick. I know.”
I don’t. Not really. But I can pretend, since it’ll make both of us feel better.
“Tthat’s my boy, that’s mmy, my boy. NnnOWW—let’s go, then! L-l-let’s get these alien genitals, Morty! Let’s harvest th-them, them for a ggooodd cause! Well, we’ll earn so much money, Morty! We’ll be makiiiinggh…MAKing bank!”
“…Oh. W-we’re, uh, we’re harvesting what?”
The swirling green vortex of possible impossibilities swallows them whole, Rick stumbling through with Morty in tow.