Work Text:
"Crybaby" was a label Morty had become all too familiar with. For as long as he could remember he had always been a ball of nerves. That's what his parents would tell you, at least. When he actually tries to think back on it, Morty is almost sure he was pretty confident when he was little. That constant feeling of dread only seemed to really set in after he had been around a few too many of his parents loud, violent fights.
It's all blurry, of course, he was young and his brain had fought hard to bury it. But he has fuzzy memories of all those nights he spent curled up in a ball underneath his blanket, or huddled up clinging to Summer when he was too scared to sleep in his own bed. Doing everything in his power to muffle the sound of hurled insults and glass breaking through the thin walls. He remembers that feeling of overwhelming fear began to overtake him even when his family was calm, when his mom and dad were a happy couple. When they seemed just a little too much like a normal family and he knew that was the calm before the storm. The happier they were the worse the crash would be.
School wasn't even the escape he needed. He always struggled to make friends or fit in with the other kids his age. He just didn't get it, how conversations were supposed to flow, how friendships were made, or how other people made it look so easy. It was bad enough that he was typically excluded and ignored, but eventually made worse when the bullying began. Other kids turned picking on him into a bonding activity between each other. He tried so hard to be nice and kind, and he never found himself angry with these children. He remembers it more as an overwhelming confusion, a guilt for whatever he had done so wrong to make everyone hate him this bad.
That's when he was sure that feeling that followed him everywhere really sunk it's teeth in. Vigilant of himself and everyone around him, hyper-aware of all the ways he could fuck up. He thought he might grow out of it eventually, but it proved to only get worse as he got older. As the years went on he stacked up negative experiences and things he hated about himself like participation trophies.
His parents brushed it off as nothing more than him being a worrier. "He gets it from his father," his mother would insist. Which only proved to make him feel worse, considering his father being a pussy was one of the things she frequently complained about. It was the root cause of most of their fights. Morty didn't hate the idea of being similar to this father, but he did hate the idea of carrying traits his mother detested so fiercely.
Morty laid awake at night after that conversation. A pillow wrapped tightly around his head and pressed against his ears like a cocoon. It was quiet that night, he didn't need to cover his ears, but it was a habit he had begun and never felt comfortable enough to let go of. His mind raced and his brain rehearsed what felt like every mistake he ever made in his life like a bad movie. That time he ate his sister's leftovers on accident, a time he made a poorly timed joke to a girl in his class, and all the times he had made his parents lives harder by simply being born.
This was the routine, he couldn't remember the last time he actually got a decent sleep rather than lay here ruminating. As every memory made his chest feel a little tighter and that familiar nausea threatened to make him throw his dinner back up. Dinner which he had picked at and barely taken any bites out of, another thing he felt guilty about.
He barely even noticed when he began to hyperventilate through his mouth and clutch at the fabric of his pajama shirt. His ribcage felt like it was trying to suffocate his lungs, his heart was drumming in his chest like a bird in a cage. His mouth was dryer than his dad's meatloaf and his throat was so tight he was worried he might suffocate.
Morty wished for nothing more than sleep, for his brain to give him a break from this for just one damn night.
He had tried any distraction he could think of, anything to get his mind off of this spiral for just a little while. He'd load up a video game he didn't really feel like playing, take a comic off his shelf he hadn't touched in years, or pull out his laptop and type "por" into the search bar to let google fill in the rest. Put on a movie, doom-scroll Twitter, take a shower. It all only worked to temporarily starve it off. Because the moment he laid his head back down and his thoughts were no longer preoccupied, no matter how exhausted he was, his mind started to spiral again. Bringing him right back to where he started.
When Rick crash landed into their family(and their garage) it continued. Even when Rick became a permanent fixture in their home, and Morty's only real friend, it continued. When Rick dragged him out of school so much his attended days were in the single digits Morty thought that maybe he'd finally stop wasting so much time worrying, considering how much of his overthinking focused on his social life and classmates. But that just meant whatever was wrong with him found a new focus; ruminating on everything else instead.
Being around an irate drunken old man who berated him all of the time and babbled nonsense didn't exactly ease any of the boys nerves. Rick was very vocal about everything Morty did wrong the second the mistake was made, and even if there was no mistake he still found a way to make his grandson feel bad for daring to exist and be stupid in his prescience.
Morty would spend hours trying to calm down enough to fall asleep, and the second he'd manage to drift off into slumber Rick would burst through his bedroom door, grab him by the ankle, and drag him wherever they were going that night. The one positive might be the fact by the time he got back home his brain was short circuiting from exhaustion and didn't have the capacity to spiral. Though, it was almost like that made the thoughts worse on nights where Rick left him to sleep.
It was almost funny how much he hated the old man for ruining his sleep schedule, but when he left him be Morty silently begged for him to come take him away, anywhere but his bedroom. Let him be anyone but the oversensitive crybaby that he was. He'd take anything to make it stop.
Then, the solution fell into his lap.
Rick did what he typically did, drunkenly dragged Morty out of bed as he put up almost no fight, and promptly tossed the boy into the passenger seat. He mumbled something incoherent Morty didn't understand about going to get something he needed from another planet. Morty wasn't quite sure why that required he come with, but he was having a particularly bad night and was honestly a little grateful to have something to focus on outside of his own head.
Before Morty could even blink the ship had already blasted off into space, and he watched as the sky faded from that dark blue illuminated by the light of the moon into the dark, deep black of space.
Morty didn't talk very much, mostly staring out the window and occasionally responding to Rick to keep him placated as the man rambled endlessly. That was until the ship gave a sudden sputter and a few strong jolts, like it was fighting Rick to not keep going forward. Morty was thrown up from his seat with each jolt, as the ship stopped dead in its tracks.
"Critical turbocharger failure," the feminine voice of the ship spoke through the speakers.
"Fuck- God- God fuckin- great," Rick swore up and down as he angrily shook the steering wheel as if that was going to fix anything.
"Aw jeez, d-d-d-did the ship break- break down?" Morty stammers out, brain already flooded with the possibilities that could come from being stuck in space. With Rick. With drunk Rick.
"It's not broken down, Morty," He elongates and spits out Morty's name like it's intended as an insult. It probably is. "Just- Just gotta land- *belch*- land on a nearby planet and- and- and- and- get in it's guts."
The engine coughed the whole time they drove and something continually made a metallic grinding sound akin to a fork ran across a ceramic plate. It was like it was trying to fight Rick back from trying to go any further, and he cursed it for not being able to do the one thing it's good for. They eventually landed on a planet that looked to be almost entirely empty with blue fields of tall grass. The ship hit the ground rather ungracefully in a way that shook the whole frame, as Rick was far too impatient to care about being "gentle" at that moment in time.
He swung the door open and stumbled out to throw open the hood of the thing, and Morty, not wanting to sit in the car alone with his thoughts, followed suit. Wincing at the feeling of the sharp rocks in the dirt on the bottoms of his feet. He hadn't had the chance to put on socks or shoes before they left.
Morty approached to stand next to Rick and take a peak at the fuming engine, as the old man grumbled under his breath about how much of a stupid piece of shit the machine was. Morty couldn't help but feel sympathy for it, even if it was just an object. Seeing his grandpa hurl insults at the poor machine for something that it couldn't help.
Smoke rolled off and the wind blew it directly into Morty's face, assaulting his lungs as he breathed it in. He tried to swat away at it as he went into a coughing fit, squinting one eye open through the smolder to peak at what Rick was doing.
He had finally gotten done prodding at the surface and grumbling mechanical terms Morty didn't know, and shrugged off his lab coat. He tossed it over onto his grandson's head, who pulled it off and promptly cupped the fabric around his nose and mouth as a barrier from the smog.
"Y-Y-Y-Y-You know I can- I can- I can cure asthma, right?" Rick commented at the sight of him trying to protect his lungs, "I-I can do you one better than any- any doctor. Build you the best lungs in the f- *belch*- fuck- fuckin' galaxy."
"I-I don't want you po-poking around in my lungs, Rick," he grimaced at the thought, especially after seeing how he had treated that homeless man. He knew Rick wouldn't bat an eye to probably do the same to him.
"You'd- You'd run marathons, Morty-" He babbled on like he hadn't even heard his response, or perhaps just didn't care. His back turned away from Morty as he rolled up his blue sweater sleeves to plunge them into the guts of the ship.
It occurs to Morty then that he had never actually seen Rick's arms before.
Even when the man raised up his arms and the sleeves of his lab coat rolled down from gravity, his undershirt rarely did the same. Hugging his skin as it fit more snug than his coat. He hadn't put too much thought into it before this moment, and he was almost certain it wasn't intentional. Proven by the fact Rick was freely doing it in front of him, he knew he didn't have shame about it. He didn't have shame about anything.
His skin was pale and had a light purple undertone. Dry and paper-like in texture, similar to his face and hands. The thing that caught Morty's attention was not his skin, but the scars etched into it. Both arms were covered, straight across, straight down, diagonal, and overlapping. Light, thin lines of superficial wounds, larger dents in his flesh from what was probably more akin to gashes, and raised bumps from where scar tissue had overgrown as it healed. Morty wondered how much of his arm was actually scar tissue, as they trailed all the way up to where his sweater concealed them again at his elbows. Though he was almost certain they went further.
He tried not to stare, though he ended up doing it anyways. Not that it mattered, as Rick shoved his arms elbow deep and yanked at wires and mechanical parts. He paid no mind to his grandson as he hid the scars Morty was so captivated by in the guts of the car.
It was fixed and running not long after, with Rick slamming the hood down and both of them climbing back inside. They stumbled over beer bottles that tumbled out onto the ground before shutting their individual doors. Morty took note of the fact he still had the lab coat in his arms, and Rick hadn't bothered to roll his sleeves back up. His hands firm on the wheel and his arms on clear display as he drove.
The adventure was surprisingly non-violent for once, collecting some plant that Morty was almost certain was meant to be used to get high. I mean, nobody told him that, but he wasn't sure what else it would be for knowing Rick. They landed back in the driveway and went their separate ways, as neither of them were going to go to sleep and they both knew that. He bid his grandfather a 'goodnight' which garnered no response, and trucked back up the stairs to the room he dreaded.
He tried to lay down a while, but as always it proved impossible. That familiar storm brewing in his head, every thought a lightning strike that ensured he wasn't going to get any peace. Not tonight.
Sat up on the edge of his bed Morty pondered something, something he had never quite considered before. His fingers pinching at the meat of his thigh as he stared holes through the skin of his arm, head swirling with thoughts.
He had seen scars like that on other people, on social media, or on kids at his school he knew to be troubled. Straight across lines slightly darker or lighter then their skin tone, though nothing as significant as what he had seen on Rick. It was never something he had considering doing himself. That was something people did for attention, Morty told himself, and he didn't want attention. His parents concerning themselves over him was the last thing he wanted. He was also a wimp when it came to pain, and couldn't see the benefit in inflicting it on himself. He failed to see how anyone could benefit from the act, honestly.
But, when he really thought about it the logic started to make sense. Feelings so overwhelming that the only way to deal with them was to make them tangible. Cover up an emotional pain with something louder to drown it out. It was the same logic as any other distraction he had tried, just a bit more…immediate. He knew Rick wasn't exactly a role model to copy, and he certainly knew his coping mechanisms weren't anything close to healthy. But, Morty had tried everything else, and he was quite desperate.
Maybe just this once he'd try it, and never do it again.
Searching his room for something to use he found nothing. He didn't have a reason to keep blades in his room, afterall, until now. He weighed the risks of going down to the kitchen for a knife, but decided the idea of using the same tool his dad used to chop up vegetables for dinner grossed him out. That, and Rick was still up probably watching inter-dimensional cable or something.
It was when he was rummaging through his desk that he finally found something. In the bottom of one of the drawers underneath a blanket of unorganized stationary; a pencil sharpener. He placed it on the desk and grabbed a screwdriver from a cup where he kept all his pens, unscrewing the bolts that held the blade to the plastic until it popped free.
He was nervous and a bit shaky, hesitating on whether or not he really wanted to do this. Considering his arm for a moment before deciding against it; someone would notice if he randomly started wearing long sleeves, as opposed to his usual t-shirts.
Pain went shooting like a star for only a moment, before fading into a light burn. And the first thing he noticed was how free it felt. Like all of that pent up tension and overwhelming anxiety had been released from inside him. And in that moment his brain switched focus from everything he had ever done wrong to the searing pain on his leg. And it was so quiet. That night was the best sleep he'd had in years, the physical pain was so much easier to ignore in order to finally rest. As he finally drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
He understood it now why people do this. Why Rick, a man always seeking ways to numb his pain, had done this.
It became a new routine of Morty's when he couldn't sleep, which was most nights. Using his new method that overwhelming anxiety died down every time. No one would ever know, and even if they did he was sure they wouldn't care. He got injured all of the time, what's a few small cuts? Nothing. It's absolutely nothing. It was how he talked himself into beginning to harm on his upper arms that could be hidden by his usual shirt.Just a little stress relief to help him sleep, that's all.
He found himself craving it even in his daily life. When Rick would yell at him too much, he found the urge clawing at the back of his mind. When school started to overwhelm him it tapped on his skull like the glass of a fish bowl. When his parents argued, when an adventure got too stressful, when Summer was being just a bit too mean; the desire to hurt himself begged to be given into. He rationalized when he started keeping a blade with him that it was just a useful tool to have either way; conveniently there if he needed it on an adventure.
"I-I'm going to the bathroom, Rick," Morty would mutter under his breath before walking off. Having to sneak off like he was doing something wrong did make him feel guilty. The shame of having to hide it was the worst part of the act. Like all the embarrassment of being a drug addict with none of the high. He figured he must've been hiding it pretty well, as his grandpa never questioned it or stopped him. His family didn't seem to notice either, but Morty knew they would be the easiest to hide it from.
Looking in the mirror after getting out of the shower he looked at his scars and fresher wounds and almost felt a sense of pride. A physical manifestation of how well he could keep it together. His whole body evidence of how he could manage his feelings on his own. He wasn't overly-sensitive, a cry baby wouldn't be able to cut themselves. They'd be too busy crying.
He was holed up in his room on his bed after an adventure, late at night. The early hours of the morning— actually —it was well past midnight. His day out with Rick had been shit, and he had pissed the old man off into an explosion. His body still trembling from the stress of galactic level events that Rick's anger certainly didn't help. But, it was all over, and it was bed time now. And that meant he could participate in his nightly ritual.
…
That's a lot of blood.
He had been so in his head with hands so shaky he hadn't realized he had pressed so hard. As blood gushed from his arm and Morty's hand grasped at the wound to try and put pressure to no avail. He whispered a sea of swears to himself and picked up a random shirt off his floor to wrap around the wound, though it quickly bled through. Wracking his brain for anything else he could do, realization began to set in that he might need to ask for help. Who would he even ask? His mother would surely flip her lid, his dad had no medical knowledge and would just tell his mother, and Summer would never let him live it down.
Rick was probably his best bet, he could heal it instantly. Maybe an excuse would work. A fall where he landed on something sharp? No, no. Rick would never believe it for a second, he was the smartest man in the universe, and he could see right through Morty.
An idea finally hit him; Rick definitely kept some more of those instant healing shots in a box in the garage. Rick had drank himself to sleep immediately after they got home, surely. It wouldn't be the first time he's stolen from his grandfather while he was blacked out.
He wrapped the T-shirt in an actual knot around his arm to keep it in place. It was beyond bled through, so it probably wasn't doing much, but it kept him from tracking blood through the house. He crept through the hall and down the stairs, far more carefully then he would normally. Everyone in this house was a heavy sleeper, and Rick almost never kept quiet at these hours if he was still up. The quiet of the house encouraged Morty to keep going, surely he was asleep if it was this silent.
Tiptoeing onto the floor down from the last stair he peaked around the corner to find darkness cloaked over the still living room. The TV wasn't on, which was a good sign. A breath escaped Morty that he didn't realize he had been holding, and he made his way through and to the kitchen.
Cautiously he approached the garage door, and stopped right in front of it. Looking down at his feet he saw no light coming out from underneath the door, just the darkness that matched the rest of his home. A drop of blood landed right next to his feet from his arm, which startled him. So much for not making a mess, but he'd wipe it up later.
He pressed his ear to the door trying to listen for any sort of noise, but heard nothing. Not even Rick's loud drunken snoring, which he would've hoped for. Maybe he was sleeping in his actual bedroom tonight, Morty reasoned. He wrapped his fingers around the cold door knob and slowly twisted, nudging it open and peaking inside. It was dark and empty with no sign of Rick that he could see.
Still slow and careful in his movements, he tip toed across the cold garage floor and over to the shelf where his grandpa stored random junk in various boxes. It wasn't organized in the slightest, but Morty had done enough fetch-quests and searching through them that he knew where the thing he was looking for was.
Sure enough he found it, wedged underneath a bunch of sci-fi bits and bobs at the bottom of one of the boxes. Glowing blue liquid in a vial attached to a syringe that looked more like a gun then a medical device. Morty grabbed it and pulled it out to inspect it for a second, before making his way over to the work bench. Laying his arm down on it's surface, he positioned the needle just above his skin and-
"What are you doing touching my shit?"
The garage light flicked on at the same time as the question hitting his ears, and Morty flinched so hard he felt like he caught air time. His arm jerking upwards in panic and tossing the syringe a random direction, causing it to land on the floor and shatter on impact. The glowing liquid splattered and pooled around it like blood around a corpse. Morty spun around to face Rick and his alarm was evident all over his face. He was doing himself no favors in looking like he was caught red-handed doing something he shouldn't.
"R-Rick! I-I was just- o-organizing your stuff," Morty stammered out the excuse, "b-b-being a good grandson." He was just digging himself into a deeper hole.
"C-Cut the bullshit, Morty," Rick approached like he was going to pick up and inspect the remnants of the syringe, before he turned his attention to his grandson. His head cocked to the side as he looked the boy up and down, eyes squinting. "Does "organizing" include bleeding all over my desk?"
Too caught up in his fear Morty had failed to even notice he was bleeding far more through his makeshift tourniquet by now, as a thin layer of crimson leaked onto the workbench. He jerked his arm off the surface and held it to his chest to avoid getting blood on anything else, wincing at how it irritated his injury.
"Sorry about the mess," Morty mumbled, avoiding eye contact. He had no more explanations or excuses left in his holster that his grandpa's critical gaze couldn't see through. So, he did what a Morty did best; cower and apologize for being so inconvenient. God, he was so awful.
Rick only stared at him a few moments longer, a judgemental stare that Morty could only take as distain. But, he couldn't blame him, because he stared at himself like that too most times he looked in the mirror. Eventually his grandpa let out a disgruntled sigh and gestured for Morty to sit down in a nearby office chair, his body language clearly infuriated. He hesitated, but eventually sat down, still clutching the bunched up shirt around his arm.
"That was my last serum injection," Rick was turned away and rummaging through the boxes on the shelf, but eventually found whatever he was looking for. He stepped towards Morty with a little rectangular red box in hand with a white cross on the front; a first aid kit, "and I don-don't feel like going out and getting more. So, we're doing this the- the- the old fashioned way."
Sliding a similar chair infront of Morty to one he was sitting in, Rick sat down so they were facing each other as he opened up the kit. Morty shifted and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat, the embarrassment beginning to set in like a boulder in his chest. He wishes he just went to sleep and hoped it sorted itself out by the time he woke up, at least then he wouldn't have to live with this tension so thick he could cut through it.
Not waiting on Morty's permission he grabbed the boys arm in a rather tight grip, pulling it forward. He inspected the "bandaging" Morty had done, before a blade popped out from one of his fingertips. He used it to cut through the material rather than just untie the knot, though he notably didn't nick Morty's skin. The fabric opened like a cocoon as the blade glided, and it fell to the floor in a heap. Blood that had dried and stuck to the shirt ripped away from the wound, and his grandson winced. Head tilted away completely to stare at anything else. He was still a squeamish boy, afterall. A squeamish boy too ashamed to look his grandfather in the eye. He thought about all the scars he had on his arm surrounding that cut, all the proof this wasn't a one time incident.
The silence felt deafening, the weight of the elephant in the room pressing on Morty's chest. Trying to focus on anything but the feeling of the alcohol wipe on his skin. Part of him had this fantasy in his head of hoping Rick would hug him and comfort him. Part of him hoped he wouldn't acknowledge it at all. But Morty could never get quite what he wanted, could he?
"Y-You- You know how fucking- fucking stupid this is?" Rick finally broke the silence, tossing the wipe in a crumpled up ball onto the desk. Even as he dug through the kit for more supplies he kept a firm grip on Morty's arm, almost as if he thought he was going to run.
"I-I know-"
"No. You don't. You don't know fuck- fucking anything," he cut off the sentence with more chastising, pulling a needle and thread out from the box. String went through the fisheye first try with ease, and he leaned down close."Th-this is shit I don't even do anymore. That's how fucking stupid it is." He gave no warning before he plunged the needle through the boys skin. Morty winced and bit his lip as the needle went in and out about 3 times before Rick broke the remaining thread off with his teeth and tied a final knot.
Finally looking down at the cut, Morty found an almost perfectly sewed up wound. It was clean, indistinguishable from stitches he could've gotten from a hospital. He bent his elbow up and down, flexing his fingers. The sound of Rick clearing his throat to get his attention snapped him out of it. He quickly relinquished it back into his grandpa's grasp, who wrapped bandages around Morty's upper arm where the cut was. Snug, but not so tight he lost blood flow.
"Don't make me do this again," Rick warned, finally letting go of Morty to glare at the boy, who finally, albeit nervously, returned the eye contact, "or I'll make your skin impenetrable." He stood up from his chair, walking over to the number pad and punching in a code, triggering the beer fridge to emerge from the workbench with a hiss and some cold vapor.
"R-Right," Morty nods along, though Rick's words ring in the back of his head. Rick admitting he, too, used to do this, something Morty knew but didn't expect a verbal confession of, no matter how small. "R-Rick- How did…" his voice trailed off and the question died in his throat. It was a stupid question from a stupid boy. Rick turned around and cocked his unibrow, clearly indicating Morty to go on instead of staring at him like an idiot. Morty gulped, "How did- how did you stop?"
The question felt like an invasive thing to ask, as though he was poking a bear. Acknowledging something he wasn't supposed to. But, Rick didn't seem to react negatively, instead turning his attention to the fridge as he opened the door. Pulling out a beer and closing it shut with a thud, he turned his back to Morty. He opened the can and took a swig, letting out a hum as he brought it down from his lips. He looked over his shoulder at Morty and held the aluminum up by the rim in the boy's line of sight, almost like a proud trophy.
"I picked up drinking more."