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As far as he could remember, Jerry had never been all that scared of heights. He was scared of plenty of stuff, and it wasn’t like he liked heights. But he’d hardly call himself… height-phobic or whatever the word for being really scared of heights was. He exercised a healthy caution around heights. He respected them, they respected him. He avoided the dangerous-looking ones and enjoyed the views from the less precarious ones.
Despite this general ambivalence to the fear of falling, Jerry still couldn’t exactly pinpoint when he’d become the kind of guy to hang out on his roof.
He wasn’t sure how it became a habit. He wasn’t a ‘being on the roof’ kind of guy. He was a ‘fall off the ladder trying to put up Christmas lights’ kind of guy. Those two things didn’t tend to mix all that well. But then again, maybe that’s when the shift happened. It was hard to be scared of the roof after having to cling to the bottom of an airplane to avoid plummeting to certain death. Besides, there’s only so many life-threatening situations a guy can get into before the prospect of breaking his legs falling off the roof stops being much of a deterrent.
Not that he wanted to break his legs. He just didn’t really count it among the top worst things that could happen to him. Closer to the bottom, now that he’d almost been digested by an alien worm, had to fight an evil version of his son (still hung up on that by the way, no one had bothered explaining that shit), and various other bullshit. A goddamn interdimensional traveler was allowed to sit on his own fucking roof and drink the only alcoholic beverages left in the house.
Which turned out to be… a half-empty bottle of wine, some kind of alien substance that would probably kill him on the spot, and… a six-pack of Mike’s Hard Lemonade buried in the back of the fridge. Good enough. He wasn’t looking to get wasted anyway. The entire family couldn’t be alcoholics. Alcohol was expensive. Besides, grabbing the weaker shit far reduced his chances of getting chewed out by Rick in the morning for drinking something he wasn’t supposed to.
He closed the fridge as quietly as he could, hearing a faint rattle from inside despite his best efforts. He winced at the sound and paused in the middle of the kitchen, waiting to see if it had woken anyone up. After a few moments of silence, he deemed himself safe enough to move again. Trying to be as silent as possible, he crept his way to the front door and slipped outside into the cool night air.
The constant constricting feeling in his chest loosened the moment the front door closed. He paused on the stoop, just taking a deep breath and letting the calmness of the outdoors wash over him. He’d always been more of a nature guy than the rest of his family. They thought it was stupid, he knew, but for him it just felt… safe. Fresh air, open skies, the simple solitude of it all. The satisfaction of doing shit yourself, with your own two hands. The knowledge that as big as your troubles may seem, they were nothing in the face of the rest of the universe.
Or they would be, if your father-in-law wasn’t the galaxy’s most wanted. But hey, it was the thought that counted.
He let out a long, well overdue sigh and kicked himself back into gear, setting down the case of drinks he’d brought out with him and trekking to the back of the house to haul the ladder into position. He found it, wrapped neatly in a thick blue tarp that was, by design, easily unwound to free its cargo. He would’ve kept it in the garage, where normal people keep stuff of this nature, but the garage hadn’t been a very good storage space in a good few years now.
He set up the ladder by the front of the house with practiced ease. The first few times he’d done this, he’d nearly gotten crushed by the thing, stumbling around in the dark to get it into the proper orientation. By this point, he barely had to think about it. As he placed it down, he noticed wryly that the legs slotted neatly into a set of faint indentations in the lawn. He had to mow the damn thing soon. If he had a normal family, he probably could’ve bribed Morty or Summer to do it with 20 bucks and the promise to leave them alone for the rest of the weekend.
He shook his head, setting the lawn aside as a problem for tomorrow. Or today, seeing as it was currently… whatever time it was. Past 12:00, which was what really mattered. He grabbed the case off the front steps and easily climbed his way up, ready to spend some well-needed time alone with just himself, the sky, and an empty roof.
Only the roof was not empty.
“What the hell?” he choked out, automatically pulling back in his surprise and nearly tipping off the ladder. He managed to catch himself before he fell, one hand shooting out to grab the gutter while the other slammed into the top of the ladder, still gripping the case he’d brought up with him. The bottles in the case clinked dangerously at the sudden movement, but seemed to be structurally intact. “Jesus Christ."
“Jerry?” The subject of his surprise looked up, finally, brow raised in vague surprise. “T-the fuck are you doing?”
“Hey!” Jerry shot back. “It’s my house! I should be asking you that!” Rick snorted, rolling his eyes and leaning back against the roof. With a small prick of irritation, Jerry noticed that he’d claimed the best spot on the roof, the edge where the roof of the main house met the roof of the garage and formed a nice little dip that helped keep you steady.
“F-fuck off, Jerry,” Rick huffed out, not even looking at the man anymore. And Jerry was tempted to do just that, not out of any inherent respect for Rick or desire to do what he was told, but because he’d come out here to be alone, and he knew for a fact that he wasn’t going to get Rick to move if he didn’t want to, so what was even the point anymore? But then he glanced down at the pack in his hand and the ladder he was standing on and decided that no. Even if his original purpose was lost to him now, there was no way he was tossing his whole plan in the bucket just because Rick was doing something stupid again. It was his house and his roof and he’d be damned if he was going to let himself get pushed around at whatever-time-it-was on a Saturday night.
He ignored Rick’s order, stepping resolutely off the top of the ladder and carefully making his way up the incline of the roof. He deliberately kept the satellite dish between him and Rick, a kind of symbolic dividing line to give him the illusion of some level of control. The pack was carefully set beside him, wedged among the shingles for extra security, and he grabbed one of the drinks and popped it open, eyeing his unwelcome guest the whole time. Rick’s gaze flicked back over to him upon hearing the bottle open, his interest instantly vanishing the second he realized what it was.
“Mike’s Hard?” the old man commented snidely. “What are you, fourteen?”
“I’m not trying to get blackout drunk on the roof, Rick!” He said it like it was obvious, but frankly, with someone like Rick, he wasn’t sure it was. The man regularly went and fought various intergalactic threats while chugging straight vodka. Hell, he was probably drunk right now.
“Then w-what’re you on the roof for?” Rick demanded, taking a swig of whatever was in his flask as if he’d heard Jerry’s whole thought process and had decided to make a point. “Asshole,” he added after a second. Jerry eyed him out of the corner of his eye, his fingers tapping the shingles in slight irritation. Still, he wasn’t about to let Rick of all people get him down.
“I,” Jerry began proudly, “am stargazing.” He crossed his arms defiantly, trying to subtly watch Rick’s reaction while still looking like he was staring directly ahead.
“Stargazing?” Rick asked, voice dripping with enough condescension that it could probably be harvested and sold on the black market.
“Yes,” Jerry affirmed. “What? Got a problem with that?” He allowed himself to turn his head, just a touch, and look at Rick more directly. His father-in-law was staring at him in disgust, which probably would’ve had a more pronounced effect if it wasn’t Rick’s default reaction to pretty much anything Jerry did.
“You’ve literally been to space,” Rick informed him. “Y-you know they’re just- just big fuckin’ balls o-of gas.”
“So?” Jerry asked.
“So?” Rick echoed in disbelief. “Th-they’re- You’re seriously gonna waste your time l-looking at ‘em?”
“I happen to find it relaxing.”
“Yeah, you would. Fuckin’... f-fuckin’ piece of shit.” Jerry let out a sigh, trying to keep it as quiet as possible to not give Rick the satisfaction of getting a rise out of him. The bottle in his hand, half-forgotten over the course of the conversation, found its way up to his lips. It wasn’t particularly good, but it wasn’t particularly terrible either. It was a cold beverage that soothed the slight scratch in his throat and gave his hand something to do that wasn’t picking at the shingles.
He turned away from his father-in-law and looked up at the night sky, as if it could somehow let him reclaim that peace Rick had decided to take from him. He’d always found stargazing soothing, even way back when he was a kid, lying in the abandoned football field at night and learning the constellations from a nature guidebook his mother got him for his birthday. Something felt secure about it. No matter how chaotic his life got, he could always count on those constellations, following their same predictable path across the night sky.
When he’d been younger, he’d imagined that some of them were his friends. That he could go hunting with Orion or catch fish with the Ursas. It was a simple thing, sure, but Jerry wasn’t one to shy away from the boring or the popular. Simplicity had its own kind of beauty, and he’d be damned if he let himself lose sight of it.
“Fuckin’ classic,” Rick muttered, so quiet that Jerry barely understood the words, but loud enough that it shattered the brief, momentary peace the man had managed to harvest out of the situation. He grimaced, trying to resist the urge to look over again. “J-just classic.”
“What?” Jerry demanded, turning so that he was fully kneeling in Rick’s direction.
“Y-you’re all the fuckin’ same,” Rick hissed. He was propped up on one arm now, head lolling to the side so he could look at Jerry without any of the implied dignity that would’ve come with actually turning his head. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but Jerry could’ve sworn that his face looked more haggard than usual. Something about the way the darkness seemed to seep into his face, accentuating the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. “T-take a guy to space, g-go to a new universe, who gives a shit? D-doesn’t matter. You still think the f-fuckin’ stars are cool.”
“And?” Jerry demanded. “So what if I like stargazing? It’s not like you care about my opinion!”
“Damn right.”
“Right! So why do you even give a shit?”
“I don’t.” Jerry couldn’t help the snort that left him at that, an involuntary reaction most likely spurred by the sleep-deprivation fueled poor decision making. Jesus, when did he become sleep deprived? When did he become sleep deprived enough to recognize the more intricate nuances of the state? “W-what? Something funny?”
“Nothing!” Jerry shot back quickly. Rick’s eyes narrowed, his head creaking upwards just a bit. All reason suggested that Jerry should just let things lie and wait for Rick to decide to ignore him again. He would, after all. But Jerry was feeling just a bit ambitious tonight. And maybe a little annoyed. “Just, if you really didn’t give a shit, you wouldn’t be being mean about it.”
“What?” Rick demanded.
“Oh come on.” Jerry pulled one leg up from under him so that he could drape the arm holding his drink over the knee, bringing his weight forward and freeing up his other hand to gesticulate more animatedly. “People who ‘don’t care’ don’t constantly make fun of everyone else.” To anyone else, including, normally, Jerry himself, Rick would’ve seemed unaffected by the statement. But Jerry didn’t have much else to focus on besides the minutiae of Rick’s expression, and so he noticed the way Rick’s jaw clenched, just a bit. Noticed that it took an extra few seconds for Rick to formulate a response.
“C-cool theory, Jerry,” he said finally. “W-would be really compelling. If your opinion mattered to me.” Another long drag from the flask. “Which it doesn’t,” he tacked on, as if Jerry was somehow incapable of picking up on subtext. Just because he wasn’t the second coming of evil Einstein didn’t mean he was five.
“Uh huh,” Jerry agreed blandly. Rick’s eye flicked up towards him irritatedly. The old man took another drink in lieu of actually responding, and Jerry followed suit, if only to have something to do. He wished he could just pretend Rick wasn’t there and continue on with his night, but it was hardly that easy. Even when he looked away he could feel the prickling energy of the other man’s presence. And the vague scent of alcohol that carried over whenever the wind blew in Jerry’s direction didn’t help either. He still didn’t understand how Rick could drink that shit.
He’d only drunk straight hard liquor a couple times in his life, and it had never been a particularly enjoyable experience. He remembered the first time especially vividly. It was back when he and Beth were both seniors in high school. She’d wanted to sneak into a college party that was happening nearby and he’d been so smitten, so desperate to prove that he could be on her level, that he’d ignored every instinct that begged him not to go and happily followed her there. He’d had three shots of vodka there, cheap, awful stuff that smelled like ethanol and tasted like drinking car exhaust. It had been awful and he’d nearly hacked up a lung afterwards, but walking home with Beth afterwards, leaning on each other and laughing far too loudly, had made it all feel… worth it. The simple things.
It was frightening to think about, when it came to Rick. To really register just how much the guy must drink to be able to down gulps of vodka the way anyone else would drink water.
“This is s-seriously what you do?” Rick piped up again. Jerry took another swig of his lemonade to avoid having to respond right off the bat. It was like the other man could sense when he was finally starting to get a little more comfortable.
“Yes, Rick,” Jerry dragged out. “I know, I know, it’s stupid and pointless and boring.”
“I would’ve used strong- stronger descriptors, but yeah, pretty much.” Jerry rolled his eyes, leaning forward wearily and letting his head hang down so he could look at the roof instead of his father in law.
“Why do you keep acting surprised? I think it’s pretty well established that I’m boring, Rick.”
“It’s an impressive level of boring,” Rick replied. “I-I mean, come on! I’d get it if y-you were just some regular loser who didn’t know jack-fuckin’-shit about space travel, but you’ve-” Jerry glanced up in time to see Rick flop back onto the roof with a grunt that sounded almost frustrated. He tilted his head, leaning a bit closer, his brain registering the behavior as notably odd. “F-fuckin’ christ, Jerry, this isn’t even your universe! W-who gives a shit about the stars! You’ve seen the stars! You’ve seen other planets! Th-this shit doesn’t matter!”
“And?” Rick suddenly went entirely still, so still that, if he didn’t know that the man was basically 90% cybernetic enhancement by this point, he would’ve worried that he wasn’t breathing. Slowly, Rick lifted back up off the roof, straightening so that he was actually sitting, head turned to face Jerry for what might’ve been the first time that night.
“And?”
“Yeah,” Jerry said. Rick was acting strange, but he wasn’t about to back down now. It was rare that he got to actually have a conversation with the other man. Did this even count? He was going to count it. “Who cares if I’ve been there? It’s still pretty.”
“Pretty,” Rick echoed.
“Yes, Rick. Pretty.” Rick snorted derisively. He went to take another drink from his flask, the almost 90 degree angle he held it at indicating that he was out. His brow was furrowed in frustration when he finally tucked it away again.
“Fine. B-be lame,” he said suddenly. It was always the same with him. Always needed to have the last word. For an intergalactic genius, he could be so petty. Childish, almost. Sometimes, Jerry felt like they’d had a third kid ever since Rick moved in. A third kid who also had zero qualms about murder, could defy every natural law Jerry was familiar with, and liked to drag everyone else into his self-destructive tendencies. A third kid that destroyed entire universes.
It was strange to think about, the wires all crossed in his head. His original universe was technically still fine. Or, well, it had been last he’d checked. Who knew what had happened to it in the interim? But regardless, it wasn’t his universe that he’d had to abandon, fleeing with his family into a new reality that almost felt like home, until he overheard someone at a restaurant asking for more parmesan. It felt like it, though. In many ways, that universe felt more like his own than, well, his did. Was that evil? Was it evil of him, that when he thinks of his kids, it’s this Morty, this Summer. That the Beth he fell in love with was technically entirely out of reach, living in a reality mirroring this one while Jerry tried to repair things with a version of her he hadn’t met until well into his adulthood.
He didn’t know how Rick did it. Hopping realities easily, leaving everything behind for a universe that wasn’t his own, knowing that, despite how close he might be able to get it, it would never be his.
Maybe that was it. Jerry was a sentimental guy. The kind of guy who, despite being agnostic for much of his life, still found it hard to believe that there was no such thing as a soul. To Rick, it was all about the numbers, the cold hard facts of the situation. If the details of the universe were all the same, who cared that it wasn’t technically his first. Jerry cared. At least, he cared to some degree. He cared in the way that made things feel weird, not in the way that made him want to go back. He cared in the way that made him seek out familiar constellations, just to remind himself that even in the insanity that had become his life, the world kept spinning.
“It’s comforting,” he was saying before he could stop himself.
“Looking at balls of gas?” Rick asked dryly. Jerry let out a long sigh, not even bothering to conceal it. By all means, he should definitely just shut up now, before he gave Rick any more ammo. But he was tired and he was lonely and Rick had enough ammo as it was. And saying it out loud helped, even if his listener was perhaps the last person you’d want as a confidant.
“The constellations are all the same,” he elaborated. Rick tilted his head quizzically. There was a genuine curiosity in his expression, his brain not fully registering where Jerry was going. It was almost sweet. “As my- Well, as my original universe and the, um. The other one.” Rick stayed where he was for another few seconds, absorbing this, before the familiar dour expression returned and he looked away again. He took his flask out and tried to take a drink, rediscovering that it was empty and shoving it back into his coat pocket angrily.
“W-well duh,” he choked out. Jerry’s gaze flashed over to him, his brow drawing uncertainly at what he could’ve sworn was a waver in the old man’s voice. Not his usual stuttering or the tone he used when he was rambling nonsense. Something different. “I told you idiots, th-this universe is literally the exact same as-”
“Except for the parmes-”
“Jesus fucking christ, sh-shut up about the parmesan!” Rick snarled, cutting Jerry off. “You whiny pieces of shit! Y-you should just be grateful I bothered bringing you along at all! You know how hard it is to- to- to get the conditions right for all of you?”
“Okay, okay!” Jerry conceded, holding his hands up placatingly. Rick’s eyes flicked to one of them and Jerry followed his gaze, noting the bottle still in hand. He took a sip of it, almost involuntarily, because that’s what you do when you have a drink in your hand. Rick’s eye twitched. “Look, I’m just saying, it’s… nice.”
“The parmesan?” A half-baked insult was already brewing before Jerry opened his mouth. Something along the lines of for the smartest guy in every conceivable universe, you can be really dense. He resisted the urge, but only barely.
“The stars,” he said instead, rolling his eyes at the way Rick’s face screwed up at the reminder. “Makes me feel like there are still some things I understand.” Rick barked out a laugh that Jerry chose to ignore in favor of looking back up at the sky.
The instant he looked away, he heard movement across the roof and snapped his head right back around in time to see Rick get to his feet. He swayed a bit as he stood, some kind of long mechanical arm shooting out of his regular arm to grab ahold of the garage roof and stabilize him. Once he was oriented, he made his way directly over to Jerry, crossing over the imaginary line of the satellite dish and suddenly making Jerry painfully aware of who he’d been poking at this whole time.
He instinctively backed away when Rick leaned towards him, only for the man to forgo him completely, instead reaching into the pack he’d brought with him and snagging one of the unopened bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
“Hey!” he yelped, unable to help himself. Rick glared down at him from where he was standing, popping the cap off.
“What? Y-you weren’t gonna drink ‘em all anyway. You’ve got, like, the shittiest bladder ever.”
“Hey,” Jerry said again. It came out a little whinier this time and he grimaced at the sound. It wasn’t that Rick was wrong, per se, he just didn’t need to rub it in like that. It was the principle of the thing! “I thought this stuff was for fourteen year olds?” Jerry prodded instead, jerking his head towards the bottle in Rick’s hand. The man glared at him for another few seconds before, in one fluid motion, he brought the bottle to his mouth and fell backwards onto the roof, plopping down directly next to Jerry. They couldn’t have been more than a foot or two apart now. Because god forbid Jerry get to keep even a physical distance between them.
“I’m out of vodka and I haven’t fixed the distillery yet,” Rick informed him, poking a finger in his general direction. “F-fuck off, Jerry.” Jerry chose not to respond. Mostly because he couldn’t think of one. Rick took another swig of the bottle, somehow managing to bring the level lower than Jerry’s despite having the bottle in hand for significantly less time.
“Fine, but I don’t wanna hear shit about me taking your alien whiskey,” Jerry muttered. Rick let out another laugh, a longer one this time, and, unless Jerry was going insane, which was fully possible, a little less… demeaning?
“P-pretty sure a microliter of that shit would- would fuckin’ kill you, man.”
“It’s the principle!” Jerry huffed.
“Sure, Jerry.” He shot the scientist one more irritated glance before turning away, drawing his knees up to his chest and, for lack of anything better to do, looking back at the stars. He heard Rick snort beside him. “You s-seriously haven’t f-found ‘em all yet?”
“That’s not what stargazing is about,” Jerry said. “The constellations are already charted out. It’s about trying to rediscover them every time. Like… like reconnecting with an old friend.”
“Booooooorrrrinnnnnng.” Jerry ignored him.
“See? There’s Orion. And then once you’ve found Orion, you can move over here and find Ursa Major, and then Ursa Minor’s right next to it.” He pointed easily to the constellations, tracing his usual path between them with a small smile. He didn’t even care if Rick was listening. It was just nice to talk about, for as long as Rick let him. Which probably wouldn’t be long, but hey, Jerry was a glass half full kinda guy. “And then there’s Cassiopeia over there. And that one’s Draco.” He had kinda expected Rick to interrupt him by now. Frankly, he was surprised the man had let him get past Orion. What was…
He turned, slightly, trying to avoid meeting Rick’s gaze and making things awkward. It turned out that he didn’t need to worry, because Rick wasn’t looking at him. Nor was he looking down at the roof like before. Instead, Rick’s face was tilted upwards, his eyes flicking across the sky in a movement so unexpected that it took Jerry a second to realize that he was following where he was pointing.
The moment was so alien, so utterly unexpected, that Jerry’s entire body froze in place, terrified that even the slightest movement would break the illusion. Rick was leaned back, his legs half bent in front of him, one hand holding the bottle he’d stolen while the other was splayed on the shingles behind him, holding up his bodyweight as he tilted his head up towards the sky. The faint moonlight drifted through his hair, making it almost seem incorporeal, like if Jerry reached out to touch it, his hand would pass through it like mist. His brow was drawn, lips slightly parted as he focused all of his attention on his eyes, blue flickering in every direction, almost too fast to catch, as he mapped out the sky above him with clear, agonizing precision. It was frightening because it was out of place. It made him seem almost vulnerable. Almost human.
“U-uhm, and that’s Taurus, r-right over there, you can see kind of a triangle a bit above Orion,” Jerry barrelled on suddenly, desperate to keep Rick’s attention, to keep this strange, precarious moment going for just a bit longer. “Oh! A-and the wolves. Canis Minor is right over there, it’s just kind of a little line. It took me forever to be able to find that one, ha. And Canis Major is kind of underneath it, there, between it and Orion. O-Orion’s my favorite. Everybody kind of learns to find one really consistently, and then you can find the other ones based on where that one is. Uhhh… there’s Cetus! That’s one of the biggest ones. And-”
“T-those don’t even look like fuckin’ wolves,” Rick commented. Jerry flinched at the sound, glancing over only to find his father in law still staring intently at the sky above them.
“W-well they’re not going to be perfect,” Jerry defended. “You’re supposed to use your imagination.” Rick pursed his lips, fingers tightening around the neck of the bottle he was holding.
“That’s- that’s fuckin’ stupid,” he choked out finally. Yep. There it was. Well, it was nice while it lasted, Jerry supposed. Weird. But nice. There was something about this kind of thing that was difficult to put into words. About those moments where Rick’s mask slipped and just the smallest bit of humanity shined through. Like when he brought them with him to this new reality, despite his insistence that he didn’t care. Or when he’d saved Jerry from the stupid, horrible, worst fortune cookie ever made. That time he’d talked Beth down from the Memory-Rick-induced ledge. Little indicators that there had, at least at one point, been a heart in that cold, metal chest.
“Come on,” Jerry prodded, pushing his luck just a little. “You’ve gotta have a favorite.”
“What?” Rick demanded.
“Constellation. Everyone has a favorite constellation.”
“Th-they definitely don’t,” Rick replied dryly.
“They do,” Jerry countered. “It’s just usually the only one they know.” Rick rolled his eyes, taking a drink to avoid responding. He gagged exaggeratedly at the taste, which would’ve been far more impactful if he’d done it the first few times he’d taken a sip. “Come on. You have to have one.”
“No the fuck I don’t,” Rick snarled. “Nobody cares about your stupid connect-the-dots bullshit, Jerry.” It didn’t even sting. The insult kind of lost most of its power when Jerry had seen him caring just moments before. Still, he decided to lay off the old man for the time being. He turned instead, letting his legs straighten a bit and leaning back to continue looking up at the stars. He found that he could focus on it more easily now. That prickly feeling of having someone up here with him had receded, leaving only the quiet comfort of not being alone. Sure, that’s why he came up here in the first place, but… well, he hesitated to call it nice, but Jerry was a social creature at heart. He wanted to share the things he loved with people. Even if those people were Rick.
Maybe especially if those people were Rick. Because the more he got to know his elusive father in law, the more he saw glimpses of someone else behind the destructive tendencies and the constant burning hatred. There was a Rick that cared about them, somewhere in there. That Rick was small, sure, and kept under perpetual lock and key, but he was there. And if the man wasn’t going away any time soon, then the least Jerry could do was try to pull that Rick out of him. For all their sakes.
He wasn’t sure how long it was before Rick spoke again. He just knew that when he did, it was so quiet that Jerry was honestly floored by the fact that he managed to understand it.
“Mine were different.”
“Huh?” Jerry was saying before he could stop himself, before he could register the statement and not risk shutting down what was very clearly a moment of almost vulnerability.
“The constellations,” Rick breathed in reply. He was pointedly looking away from Jerry, instead staring upwards as if the stars could somehow save him from the situation.
“Oh. L-like… in your original universe?” Rick’s eyes flicked down for just a moment, long enough to convey a what else would I mean, dipshit? And also perhaps a good dose of are you fucking stupid? Which, of course, they both already knew the answer to. “That’s…”
Lonely, was the word that came to mind. Jerry wasn’t sure how he’d feel, to have his old friends suddenly pulled from his grasp. To look up at a sky with no Orion. The stars had been his constant companion throughout his whole life. To lose them like that… It wasn’t the end of the world, but it was certainly a reminder. It would probably hurt, every time, to look up at the sky and be so starkly reminded that this wasn’t home.
But, then again…
“That’s exciting.”
“The fuck?” Rick asked eloquently.
“Well, I mean, how many people get to learn an entirely new set of constellations? We can compare notes!”
“D-do I look like I knew the constellations!?” Rick demanded.
“You knew them enough to know they were different! Checkmate!”
“I-it’s basic pattern recognition, jackass! It doesn’t mean I f-fuckin’ mapped ‘em out or whatever you do.”
“Whatever you say, Rick,” Jerry said, trying, and failing, to suppress the small victorious grin creeping up his face. Rick glared at him for a moment before turning away. He took another drag of his bottle, finishing it. Jerry took the moment to down his as well, before reaching over to grab another pair out of the pack. Wordlessly, one was placed in Rick’s waiting hand.
When Jerry had become the kind of guy who lied on his roof at night to stargaze, he didn’t know. When he became the kind of guy willing to do it with Rick, was an even greater mystery. And yet, despite it all, he couldn’t help but feel a small sense of warmth as they sat there, silent save for the sloshing of shitty spiked lemonade and the chirping of the crickets. It was peaceful. Comforting.
Home.
“...I-is there a Prometheus?”
“Prometheus? I, uh. I don’t think so.”
“Oh.”
“That one was my favorite.”