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Put up against a multiverse of ever-changing variables, this was the constant. A teenage boy dutifully buckled into his seat, and his grandfather, too cognizant to reek of booze the way he does. His seatbelt hanging loose. It’s them and the literal vacuum of space. Dark yet bright in a way the lion’s share will never see. The thick dome of Rick’s car(spaceship) is their only shield from it, and Rick is Morty’s.
“I’m not doing some Pirates of the Caribbean knock-off search for the Fountain of Youth because that franchise should have died with Dead Man’s Chest, Morty.” Although they don’t leave the wheel, Rick’s tone has a way of crossing his arms in petulant defiance. “Okay, maybe the next one was good. Really wrapped things up, but the fact that I don’t remember its name speaks volumes.” In lieu of functioning as the pseudo studio-audience laugh track he is, Morty stonewalls. “The rest should have never been made, that's what I’m saying. The Fountain of Youth is hackery, Morty,” he exaggerates every syllable.
“Are you done?” Muddled by Morty’s knees pulled to birdy-chest. Chin tucked into them. A filled “free adventure” stamp card garnishes a pile of crushed cans below. Rick’s trying to be funny. Comedy’s the great mediator. Honestly a prerequisite for such a shitty guy. Sinless as a lamb in the eyes of those you make laugh, but Morty knows better. Not that it makes him special. Rick would be the first to literally obliterate that line of thinking.
“Are you done with hack shit? What do you even need something like that for? You’re basically a toddler with a fraction more sentience.” Two fingers leave the steering wheel to show how small his intellect is. Morty figures you could fit a pebble between them.
“I get to choose one in every ten adventures. You said that.” Morty commandeers the over-enunciation of “you”.
“Yes, I did, and I’ve noticed a real theme in our last two. Mushroom hunting, and not the fun kind. The medicinal kind, and asking to visit a moon with plants that all reproduce asexually through cell recycling and regeneration- I-I thought maybe you wanted to help cure cancer or something! Then, today you ask me if I know about the Fountain of Youth?” Finally sparing his grandson a glance, but it's the kind that has Morty sinking further into his knees.
“But you said-“ A weak attempt even for Morty.
“Yes, and you’ve been pussy footing around with this idea for months. The answer’s no, Jeezus.” Dots of spittal splay across the dash from the force of his veto.
Any further argument dies there.
Morty’s legs are bouncing as they descend. Rick had acquiesced to his mother that they would get home in time for breakfast or dinner everyday. Morty missed the excuse to have midnight burgers and ice cream from other dimensions where the cows are treated like gods so it’s extra smooth. He was being robbed. He’d paid for those meals with blood, sweat, and tears. Now their adventures were more often than not on planets with days longer than Earth’s to squeeze out as much time as they needed. It extended their period of adjustment upon return, but Mom needed the “facade of normalcy”. In Morty’s opinion, not that anyone ever asked for that, their attendance at the dinner table wouldn’t be the stipulation he’d make. He’d say, no adventures where the loss of limbs, even if momentary, was highly probable. That would be a start. He could handle shootouts and driving the car when Rick got too drunk to handle it, but he wasn’t a fan of new limbs spurting out from cauterized stumps. Maybe he should just be grateful this Mom made any stipulations at all.
Breakfast wasn’t too bad. Rick liked pancakes, or Morty assumed Rick liked pancakes by the frequency at which Mom made them. Maybe it was a general sweet tooth? He’d go on grocery runs in a separate dimension because they have his favorite cereal: Just The Marshmallows. It’s less involved than picking them out, Morty. I’ve timed it. Rick had assured.
There were times Morty wondered if his grandpa could really taste at all. A sneaky pull from his flask while he was passed out on the couch nearly burned his taste buds right off and with the two of them, that’s not an exaggeration, it’s never an exaggeration. Being Rick's little sidekick through most of infinity dulls, but the excitement comes back in that way. Like singed new tastebuds.
They park, the vastness of space traded for a heavily altered(Rick would argue improved) suburban garage, Rick’s flighty. The hand that had been lazily slung over the armrest now drummed a thumb on his knee. Morty’s feet swing down from their dangling position to exit the vehicle. The cloying scent of breakfast seeps through the garage door. The makings of a heavy, greasy meal that was not going to sit well in his adjusting-to-Earth’s-regular gravitational-pull stomach, but what Mom says goes.
“You coming?” Morty asks as his feet touch concrete, Rick’s are pressed firmly into the ship’s floor.
“Yeah, I’m coming, buddy.” He’s warped by the fishbowl-esc glass. Looking a little cramped by the vehicle despite being the one who built it.
“You okay, man?” Morty pries, his grandpa's scarred hands raise in preparatory defense before rifling in his coat pocket and re-emerging with his flask. Defensive posture is traded for a lifted index finger and an equally dramatic knocking back of liquor. He takes three long swigs, metal clinking against teeth. That cannot feel good. The hum of satisfaction when he’s done speaks otherwise.
“There. Now I’m ready to eat with my family.”
Proclamation notwithstanding, Rick must have decided to hang back in the garage because he was running late. Summer filled the gap he left behind, sliding into the chair beside Morty instead of the one in front of him. You get into another fight with grandpa? Was practically written in her posture. It made him feel a touch pathetic. He swayed, center of gravity hovering over his pancakes that had all but turned to paste.
“Wow. This is what constitutes uncreative teenage girl makeup these days?” The sort of intrusion that could only be Rick. Who else greets their granddaughter with an insult? The table teetered as he leaned his weight against it. Artificially heavier from all his augmentations.
“It’s Halloween, Grandpa Rick. I’m a cat.” It was only then that Morty registered the eyeliner-drawn nose and whiskers adorning his sister’s face. I really am tired.
“Halloween’s on a Wednesday this year? Yikes.” That “yikes” was spoken with a certain hiss to it, be it a lame joke or genuine distaste at the idea Morty couldn’t tell. He dug into a hefty scoop of pancake paste.
“So, I’m a cat, and I’m going to a party. What are you losers doing to celebrate? You gonna dig around in your Grandpa Rick box and wear some alien’s skin or something?” The correct assumption that he’d be spending the holiday with their grandfather was both obvious and demeaning. His response came in kind.
“That’s insensitive, Summer. I’m not wearing any alien’s skin.” Not that he had any in the first place. The most useful thing from that box for this occasion would be a cheap headband with pompoms springing from its fake antennas. Rick was totally capable of making him a super cool costume, it’d be like alien skin but less macabre. Artificial, but just as good as the real thing with pores and everything. He wouldn’t though. He’d say something like, I’m not party city, Morty. That’s beneath me. And Morty would feel stupid for asking.
“Hey, where’s mom gonna be later?” His question’s directed to his sister, cleaning his plate and scooping at a puddle of syrup with a finger, indifferent to its less than appealing nature.
“Working. Horses don’t stop going into cardiac arrest because it’s October 31st, Morty." Without his attention on it, the sticky plate: little brother spit edition slides down to Summer from the angle Rick’s lean had given the table. Her nose wrinkles in disgust
“Jeez, Summer, it was just a question. I just wonder what she’s doing.” If she’s here now went unsaid, but not unanswered.
“Well, she’s not here still, which means she’s working.” Summer could be Rick-like in this way. Speaking as if any second they were not on the same page was a waste of her time.
“Doesn’t matter where she is." Rick was speaking directly to Morty now, lifting off the table to slide behind him. Its wooden legs clamored. A hand clasped over his shoulder with such force that any trace of support disappeared. The other fell to the back of his chair, rocking it. “You’re too old to be dressing up and scamming candy from the neighborhood. I’ll tell Beth we made it for breakfast even if she already skipped out. Sum Sum will vouch for us.” She probably feels some type of way because you’re my little buddy and she- uh- wasn’t. That’s all there is to it. He recalled the drunken answer Rick had provided to her sudden extra attention. Rick went on. “No need to worry. Even less reason to worry actually, because we’re going to a haunted house, Morty!” Morty's name came out as a sing-song exclamation and the grip on his shoulder evaporated, replaced by a bold set of jazz hands.
“Really? W-which one? A Halloween one?” He couldn’t help but be excited.
“Halloween’s not really a thing where we’re going because they skipped over the need for pre-religions the base idea of Halloween was stolen from, but they are juuuust capitalistic enough that they still have fucking awesome haunted houses! It’s an outer space haunted house, Morty!” Both hands were back on his chair now, shaking it to insure the importance hit home.
“This is not gonna be like the thing in the Denny’s bathroom, right?” The jostling stopped and Rick craned down to answer, scratching at his head with faux coyness unbefitting his age.
“No! Probably not. I don’t know, I never hopped in. What I do know is that it’s a two-seater this time.” Rick announced, popping a plastic capsule full of iridescent bluey-purple powder from deep within a separate lab coat pocket than the one his flask was held in. Are all of those for getting f- messed up? The cap popped open, a thin line of dust was tapped onto his thumb before Rick lifted it to his nose and sucked in a few sharp inhales in quick succession. Summer looked on with barely contained envy, but in a rare moment of virtue, Rick shooed her to school.
Not that his wisdom remained after whatever it was he snorted kicked in. Mere moments later he was struggling to get the car started. Eyes emanating a faint blue hue. Morty’s getting antsy, and Rick’s getting frustrated. The latter wrenches free his portal gun and shoots it instead.
“That was always an option?!” Morty’s tapping his foot in a manner that reads like a scolding kindergarten teacher.
“Of course! It’s almost always an option, Morty.”
They walk through the swirling mass one after another, and Morty clings to what remains of his excitement.
Once you got past the booth and tickets, the place was a waking nightmare. The corridor, kitted out with railings and all, was a fleshy tunnel, not in the way that steak is fleshy, but in the way a pulpy fruit is fleshy. The walls were a mosaic of varying greens with maroon veins bulging from its surface. They stagger along a metal bridge constructed within the plant-like organism. Acid bubbles burst and settle under their feet, a weeping yellow-like bile that smells just as bad as it looks. Morty wondered what kind of metal they must be standing on to withstand that kind of pH. The thought put a stutter in his step and he nearly tripped.
“I’m not gonna get turned to stone, right? Like they don’t have a real Medusa here or something?” The metallic clank of their footfalls grew closer together as Morty sped up. Shortening the distance between him and Rick.
“Medusa? The Greek myth, Morty? Greek like from Earth?” He didn’t have to turn around for Morty to envision the crease of his brow, birthed by agitation. It must have been K-Lax he snorted judging by the quick comedown. He didn’t go in for another bump.
“Sorry, damn, I forget sometimes, you know.” Tinny voice cracked with the apology. He cringed at himself.
“How do you forget we’re not on Earth?” Asked with the same intonation Summer had answered about horses and cardiac arrest with.
“Okay, it’s not that I forgot. It’s that i-it’s so normal that it feels, okay, d-don’t grill me here!” Two hands fly up in admitted defeat. Below, something creaks, and Morty flails and spits. “I just walked through a bunch of spider webs, Rick! Thought you said this wouldn’t be like Earth!” This time around, Rick looked back.
“Earth’s not the only planet with spiderwebs, Morty. The Medusa thing was cultural!” Patting at his lab coat for his flask before halting his strides. I didn’t feel any spiderwebs. Morty doesn’t account for Rick’s stopping and the pair bump into one another. Morty grumbles a complaint upon contact, but Rick chuckles wildly. “Oh, ho ho! It’s starting, Morty!”
The Chameleon-esc passageway begins taking on a new life altogether. They were hallucinating from plant fumes at least and viewing some sort of virtual reality computer program at best, although that’d require more heavy lifting on the establishments part. The pulsating walls took on the aged-beige of the Smith family living room. The hard iron(?) under their feet loses its echo, softening into carpet. Smoke and burnt wood cling to the air and skin. Bringing forth memory the way certain smells tend to do. For Morty, it was the day Rick crashed into their lives. For Rick, it was the day his wife and daughter died.
Morty tip-toes like a fawn newly-born, arms held out for rails that are no longer there.
“It’s fine, Morty. I’m sure it’s safe. Imagine all the paperwork we’d have to sign i-if falling into a carnivorous plant's stomach acid was on the table.” Rick pushed forward as the rest of the house materialized before them.
“Carnivorous?” His grandson asked with a shudder.
“We’d also have to sign shit if it could eat us. Quit worrying so much.” He’s running his hand between couch cushions and peeking under furniture. “This place must be pulled from our memories. I kicked that empty bottle under there just last night.”
“Gross, Rick.” One hand falls limp at his side while the other wraps around that forearm. The pressure from his nails leaving pink crescent moon indentions in their wake.
“You don’t want to get into a gross-off with me, Morty. I guarantee you will win.”
Objectively-old-ass-fuck back and knees pop as Rick straightens up from peering under the sofa. His hand slots into the small of his back, and he grunts till the sting ceases. By then he’s waiting for Mister Dipshit’s snarky comment, but nothing comes. The boy’s eyes have rolled back in his head, real horror movie style, just the whites showing, arms suspended at his sides, fingers twitching.
“Ooh, shit.”
The world goes white.
Welding torch paints the otherwise shadowy garage in quick bursts of light each time the flames lick at the gadget held between Rick’s gloved fingers. He’s sitting at his workbench, and Morty is standing behind him. Light flashes on their protective goggles, concealing matching sets of grey-blue eyes. Rick speaks like he’s bored, picking up a conversation he’d shut down earlier.
“Before you freak out like your mother would, I’m not dying, not actively. I’m just saying when it does come, I’m not fighting it. It’s why your little youth-serum quest is a wash. I’m not doing it. End of story.” Morty’s fists shake at his sides. His measly five feet three inches feel much larger when he’s fueled by righteous anger.
“You’re just gonna die? Why now? Why now are you making it permanent?” More welding sparks.
“Because I’m old, Morty.” The torch is abandoned and the space goes dark. Tinted goggles removed with a plastic snap and a hiss of annoyance. “And I’m speaking in broader strokes here. I can augment myself to assess and handle every threat, and I have, but I can’t stop the clock that way. Hopping into a clone works for bodily damage, but I’m fighting the bitch that is time, Morty, and she’s- woah buddy she really bites.” His chair swivels to meet his grandson’s face for the next bit. Voice lower, and kinder than usually thought possible. “So, when the time comes, I’m gonna check out. Fill my ship full of decent Earth weed and K-Lax and ride out into the fucking sunset.”
“You bastard.” Spoken with cool familiarity for what Rick assumed to be Morty’s first time saying that word. He’s probably thought it a lot. Thought it about you.
“Excuse me? I’m trying to give you a chance.” He stands, unslouching. Towering. Patting at his coat pocket to feel the metal square beneath the fabric while taking a step forward. Morty holds his ground.
“What? Scared you won’t get your inheritance if Grandpa goes out and dies like a dog?” A pregnant pause passes between them and Rick fills the silence in perpetuity. Morty hardly sees the glint of silver before it registers that Rick has thrown his flask at him, the edge clipping his cheek. He yelps. Hand cupping the point of contact.
“That’s your inheritance. That’s what you get from me. With the track you’re on now you’ll appreciate it.” The firm level to Rick’s voice is more frightening than when he yells.
“N-no, what? T-t-t-hat’s not what this is about, Rick! I didn’t say any of that. Maybe I just don’t want you to die!” Morty wills his lip to stop quivering. Wills his eyes to stay dry. He stammers, stumbling all over himself.
“You won’t even give me that one thing? You’re gonna take my dignity? Have me drooling in a nursing home Jerry put me in so you can have more time with grandpa?” Try as he might to avert it elsewhere, Rick’s leering at the blood-striped flask. Morty shrieks. The sound like a labored bleat.
“You’re saying this confusing on purpose! You know you don’t have to die! You think I’m above begging? Don’t do this to me! Please!” Morty felt little again. Scanning the garage in a frenzy for anything that could help him.
Freak out like my mother? Freak out like my mother?
His mother was right past that door. Drinking over a bubbling pot. Glass of wine held firmly at the stem, condensation rolling over her white-knuckled grip. Morty could feel her despondency. He could see her and himself, and Rick. Floating above it all an unbiased spectator. He imagined Beth heard the screeching and pressed an ear to the garage door. He’d argue it’s none of her business if he could, but she’d listen anyway. Floating Morty wasn’t concerned. He could feel the heat of the stove. Hear the hum of it. Smell caramelized garlic and onion clinging to his mother’s clothes. He could taste her wine, sour and red, much like the dinner they’d share if he could just leave the garage.
“I’ve done worse. Y-you shouldn’t be begging me this way. It’s not healthy, it’s- look I have important shit to do, you don’t dictate my life you little piece of shit- I don’t owe you anything.” Rick’s voice comes out garbled, muffled by the door that opens to the garage. Less shrill than what was coming from Not-Floating Morty.
“You know, Rick, you say that so much it’s really lost its punch. So what I’m a piece of shit? I just wanna keep my grandpa.” Flat. Spoken like facts and not the pleas they are.
“I’m not your grandpa.” There could have been more to that. Graciously cut off by Rick’s bacterial-sized conscience. Rick had killed his “real” grandpa. Whatever real meant. An incident in the garage had proved that the only parts of this family that were from the same dimension were his mother and sister. At some point, his father, Rick, and Morty himself had all been switched out for parallels of themselves and Beth’d been none the wiser. He hated to think she’d be able to tell if the same ever happened to Summer.
“I don’t care that you’re not my grandpa, Rick. You’re my Rick. Who gives a crap?” All I know is that when he came around everything was worse for a while, then everything was better. Morty had admitted that to Beth late one night. It’d been coaxed out of him with the promise of a cup of wine. He was pissed when she didn’t fork it over
Rick softens despite himself, it only works to fuel his self-piteous flagellation.
"You did this to me.” Still as the dead, his somewhat-for-the-most-part-grandson pushes the bruise. “You took me to space. Showed me that whatever you wanted was possible. How am I supposed to go back to the way I was? Worrying about math homework I don’t understand?” This must have been a real hard day for Not-Floating Morty.
Every mother has her lines. What good is respecting your son’s boundaries if it’s at his expense? The garage door opens with a creak, not a burst. Wine glass clinking against it. Morty is brought back down.
“Dad, what is going on here?” Firm, but not accusatory.
“Rick is trying to leave again!”
“You little turd!” They talk over each other. They do that a lot. Morty’s pointing, one arm flailing theatrically before reaching for Rick. The flask glistens bloody on the floor. Morty doesn’t know it's dripping down his face.
“Dad!” Beth stomped. Morty had never looked much like her, but there, with a shaking fist curled around her father’s threadbare shirt as if the contact alone could keep Rick from vanishing into nowhere, he may as well have been his mother copied and pasted. Will this be the rest of their lives? Navigating an eggshell floor to prolong this act?
“I know this might be difficult for you to comprehend being as I’m fucking awesome, but grandpa’s really not the best guy, Morty, and me fucking off shouldn’t bother you so much.” Rick was shoving at him the way you push away a rowdy dog.
“I KNOW! I know you’re not a good guy, Rick! The difference is I don’t care!” His grip is tight. His knuckles are white. Rick’s lab coat is splattered in red droplets. Was the room getting bigger? Or Morty smaller? Had he taken the proverbial “drink me” potion and sunk down to the size of a nervous toddler?
“Rick, you are joining us for family counseling tomorrow or you are out of this house,” his mother’s voice came out a woman’s. Strong and sure.
“What the fuck, Mom?” A piercing, panicked look from Morty was met with an admittedly harsh glare down at him and something told him his swearing would be handled at a less pivotal time.
“Not to be dismissive, Sweetie—“ words cut off by a badly suppressed belch, “—but how would threatening me with what I said I was going to do anyway make me do something I really don’t want to do?” Really was emphasized in such a way it almost felt mocking.
“It’s not supposed to. It’s for him to see. Morty, it doesn’t matter if you don’t care, Rick is-“
“Fine. You tied my hands. I’ll waste an hour of everyone’s time.” He interrupts her, prying Morty’s hands away and crossing sinewy arms over rumpled lab coat.
“Is that…all…” Is that all it takes? Had he spoken out loud or just thought real hard? His mother was so often at war with herself and yet now she really seemed small. Jealous of her son, her not-son, her not-son who’d been shackled to her not-father who actually gave a shit about him, unlike her own.
“Woah. It’s suuuuuper loud in here all of a sudden. That mean dinner’s ready?” Jerry, who’d meandered into the dining room with Summer following on his heels, her phone in hand, proclaimed through the open door.
“Shut the fuck up, Jerry.” Said in unison. Rick’s reply, graveled and hollow, while Morty’s was brimming with the conviction of youth. He scratched at his forearm.
One swallow, then another. It’s amazing how this shit still has the audacity to burn as it slides down his throat. Another gulp for good measure, annnnnd that’s enough.
“Dad.” Beth leans over her worm of a husband and her utterly disengaged teenage daughter to whisper. “I can’t believe you brought the weapon you struck my son with to therapy.” She puts emphasis on “weapon” and “struck” like he’d forgotten. There’s something to be said for the dwindling autonomy of a Family Man.
“And I can’t believe you let him sit with me. Guess we’re both aghast.” Sure enough, there was Morty, an elbow away picking at the waiting room cushions and tossing the fluff on the floor. Rick kicked it under their seats. No part of him wanted to be doing this. He wouldn’t do this, but the gates of Hell open, and out peeks his family’s therapist, Dr. Wong. In all her bobbed haircut and pantsuit wearing glory, so it was happening.
“The Smiths,” she called, her voice a practiced calm that Rick found frustrating on principle alone. It insisted upon itself. Morty shot up, and Rick used what self-restraint he had not to scowl. One by one they herd into the office. It’s decorated with paintings that came as filler in their frames(if you take the price stickers flaking off the glass into account) and a fake plant that’s somehow still drooping like it’s missed days of watering. The family piles onto the provided sofa, and Rick takes the armchair(the joke that could be made is not lost on him). It’s his way of being the bigger person, separating Morty from himself when even his own mother failed to do so. Morty and Beth are inadvertently angled towards Rick and his eyes are already on the door. For a moment, it’s quiet in the way rejection can be quiet.
“So.” Dr. Wong, whose nails are meticulously clean, but not polished or manicured in any way, interlocks her fingers over crossed legs, taking stock of the flock.
“Rick, you are an intelligent man. Surely you have picked up in these few moments that your presence alters the dynamic here.” At least somebody will address the elephant in the room. Well. The second elephant, the first being the scrape and blooming bruise on Morty’s cheek. Beth had instructed her son to claim it was the result of an accident with a hammer while helping his grandpa in the garage to keep any legal action out of the question. Close enough. The thought was bitter in all the worst ways. The brand of bitterness a shitty farmer must feel when his crop comes up deformed and inedible.
By the looks of all, one, two, three, four, five faces, he must have been addressed again and failed to reply. He waited for the shrink to repeat herself.
“As it must have at home.” Can’t imagine why that one didn’t land the first time. She went on, not missing a beat.
“Anyone, tell me, when he arrived—“ Jerry cuts her off.
“When he crashed a spaceship into our garage and terrified my son.” Just like that, with Jerry’s help, she sunk her talons in Morty.
“Your first impression of Rick was fear?”
“N-not exactly. It was loud when the ship crashed. Really loud, and the house smelled like chemicals for days.” He actually stops wringing his hands together as he answers.
“There’s always chemicals, Morty. They literally make up every aspect of life.” Only now did Rick find his voice.
“You know what I mean, Rick. Oil, smoke, t-that stuff. I smelled like that when I went to school the next day.”
“Back when you still went to school.” Muttered under his son-in-law’s breath.
“I’m sorry, what was that, Jerry?” Rick always managed to say his name like a slur. “I thought that was handled, sure he’s absent from time to time, but we all agreed he’s learning more with me. See, recite pi again for us, Morty.” Open palm presents his grandson, or, more truthfully, shows off his work.
“O-oh, I-“ Turns out, with the right prompting, Morty could open his mouth and spout 3.14159 like he’d done before, a new augmentation Rick added. Support up there in his noggin to go with the kid’s robotic self-defense and stamina measures. They were gifts in a way. Special treatment. Rick was self-aware enough to admit that being prepared for life or death situations was the usual cost of his time.
“That could mean nothing!” Jerry hoped aloud. One finger held up high, Beth’s glare cut him down. They’d be arguing about Jerry’s priorities later. Again.
“Do you ever wonder how things were before you arrived?” Dr. Wong once more. Rick at least gives her the courtesy of lying while he gets acquainted with every object in this room save for her eyes.
“Nope. Things were a little shaky for a while for sure, but now I’d say it’s better,” he answered. The couch cushion looked to be swallowing Morty up, but there were no verbal objections. It occurs to Rick that Beth hasn’t said a word.
“So, why don’t we discuss the situation that brought us all here today. Beth said there was a verbal altercation?” Dr. Wong addresses the family at large.
“Is that what we’re calling it?” Rick scoffs, somewhere between unwilling and unable to stop himself.
“What would you call it, Grandpa Rick?” Summer proposed, challenging in a way that cannot be ignored.
“I’d call it your dumbass brother’s last time asking me for any-fucking-thing.” He should have stopped there, but he faced the boy instead. “If I wanted to find the Fountain of Youth, I could do it in two weeks tops. I don’t want to. Mortality is part of this shit, you can extend it, you can make it easier, but you can’t beat it, you wouldn’t want to.”
“You think it’d only take you two weeks to find the Fountain of Youth?” Morty took the wrong lesson from that.
“That’s two weeks, accounting for keeping you updated so you don’t shit your pants in my complete absence. Both of you.” A disapproving look, coupled with folded arms, roved from grandson to daughter. Beth’s hands rested in her lap, ostensibly at ease.
“And this upset you, Morty. Your grandfather’s acceptance of his mortality?”
“He doesn’t just accept it. He was acting like he welcomed it. Like-“ Oh boy, now he’s crying. Not sobbing, the waterworks swell and wobble over onto cheeks round from residual baby fat incongruent with the frown etched into his features. “S-so he gets to spend the rest of his life with me as his fu- freaking sidekick, but then gets to just leave? L-like I’m-“ Replaceable. Insignificant. Like Morty was finally getting the answer from every time he questioned his value in Rick’s life. The little moron stared him down.
“If you don’t need me in the end, then— oh my, God.” Morty’s head plunges into his hands, fingers dragging through his hair. “Y-y-you, son of a bitch.” Added as the heel of his right palm is used to dry watery eyes.
“Don’t talk about your great-grandmother that way,” it was mumbled. Rick picks at his chair’s pilling material.
“NOW you’re my grandpa? Now that you’ve brought me down to your level?” Morty snapped, he had never been the stereotypical summer child, more so now that their shared despair had taken shape within him. Could it ever really be reversed?
“I was trying to lighten the mood, dipass.” Rick flicks at his flask’s cap.
“Though I appreciate your use of an “I” statement, there is no need for name-calling,” Wong reprimands.
“I’ll call him whatever I damn well please.” He doubles down, not taking the opportunity to “correct” himself.
“That’s not cool, Rick.” Morty touches his sore face as the sniffling dies down.
“Beth?” Dr. Wong took the attention of the room.
“Oh… yes?” She blinks, responding like someone woken from a dream.
“What happened to Morty’s face?”
Rick’s chair squeaks as he pushes out of it to stand. His flask was already twisted open.
“That’s it, I’m out of here.” For once, Morty doesn’t ask him to stay or beg to come with him. The couch consumes. Something imperceivable bearing down on him. Rick hopes that without him taking up space, his face diluting his daughter’s already flawed moral compass, she’ll tell Dr. Wong what really happened.
The silence that follows Rick’s exit is louder than the one sired by his attendance.
“Oh, you know. A- teensy mishap in the garage.” Beth’s thumb and forefinger knit together to measure the weight of Morty’s suffering. On the scale of Rick grabbing a wrist or ankle to drag him towards the ship to getting shoved down a flight of alien stairs that function more like an escalator and keep you tumbling for twenty minutes before he helps you up, the smack to the face was more humiliating than it was painful.
“A mishap?!” Jerry slaps a hand on the coffee table, shaking it with a wince thereafter. “Your father hit our son!” That would have had more punch without the pitiful display.
“You don’t know that!” Beth argues.
“It doesn’t take a genius!” Jerry whines, and Beth's mouth opens, Morty figures to downplay that simple truth, but it closes again. She picks at the skin around her nails.
“It’s sorta par for the course though, right?” Summer’s the only one who asks Morty. Effectively halting his self-unaware excavation of the couch cushion. Little tufts of stuffing litter the floor. Morty lifts his hands from inside the sofa so he can talk with them.
“N-not really. I mean, sometimes, but Rick’s not usually the dangerous part of our adventures. Sure, he makes the dangerous stuff happen, takes us to it, but he also gets us home in time for spaghetti?" Lithe shoulders rise in such a way that asks, Good enough? He decides for himself that it's not.
"Look, my idea of normal is fucked up, it’s not that I’m happy, or feel appreciated, because I’m not, and I don’t, but it’s my life and I don’t want it different. Not right now at least.”
Hands, too small and stubby to be so calloused, fold in his lap.
Rick deserved a drive after that shitshow. And a drink. Several drinks(—alcohol seeps from his pores). He’d hobbled back into the ship after a mind-clearing trip to a bar in a neighboring solar system. The autopilot got him home, but he’d have to land her. Breaking the horizon, the three bed two bath one storage room with a cot comes into view through the night sky. Growing in size as the ship lowers, its single occupant coming home to rot it from the inside out. An image comes to him like salvation. Turning this thing around and starting his slow euthanasia tonight. A soft vibration takes him from his fantasy. The cellphone he’d discarded in Morty’s seat lights up for the third time this outing. First a call from Beth, then a text from Summer, and this appeared to be a secondary text from Summer.
Do gods feel shame?
There was more energetic material in the house than the last time he’d crashed into it, but — I know how to drink and drive, dammit! I can still park this thing! The final thought before a sudden swerve and subsequent collision with his garage. As predicted, it was worse than last time. Molten rubble smolders around and atop the ship; The Smith residence had been all but leveled, yet Rick alone was safe inside his craft. The series of explosions and a bad jolting had disoriented him. He’d hoped the Smiths weren’t home, but a scrap of sunny yellow pajamas coated in charred gore out of his peripheral vision told him otherwise.
It’s okay. He’s not your real grandson.
“R-r-rick?”
The facade that’d once been his home crumbles away to vacant blackness and they are back in the haunted house. Unidentified metal groaning underfoot. Acrid smell invading their nostrils. There’s a distinct click of a camera from above, followed by the mechanical whirling of a photo being printed. Morty blinks from the sudden light, shaking away a gaze that could be read as haunted. The photo floats down into trembling hands.
A “neon” sign lights up the middle of an otherwise murky hallway. He can’t read the script, but assumes it highlights the exit. Rick lifts his portal gun and fires two paths to the same residence. One to the garage, and one for Morty. The green radiance blankets Rick’s thousand yard stare, giving his already weathered appearance a sickly edge.
“Let’s go home. You can’t miss dinner.” It’s an order spoken like a request.
They have some sort of beef patties with mashed potatoes and gravy. English peas on the side. The chair beside Morty is empty, and he feels far away when Beth asks what he and his grandfather got up to for Halloween. Unblinking, he slides the harrowed souvenir photo to his mother, and somewhere during the exchange it got splashed with gravy. Jerry, shirt bundled in his fist, made a show of wiping it clean. Only serving to swirl the cheap ink. It was better that way. Schrodinger’s expressions, blurred till they could mean anything. Beth still put it up on the fridge.
After dinner, fighting the exhaustion from living a 48+ hour day, Morty tosses and turns. Restless in a fittingly twin-sized bed. His bedroom has hardly changed in recent years, the only notable differences being that his choice of posters comes and goes with his interests, there’s a box in the corner overflowing with various gadgets with “Rick Stuff” scrawled across it in fading sharpie, and a few splotchy discolorations on his solar system rug. That is also Rick Stuff. Liquor spilled on one of many intoxicated calls to adventure. The same type Morty’s waiting for now, on top of the covers, willing his door to stay shut and to open in equal measure. He’d take being dragged to an alien galaxy over playing back the day’s events till he makes sense of them. He recalled his haunted house self feeling angry before succumbing to hysterics. Angry at “Rick” for wanting to die, angry at his mom as if she was the cause of the growing meridian between them and angry at himself for giving a damn one way or the other.
His father had been handing out Halloween candy to other children all evening, and put a bundle of leftovers there on his bedside table. It’s illuminated from the glow of his inherited elephant lamp. He stretches to grab a piece, mattress creaking with the effort. Just as a finger crinkles against the plastic wrapper, his door swings open, the stink of tequila with it.
It’s Rick, of course. Rick doesn’t knock.
Candy-coveting hand retracts.