far more naked

by orphan_account

Summary:

Rick puts Morty to sleep.

Notes:

• For sheeplaurelzzz.

Morty’s face is slack and peaceful, which is how Rick knows he’s unconscious and not asleep — aside from the IV cannula in Morty’s arm, delivering an infusion of ketamine and midazolam. Hard to look at him, with the glare of the surgical light off his body, naked save for his underwear. It’s dark in the garage, pitch-black except for the halo of light around the table.

In and out, that’s all, easy as it always is. Easy to slip that needle into his thigh, easy to tug him out of bed, easy to slide his clothes off and lay him on the table. Easy as it always is. In and out. And why shouldn’t it be easy? Shake a surgeon, ask him, does it keep you up at night, when you close your eyes do you see — no, of course not. Do you like ripping people open? Do you get off to it? Of course not. That’s insane; to think something like that you would have to be truly deranged. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it. On the operating table people are malfunctioning machines. It’s not personal. As soon as Rick splits him open: not personal. Whatever he feels about Morty when he’s awake, shrilling over the day’s new injustice, clammy hand hot around Rick’s wrist: he doesn’t carry it to the surgical table. The thing lying on the table right now isn’t even human, it’s his next project, something new to fix. That’s all. The air is heavy in his lungs.

In his ears he can hear the radio-static buzz of life-support systems. Ringing, too, a high insistent whine. Morty’s been teasing him about being hard of hearing. I can always hear you, Morty. He hadn’t said that. He’d said Fuck You You Little Shit. And Morty had laughed inanely in response. He wonders if Morty thinks the low-density fiberboard he calls a door actually absorbs any sound. He’s stupid enough to. Always thinking with his dick. Little fucking freak. Probably wants everyone in the god damn family to hear him. Sounds like some shit he’d be into. Jerking it all over the house like an insecure dog. Christ. And he has the nerve to act angry when he gets caught. That also sounds like some shit he’d be into. He must get off to it. He’s done it on the fridge; on the kitchen counter; on the couch; on the door to the garage; on Rick’s workbench. Rick has the footage to prove it. Next time Morty says some stupid shit to him Rick will take a blacklight to the entire house, but, it's Morty, so he’ll probably get off to that, too.

His flask is light, almost empty. He should have thought to bring a back-up flask, and maybe even a back-up back-up flask.

Morty put up a sign earlier, after Rick walked in on him and complained, loudly. Of course he gave Morty shit for it. But he hadn’t really cared. Still: a sign taped to Morty’s door. DO NOT DISTURB in big angry red letters on printer paper, traced over several times with a dying Crayola marker. DO NOT DISTURB — stupid, and hypocritical, also. If anything Rick’s the one being disturbed here, by him, constantly. Since they’re all about hypocrisy here, maybe Rick should put up his own sign on the door to the garage, or maybe just hang it around his neck: DO NOT PESTER DO NOT HARASS DO NOT MOLEST

(He must see Rick’s shadow under the door. Acting all surprised when Rick walks in on him. He likes it: getting caught white-handed. If a fourteen year old boy opens Pornhub and nobody’s around to hear it, did he even —)

Rick grabs the laryngoscope, attaches the smallest blade he has, and moves around the operating table to stand behind Morty’s head. His shadow stretches over Morty’s body. Standing over Morty like this, leaning over his soft sleeping face with the scythe Rick is about to put down his throat: he could see someone feeling bad about this. Not that he, personally, has a reason to feel bad about it, or any of the countless times he’s done it before. Morty is short, or lying down, like he is now, and there’s really no way to stand other than over him. If he was taller, or if he wasn’t lying down, Rick wouldn’t have to stand over him, but he isn’t, so Rick does. And the laryngoscope — is he supposed to let Morty slowly suffocate under anesthesia, brain cells dying one-by-one from lack of oxygen?

He frames Morty’s little head in his hands, tilting it back. The hollow of Morty’s throat is fragile under his thumbs. He can feel Morty’s timid pulse, and his index and middle fingers pry Morty’s chapped lips gently open; say ah. Not only is this medically necessary, it’s actually life-saving. He’s pumping oxygen into Morty’s breathless body. No reason for the blood to jitter under Rick’s skin. Certainly no reason to feel guilty, or bad in any way. Rick slips the blade into Morty’s mouth and angles it down into his tongue, holding his wet warm mouth open with his free hand. It’s just a laryngoscope, not like he’s putting — then maybe he might have a reason to feel guilty, even if he’d be just fucking around and, plus, Morty, crotch-height, is basically asking for it.

Rick angles Morty’s head and maneuvers the blade further inside until he can see Morty’s vocal cords on screen, an obscene slit hidden under the curl of his soft palate. It’s difficult to believe Morty’s annoying little whiny voice comes out of something so delicate. Morty doesn’t gag; he’s good, he’s unconscious. The inside of his throat is very pink and very small and very wet. Rick remembers the endotracheal tube. He breathes out as he passes it down Morty’s throat into his windpipe. It’s a tight fit. He steps back, removes the laryngoscope, and connects the tube to the ventilator. He watches Morty’s ETCO2 levels, though he already knows he put it in correctly. He could do this in his sleep. He does, sometimes. It’s hot in here. He steps back from the table.

Morty’s little sign is long gone, of course, sitting somewhere in a workbench drawer. DO NOT DISTURB—who does Morty think he is? He’s like one of those new-age parents who think grandparents have to ask their kids’ consent before hugging them. Fucking family therapy. Is he supposed to ask for consent before he comes into Morty’s room now? Before he looks at Morty? So Rick’s idiot soon-to-be-ex-son-in-law—so Jerry can brag about how progressive they are? Why doesn’t Rick just cut his own balls off and present them to him on a platter? If anything it’d be more progressive to have an open-door policy.

Besides, it’s not like Rick's ever demanded that Morty ask his permission before waltzing into his garage, or dozing off against Rick’s shoulder. Earlier: Beth knocking politely and hesitantly at Rick's door to ask if he could talk, if he wasn’t busy with his work, for a minute, just about something Morty asked her to tell him, or ask him, if he could ask permission before coming in Morty's room, or even knock first, not that it’s a big deal if he doesn’t, but you know how teenage boys are, and Morty’s going through puberty, he’s a teenage boy, and you know how he is, so sensitive. It’s not like Rick ever asked for any of that, or any of this, or anything at all. If anyone’s being disturbed it’s him. Red red red.

Rick tugs down his mask to take one last pull from his flask. There’s only a couple drops left. What the fuck did he put in here? It tastes like a sucker-punch to the head. He wracks his brain for possibilities, and can’t think of any possible substances, or, no, he can think of many possible, even probable substances that could be rivering their way through his digestive tract, too many, in fact, to narrow down. He hopes it’s not acetone again. But then if it was he would have probably found out already, considering he downed most of the contents of his flask on his way down the stairs, dragging Morty’s limp body behind him by the back of his shirt. Or he’s about to find out. Whatever the fuck was in there, he decides, it’s at least enough to keep his hands from shaking. When he sets the flask down on the table there’s a smear of red down its polished silver curvature, and himself inverted.

He’s not quite at that inflection point of just drunk enough where the world becomes, not friendly, but not mean, and pieces fit together in the way he knew they’d fit together all along, his brain alive with connections, and best of all, everything he does becomes good, and fun, and right. It’s hard to find that finicky little point and stay balanced on it for very long, because when he’s there drinking more also seems good and fun and right, and it usually is, until it’s not. Rick runs the calculations now: yes, drinking more makes sense. He fumbles around, reaching for the bottle he’s got in a cabinet down here somewhere, not this one, where the fuck did he put it ah there it is. It’s glass, and sticks uncomfortably to his gloves. He pulls it out, squints at it. It’s filled with something pitch-dark and sinister-looking, like crude oil, fuck if he remembers what’s in it, some Smubian analog for whiskey probably (or maybe, actually, crude oil).

Morty lies there under the light. Judging him. Rick can sense it. Morty can’t hide anything from him. Always fucking judging; it doesn’t matter if Morty’s asleep or or passed out or what, even if he died Rick would feel the heavy heat of his patented Morty Guilt Trips until Rick killed himself over it, which is almost certainly exactly what Morty wants. “Shut the fuck up, Morty,” he snarls. “I-I—I have a system , Morty, it’s just to take the edge off. What the fuck would you know about surgery, you can-can barely figure out how to pull your dick out of your pants half the time.”

He uncorks the bottle and attempts to pour it into his flask, but his hands are shaking too badly and it spills everywhere. He did need a drink after all. “See,” he says triumphantly to Morty, who does not see; he’s unconscious. Fuck it, what does it even matter which container it’s in, it’s all gonna end up in the same place anyways. “Bottom’s up,” he says to Morty, who says nothing in reply.

As soon as the sludge hits the back of his throat he knows it’s not crude oil, which is great, but it’s not Smubian whiskey, either. That metallic taste again, it all just tastes like—he takes one last swig, and then another last swig, wipes his mouth on the back of his arm, sets the bottle heavily aside for later.

Rick stares at his blackened gloves, now smeared with whatever the fuck was in that bottle, and considers changing them for a fresh pair. He decides against it. Sterile fields are overrated, and besides, he’s not a hack. On the off chance Morty becomes septic he’ll just go in again.

After a few restorative pulls from that handle of not-whiskey, Rick is easily able to ignore the waves of guilt Morty is trying to send his direction; they bounce off completely ineffectively, like UV rays against sunscreened skin. At the beach on Agal-3: Morty spreading shiny sunscreen over himself on his — on their towel. Apparently he burns easy, something Rick found out during their last trip to the Sun. Sitting there in his little fucking swim shorts, an old orange bottle of Banana Boat wedged between his legs, not a care in the god damn world. Gross. Did Morty ask for consent before showing Rick his disgusting almost-naked body? No. There you go: if anyone’s being disturbed, it’s Rick.

Rick puts drapes over Morty’s face first. Now Morty is just a pair of naked legs. Not naked; Rick considerately let Morty keep his underwear on. It doesn’t really make a difference to Rick either way, but Morty has all these weird hang-ups about being naked. Some kind of Freudian thing with Jerry, probably. It’s not like anyone wants to see his ugly little body anyways, and it’s narcissistic of him, actually, to assume otherwise. Not that it’s Rick’s problem if Morty wants to be ashamed, he couldn’t give less of a fuck personally; he just wonders where all that shame goes when Morty’s rubbing himself all over the furniture. All blushing-virgin around Rick, then a creepy little creep around everyone else. Roofieing that girl at school — and Rick’s the perv? Fine. Not Rick’s problem. What does he care. Anyone would have to admit it’s strange, though, not to mention completely irrational — Rick’s seen him naked more than anyone else, more than his parents, and yet Morty’s always freaking out out about protecting his modesty around Rick, like he has anything Rick hasn’t seen a million times before, bigger and on objectively sexier people too. But somehow he’s the bad guy if he points Morty’s hypocrisy out. Fine. And also Rick doesn’t want to see Morty’s weird little balls. A pervert, for example, would have taken off Morty’s underwear first. QED.

Rick hardly has to indulge Morty’s weird and irrational complexes, though; this is his garage and his operating table, which means Morty’s a guest here. Rick’s not going to waste time and perfectly good sterile drapes preserving his modesty, not that Morty has any to preserve in the first place. Besides, what Morty doesn’t know, or doesn’t remember, won’t hurt him. If Rick was some kind of pervert like everyone in the fucking family thinks he is, apparently, a pervert who was trying to hide the fact that he was a pervert, the first thing he would have done is cover Morty up, compensating for some uncontrollable sexual attraction. What’s there to be attracted to? Nothing. If Morty was awake, Rick’s sure he would probably freak out anyways, covered or uncovered. Rick can’t fucking win with this kid. Again, what Morty doesn’t know won’t hurt him. As far as Morty’s concerned he’s having a nice wet dream about that chick at his school, Jennifer or whatever, and he’ll wake up none the wiser about Rick “violating” his unreasonable little “boundaries”, like Morty hasn’t done plenty of that himself. Fucking family therapy.

He puts the drapes he was going to put over Morty’s legs over Morty’s face instead, on top of the one already there. Morty’s on a ventilator, he’ll be fine. Then he sets to applying the chest drapes, his fingers firm against the adhesive edge. He takes his time. His fingers push into the soft channels of skin between Morty’s ribs. Morty’s so skinny, like a… skeleton person. Morty hasn’t been eating much lately; at the dinner table, he’s been leaving half his food on the plate, which Rick chalks up to Beth’s cooking, (not bad, but, if he’s being honest, not great either, except for her pancakes — Jerry’s fault, somehow) or, lack thereof. Rick can’t have Morty collapsing from low blood sugar when they’re running from Yurkurs; maybe he’ll take Morty out to Shoney’s or something, make sure he eats properly. Babysitting Morty so he actually eats food — Christ, what’s next, making sure he showers and wipes his ass, too? Morty’s like a high-maintenance Tamagotchi, if Tamagotchis constantly implied that their owners were Tamagotchi-molesters. Maybe he’ll just run a line into Morty with some lipids or something when Morty’s asleep.

The scalpel glints in the light like a promise. The incision is an uncomplicated glide down the gap between the ribcage, right into that cruel little divot in Morty’s chest. Morty’s skin, at least, opens easily for him. Dark blood beads quickly at the edges of the slit, pooling over the pale subcutaneous fat underneath. When Morty bleeds he bleeds hard. Like a stuck pig. When he touches Morty -- when he grabs Morty’s arm or something, to get his attention... The last time he grabbed Morty’s arm he was shocked at how little give it had left. He’s just a tight bag of bones. If Morty has any fat remaining it’s lower, it’s—

From underneath the table, a thin tube snakes up diplomatically to apply suction to the incision.

He has to stop thinking of the thing on the table as Morty. In fact, he might as well be hacking open any old cow-eyed prediabetic roaming the streets, just waiting for someone to make use of their perfectly good hepatic stem cells. He has no reason to feel guilty, so he turns all the unhelpful parts of his brain off, and doesn’t. A couple swigs from the bottle of Ambiguous Liquor help the process along. If it was Morty on the table, which it might as well not be, again, it could be fucking Henry Kissinger or Genghis Khan lying on the table right now with his smooth little legs out, but hypothetically if it was Morty this would be for his own good.

He needs to part the soft tissue in Kissinger-Khan, so Rick turns the dial up on the bovie, which is sitting unassuming next to a variety of surgical implements. The smell is not something you forget: deep rich burning flesh, that gross Smartfood popcorn Beth keeps getting, and a faint bright ozone from the contacts which allegedly smells like “working on the ship” (from welding the hull, probably).

Morty, he knows, hasn’t forgotten.

The morning after Morty’s first fully conscious surgery, him and Rick blinking bleary and hungover at each other from opposite ends of the kitchen table, Morty not quite able to meet his eyes, Jerry decided to cook some kind of beef casserole with Fritos in an attempt to reclaim the kitchen as his territory, or something, any standard-issue moron (but then Jerry is no standard moron) would have second thoughts about roasting Fritos on a pan, and about 10 minutes after sitting down for maybe some nice fucking eggs and bacon the smoke detectors started screaming right into Rick’s eardrums and Morty had puked all over the table. Burnt beef and Fritos: that’s what cautery smells like. He remembers the way Morty had stared at his own vomit on the table like he hadn’t seen it less than a few hours ago, thin and watery, red.

Jerry, after some flailing around with the smoke detectors, had come to the kitchen table; he had seen Morty’s puke dripping down the edge of the table in dark languid ribbons. He had -- yes -- looked at Rick accusingly, knowingly, like any of this was Rick’s fault. Well, now Jerry gets to sit alone in some decrepit motel, watching the dull yellow streak of headlights through the slats of his window shades, drawing shapes in the dark spots of mold down the walls.

Rick starts in on cutting through the fat layers. The garage smells like barbeque. On Balcan-2 humans are a delicacy; they cook them live, like lobsters. Like steak: better when it’s red inside. Cortisol makes the meat tough and acrid, he’s heard, so they’re anesthetized for the process, staring doe-eyed and serene at the creatures that are about to devour them, the air burning in their lungs. Rick doesn’t have the stomach for it — not prepared like that, at least. But it’s not a bad way to go, or not the worst; the boiling water just a warm bath. They don’t even realize they’re being cooked. The anesthetic is a more recent luxury; they used to go without. But — the taste. And he supposes the slavering old fucks paying for the “experience” think it’s unpleasant to watch. Last he heard their species had some kind of multi-dimensional near-extinction event, probably some poor careless bastard avenging his Morty, out of his mind with rage. His own fault, anyways, for letting his guard down. Mortys are basically like the galaxy’s wagyu. (Or veal.) He wonders, as he runs the pen feather-light through pectoral fascia, stretching open the incision with two fingers, if Beth might be willing to cook steak for dinner tomorrow.

Surgery’s more of an art than a science. He feels artistic, at least, pen in hand, efficiently and skillfully cauterizing all the annoying little veins that well with blood when he hits them. The yellow fat globules bubbling around his fingers make him think, texturally, of the tiny sacs of juice inside orange slices. Digging his finger into the hole and holding it open with a retractor, he finds the venous arch somehow in the froth of the body and clips it. This is the annoying part: pulling ligaments apart so he can get in there with the saw, poking around and cauterizing veins so it doesn’t bleed out, since he only has so much blood to work with here. Rick almost killed Morty the first time he operated on him, forgetting that Morty was — is — much smaller than himself. Morty would have died if anyone other than Rick was operating on him, but Morty’s alive, still, and he’ll stay that way, because Rick is a genius. He parts the gelatinous fat and tight muscle with his fingers, he’s basically Moses with the red sea in here, if he believed in that sort of thing, and cuts through the linea alba, a shocking white between all the yellow-orange-red, splintering like asbestos under his pen. Maybe he’ll annex Jerry’s grill with the rest of his stuff and have some kind of BBQ cookout in the backyard. Yes, that’s what he’ll do when Jerry comes by to pick up the kids during his next scheduled visitation time; and as a bonus, Morty will get some protein in him under Rick’s watchful eye. Killing three birds with one stone. Rick pats himself on the back (not literally, his gloves are covered with blood) for having such a great idea. Sometimes he surprises himself.

He’ll still take Morty out on a Shoney’s trip, though; all this has made him really hungry for a Shoney's® Double Decker. If he wraps this up quickly they might even be able to make it before they close tonight. A Double Decker, or — maybe lobster. Does Shoney’s have lobster? Did they ever have lobster? He’s probably thinking of Outback’s. He’ll take Morty to Shoney’s first, and then Outback’s: that’s what he’ll do. After the cookout. He’ll even pay for Morty’s entrees. Surrounded by warm welcoming decor that is simultaneously all-American and all-Australian, Morty will have what he needs to start getting over this whole divorce thing. Divorce, Rick will inform Morty over a plate of lobster tails, is a good thing, even, he would have to say, ideal given the circumstances, maybe not now but in the grand scheme of things, and plus Jerry deserves more than to be trapped in a loveless marriage — they may not see eye-to-eye, but even Rick wants the best for him, you’d have to be some kind of monster to want this poor guy to be in a relationship with a woman who rightfully doesn’t respect him or his micropenis or his microbrain, a woman who sees him as nuisance at best; yes, it would be cruel, even inhumane, like putting a Little League catcher in an NBA game. And then, yeah, then Rick will talk about how Back In His Day divorce wasn’t an option, he knows Morty loves to hear about his Lore, though technically speaking Rick’s parents weren’t any worse than any other married couple back then, and now, which is really an indictment of marriage as an institution — at some point he really should point out to Morty that he was right about marriage all along. Anyways, they’ll bond over it, and Morty, sitting under a deer head, actually that might be Texas Roadhouse, whatever, kangaroo head, bonding with his grandfather, will think, hey, maybe I don’t have it so bad, maybe this really is the best for all parties involved, and then he’ll stop being a mopey little bitch on their adventures.

There’s hardly any preperitoneal fat, which makes things easier. Rick feels between Morty’s ribs: yep, a perfectly centered incision. Man, he’s good. He did nick the peritoneum, but that’s fine, he’ll just zap it a little bit; problem solved. There’s a vein that Rick can’t get a good grip on, so he uses his forceps to bovie it. Done. Rick grabs some heavy scissors to chop through the xiphoid. He really hates the sensation of cutting through cartilage, the textural equivalent of nails on a chalkboard, but it’s over soon enough. He trims away some of the diaphragmatic attachments, pushes away tissue and pleura around the sternum and wriggling his fingers behind the manubrium, too, just in case. Finally he’s able to get to the actual surgery.

Rick grabs the sternal saw, waiting patiently on the table next to him. The actual saw part is small and pathetic, smaller than Morty’s, uh, thumbs, and the whole device more closely resembles a drill, but it still feels good to hold it. His whole body: solid and shining with rightness. If it feels good now, it’ll be even better, he thinks, if he makes the saw bigger, because really, is there some kind of law stating that sternal saws have to be tiny? And even if there was, is he going to let the law dictate what he does? He’s Rick Sanchez, and he’s going to make a big saw. He’ll repurpose the swashplate mechanism in the big oscillating dildo he made for that orgy; it’s all reciprocating motion. Why is it called reciprocating and not retaliating? Well, he’s Rick Sanchez, and he can call it retaliating motion if he wants to, and he will, and he can make a big saw, and he’ll do that too. Maybe he’ll repurpose the entire dildo, actually, and save some materials. He gets that heady feeling of a good plan. But first he should probably finish this up. He disconnects the endotracheal tube from the ventilator for now so the lungs don’t get punctured, or explode, or something equally annoying. Should be good for at least a couple minutes.

He’s about to fire up the saw when a noise from the kitchen makes him pause.

A cabinet opening. Just Beth. Probably reaching for the wine. Sure enough, he hears the predictable clink of glass. Like father like daughter. They’ve been going through a lot of Kirkland box wine. Something complex rises in him. A sudden awareness of the heat inside his gloves. Even if she walked in right now, not that she could, because the door is locked and bolted, but even if she did, she’d have no reason or justification to get mad at him. Drinking and operating: the exact things she does every day. Hypocritical to get upset with him, which she won’t, because the door is locked and she can’t come in. Rick waits, patiently, for the sound of retreating footsteps. He can take all the time he needs. Morty — the body he’s operating on can go a while without ventilation.

Glass dropping, and shattering. Slurred soft cursing from behind the door. Shards windchiming into the trash. More shuffling. Water running. How long, he thinks, does it take to get a fucking glass of wine. It’s not rocket surgery. What does she have to drink over, anyways? Her deadbeat husband is out of the house, her dad is back in her life and taking care of her son for her; in fact, the only thing she could possibly be drinking over is Summer eating paint chips, which is hardly the most solid justification for drinking or family therapy.

He can hear the sound of his own breathing.

If he's not lucky, Beth might decide to stay downstairs. She might turn on the TV. She might drink a glass or two or five. She might even knock on the door when the saw starts up and ask what he's doing. She might wake up the next morning, headache still beating in her skull, take an Advil, polish off whatever’s left in the box, drive to work, see a horse’s limp body splayed out on a table, set a sharp knife to its soft belly, find its inside familiar, test the weight of its life in her hands, her own life ringing full and powerful in her as she hacks through its smooth organs, watch the horse wake up, its warm eyes gentle with sleep and yes despite everything human trust, because how could it know, in its small strange horse brain, of the changes inside it, how could it know that the warm hand stroking it was inside it at all, it will eat an apple from her hand, and when she drives back home she will not hear his terrible screams cracking into a new register, and all the red thoughts ballooning in her skull will be of carbonara sauce and Costco wine.

He remembers, hand tight on the saw, that little art project she was building in the living room a couple days ago, maybe some kind of coping mechanism, who fucking knows, a car-crash of mangled horse hooves with the blood still crusted into the cartilage, one twisted deer limb shoved into the mess, arranged to her liking, synecdochical, repulsive. He almost feels some rare flash of understanding. There are these moments where he catches himself thinking of her with the sort of fondness he has for the living room sofa: faithful and familiar, an impression of himself visible in the pilling fabric.

They had a dog when his daughter was little. He’s not sure what happened to it, though he has some ideas. He remembers tripping over its dog bowls and chew toys long after it disappeared, shouting at — to throw that shit out already; she had refused, because she was convinced they would need them for the new dog they would get someday. Cynical, he remembers thinking at the time, to simply replace the old dog with a new one and pretend like nothing ever happened, like a widower making the replacement wear his wife’s old clothes. Now Rick has come to respect the pragmatism of it. They never did get a new dog.

Lately Beth’s already short fuse has gotten shorter; Rick hadn’t anticipated the divorce affecting her this much. He overestimated her. Summer, to her credit, has enough brains to stay shut up in her own room. Not Morty. When Beth snaps at him Rick sees her look over Morty’s head for a second, looking for someone taller. She needs someone to hurt. She takes after her father. Rick considers being annoyed, but then there’s Morty: pressed closer into Rick’s side, lingering in the garage. It’s convenient. Why fuck up a good thing?

Rick hears slippered feet pause by the door. If she tries it she'll find it locked, but she won’t; she knows better. Though she’s been giving him these kicked-puppy looks lately, like she’s looking for a heart-to-heart, saying shit like maybe I should give him a second chance or well the kids, what the fuck does she think Rick’s reply is going to be, or, his personal fucking favorite, what would Mom—like she doesn’t know the end to that fucking story, the second chances and the kid, and if that’s what she wants she deserves everything that’s happening to her.

So. He waits. Daddy, I can’t sleep. Elbow-deep in her baby boy’s guts: let me give you something to really lose sleep over.

After a few moments the footsteps retreat. Rick hears shuffling up the stairs. He fires up the saw. The sound of it grates through the house like a drill, but he knows Beth isn’t going to come downstairs and complain; she would never interrupt his important science. Rick slots the saw into position, wiggling some extra tissue out of the way for a clean cut. He saws towards himself, hand numbing from the vibration, and cuts through bone butter-smooth. Once he’s done, he pulls out the saw and breathes, learning over to take another swig. Whatever’s in this bottle is starting to taste better the more he drinks it.

The whole garage smells like burning hair and sweaty pennies. Morty, to his credit, smells better on the inside than Rick’s own interior battery-acid stench. Underneath the copper-smell there’s a certain sickening tangy sweetness to Morty, like a new animal. Rick still hasn’t figured out how to get it out of his lab coat, which, for the next several days, will smell like a pipe to the head. A couple days ago Morty was dozing off on the couch, slumped non-consensually against Rick’s shoulder, and Rick could smell it on him, faintly, behind the awful oniony sourness of nervous sweat and PHOENIX XL®️ Axe Deodorant Body Spray. Morty gets nosebleeds in the summer. In the heat it’s enough to drive a man insane.

Lying there. Open for Rick. He feels — he needs another drink. He takes one, but there’s nothing left for him; the bottle is empty. The next thing he hears is the sound of glass shattering, and the ringing silence afterwards. Above him the surgical lamp burns. He’s aware, suddenly, of the insistent QRS beep; he should move quickly.

There’s a tiny chip sitting on a shiny tray. Thread-thin wires spread out of it like rays. It basically looks like a pacemaker, though it’s a thousand times more advanced than the Raspberry Pis they’re shoving in geriatrics in hospitals across the country. Rick had something like it in himself, briefly, a stubborn weight between his ribs. He busies himself with reconnecting the endotracheal tube to the ventilator. He knows he’s stalling. The heartbeat in his ears doesn't sound like his.

Beth made him take too long. Fuck. There’s blood pooling in the chest cavity. Rick stanches the bleeding with the bovie, and yanks the suction tube up to clear away the blood and pleural fluid. The tube feeds down to a vat of evil-smelling Morty Material he’s been collecting, which is worth its weight in gold; the amount of tissue he just sucked up from Morty’s chest cavity is enough for a thousand clones, and most of them probably won’t even have cancer. Though it’s not exactly as if Rick’s hurting for Material; all he'd have to do is go into Morty's room, or ask permission to enter since it’s apparently a Restricted Area now, vacuum the carpet, and use whatever he dumps out of the bag.

He mounts the retractors, hooking the blades into the sternum. Morty’s sternum is tough to pry apart, even with Rick leveraging his weight; he takes it slow, hands shaking from what must be the effort of pulling him open. He takes a break to inject some muscle relaxant he keeps handy for working on Morty. It's easier after that. Wiping off the ligaments with a towel, he injects bone wax to stem the flow of marrow.

Morty’s insides shiver at the world. Small-animal heart. Like something’s alive in there, Rick thinks.

After all this, he realizes he needs a bigger retractor for opening up the pericardium. He fumbles in a cabinet for one, blows the dust off — should be fine — and ratchets it into an upside-down A shape. Once that’s in place, Rick retrieves a fresh, sharp knife to cut through the protective flesh. It seems to flinch when he cuts into it. Morty’s internal walls squeeze around his heart. It’s hot in here. This is hardly Rick’s first time doing cardiac surgery, not even his first time on Morty; he’s used to it by now, completely desensitized. The heart is a muscle like any other. There’s no special meaning in it. Covered in blobby yellow fat, it seems ridiculous more than anything. How something like this could be keeping Morty alive. It looks like it’s straining to get out of Morty’s chest, pumping frantically, like it’s trying to get away from the hard edge of Rick’s intrusion. Rick feels raw for some reason, like he’s been sunburned on the inside.

He looks closer and catches a gleam in the light: a thin wire. His own heart goes still inside him. Someone’s already been in here.

“Garage,” he says, voice steady, “analyze foreign object.”

It’s quiet for a moment, except for the blood rushing in his ears. “Garage, I’m not going to ask again.”

EARLIER USER COMMAND: ‘SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU STUPID BITCH’. I AM ONLY FOLLOWING MY DIRECTIVE.

“I told you to shut the fuck up because you were giving me your unsolicited opinion on whether you thought surgery was necessary, and your directive is to analyze only when I’ve explicitly told you to analyze. Now follow it or I’m going to decommission you, because I don’t have the fucking time to be dealing with defective tools.”

Silence, again. MULTIPLE FOREIGN BODIES DETECTED. WAITING VERBAL SPECIFICATION.

“Which foreign body do you think I’m referring to?”

……FOREIGN BODY IS COMPOSED OF 52% TITANIUM, 13% SILICON,

“I don’t care about the material composition, I want to know who put this thing in him .”

FOREIGN BODY INSERTED, pause, BY RICK SANCHEZ DIMENSION DESIGNATION C-137, NINETY-THREE DAYS, SEVENTEEN HOURS, TWO MINUTES, THIRTY-SIX SECONDS AGO.

Pregnant pause.

“Oh,” Rick says. “How do you—”

CONFIDENCE LEVEL: NINETY-NINE POINT NINE NINE NINE NINE PERCENT. ARCHIVED BIOMETRICS FROM SPECIFIED TIME PERIOD MATCH USER ON FILE. AND I WAS LITERALLY THERE BUT I KNOW THAT’S NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU.

He ignores that last part. “Why don’t I—I feel like I would’ve remembered operating on him.”

BIOMETRIC SCANS INDICATED HIGH CONCENTRATIONS OF VARIOUS PSYCHOACTIVE AGENTS PRESENT IN YOUR BLOODSTREAM. YOUR MEMORY CONSOLIDATION WAS LIKELY, pause, EXTREMELY IMPAIRED.

Now Rick remembers. 93 days, 17 hours, 3 minutes, 46 seconds ago, Rick performed a sternotomy on Morty almost identical to this one. The only difference was that Morty was conscious for it. Rick was too, barely:

A drug deal gone wrong on Xylus-β. Fine, except that it didn’t have the courtesy to go wrong until after Rick had already snorted approximately a kilogram of highly refined space coke along with probably some other stuff too. Of course it was Morty’s fault: some mafia chick with an admittedly impressive rack had fed him some sob story about Rick killing her whole family or whatever, and Morty had the brilliant idea to double-cross Rick. Morty got a right atrium full of parasites for his trouble. And Rick, generously, instead of going, Ha, serves you right, Morty, and leaving him behind to deal with the consequences of his own actions, had instead massacred an entire wing of the Xylian Mafia and then performed an on-the-fly maximally invasive tricuspid valve replacement on Morty using only a shitty Swiss Army knife gifted to Morty by Jerry (who else) and half a handle of Floobian liquor, forced unceremoniously down Morty’s throat. What a fucking waste. He was looking forward to drinking that shit too. Morty didn’t even appreciate it, coughing/puking most of it up like a little bitch.

And, coked out of his fucking mind and more than a little pissed at his one and only grandson for trying to sell him out for some trim (as usual), a new implant he’d been tinkering with over the past few months burning a hole in his pocket — it had seemed like a good idea at the time, while he was fucking around in Morty’s chest cavity, it had felt like something he deserved to do. Damn. So that’s where it went: it was in Morty the entire time. It would have been nice to know that before he remade it from scratch. He looks at the now-redundant chip sitting exactly where he left it on the surgical tray. There’s something to be said for redundancy, he supposes, like a good little systems engineer.

Rick stares at the yawning hole in Morty’s chest, absently watching the convulsions of his heart, the irritating and increasingly-urgent QRS beeps softening into background noise. Now Rick remembers: the way Morty shook when Rick cut him open, the way he forced himself to relax into the intrusion of Rick’s forceps, the way he bit into his clenched fist to keep from crying out. Despite his ‘extremely impaired memory consolidation’, he can hear it: Morty’s voice from that day, vocal cords shot through from screaming Rick-Rick-Rick make it stop .

Now he remembers: the ride back home; a silence too big for the ship. Morty, drunk. His head against the dash. Rick had considered grazing some space debris to shake his brains up a little, but in the end kindly decided against it.

“So,” Rick said conversationally. “What have we learned?”

He can admit that he could have been a bit more sensitive, but it’s not like Morty was doing surgery on himself, and, considering Rick was actually doing most of the heavy lifting while Morty focused on screaming and crying and general hysterics, Morty might’ve even stood to be a little bit appreciative.

“Fuck you,” Morty replied, enunciating the words carefully. “Fuuuuck youuuuuu.”

“Fuck me?” Rick repeated. Save the kid’s life, and this is what he gets? “Fuck you, you double-crossing little shit. I think what you meant to say was ‘thank you, Rick, for not leaving me on that rock to get what I fucking deserved’. Repeat after me, Morty, follow my mouth — Thank. You. Now you.”

“Fuck. You.”

Rick was, in spite of himself, impressed. “You know, I-I could’ve — I should’ve left you to deal with those guys, Morty, I’m sure they would’ve-would’ve really taken care of you.”

“Whatever,” Morty mumbled. “I’m drunk.”

Silence. Again. Morty, slumped over, looked like a sad airless inflatable noodle man (the ones from the car dealerships).

“Well, hey, buddy,” Rick said, thumbing the peeling leather of the steering wheel, “big milestone, I mean, first surgery.”

Morty lifted his head to look at Rick. His face was blotched red, cutely. Ugly-ly. Cute-ugly. He stared at Rick for a long moment, confused. “That was your first surgery?”

“What? No, that was your first surgery,” Rick said, a lie.

“Noitwasnd,” Morty slurred, frowning. “When I was a —when I was a baby, I had — Mom told me there was something wrong with my, uh,”

“Brain?” Rick suggested.

“Spine,” Morty said. Glancing over, Rick saw him looking triumphant. “So — my second surgery. I-I don’t remember it, though. The first one, I mean, I remember the second one. Because I was a baby, I think. And I wasn’t alive—awake for it. Because it would have hurt if I was awake,” Morty explained. “Like it did now. Does now. Earlier.”

Morty can be, admittedly, pretty fucking cute when he’s not busy being an annoying pain in Rick’s ass. He knew the surgery Morty was referring to, or at least he’d seen the evidence of it during an earlier — mostly exploratory — operation. Christ. Imagine the fucking hack grubbing around in his grandson’s insides in some shitty OR, probably getting off to the whole thing, too.

“I meant your first surgery while conscious, duh, which is the only milestone that matters. It’s not exactly a milestone if you just lie there and take a nap while some guy digs around in your guts for an hour, Morty, a milestone means — it-it implies effort on your part.”

Morty frowned. “I didn’t — I just lied—laid there this time, too.”

“Hey, that’s not true,” Rick said. “You also bitched a lot.”

“You can’t be mean to me, Rick, I’m comvuh—convor—convol—”

“Don’t hurt yourself.”

“I’m—I’m still getting better. So you can’t be mean to me. ‘cause… you can’t. It’s not allowed. My tummy hurts,” Morty whined. God. He hates when Morty whines.

“And,” Morty continued, slowly, thinking, “not my second surgery. Right? ‘Cause — I turned into a car. And sm’other stuff. You were in me before.”

Rick took a turn a little harder than he strictly had to, and sent Morty, seatbelt-less, lurching into Rick’s shoulder.

“Rick,” Morty had moaned, “I’m-I’m gonna—” and then he proceeded to puke into Rick’s legs.

“Fuck, Morty!” Rick snarled. Morty, face-down in his own vomit, nestled heavily into Rick’s lap.

“‘m sorry,” Morty had mumbled into Rick’s crotch. “I’m drunk.” Then he started snoring.

Now Rick remembers: the thick heat seeping through to his legs, Morty’s warm breath against his belt.

Very calmly, he had pulled into the garage. Very calmly, he had opened the car door; very calmly, he had let Morty’s head drop, brown-red sludge pooling in the driver’s seat; very calmly, he had climbed out, walked into his room, closed the door, and taken off his pants.

He’s done here. He holds open the incision with one hand and with the other quickly stitches up some abdominal fascia or something, whatever, the cytogenic injection will fix it all anyways, and tags them with hemostats. He’s pretty sure Morty’s hemodynamically stable. He doesn’t bother with wires, just aligns the sternal halves roughly and ties the sutures into place, draining the air and extra juices, approximating the skin with some stitches and basically just slapping the whole thing together so he can inject the cytogenic fluid. Rick pushes the needle into the deep fascia (not his prettiest closure, but whatever), glad that Morty’s not awake to bitch and moan about the size of it, and watches Morty’s skin knit itself together. Shit. He forgot to pull out the sutures; now they’re stuck in there.

Rick feels fine. He feels good. The surgery wasn’t a complete waste of time: he feels fine, and good, and better after doing it, like he knew he would. Another successful operation, even if it wasn’t technically necessary in the end, but it’s not like he could’ve known that. And he’s doing all this for Morty’s own good, even if Morty would freak out about it, if he knew, but he doesn’t, and he won’t, and he freaks out about everything anyways. There might still be time to take him to Shoney’s and get that burger. Rick wipes his nose with the back of his hand unthinkingly, and smells blood. He wonders if Beth drank all the wine. There’s at least still Listerine in the bathroom, or there was this morning, which is an option as long as Summer hasn’t decided to branch out from paint thinner and Adderall. He really needs to turn the volume down on that fucking monitor. It’s starting to give him a headache.

Something on the table moves.

He shakes himself, checking the monitor: BIS of 80. Fuck. He tugs the drapes off Morty’s face just as he’s blinking awake.

“Rrgghk?”

Morty wipes at his eyes, squinting against the harsh surgical lamp. He snorts up some snot. When he looks down to see the blood crusted around his chest and thighs, he draws a sharp breath in around the endotracheal tube, starts pulling at it frantically.

“Hey, sh-sh-sh-shh, Morty, you’re okay, relax, you gotta—you gotta relax for me, buddy.” Rick can feel Morty’s stomach muscles contract under his hand. Woozy from the midazolam and ketamine, Morty is in no shape to put up a fight, and he obediently lets Rick maneuver him into a sitting position. “There you go. Take a deep breath for me and let it out, nice and easy.”

He deflates the cuff on the exhale and gently works the tube out of Morty’s windpipe, feeling it catch. His own throat feels tight. “Keep your mouth open just like that, Morty, you’re doing so good.” He pulls the tube out. A thin string of saliva connects it to Morty for a moment. Rick reaches for the suction catheter he keeps under the table, there it is, “open up, Morty, just gotta get this stuff out of your mouth.” He presses the tip of the catheter in between Morty’s lips. Morty lets it in.

It’s hot in here.

“Alright, Morty, should be done, just-just take another breath and cough.”

Morty coughs, then retches up the contents of his stomach. Rick moves quick to prevent him from aspirating on the slurry of brownish liquid dripping out of his mouth in webbed little pillars. Under the hand he has on Morty’s back, he can feel Morty’s body heaving with effort.

“What—oh man, what…?” Morty croaks out. Great; he can breathe. In hindsight Rick should have done a spontaneous breathing trial before he let Morty’s lungs fly solo, but he looks fine enough.

Rick busies himself with cleaning up the makeshift operating theatre, peeling off his gloves and tossing them under the table, hitting a button to condense the ventilator and other life-support systems and cranking the lamp out of the way, even if, technically, he could ask the garage to take care of all of this. “Just finished up some surgery,” Rick says redundantly, tossing scalpels in some random drawer, he’s sure that won’t fuck him over later the next time he’s reaching for a screwdriver.

“Oh.” Morty’s voice sounds very far away.

“Yup. Listen, Shoney’s closes in,” he checks his phone, “twenty minutes, so if you wanna go ahead and—”

“There’s blood,” Morty points out, helpfully.

Rick looks up at Morty, who touches his chest, to show Rick. Rick huffs out a laugh. Maybe he should have gone a little less hard on the ketamine; the kid is fucking wasted. “There sure is.”

Morty lets his head loll to the side. Last time they showed up to Shoney’s covered in a little blood they rudely called the cops, which is the only reason Rick turns and grabs some old dark rags sitting on the washer, wetting them in the sink. He can feel Morty watching him. “What did you do?” Morty asks, not yet able to summon the usual righteous indignation.

“Had—had to get some stuff out of you, Morty, no big deal. That bitch waitress gives me an attitude whenever I show up less than 15 minutes before close, so we should probably hurry—”

“What stuff?”

Rick sighs loudly. Like he’s supposed to sit around and explain every little fucking—all the minutia of a sternotomy when Morty’s probably not even going to remember any of this in the morning.

“I’m not going to — ” He gets an idea. “Morty, remember—remember that one time you sold me out to the mafia, no hard feelings of course, not like I can’t go back to that solar cluster anymore or anything, but you remember them putting those worms in you?”

“Worms,” Morty repeats, looking as wide-eyed as anyone could possibly look after being administered 1300mg of ketamine, staring at Rick as he approaches with the rags. “They, they, they were—”

“—In you the whole time, yep, I must’ve—there must’ve been a couple still left in there, Morty, but don’t worry, I got rid of ‘em for you, took all of them out, good as new, you’re welcome.”

Morty goes quiet. Rick raises the cloth, about to wipe him down, when he hears sniffling. He looks up, horror-movie slow, and, yep, of course Morty’s crying for some fucking reason.

“I’m suh-sorry,” Morty sobs, shiny snot leaking out of his nose.

Rick stares at him, wishing he had never looked up at all. Should’ve just ignored it. Fucking ketamine. This is the last time he gives Morty the good shit, should’ve just saved it all for himself. “The fuck are you—it’s alright, Morty, it wasn’t a big deal, you don’t have to cry about it, Jesus.”

“I, I, I,” Morty blubbers, “those guys tried to kill you, and it was muh-my f-fault, and then I-I-I threw—threw up in the car, and I was scared, and there were worms inside me, and I’m, I’m sorry, I’m a—a bad Morty. ”

“It’s fine,” Rick says quickly, feeling his face muscles contort strangely, what kind of face does he even make in response to that, “it’s—I forgive you, like I said, no hard feelings, you learned your lesson, just don’t—don’t do it again, alright, you can calm down now, stop crying already.”

While Morty makes wet pathetic noises Rick sets to work on wiping him down, brisk and clinical, like he’d wipe guts off the windshield, thinking only of the burger he’s about to tear into at Shoney’s; he’s so distracted, in fact, by the prospect of a delicious two-patty burger with four slices of crispy hickory-smoked bacon, four slices of American cheese, and a side of lightly seasoned house-cut fries, that he doesn’t even visually not to mention emotionally register who, or what he’s wiping down at the current moment, to the point where he might actually be wiping down the soft goose-bumped shivering titanium-plated hull of the ship for all he knows.

“Rick,” Morty whines, “you’re-you’re rubbing too hard, it hurts.”

“Oh.” Rick tosses the rags on the table.

Morty himself is mostly clean, but his underwear is soaked through, black with blood; he can’t go to bed in those. Jerry insists. insisted, on buying the kid those cheap polyester 12-packs from Walmart, essentially the underwear equivalent of one-ply toilet paper, they barely make it through a single wash, and Rick’s been replacing them with his own superior synthesized underwear but Morty went to bed wearing one of the last shitty Jerry pairs, thin enough that any sort of liquid makes the fabric basically translucent, and Rick thinks before he can stop himself that the difference between a roofie and an anesthetic comes down to intent —

He really hopes his burger doesn’t come with soggy lettuce and that they don’t skimp on the bacon, they always do late at night, Shoney’s used to have standards but not anymore, apparently, he also hopes that waitress isn’t expecting a tip especially if his burger only comes with two as opposed to the standard four slices of bacon, when she flips over that fucking iPad he’s going to look her directly in the eye and hit that ‘other’ button and put in 0%, and he’s going to do it with pride.

“Is your nose bleeding?” Morty asks. Rick, busy counting the number of pits in the garage floor, almost asks him what the fuck he’s talking about, when he remembers wiping his nose earlier.

“I get nosebleeds too,” Morty continues, toothache-earnest. “They’re, uh, they’re really gross. One time I-I had one when I was sleeping and-and it got all over my pillow, and when I woke up Summer asked me if I got my p-period. But I didn’t, i-it was just a nosebleed. Mom said it’s because I pick my nose but I-I don’t do that anymore.”

“This is, uh,” dry-mouthed, “this is really fascinating lore you’re sharing with me, Morty.”

“Really?” Morty looks surprised. “When I—when I get nosebleeds, um, D-Dad—Dad told me to tilt my head back so the blood stays in. He, uh, he used to help me put tissues in my nose when I was little.”

“Jerry’s a fucking moron, Morty, you-you’re not supposed to tilt your head back, that makes the blood go down your throat, you’d probably—you can choke that way,” Rick snaps, forgetting in his irritation that he doesn’t give a fuck whether Morty chokes or not, what does he care. “Miracle you’re still alive,” he mutters, “no thanks to your dad.”

“Oh,” Morty says. “I-I didn’t know.”

At this point, even if they portal to Shoney’s, the service is going to be terrible.

“Um. C-can I have my pajamas? It’s cold.”

“Fine.” Rick makes a show of looking around for them, even if he honestly has no clue where he tossed them, they could be…sitting on the table right next to Morty, now crusted with drying blood. Whatever, those were too small for Morty anyways, he barely fits in them; they ride up and show his stomach when he sleeps. He must’ve had them since he was a kid: they have little spaceships on them. The sort of dumb thing Jerry probably found in the bargain bin at Walmart. Rick will just get him another set.

“C’mon, buddy,” Rick tells Morty, winding an arm around his back to help him off the table; he’s too short for his feet to touch the ground. “We’re—I’ll bring you upstairs and we can get you your pajamas.”

Morty nods, leaning warm into Rick’s side. As they walk Rick can hear Morty’s bare feet on the garage floor.

The house is dark. Rick patiently guides Morty to the stairs, hand resting on the small of his back. For a moment he’s on edge as they walk past the living room, just in case Beth snuck down here earlier to sightlessly watch the TV on mute, like she’s been doing recently for the sole purpose of scaring the fuck out of Rick when he’s just trying to grab a goddamn beer. But she’s not there. And even if she was there, sitting on the couch, watching whatever Beths watch at midnight, she wouldn’t say anything. Why would she say anything, even if she was there, which she’s not, and she’s not anywhere else downstairs either: he’s just putting his grandson to bed.

“Stairs,” he says softly, warning Morty, like he doesn’t live in this house or something. Morty startles a little at the sound of his voice.

He’s just putting his grandson to bed. Someone else — some kind of ‘therapist’ might see this and think, uncharitably, that Rick was taking Morty upstairs to do something nefarious to him, because, apparently, he can’t spend time with his fucking grandson without everyone on the planet lining up at his door to get upset at him anymore, he can’t look at him, can’t speak to him, can’t touch him —

He’s just putting his grandson to bed. They’re going to walk upstairs and straight to Morty’s room, and then Rick is going to tuck him into bed and give him a kiss goodnight, on the forehead, unless, of course, Morty decides when they get up there that Rick’s not allowed in his room anymore.

Morty stumbles on a step, because of course he does; Rick sees it and catches him, pulling him closer to his side.

If he was going to do something fucked-up to Morty, he wouldn’t take him upstairs where his daughters are sleeping, grand- and regular. Anyone would have to admit that that would be stupid, and irrational, and Rick is not stupid or irrational. QED. Morty is shivering against him.

Right; Morty, in his blood-stained underwear. It would be, now that Rick really thinks about it, mean, even cruel, to put him to bed in his gross little tighty-whities, or tighty-reddies, whatever sticky blood Rick missed still drying on his chest. Morty would certainly bitch at him about it the next day. In fact, it would be better and easier for all parties involved if he were to get Morty cleaned up before bed. He steers Morty towards the bathroom.

“Where are we going, Rick,” Morty whispers, sounding more sober now. “I-I thought we were going to get—to get my pajamas.”

“We are, Morty, hold your horses, Jesus, but you’ve still got blood all over you, you look like, fuckin’, Carrie White over here, we’re just gonna take a quick shower first.”

“Sh—shower,” Morty repeats, sounding nervous for some reason. Rick can feel him go stiff against his arm. Anger rises quick and hot inside him.

“Yeah, a shower, Morty, you ever heard—you ever take one before, just kidding, you clearly haven’t, and Axe body spray doesn’t count. I-it’s a great invention, Morty, you should really try it sometime. You—you don’t want Summer asking if you got your period again, do you?”

“N—no,” Morty mumbles. “But—”

“Look, Morty, I-I don’t give a fuck either way, you can go right ahead if you want and fuck off back to your room yourself, just—just trying to be a good grandpa here, but fuck me I guess for trying to save you from sleeping in your own blood and guts.”

“I-I didn’t mean—I’m sorry, I-I just, I’m tired, Rick.”

“You just slept for, what, five hours? What do you have to be tired about? I’m the tired one here, Morty, so move your ass already and we can both go to bed.” Rick doesn’t quite shove him into the bathroom, reaching around the corner to hit the light switch.

Morty jumps when Rick closes the door behind them, like he has anything to be afraid of. Blood roiling in his veins, Rick folds his arms, leans back against the door with casual disinterest. He looks at the mirror. Then he looks at the sink.

Red hair is crawling out onto the countertop. Fucking Summer. Gross. He’ll never understand why women insist on washing their hair in the sink when they could just do it all in the shower. He wonders, absently, if Beth still keeps that bottle of wine in the toilet tank. She might have finished it all already.

“Hey, R-Rick, are you just gonna, um, are you just gonna stand there while I… y’know,” Morty says, interrupting Rick’s inspection of the riveting interior design of the bathroom. Rick lifts his eyebrow, giving Morty his best dead-cockroach look. Morty seems very small like this, goosebumps prickling all over his body.

“Morty,” he says, sounding as bored as possible, “I—look, I know you think I’m obsessed with you, but I promise I have better things to do than sit around and look at your tiny little dick, so you—so it’d be great if you could hurry it up, b-because I have shit way more important than you to work on tonight.”

It’s interesting how Morty blushes all the way down to his chest. “M-my dick’s not—”

“Morty, you know I have eyes, right? If I wanted to—if I was desperate to check out a micropenis I’d just go to Jerry’s motel room.”

“Jeez, alright, y-you don’t have to bust my balls, Rick,” Morty mumbles.

“Some time this century would be nice, Morty, not like I need to get back to curing space AIDS or anything.”

“I’m going, I’m going! Just — don’t look,” he says, turning his back to Rick.

Rick scoffs. “Trust me, I’m not.” He is, actually, in the mirror, watching Morty shimmy his underwear off and letting it drop to the floor, just to check, and yep, just as he remembers: Morty’s disgusting naked body, not attractive in the least. Morty fumbles for a towel, and Rick rolls his eyes, starts to remove his coat.

“W—Rick, why are you taking off your shirt?!”

“Morty, you just went through surgery and the anesthetic — you’re welcome, by the way — is still in your bloodstream,” Rick explains patiently. “If I let you go in there by yourself, you’re going to pass out, crack your head open, and then I’m going to have to spend another couple hours piecing together your Humpty-Dumpty ass, and, like I said, I don’t have all night to babysit you, Morty . Any more questions?”

“I feel fine,” Morty protests in his annoying little whiny voice. “I-I don’t feel dizzy or anything.”

“Not a question, and I don’t know what they’re teaching you in that school, but hot water makes your blood vessels expand, Morty, and your blood moves to your superfi—to under your skin, and if you look down you might be able to figure out, Morty, you might be able to rub two brains cells together and realize that you don’t have a ton of it in you right now.” Rick tosses his coat and sweater onto the counter. “You need to get the fuck over yourself, seriously, I-I’m even leaving my pants on for you and everything. C’mon, in you go.”

Morty objects as Rick herds him into the shower, shrinking into the corner when Rick reaches to turn on the water.

“I don’t know if you know how this works, Morty, but you actually need to get under the water.”

“I-I — I can take a shower tomorrow, it’s fine,” Morty babbles. “You don’t have to — you can go back downstairs and work on the space AIDS thing, I don’t mind.”

The glass is already starting to fog up from the heat. Leaving his pants on was stupidly considerate; the water starts soaking uncomfortably into the fabric. “Morty, Jesus Christ, just get rid of that towel so we can get this over with.”

“You’re gonna make fun of me,” Morty says, looking like a scared rat.

Rick sighs. “I’m not, Morty, come on —”

“You were making fun of me a minute ago! You—you called my, my thing, tiny!”

“Morty, I promise I won’t make fun of your tiny penis, on my honor.”

“Y-you don’t have honor, you-you said honor is for morons and judges!”

Did he say that? He needs to workshop it. Morons and judges — it’d be better if there was some kind of alliteration. Jackasses and judges? Maybe he should drop the judge thing altogether, it’s an admittedly weak joke.

“ And ,” Morty continues, jabbing a finger at Rick with the arm he was using to hold up his towel, “y-you just made fun of me again!”

Rick looks down at the towel, now lying soggy and pathetic on the shower floor. “You wanna get that?”

Morty actually does bend to pick it up, but then he straightens up like he’s been electrocuted, and seems to settle for covering his junk with his hands.

“Y-you know what, Rick, fine, just-just get it over with.”

“Fucking finally,” Rick says. “That’s what I was saying from the beginning, Morty, I-I don’t know why you have to make everything so god damn difficult.”

“Whatever,” Morty mumbles.

Rick grabs a nice-looking washcloth that’s hanging on the shower door handle, Beth’s, probably, and selects an appropriately fruity-looking pink bottle of soap, squirting it onto the washcloth.

“What are you — Rick, I-I can wash myself, you really don’t have to —”

“Morty, remember like 30 seconds ago, when you were being a little baby bitch about taking a shower, and I told you that I’m not trying to spend another several hours operating on you? Yes, I do have to. If you wanna try and wash yourself and fall and break your neck, by, by all means, you can go for it, knock yourself out, I’m just — just trying to do you a solid here. I know you’ve probably been watching some crazy shit on Pornhub—”

“I don’t—what—”

“ — but whatever bizarre ideas you have about what’s happening here, it’s not that. Okay? Don’t make it weird.”

“ I’m not the one making it weird, I—you—we’re in the shower together, Rick! That’s weird!”

Rick frowns down at him. “Being a little closed-minded there, don’t you think? Plenty of cultures shower together, Morty, i-in Japan they do it all the time, you’re-you’re gonna tell some Japanese dad that he’s some kind of p—pervert for getting in the bath with his kids?”

“Wh—not our culture! We’re white!”

“What culture,” Rick says, “and you’re white, Morty. Clearly. It was an example, dummy, I’m just saying that it’s not inherently sexual to take baths or showers together, a-and I’m offended that you would even imply that, I mean, you think I’m just gonna start bad-touching you ‘cause I’m trying to help you clean up after surgery, Morty, is that what you think?”

“I wasn’t saying it was, you know, I wasn’t saying that,” Morty insists, looking down and then quickly looking at the shower door, “I just—”

“You just what , Morty? I—I washed your ass when you were a baby, sitting in one of those little plastic tubs, you-you’re gonna accuse me, you think that was some kind of sexual thing too?”

“No! I—”

“What the fuck do you think this is, am I your creepy gym teacher, Jesus Christ, Morty, I’m your grandpa, where do you get off on implying that I’m going to—”

“ — alright, okay, I-I-I—I’m sorry, I’m just, y’know, I haven’t—I don’t really—since I was little—I’m just, I dunno, a little old for this.”

“Old— age has nothing to do with anything, Morty, you—how do you think quadriplegics wash themselves? Huh? You want some guy who can’t use his arms and legs to get in the shower by himself because you think someone helping him out is weird? Sitting there getting fuckin’ waterboarded because Morty Smith over here thinks that nobody should shower together, you-you got a future working in Gitmo with that attitude, I’m just saying.”

“Fine! Jesus! Do—do whatever you want, Rick, I get it,” Morty snaps, staring hard at the door. “Just, hurry up.”

“I’m helping you out here, Morty, you could be a little grateful.”

Morty snorts and says nothing. Little jackass. Rick holds up the washcloth for Morty’s inspection. Like letting a dog sniff the hand that’s going to pet it. “This work for you, your royal highness?”

“That’s Summer’s shampoo,” Morty informs him, like Rick didn’t know that.

“It’s all soap,” Rick says, annoyed. Of course Morty would be precious about soap . The littlest fucking things; he’s lucky Rick’s in a good mood tonight. Sometimes he can’t believe Morty’s actually straight, what with all his little sensibilities and ideas about what soap goes in what place. “I just figured, since you’re being a little puritan about it, you wouldn’t want me rubbing a bar of soap all over your body, thought you might prefer it this way, that’s all.”

“Fine, yeah, that’s—whatever, doesn’t matter.”

He goes for Morty’s armpit with the washcloth, and Morty shivers, jerking his arm down reflexively and trapping Rick’s hand.

“Morty—”

“Sorry! I’m—I’m sorry, I just, it’s ticklish.” Rick’s glad, suddenly, that he thought to keep his pants on. Morty raises his arm slowly, with intense concentration, the other still blocking his crotch.

“You finally got some hair growing here,” Rick notes.

“Shut—don’t point it out,” Morty mutters. “It’s w—embarrassing.”

“What is it with you and-and calling shit weird . Nothing weird about it. I got plenty of hair growing down here if you wanna take a look, I’m not ashamed.”

“I know,” Morty says, not looking, “you’re not.”

“It’s natural, Morty,” Rick says, moving to the other armpit. "They don't teach you about that shit in health class?"

“I mean, yeah, I-I guess, but I don’t really pay attention. It’s not like I don’t know all that stuff already.”

“Wow,” Rick says, whistling low and soft, “real—real hotshot over here, Morty Smith , got it all figured out. Bet you’ve been doing a lot of ‘independent research.’ Just so you know—hot tip, Morty, XHamster isn’t a valid source for your papers.”

Morty’s breath hitches. “Can you, not, talk about that right now,” Morty mumbles.

“About what?”

“About—me watching porn!”

“Why not?” Rick asks. Butter wouldn’t melt. “Not like you’re trying to hide it.”

“I—I’m naked, Rick!”

Like Rick hadn’t noticed. “So?”

“So it’s, it’s weird. ”

Rick does his best to look offended and grossed out. “Again with the fucking ‘weird’, Morty, even mentioning the website you spend 16 hours on a day like it’s your job, you’re gonna freak out and assume that I’m driving at something weird here, Morty? I’m not exactly—I know you think I’m some kind of monster, but believe me, I’m as excited as you are to discuss your porn habits . Little fucked up to be getting hot and bothered while I’m just trying to clean you up here.”

“I-I-I’m not hot and—I just—it’s weird , Rick, you’re making me feel—we-we shouldn’t be talking about porn right now.” He’s still got his hands over his dick. Like Rick hasn’t seen it all before.

“Nothing weird about it, Morty, like I said, nothing to be ashamed of. Not like your dad’s around to talk about this, and, I mean, let’s be honest here, I’m not even sure he’s gone through puberty yet either.”

He brings the washcloth to Morty’s chest. Morty shivers, avoiding eye contact. Rick gets an idea. He twists an arm to reach behind him to the faucet, turns the water a little warmer. Morty doesn’t seem to notice. “Everyone jerks off, Morty, even your mom and your sister, gross as that is to think about, i-it’s perfectly natural.”

“Rick, don’t—I don’t want to hear about—”

“ — even I — look, Morty, your grandpa — Grandpa’s got a lot of people in his proverbial DMs, Morty, I-I usually have someone to take care of that kind of thing for me, but even I jerk it sometimes when I don’t feel like coordinating all the people that want me, i-it’s more complicated than you think, if I don’t do the scheduling right sometimes they overlap and-and they get jealous, Morty, they want me all to themselves, sometimes it’s just easier to hit up the old ‘hub. What’s your problem, why are you looking at me like that.”

Morty grabs his wrist, holding him still. He’s staring at some distant point on the floor. “I-I think—I think we’re done, we can get out now.”

Rick feels his face twist into a scowl. “I’m not done yet, buddy, still got a little bit to go, just chill, dawg, okay, I’m almost finished.”

“No, I — I’m done, Rick, I wanna get out.”

“Morty,” Rick says impatiently, rolling his eyes, “don’t be such a little bitch, y-you’re never gonna get laid if you freak out every time someone mentions sex around you.”

Morty tries to wrench Rick’s hand off him, which, Rick’s not sure what he was expecting to accomplish with that, only one of them has a cybernetic arm and it’s not Morty. “I-I-I-I’m not being a little b-bitch, Rick! You know, you’re-you’re making me real uncomfortable, talking about porn and sex and stuff while you’re, t-t-touching me, and it’s—it’s—you know!”

“No,” Rick says calmly, “I really don’t know, Morty, you wanna—could you explain it for me, I’m genuinely curious. Am I doing something wrong here, Morty, trying to take care of my grandson, is that what you’re trying to say?”

Morty glances up at him and then looks away quickly, chewing on his lip. “I’m not saying it’s—that you’re doing something wrong, that’s not what I meant, I-I’m just saying it looks —”

“ I’ll tell you what it looks like, Morty,” turning the water even warmer, “it looks like I’m trying to be a good grandpa and help you clean yourself up after you went through open-heart surgery, Morty, it looks like I’ve been putting up with your neurotic bullshit all night when I just want to get this over with as much as you do so I can get back to doing something actually worth my time, Morty, it looks like you’re losing your shit over something completely innocuous because you’ve got these weird little ideas floating around in that tiny brain of yours. But if you don’t want me touching you, I’m more than happy to—I can go and get Beth over here and she can finish the job, if that’s what you want, Morty, I’m happy to do that if that’s what you want, I’ll go out right now and wake her up and she can come in here and throw up when she sees your disgusting little body, and then you can go ahead and accuse her of trying to have sex with you, if that’s what you want.”

"What?" Morty says, shrinking back against the shower wall for some reason, like he isn’t the one accusing Rick of all this shit — if anything, Rick should be the one compressing himself into the mildewed tile. "Jeez, Rick, I don’t—what, what are you even talking about—”

“What am I talking about,” Rick repeats, indignant, “what are you talking about? Basically accusing me of — Jesus Christ, Morty, I know this divorce thing has you all fucked up, you’re lashing out and everything, but I’m an innocent party here, I’m literally just trying to help you, if-if you wanna get mad at anyone get mad at your dad for putting you in this position in the first place, i-in fact, why don’t you go ahead accuse your dad of trying to fuck you, Morty, I’m sure he’s given you a bath when you were a baby too, and according to you that’s completely unacceptable.”

“That’s not—I never said—”

“That’s not what , Morty, your dad gets to play by different rules now, is that it? I mean, fuck, I’m sure—it’s not like you slap some shitty little sign on your door when he walks into your room.”

Morty stares at him. “Wh—you did take my sign!”

“I have no fucking idea what happened to your sign, Morty, i-it was just an example, I’m not—I’m working on a plasma laser that’s capable of wiping all of eastern Washington off the map, and that’s on its lowest setting, Morty, I’m a genius, why the fuck would I care about some little fucking poster you made, you-you probably taped it like shit and it fell off and Beth or Summer threw it away.”

Morty’s chest heaves; he takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Look, Rick, it’s not personal, okay, I didn’t mean anything by it, I-I-I just don't want you, or Dad, or anyone , coming in my room while I'm, y'know,” Morty bites his lip, he’s going to chew right through the skin at this rate and then Rick will have to put him under again , “taking care of myself!”

“ Taking care of yourself? ” Rick sneers. “Alright, Morty, so—so what you’re saying is ‘taking care of yourself’ takes priority over my important science, Morty, is that what you’re saying here, you’d just let the whole world explode if it meant getting your dick wet — oh, wait, right, we know you would because you’ve done it already.” Morty’s making this face to make Rick feel bad, which isn’t going to work on him, he sees right through it, manipulative little jackass. “You're really fucking up my workflow here, Morty, taking care of yourself 24/7, basically, when am I—when are you gonna find time to help me with my work, I-I-I mean, can’t you just take care of yourself at night like a normal person or something?”

“Rick, you-you-you came into my room last night at three in the morning!”

“Who jerks off at three in the morning?”

“I’m —that’s a normal — I’m growing, I have urges!”

“Oh, like you're the only one with urges! ” Rick snarls. “I’ve got plenty of — listen, it’s not like I don’t get plenty of action, and unlike you most of it isn’t hand-to-gland combat, but the difference between me and you, Morty, is that I don’t let my dick control my life. Maybe you need to figure out your fucking priorities, here, okay, i-if you’re going to adventure with me I need you to take this shit seriously, otherwise, I mean, I might as well take Summer with me instead, I’m sure she would rather do cool fun shit with me instead of beating her meat into a pulp!”

Morty pulls at his hair, his frustrated cry echoing in the bathroom. "Do you--do you want me to put on a chastity cage or something?!” he shouts for the entire fucking house, no, the entire block to hear.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Morty, keep your voice down, first you think I’m gonna r—bad touch you, now you think I want you in a chastity cage? You know, you've got a real, real sick mind, Morty, to want your grandpa to put you in a chastity cage. Is that why you don’t want me in your room, because you’re thinking about—you have all these thoughts about me, Morty? Is that why?” Rick gets up in Morty’s face, and then freezes.

Something is poking him in the leg.

“Hey, buddy, what’s, uh, what’s going on down there?”

Morty starts crying; Rick’s surprised it took him that long. He’s so ugly when he cries, and annoying, and he has no fucking right to be crying when he spent the whole night basically gaslighting Rick.

“I knew it,” Rick says, awed. “I knew — you were projecting onto me!”

“Wuh-what are you t-t-t-talking about,” Morty sobs, scrubbing at his face. He reaches for the shower door but Rick blocks him. Not so fucking fast, he thinks: now he’s finally caught Morty in the act.

“ What are you talking about, ” Rick mocks, then laughs. “You know exactly what the fuck I’m talking about, you little—you little sneaky—sneak. The sign, you accusing me of trying to have sex with you in here, that was all because you wanted to throw me off, because you wanted to have sex with me . Fucking devious, a-and here I was starting to feel bad, too. Jesus!”

“I don’t—I’m not—this isn’t—” Morty starts pretending to hyperventilate. “I-I-I don’t want to have sex with you, Rick!”

“Yeah?” Rick backs him into a corner. “Yeah? You don’t? This is what not wanting to have sex with me looks like, Morty, you and your little hard-on? Were you—were you planning on telling me about any of this, or-or were you just going to keep it to yourself? I mean, I’ve got my — I’ve got my shirt off, Morty, b-because I honestly didn’t think you were trying to get a piece of this, I came in here completely innocent, I just wanted to help you. Kinda fucked up, don’t you think? Not telling me — that’s basically rape, Morty.”

Morty starts crying harder, which is really, to be honest, killing Rick’s vibe. Figures he can’t even let Rick have the satisfaction of his own vindication. “Morty, relax, I don’t know why you’re freaking out.”

“You’re wrong,” Morty shouts, “I-I-I, I’m not, I don’t want to, y-y-you were talking about porn, and s-sex, and stuff, and,” hiccuping, “you were confusing me, a-and really-really scaring me, Rick, a-a-and that’s why I have a boner, I don’t want to .”

“Bullshit,” Rick says. “I’ve never gotten a boner from being scared, Morty, that's not how it works,” though he actually has plenty of times and that is in fact how it works, he actually created a thriving interplanetary industry around it, but he’s willing to bet they haven’t covered that in Morty's health class.

Morty snorts up snot. “I-I-I just wanna get out now, Rick, I-I don’t know why you’re being so mean to me but wuh-whatever I did, I’m sorry , just let me out.”

“Fine, Morty, if that’s what you want, we can get out, I just need to—just wanna check—you're not going to go to Beth and tell her about this, right?”

“What?” Morty stops crying for a second in order to give Rick this scared look. “N—no?”

“Good, because just between you and me, Morty, she came to my room earlier and she said she was concerned you might be having some — weird sexual feelings towards me, and I’m just worried she might, y’know, she might get the wrong idea about what’s going on in here, that’s all.”

“What? Mom said that? No she didn't,” Morty says, sniffling. “No she didn’t!”

“She did , Morty, kinda messed up of her, I know, and of course I told her that you didn't—that you can't help being a little creepy weirdo, you're going through puberty, but I don't think she believed me, Morty, and, well, now we know why. Now if you go to her and start telling her stories about Grandpa—about you getting in the shower with Grandpa, well — think of it from her point of view. She'll be wondering what you were doing naked in the shower with me. Think about it, Morty.”

“She'll be wondering what you were doing in the shower with me!”

“With the divorce and everything,” Rick continues, ignoring him, “your mom—she might decide you can't live under the same roof as me, Morty. She'll send you to live with your dad, Morty. And, I can protect you here, but over there, Morty, with your useless piece of shit dad, no offense, if — if some real freaks wanted to grab you and fry you up on a hibachi grill, I wouldn’t—I couldn’t do anything about it, dawg.”

“Rick—Rick, you’re, you’re really screwing with my head here, I-I don’t—”

“I'm screwing with your head?” Rick says at a normal volume. “ I’m screwing with your head? You putting up that fucking sign — that’s not screwing with my head? Popping a fucking boner when I’m just trying to clean the blood off you — that’s not screwing with my head?”

“I’m sorry,” Morty whimpers, and then he fucking starts crying again. There’s no way he can store that much water inside him. Rick wonders if Morty was drinking the shower water when he wasn’t looking. He’s starting to get a headache.

“You should be,” Rick says, lamely. They’re both quiet, then, except for the patter of water on tile and Morty’s wet sniffling.

“Listen,” Rick says softly. “Hey, Morty. Morty, look at me.”

The floor must be pretty fucking interesting the way Morty’s staring at it. He feels his patience start to slip. “I said, look at me. ”

Morty looks at him. The expression on his face is so pathetic it makes Rick think there should be ASPCA sad music playing in the background. Leave it to Morty to make Rick feel bad for no fucking reason; he’s got a real gift.

“Okay, I can admit I might have been a little harsh on you, Morty. I know—I remember what it's like to have urges, Morty, like I was saying, it’s perfectly natural. And I just wanna say it's okay if you want Grandpa, Morty. Lotta—lotta people around the galaxy want a piece of me, Morty, a ton of guys would rip your balls out from your throat just to get a chance to be naked in the shower with me like you are right now.”

“I don’t—” Morty starts, then seems to think better of it. “Y-yeah. Okay.”

“It’s normal, is all I’m trying to say, Morty. Don’t be—don’t feel ashamed. It’s not a big deal. I don’t mind. You’re looking at me like you don’t believe me, but this time—but I’m telling the truth.”

“I believe you,” Morty says, bobbing his head, seeming much calmer now. Like being in the eye of a tornado. Or — no, it’s like Morty is some kind of tamed animal, not like a lion or bear or anything but maybe a little baby horse. Rick smiles down at him, buoyed by his own generosity. He feels good enough that he gets even closer to Morty, cranking up the temperature even more. It’s starting to get unbearably hot, even for him.

“Listen, Morty,” he says again, reaching to thumb at Morty’s hipbone and hearing a sharp intake of breath. “Lemme—let Grandpa make it up to you. I-I’m gonna, gonna help you out here, okay, and, listen to me here, I don't want to be doing this any more than you do, but you’re recovering from surgery, so it’s only fair if I help you. If you broke your arms, I'd help you out too, Morty, and you could post about it on Reddit and get a million karma for it, Morty.”

“What are you—” Morty’s voice cracks. He rallies. “What are you talking about, Rick?”

“I’m not going to judge you,” Rick continues. “This is a judgment-free zone. We’re—this is weird for everyone, Morty, and scary, and I-I know this is hard for you to believe, but even I had to figure this stuff out at one point. And, you know, I just want to give you—make sure you have a safe space to experiment, so you don’t end up like your dad and knock up the first girl unfortunate enough to — the first girl you mess around with.”

“Um,” Morty says.

“And normally you’d be doing this in high school, you’d be figuring out that none of this is a big deal, Morty, none of it actually means anything, i-it’s all biology and hormones. It’s not a big deal,” Rick says kindly, warming to a paternal tone. “We’re—you and I, Morty, we’re men of science. So we’re smart enough to know, Morty, that none of this—whatever society says, we don’t have to subscribe to their puritanical backwards beliefs, we can rise above whatever our monkey brains are tricking us into thinking. Right? I just want to help you out, Morty, t-that’s—that’s all. You trust me, right?”

“Yeah,” Morty says immediately. “Yeah, I-I trust you, Rick, a-and, y’know, I’m thinking that, maybe we should continue this conversation, um, outside the shower, maybe, it’s getting a little hot in here and I’m starting to feel real dizzy, a-and I know that’s what you were afraid of, y-you were right, so I just, don’t want to break my head open, because you’d need to spend time fixing it, so maybe we should—”

Morty said he trusted Rick, which is all he really needed to hear, so he reaches down and takes Morty in his hand.

“What the fuck!” Morty gasps, shoving Rick away from him. Rick collides into the little ledge where Summer keeps all her fancy soaps and other assorted girl shit, sending bottles clattering to the floor. It really fucking hurts where Rick hit it, right in the center of his spine.

“Jesus fuck, Morty, c-can you not be such a fucking spaz for two seconds?” Rick snarls. “You said you trusted me!”

“What the fuck is wrong with you!” Morty yells, his little Morty chest heaving, looking at Rick like Rick’s the asshole here. And of course he starts crying again.

“Shh, Morty, calm down, you wanna wake the whole house up — it's okay, it's okay, don’t cry, c’mon, I didn’t mean to scare you, it’s alright, buddy, you’re okay.” Rick reaches over to sorta awkwardly pet Morty’s hair. No way to possibly misinterpret that. Morty flinches away from him — Rick was just patting his fucking head! “My bad, Morty, I-I forgot how sensitive you are about these things. Look, after this — not right after this, they’re closed for the night, b-but tomorrow morning, first thing, I’ll take you to Shoney’s and we’ll get some pancakes, alright?”

"I don’t want pancakes!” Morty’s voice is still too-loud. “You can't just -- m-molest me and then-then-then tell me you're gonna take me to Shoney's, Rick, like that’s—that’s gonna make it all better, that’s not, that’s not how it works,” Morty says, sounding like he’s trying to convince himself.

“You don’t like Shoney’s?” This is easily the biggest betrayal of the night.

“No! You like Shoney's!”

“It’s a good restaurant, Morty,” Rick says primly, unwilling to believe that this is his own flesh and blood saying this shit, “that serves nice American food for people on a budget. Kinda classist of you. And, come on, molesting , really? You're 14, not 9, a-and you just finished lecturing me on your god-given right to watch porn whenever—whenever the hell you want. If-if sex is so scarring to you, then maybe I should just block Pornhub on the wifi, Morty, i-is that what you want?”

“Fine! Do it! I-I don’t care! I-I’ll—I’ll just use a VPN!”

“Morty, NordVPN is not going to stop me from blocking you from Pornhub. Just—for the love of God, stop fucking crying, y-you’re starting to make me feel like an asshole here.”

“You,” Morty starts, and he seems to be at a loss for words, for once.

“Me,” Rick repeats, edging closer to Morty, who looks like he’s malfunctioning. “Listen, Morty, I-I was just trying to prove that it’s not a big deal, Morty, i-in high school, you’d know if you had—in high school people are giving each other handjobs all over the place, it’s not even a big deal. And I feel bad that you haven’t been getting that, and it looks like that hurts,” he says, looking pointedly downwards. He reaches for Morty, again, and Morty’s hands go up to Rick’s chest, again, but this time he doesn’t push Rick away.

“Rick,” Morty says, and Rick politely waits for him to continue, but he doesn’t, so Rick keeps going. Morty’s expression has smoothed into something completely unreadable. He shudders when Rick runs his thumb over the head, breathing fast and shallow. Humming, Rick brings a hand up to rub Morty’s shoulder soothingly. If he’s being honest, he was expecting more of a fight, but Morty seems to have grasped that Rick really is just trying to help him out, the way birds caught in wire will go limp and pliant when you try to extract them.

“You’re okay, Morty, I got you,” Rick murmurs low into Morty’s ear.

“Can you,” Morty’s voice breaks, “the water, can you turn the water down, i-it’s really—it’s really hot in here.”

“Sure, Morty.” He does it, obliging, and Morty groans with relief in a way that makes Rick feel like there’s a live wire running directly into his dick. Morty sways on his feet, and Rick catches him before he slips, holding Morty against his chest. He can feel Morty’s heart fluttering small-animal fast against his skin, and can see, with sudden, startling clarity, why other Ricks do this.

It’s taking — longer than Rick expected, not that he was expecting anything, he just always figured that Morty would be a quick shot. Morty’s making pained little noises into Rick’s body, whimpering softly with each stroke like it hurts him, and it should be good, for Morty, at least, but he looks like he’s somewhere else, zoning out the way he does after particularly bad adventures. This isn’t what Rick wanted.

He realizes: the ketamine’s probably still in Morty’s system. Fucking on K always feels, to him, like someone texting him about an orgasm they had a couple of days ago. God fucking damn it.

“I’m trying,” Morty says, sounding far away, “but I-I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“Think—think of Jennica,” Rick says, a last-ditch effort that makes his mouth fill with sour spit.

“Her name,” Morty pants out, “her name’s Jessica.”

“I don’t give a fuck what her name is,” Rick snaps, but thinking of her seems to do the trick, because a few moments later Morty tenses against him and then relaxes, letting out a low, relieved sigh. Rick examines his hand, a small amount of pearly fluid pooling in his palm. That’s that, then. He brings it, unthinking, up to his mouth.

“N-not, not trying to make you feel self-conscious or anything, buddy, but your cum tastes fucking awful,” he tries, his voice ringing off-key in the bathroom.

Rick waits. Morty says nothing. He reaches behind Morty to wash his hand off in the water.

Morty is quiet as Rick maneuvers him out of the shower and sets him down on the toilet seat. He can hear, in the silent bathroom, the sound of water dripping off Morty into the bowl. He retrieves his sweater and coat, pulling them on. The fabric sticks unpleasantly to his skin but he barely feels it. Rick pulls a clean towel from the cabinet. Morty is staring absently at the tiled floor, and doesn’t react when Rick kneels down in front of him to towel him off. He starts with Morty’s hair, which frizzes from the friction of the towel, and makes his way down to Morty’s feet, carefully drying each individual toe. There’s a small scar on the inside of Morty’s thigh that he must have missed; he dries that carefully, too.

“Hey, Morty,” Rick says, reaching into his coat. Morty doesn’t respond, but Rick wasn’t expecting him to. He calibrates the gun, then lines it up with Morty’s eyes. “Look over here.”

The flash flares brighter than usual in the steam. Morty blinks, shakes himself.

“What—where..?”

“Heard you fall in the shower, buddy,” Rick says, trying to remember how to arrange his face in the normal way. “D-didn’t want you drowning in there, so I pulled you out. Here.” He hands Morty the towel he’s holding, and Morty takes it gratefully, covering himself up.

“Aw jeez,” Morty mumbles, rubbing his eyes. “I-I — I fell? But I thought I already took a shower before I went to bed…”

“You doing alright, Morty?” Rick asks, and pushes himself up off his knees, not waiting for the answer. “Come on, let’s-let’s get you to bed.”

“Okay,” Morty says. “Um—thank you. For helping me. K-kinda lame of me to pass out.” He chuckles weakly.

“Don’t mention it,” Rick tells him, opening the bathroom door and letting the steam out into the hallway.

He waits outside for Morty to put on his underwear and pajamas. Standing in the hallway, he thinks nothing at all. He leaves before Morty has the chance to say goodnight, walks down the hallway, walks downstairs, opens the door to the garage, opens the door to the sub-basement, and climbs down to the Backup Room. He doesn’t bother flicking on the lights. The dark walls are neatly lined with blue vats of fluid that cast a soft ambient glow, a sleeping body in each one. He walks up to one vat and hits the release button, the body inside carried out with the rush of fluid, which drains into the floor, hitting the ground with a wet thump. It coughs amniotic fluid out of its lungs, and turns its face up towards Rick, the look in its eyes too-familiar.

“Hey,” Rick says, voice soft.

 

Notes:

cue rick and a clone rifling through every cabinet in the house looking for a $10 Shoney's gift card that expired two years ago

title from angela carter’s “flesh and the mirror”.
fic for laurel , an incredibly talented writer, wonderful and patient friend, and basically the only reason i'm still writing for this fandom. this fic was originally started 6 months ago as an homage to coercivity , but it took a life of its own, as usual
thank you to kit for beta-ing and moral support :-)