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"I can come visit you, Morty! W—we got — we got a doorway! And now that I don't have a dumb wife, I have all the time in the world. I—I can go on adventures, Morty! We — we can go on adventures!"
And for the whole moment it took for him to listen to a version of his grandfather's manic ranting, Morty truly did believe it.
He truly believed that even in a reality where his family scared him with the intensity of their affection, he could at least get away with having a Rick of his own. A Rick who, for once, wanted him around. A Rick that had chosen him. Over everything else. Over his own wife.
Yet even as he dared to hope, Morty was a creature of nervous habit, "You're…sure I didn't ruin your life?"
His fear did not dissipate. Even when this Rick cupped his jaw, and smiled through his beard.
"You saved me."
Even when this Rick leaned in and kissed him.
Because it had happened before.
It always seems to happen. To Morty. Who closes his eyes and allows for Rick to press his lips over his own. There is always give and take. And he had taken everything this Rick had to give, so it was only fair for Morty to acquiesce this — a bit of affection. A tradeoff for care.
It felt inevitable, always.
This moment where Morty had to accept the other shoe dropping.
There was probably some parallel dimension where, as his grandfather so often said, the exact same circumstance happened. Or when it never did. Where a near-identical version of himself was lead to this exact moment. Had to make the same choice as Morty did now.
A reality where he was still Mort.
Only that Mort had gotten away.
On Friday, Mort had taken Jessica out for ice-cream.
His parents liked Jessica. She was put-together, came from a nice family, and she looked good in photos where she was holding onto the leather sleeve of his varsity jacket.
It was easier to escape, when he went out with Jessica.
"Did Z get back to you yet?"
It was easier for his father to let him go, if he thought he was going out on a date with the prettiest girl in school.
"I don't want to bother him too much, he's still waiting on his midterm results," Mort replies, gazing up at the stars across the planetarium's dome. He likes it here. There's comfort, in the stars, in his insignificance compared to the vastness of the universe. It makes his problems seem small.
Somehow. Space makes Mort feel less alone.
Jessica presses her lips over his shoulder, "Well…if he does answer you, and says yes, I think you should go," Mort looks down at her, she gazes up at him with teary eyes, "It's your only chance, Mort. You gotta get away before your family gets you killed."
He makes an effort to hug her back. Jessica sobs a bit in his arms, and then leads him to a darker corner of the atrium to fish his penis out of his jeans.
She's sweet like that. Always trying to make him feel relief, in the only way they think they can. And Mort does like her — likes the way she smiles at him, likes her red hair, likes the way she believed him, after spilling his guts about how nuts his dad is. How his mom enables her husband. How his big sister got indoctrinated somewhere between middle-school and freshmen year into treating Mort like some divine patriarch in the making.
Summer really hurt him the most. She used to color with him, and make pictures of the planets whenever Mort asked. But when Jerry started pushing him into sports, Summer's voice began to blur with their parents.
That's my brother! That's my little brother!
She became someone who was in charge of making sure Mort didn't party too hard, and monitored him during school hours, and told his parents if something was wrong because she worried about him all the time.
Mort just wanted to breathe every once in a while.
Even if that meant inhaling Jessica's perfume as she let him cum over her panties. That was fine. She was the only one who seemed to care anymore.
Z studies over at MIT.
He got accepted early while taking supplemental colleges courses with Mort in their lofty private school. Z was cool, and still talked to him over discord and on socials.
Mort's social media presence was tightly manufactured. If he so much as shared a vaguely worded pintrest image, his mom was the first to see it, and ask him what he meant by it. Nothing but motivational quotes and his countless achievements made the cut, most days.
But Z knew him from their mindcraft server days, when he'd been allowed to game more frequently. Z knew that Mort didn't really give a shit about sports, or athletic scholarships or the constant array of extracurriculars that would allow him into whatever school he applied to a hundred times over.
If Mort had his way, he'd be shooting the shit masturbating in his room and doing what normal, average teenage boys did.
He would not have had to fake his own death.
Mort hid out for a week, allowing the river to take his jersey and shoe and a chunk of his hair as he threw it all for the police to find. He'd fallen on a practice run — training for Yosemite with his dad.
Or so Jerry thought.
Mort had been trying to get away from him.
And maybe his dad knew that. Somewhere in his warped, obsessive mind. Jerry Smith the successful advertising tycoon. With his perfect blonde wife, happy homemaker that she was, who hung on her husband's every word as if he'd strung the stars up in the sky. And his perfectly respectful older daughter who never did drugs and was a chaste straight-A student.
Mort was his masterpiece. Jerry's dad had been a wilderness man. Mort was going to be even more successful. Even more capable.
Too bad he didn't want to be.
Which is why he staged his fall.
Mort felt bad, at first. Had wanted to stay for his funeral, but he couldn't risk being found out. Z lived on campus at MIT, and Mort wanted to look like just another gifted student who happened to bunk with him.
"You should come to one of my seminar classes," Z offered, "So you don't go stir-crazy — oh! You should come to Dr. Sanchez's, actually. He teaches alot of the sci-fi shit you like, only he actually theorizes how stuff like that would be possible."
Mort doesn't consider himself stupid. He has a lot of experience with hands-on shit like team-building, leadership, all the stuff that's supposed to help him in the real world.
…but damn, does he like nerd shit.
Mort wishes he had brought something from home that he'd kept for his personal interest.
"Come on, you'll like him!" Z insists.
Mort goes, if only to feel normal.
"…And we're left with a radical non-duality. The universe is not locally real — Which means nothing matters," the professor was drowning on, turning solemnly to his class. Mort thinks he looks exactly like an MIT professor should — in fact, he looks like someone Mort feels is familiar, before the old man begins to smile and dance, "…or EVERYTHING DOES!"
The classroom erupts into cheers as Prof. Sanchez eggs them on.
"Moral universe, let's GO!"
Mort feels himself smile — really smile — for the first time in years.
Professor Sanchez turns out to be really cool.
He let's Mort hang out in his office, even outside of his student hours. Shows him side projects, or lets him help with some of his personal theories.
Mort isn't as smart as he thought he was, but he also doesn't get underfoot.
He likes the professor. Likes to ask him questions about the movies he likes, and how close humanity is to achieving that dream of boldly going where no man has gone before.
"I used to dream of making my own spaceship," Sanchez confessed, leaning back on his leather chair as he closed his eyes and titled his face toward the roof overhead, "Flying around the cosmos on nothing but a car battery and trashcans for thrusters."
"Come on, you could probably could make an actual one with everything you know," Mort pointed out, carefully adding to the castle of cards he'd created on the professor's desk.
He snorts, but not unkindly, "You're a dreamer, Mort — that's why I like you."
Mort smiles.
"What would you have me make, if I were suddenly gifted with the ambition to chase my mind's greatest dreams?" he asked him, sitting upright.
Mort worries his lip for a moment, before answering, "…maybe a sexbot."
The man across the desk bursts into laughter.
It helps that Professor Sanchez doesn't take roll, and doesn't blink twice when Morty makes himself absent during scheduled tests. He doesn't want to risk the professor finding out he's not an actual student. So Mort pretends that he has other class obligations or that he's fishing for extra credit to scrape by his elective.
It's when he invites Mort to his house to talk shop over dinner where they both seem to realize they're even related.
"Oh, Rick…he has your eyes."
Rick isn't happy, when Mort tells him the truth.
He's used to that. To upsetting the grown-ups around him with the reality of what he feels. But Mort is desperate. He begs Rick not to call his parents. Not to call CPS like Uli says.
Rick isn't happy, but it's not Mort's fault.
His grandfather is furious at his dad.
"I am not sending my grandson back to that piece of shit!"
"Rick!" Uli gasps, and in the back of his mind Mort does make a note that this is the first time he's ever heard the old professor curse, so maybe that's not something he does. Maybe Uli has every right to be shocked, maybe even offended and worried on Rick's behalf.
It doesn't really matter, though. Because what Mort actually feels is relief.
Something in him knows that Rick won't let him go.
"Are you not hearing how he just poured his heart out to us?" Rick reiterates, as if Mort were not currently on his knees, on the carpet floor with tears streaming down his face, "Jerry is a maniac — and my daughter let herself get roped into some trad-wife bullshit — I left my daughter in an abusive marriage!"
"That is not your fault!" Uli says, stepping forward to lay her palm over Rick's cheek, "You didn't know, you were getting sober — you barely met your granddaughter!"
"But now I have a grandson!" and at the mention of Mort, Rick's eyes found his and firmly held firm in an intense gaze, "…there's no way I'm ever leaving you alone with them again!"
Mort felt himself breathe.
Uli glanced between them, hugging herself, "It is late — we have much to think about, and it can wait until morning after we all rest."
Mort doesn't want to leave.
He thinks he should. He offers to go back to Z's place, but Professor Sanchez — Rick won't hear of it. They set him up in the guest room they have upstairs. It's as nice as the room he used to have, in the house that never felt like home. Mort imagines putting up posters of planets and sexy women and whatever else he wants.
He dares to hope.
Mort has a lot of nightmares. In those days.
He's terrified of his family finding out. Even though his plan had been foolproof. Jessica posted pictures of his funeral on her instagram. Of the new scholarship program the school made in his name. His dad's eulogy goes semi viral because he threatened to kill God for taking Mort away from him, but no one thinks to point out how fucked up that is or how weird his family was acting.
They were allowed their grief.
Mort was allowed to hide.
Uli doesn't call CPS like she says they should — she's nice to him, for the most part. A saner, kinder woman than Mort's mother is. She teaches at a liberal arts school, which is a funny thing compared to Rick's tenure at MIT. Maybe he has a type for creatives.
He certaintly thinks Mort is one. Not gifted in the way his family did. Mort is special because Rick thinks his ideas are cool. That he's helpful in the garage with the small projects that tinkers with. Mort is grateful for the distraction.
Especially on the night's he wakes up screaming.
"Mort!" Rick is by his side by the time Mort has blinked himself awake, "Mort, I'm here — I'm here for you lil' buddy."
"I'm sorry," he sobs, finds himself leaning into Rick's space — curled up in Rick's arms as he makes himself as small as he feels. On night's like this, "M'sorry — I don't — I don't mean to — give you problems."
"You are not a problem, Mort," Rick says, firmly over his scalp, where he presses his lip into the boys hair, "I promise you —Mort, Mortimer…Morty. You're my grandson, I should've been there for you, I will never let you go again."
Mort continues to cry, but there's comfort in Rick's words.
Jerry suffocated him. Beth allowed him to be stiffled and Summer stopped being his confidant. All he knows is smothering — but the way Rick offers it feels safe. Feels secure.
It feels right. In a way Mort has never known before.
"C'mon," Rick squeezes his arm, encourages him to leave the bed, "Let's go to the garage, get your mind off your bad dream, okay?"
Mort nods.
Uli appears at the door by the time Mort has his shoes on, "Rick? It's the middle of the night."
He hears, more than watches, his grandfather make a noise, "He had a nightmare, Uli, we're just gonna work on something until he gets sleepy again."
Uli doesn't like for Mort to stay up late, but she isn't his mother. Rick is his grandpa, so really, only he really gets a say on how to take care of him, while he stays with them. Mort is afraid sometimes that Uli doesn't really want him around.
They couldn't have children, she and Rick. Mort thought that she might warm up to him, if he played the role of son. Like he used to do.
But Rick is his grandpa. Mort doesn't want to ever go back.
Everything he needs to learn, Rick will teach him. And his grandpa is already figuring out how to give Mort a different identity. A new alias so he can really enroll into MIT, and be Rick's TA.
Rick said that he was going to take care of him.
And as nice as Uli is…sometimes Mort feels like she gets in the way.
"Come on, Morty," Rick says, pulling him forward again, as they enter into the hallway.
Mort blinks, "Morty?"
Rick spares a glance at Uli, who walks silently back into their room, before smiling down at his grandson, "Yeah — I mean…what kind of nickname is Mort, anyway? Unless you don't like it that is —"
"I like it," Mort — Morty says. Toothy grin manifesting where he used to never grin with wide, eager emotion. Rick is good at making him smile, "I — I really like it, Rick."
His grandpa smiles back, and it's a special sort of smile that he never does around his wife. One where his cheeks flush and his eyes shift away, even though his grip never leaves Morty's skin.
"…I'm glad."
Rick has a lot of projects he never got around to working on, or that he gave up on, before Morty came into his life.
The spaceship he once talked about is real; blueprints and junk engines from scrap cars he meant to throw away but kept, after all these years. Morty likes being Rick's little helper. They spend a lot of time in his garage now. Not only in night's where Morty has bad dreams, where they usually stay up until morning where Rick has to rush to campus or call in sick.
Rick and Morty work on inventions all the time.
It's the happiest he's been in years.
"There is one thing I never got around to figuring out," Rick confessed to him, one day, while they worked underneath the makeshift hull of what used to be Rick's car (Uli hadn't been happy to find that Rick no longer had a car to drive to work with).
Morty turned his head to watch the arch of his grandfather's nose. The light of the flashlight in his hands making the sharp angles of Rick's face look more pronounced, more…handsome, in a way. Especially when he was focused on something like this. Rick says they might be ready to test if the ship can hover — maybe even fly.
He wants to help Rick do whatever he dreams of, "What thing? Better than the spaceship?"
"Way better than the spaceship," Rick grins, a gleam in his eyes that sends a thrill through Morty's chest, "The spaceship — it was my fallback idea, a way to travel the stars within the condensed of our universal understanding. But my other idea — it blows spaceship travel out of the water, Morty."
"Well — what is it," he says, feeling excitement beyond words, "I wanna know — I wanna help!"
Rick pulls himself out of from under the engine. Morty following suit.
He watches the contours of his grandfather's spine as he twists to look back at him with a wild sort of glee,
"I call it a portal gun."
Rick hasn't been to campus in a few days.
Uli got worried. Got into an argument with him about it, Morty hears them from the stairs, and tries his best to feel guilty about it. But he isn't really.
Rick has never been cooler, to him. Letting Morty help him with portal travel. It's genius — he's a genius. And Morty uses his muscle and his energy to help Rick in every way he can. Stuff like having a career won't matter once Rick breaks the code, and he's getting closer every day.
He and Morty are going to travel the multiverse together.
Just Rick and him, for a hundred years.
"…Is all you want to keep running away?" Uli asks him, once Rick has stomped away from her for the night.
Morty lingers by the stair rail, "I…I don't want my dad to find me."
"So you encourage him to chase fantasies?" Uli turns, tears in her eyes, "This is madness, Mort — Rick is a teacher, not an adventurer!"
"He says he can do it!" Morty argues, feels bad that he's yelling, but not that he doesn't really care to hurt her feelings, "Why don't you support him? Why did he give up on his dreams — just to — just to play house with you!"
Uli steps back. Morty does feel bad.
But he doesn't stop her from walking out the front door.
"Morty! I need you!"
He rushes to Rick's call.
Uli leaves the same day Rick starts drinking.
That's okay though, because Rick shares some of his vodka with Morty and they both are too busy laughing to notice her car pulling out of the driveway.
Rick is a riot, when he's drunk.
Morty hasn't even done molly, what with Summer being a narc, but Rick is a trusted adult, so not only is it safe for him to drink with, but it's also so cool.
He feels ten foot tall, watching Rick animatedly explain the science behind his latest invention, inebriated out of his mind. He can barely understand a word, but it doesn't matter, so long as his grandpa is happy.
It feels like anything was possible, when Rick had that manic gleam in his eyes.
Like all of reality was at their fingertips.
"I was afraid of morals, Morty — morals and ethics! But now I don't have to worry about that anymore!" Rick pulled him close, "I've — I had a breakthrough lil buddy! And it's all thanks to you! I did all this for you! To keep you safe!"
The boy hugged him, vision swarming as grateful tears fell form his eyes, "Thank you, Rick!"
"It's gonna be you and me — Rick and Morty for a hundred years!"
Rick tastes like liqueur and spittle.
And that was nice, in a way.
Morty moans as he feels his grandfather push him into the bed. Weight anchoring Morty, overwhelming him in a way he'd never thought he'd welcome. When his dad — when Jerry overpowered him, Morty always felt scared. Felt intimidated. That was why he had to be as outside of Jerry's immediate reach for his death to be plausible.
He used to be afraid that his father would never let him go.
Now, Morty prayed that Rick would be the one to follow through on that.
"y—You're perfect, Morty," Rick was saying, over him, against his cheek, his jaw, as his lips grazed his skin, "Perfect, perfect, perfect —"
"I'm — m'not…" Morty protested, though arching his back to meet more of his skin to Rick's eager hands. He was pulling up his MIT shirt and pawing at his stomach. He drooled at the thought of his grandfather ripping away his clothes.
Rick's electric eyes meet his own. Pensive in the way his grandfather would look at a forumla — trying to dissect it. Trying to figure out how to solve it, and use it to get what he wants.
Morty felt himself shiver as Rick's drunken gaze darkened, and his fingers wrapped themselves over his sternum.
"You're right, Morty," he said, voice husky with booze and desire, "You're eyes aren't symetrically place, your button nose actually deviates at the tip, and your freckles are proof that your epidermal layer can't make up it's fu — BURP — ing mind."
Morty squirmed, pressure increasing over his delicate bone as Rick leaned in further.
"You're imperfect, Morty," His teeth bared themselves in a seething manner over Morty's face, "You're — you wanna fuck your grandpa like the little freak you are — you little homewrecking asshole."
The boy keened. Hips moving involuntarily against the tent of Rick's jeans.
"Is that what you want, Morty?" Rick spat, rocking his clothed erection over his grandson's bulge as he pulled Morty up by his throat, "For me to tell you — for me to say I choose you over my perfect life? That you ruined me and that I love you for it —?"
"Rick!"
"I love you for it," Rick confessed, other hand moving to spread Morty's legs wide, to flick his spidery fingers over the buttons of Morty pants, "I love you, Morty — you — you saved me, Morty —"
He captured Morty's lips again, inhaling the boy's moans as his grandfather's large hand enveloped both their cocks in his singular palm. The friction lacked lube, but Morty had been leaking pre for over an hour.
He was practically gushing now.
They were going to make love in Rick's marital bed.
When had Morty become this covetous, selfish boy, he didn't know. As he wrapped his arms around Rick's neck and deeped their kiss, he wondered if this possesive streak had always been somewhere, boiling under the surface of his skin.
Everyone had once longed for a piece of Mort. He'd been pulled apart at the seams, desperate to get away. But with Rick it had been different from the start. Rick wanted all of him, intended to keep him alll in one place, not share a perfect version of Mort with the world. He didn't care for Mort to make him look better as some sort of prize, or proof of sucess.
Hell, Morty made him worse and that only made Rick want him more.
It was unlike anything the boy had ever known.
He was addicted to it. To the way Rick rubbed his larger cock over his own, as if to intimidate him, yet all it did was the contrary. Mort had made himself strong in an attempt to escape his family, but now he longed to feel powerless under Rick's control. He needed it, in the way he needed air to breathe.
Rick bit at his jugular, rocked his body over Morty's and carded his free hands finger's through the boys smaller, lithe digits and he fucked over him with abandon. With ugliness — when everything Mort had once known was prestine.
"r—Rick!" he cried out, legs wrapping around Rick's waist as he gave into the heat of it all, to the wrongness that made him feel free, "Rick — !"
He watched his grandfather throw his head back, "Moo—OUR—-ty—!"
Rick's cum spurt strongly over Morty's borrowed clothes. Over his throat and chin as he marked him entirely. He had to close his eyes to really allow for the sensation to wash over him, and yet, he was still hard by the time Rick was done blowing his load.
His grandfather was looking down at him with predatory eyes and Morty loved him for it.
"Didn't cum, m—MoRty?" he grinned, threatening almost, as he pushed himself down, "Greedy boy — evil boy."
Morty arched his back again as his grandpa slurped around his cock easily. His tongue experienced with age as it knew how to wrap itself around Morty's member. The boy made sounds so unlike the accomplished young man he was once known as, used to having girls or even Jessica blow him without him having to make a single sound.
But Rick was different. His cheeks hollowed painfully around Morty's cock, his hands played with his balls as he coaxed his grandson to finally let go. Beard scratching at Morty's taint as he begged his grandpa for more and more.
To give him everything that Rick had left to give.
Morty's legs shook as his orgasm crawled up all at once. Calves hitting Rick's upper back as his grandpa held his waist up easily — pulled his lower body up as if to devour Morty outright. A meal — a last supper.
This was a man on death row, eager to eat.
"RICK!"
Of course Jerry had to find them in the worst possible moment.
The portal swirled behind them, and his mother was begging Morty to step away from his grandfather — her father.
Beth Smith, who like Mort had needed someone to guide her. She'd been a teen herself, with an infant Summer at her hip when Rick had been thrown out on the street by Jerry's far more wealthy family.
Beth had much to say about how a real man stays by his family — because that was all she truly wanted. For someone to take the reigns. For her father to be that man, even when he was a drunkard, only to find that her high-school fiance was more than happy to replace him when it came to changing Elisabeth Sanchez into his perfect bride.
"He's going to get you killed!" his mother had cried.
And well, what could Morty say but the truth, "Dad's the one who would've gotten me killed!"
But Beth Smith never truly saw Mort, let alone Morty. Her life revolved around men who gave her what she thought she wanted, and if her son wasn't going to be one of them, there was no reason for her to even feel the guilt of leaving him so neglected.
His grandfather put himself between the boy and his parents, "Morty is never going back to your crazy husband, Beth —"
His father stepped forward, rifle in hand, "Mort is coming home, you son of a —"
"Dad, NO —!"
The sound of a gunshot still rings in Morty's ears, in his nightmares, in his gut where he launched himself in front of Rick to keep him safe.
And maybe that's the difference between Morty and Mort.
More athletic. More prone to following through on his reckless ideas. Maybe in yet another reality, they won't ruin each other all at once, he and Rick. Maybe it won't feel like dying.
The sight of his family turning inside out hurts less.
"Morty —"
"—wake up, Morty!"
He is jostled by Rick, because Morty is always jostled by Rick.
Blinking, he remembers that Rick drove them out into the desert. Watched as the remains of the starlight slowly greet him in their twinkling silence. Morty thinks they must have gone to every single one by now.
And yet.
It still feels so vast.
Morty feels less alone. When he looks up at the universe.
"You were having a nightmare," Rick's voice cuts through his thoughts. Always cutting. Always violent, in a way Morty is used to now, "Didn't want you to wet yourself."
Morty's back is leaning against the motorbike that Rick got. The same one that he'll likely get bored with soon, sequestering it away to the basement by the time they get back. Still, though. He thinks that Rick only got it because Morty hadn't thought it very interesting. He modified the magnets because Morty had gotten caught in it.
He probably took him for a drive just so Morty could admit it was worth it. And maybe it was. Simply because it proved in some way that Rick valued him. His opinion. His attention.
A sunk-cost fallacy, Morty remembers Rick describing.
Pouring so much into something or someone while the result remained constant. Hoping this time things would change. No matter the cost, no matter how miserable one ended up. The thing you happened to love mattered more.
Yet, the end was the same.
Inevitable.