Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/13992159.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Rick_and_Morty
  Relationship:
      Rick_Sanchez/Morty_Smith
  Character:
      Rick_Sanchez_(Rick_and_Morty), Morty_Smith, Summer_Smith, Beth_Smith_
      (Rick_and_Morty), Jerry_Smith
  Additional Tags:
      Yandere_Morty, Brainwashing, Dark_Humor
  Stats:
      Published: 2018-03-16 Updated: 2018-03-19 Chapters: 2/? Words: 16873
****** Overwritten ******
by Klei
Summary
     People liked to think that their minds were some otherworldly force
     that could never be tampered with, but Rick knew better; the human
     brain was little more than an absurdly complicated computer, and
     every last thought was the result of some physical construct that he
     could modify to suit his whims. In this case, what he wanted more
     than anything else in the world was the love of his grandson. Being
     the genius that he was, this was a feat well within his capabilities,
     and he found himself quite pleased with the results.
     ...Admittedly, however, Rick could have done without the creepy
     shrine and constant threats of harm to anyone who dared to so much as
     sneeze in his general direction.
***** Chapter 1 *****
Chapter Notes
See the end of the chapter for notes
Rick had no idea exactly when things had gotten this bad.
"Morty, what the fuck is this?" said Rick, slamming a book down on the kitchen
table where Morty was currently working on what appeared to be biology
homework.
"Huh?" said Morty, practically jumping out of his seat in response to the
sound. His startled visage only grew more alarmed when he finally noticed
exactly what it was that Rick was asking him about. 'The Game,' read the cover
of the book. 'Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists.' "Oh geez! Hey,
wait, what were you doing in my room, anyway?"
"I needed a DNA sample, so I took your sheets," said Rick flatly. Notably,
Morty didn't bother to ask what he needed it for; by this point, the only
reaction he could muster was a resigned eye roll. "More importantly, Morty,
this is the sort of desperate-yet-somehow-predatory shit I expect from Jerry."
"Hey!" called out an indignant Jerry from the living room.
"It's not- I'm not trying to be a creep, I just- I want to know how to get a
foot in the door, you know?" insisted Morty. "And anyway, since when do you
care about other people's feelings?"
"Since never," said Rick. "I'm just stating the facts."
"What do you want me to say, Rick?" said Morty, blushing furiously. "It's-
Women are hard to talk to! They're like some kind of-of social Rubik's Cube!"
Never one to let a bad metaphor slide, Rick popped a portal up on the ceiling.
A scrambled, three-by-three Rubik's Cube dropped down from it into his waiting
hand, and without ever once breaking eye contact with Morty, Rick proceeded to
solve the cube within the space of a minute.
"Okay, Rick, I get it; you're a genius," muttered Morty as he attempted to turn
his attention back to his homework. "You know everything, it's all so easy for
you, and we should all just-just be grateful a person as smart as you would
even talk to us!"
"See, that was clearly sarcasm, but it's also literally the only thing you've
said so far that isn't completely wrong," said Rick, setting down the cube in
favor of picking up Morty's pick-up book and tossing it in the garbage.
"What the hell, Rick?" said Morty, rocketing up out of his seat to fish it out
of the trash can. "You can't just throw out my stuff!"
"I'm not throwing out your stuff," said Rick. "I'm throwing out your garbage."
Morty shot him an irritated look as he retrieved his book and stormed off to
return it to his room.
Rick sighed and began fishing through cabinets for a bottle of Beth's wine.
Really, there was no point in letting this grate on his nerves as much as it
was. After all, the solution to the problem was sitting comfortably in one of
the inner pockets of his lab coat. Rick pressed his hand to his hip to confirm
that it hadn't slipped out through a hole in the fabric à la The Polar Express.
Before long, Morty would be throwing that stupid book away of his own volition.
His own frustration with the situation made no sense, and that in and of itself
only served to heighten his annoyance. When he called his attachment to Morty
irrational, he didn't just mean it in the sense that bonding with others was
inherently meaningless (though it was). No, the problem with his relationship
with Morty was that not a single one of the thoughts he had about his grandson
were grounded in any kind of logic. Hell, even when he tried to boil it down to
nitty-gritty biological hang-ups, his feelings remained utterly
incomprehensible.
Rick uncorked the wine and took a swig straight from the bottle. Honestly, what
kind of a pathetic fuck was he to get genuinely jealous over his grandson's
failed love life? That was some teenage girl level emotional stupidity right
there, and at least teenagers made sense in a 'budding reproductive desires'
sort of way. There was absolutely no evolutionary advantage to wanting to bone
his own grandson.
Rick set the bottle of wine down and pulled out his flask. He was gonna need
something stronger for this.
===============================================================================
 
People liked to think that their minds were somehow above mere programs and
machinery, but Rick begged to differ. At the end of the day, the human brain
was just an obscenely complicated computer. Rick had learned to successfully
replicate it through a combination of cutting-edge electronics and unique
programming algorithms years ago. The sad truth of the matter was that the
brain was little more than hardware made of flesh, and every last thought was
the result of some physical construct making it so.
And, as with robots, if it was something he could touch, it was something he
could modify.
Rick stood outside Morty's room with a syringe in hand. His last attempt at
mind modification had not gone particularly well. The date rape serum he'd
given Morty to use on Jessica had resulted in the destruction of their entire
planet. Biological agents and chemical solutions could be fiddly things when
one wasn't careful. They were the right solution for some problems, but
definitely not this. He wasn't going to risk something mutating and turning his
grandson's brain into mush. (Not that it wasn't already mush.) No, he needed
something dependable. Something that could directly rewire parts of Morty's
brain by snipping away a few neural connections while building up others.
The syringe, which appeared to be full of gray fluid, was in actuality chock
full of nanobots, each one fully equipped for brain surgery and programmed with
explicit, painstakingly debugged instructions to reinforce all of Morty's
positive thoughts about Rick, in addition to redirecting his feelings for
Jessica. All told, he'd spent about three months straight on this particular
project, and while regular idiots might not consider that a particularly long
amount of time to work on something so complicated, for Rick, it was an
absolutely absurdstretch of time. It was very rare for him to be capable of
focusing on any one thing for so long before he got bored and had to move on to
something else for a while. He couldn't remember working this hard on anything
since he invented interdimensional travel, which he supposed said a lot about
how badly he wanted this to work.
He took another look at the syringe. This was it. All those long hours spent on
hardware tests and unit tests and testtests… It would all be worth it in the
morning, when, at long last, Morty looked at him with the same longing eyes
that he did Jessica.
Rick slowly opened the door to Morty's room. He'd done this enough times for
smaller things to know that Morty was a heavy sleeper, but something about this
particular project had his heart beating rapidly beneath his ribs as he tiptoed
closer to the unconscious lump he called a grandson.
With a deep, quiet breath, Rick lined up the syringe with Morty's neck. Was he
really doing this? Was he actually going to modify his grandson's brain to suit
his fucked-up desires? Of all of the messed-up stuff he'd done over the years,
this had to come pretty fucking close to the top of the list. There were some
who would say that even killing a person wasn't quite as bad as robbing them of
agency.
But then, it wasn't like he was taking away Morty's free will, or anything. In
the grand scheme of life, who a person fell in love with was such a tiny thing.
Really, in a lot of ways, he was doing Morty a favor.Instead of some silly,
unrequited crush on a girl he had almost nothing in common with, he would
instead fall head over heels in love for someone who he already knew; someone
who would actually lo- err, wanthim back. Yes, it was manipulation, but in many
ways, it was mercy.
Pffffffft. As if.
Rick had to catch himself before he ended up laughing out loud at his own
excuses and waking Morty up. How long had it been since he'd felt so guilty
about something that he'd attempted to justify it as being 'the right thing to
do?' What nonsense. Nothing about this wasn't objectively terrible. He was a
shitty person doing a shitty thing for selfish reasons, just like always.
Undeterred by morality, Rick plunged the needle into Morty's neck and injected
the nanobots. Tomorrow, he would be too busy enjoying the fruits of his labor
to waste time wallowing in guilt about it.
===============================================================================
 
Morty groaned as the alarm clock shrieked its daily announcement that the
morning had, in fact, arrived. He blearily groped around for the off button,
then rolled himself out of bed. Where was he? Still in his own room? If he
wasn't currently in space on an adventure, then that meant there was at least a
fifty percent chance that he would actually get to go to school. Yawning, Morty
began rifling through his closet for some jeans and a yellow t-shirt, then
grabbed his schoolbag from its spot in the corner.
As he descended down the steps, Morty couldn't help but notice a strange
soreness in his neck. Had he slept in an awkward position last night? He rolled
his shoulders in an effort to combat it, but to no avail. It seemed he would
just have to wait it out.
Initially, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Beth was already away at work.
Jerry, presumably bored of sitting around doing nothing, had gone outside to
mow the lawn. Morty grabbed a box of cereal from one of the cabinets and poured
himself a bowl.
BOOM!
Morty didn't so much as flinch from the noise in the garage, nor did he react
upon seeing Rick burst through the door connecting the two rooms to escape the
black cloud chasing him into the kitchen. His grandfather coughed and gasped
for breath as he shuffled his way through the room to take a seat at the table
across from Morty. He was positively covered in some unknown, soot-like
substance; the spikes of his soft, pale blue hair were clumped together with
gunk, and his pretty white lab coat probably would have been ruined were it not
for the fact that Rick had designed them to be stain-proof.
…Wait, pretty? Morty shook his head and took another bite of cereal. He knew he
shouldn't have masturbated to that video with the sexy redheaded chemist the
other day; now he couldn't even look at his own grandpa's lab coat without
being reminded of it. It was a good thing Rick couldn't see his fleeting
thoughts, because Morty knew all too well that he would never have let him live
that one down.
"Good morning, Rick," said Morty through a mouthful of cereal. He watched with
mild bemusement as Rick grabbed a handful of napkins to wipe off his face and
eyes.
Rick didn't grace him with a proper greeting, opting to instead acknowledge him
with a look of annoyance. "There's nothing about this morning that makes it
inherently better than any other morning, Morty."
"Is- I guess I always kind of thought it was more like an 'I hope you have a
good morning' sort of thing," said Morty. "I don't think it's saying, you know,
'This morning is already amazing.' "
"What difference does it make either way?" said Rick tossing the used-up napkin
at the trashcan. It missed and hit the floor, but he didn't bother standing to
pick it up. "Do you think the morning is going to be better just because you
ask it, Morty? It's-it's not a conscious entity that can understand and fulfill
your wishes. It's an inherently intangible concept, Morty!"
So many big words in one sentence. Only Rick could sound so natural saying
something like that out loud. Morty smiled despite himself.
"Yeah, I-I guess it is pretty stupid, huh?" said Morty.
Even covered in filth, Morty had to admit that Rick evoked more of a 'sexy
chimney sweep' vibe than a 'creepy mad scientist' one, even if the latter was a
better description of him as a person. Well, 'mad' in the grumpy way, at least;
for all Rick's many psychological issues, he wasn't the type of person to
cackle manically over a corpse he'd brought back to life. Morty couldn't help
but snicker at the mental image this thought generated in his head.
"What's so funny?" asked Rick.
"Nothing," said Morty, stirring his spoon around his cereal, unable to tear his
eyes away from Rick's. How long was he going to leave his hair all messed up
like that? "I was just thinking that you should, uh, you should probably
shower."
"No point until the garage is cleaned up," said Rick, noticing the direction of
Morty's gaze and attempting to thread his fingers through his own hair to
assess the damage. "Unless you wanna clean it."
"Okay," said Morty without really thinking. Wait, what? First of all, the bus
was going to show up in a half an hour. Second of all, why would he want to
clean up Rick's mess? "You should go, you know, get some rest, Rick. It's-it's-
it's not healthy for you to stay up doing science stuff all night."
What? What?
Rick snorted derisively. "Ninety percent of what I do isn't 'healthy,' Morty.
But fine, since- If it matters so much to you, I'll go shower."
He stood up to leave. Morty, too, raced through his cereal so he could
hopefully make at least a decent dent in the cleaning before the bus showed up.
Why had he agreed to this, again? He just hadn't been able to help himself.
Rick had seemed so tired. If one didn't know him, they might have assumed the
bags under his eyes were just wrinkles, but Morty had spent enough time around
Rick to know what was just age and what was an indicator that he'd stayed up
all night. Hopefully, he would take some time to rest while Morty was at
school.
===============================================================================
 
Morty barely managed to catch the bus on time. Fortunately, Summer managed to
delay departure by complimenting the driver's watch and striking up a brief
conversation before boarding. Less fortunately, not only did Morty now owe his
sister a favor, but the process of cleaning the garage had left him covered in
the same gunk that Rick had been engulfed with earlier.
Summer shot him a weird look, but didn't question it before hurrying off to
join her friends at the back. Morty took his usual spot in one of the empty
seats at the front, where there were fewer directions for bullies to harass him
from.
'Fewer' unfortunately did not mean 'none,' and two of the kids in the seat
behind him stood up and leaned over to comment on his appearance as the bus
began to roll onwards to the next stop:
"The fuck happened to you?" snickered Generic, Poorly Characterized, Moderately
Overweight, Acne-Ridden Bully Number One.
"Did your grandpa use you in another experiment, Lab Rat?" asked Snot-Nosed,
Short and Skinny, Possibly-Up-For-Redemption-In-a-Later-Arc Bully Number Two.
"You gonna grow a bunch of tentacles again?"
Damn, he was never gonna live down the tentacle incident, was he? Morty pressed
his face against the window and exhaled, his breath clouding up the glass.
"Careful!" teased Bully One. "Your breath might be some kind of toxic gas that
melts the bus!"
"Don't scare him!" snickered Bully Two. "If he shits himself, his turds might
mutate into a monster!"
Morty rolled his eyes, more annoyed by their words than anything else. He'd
been through too many near-death experiences to let a couple idiots hurt him
with words. It was honestly difficult for him to imagine something they could
say that would actually-
"You wanna go home and cry to your weird grandpa?" said Bully One. "Must be
nice to know you come from a long, proud line of total freaks!"
And with those words, Morty could take it no longer. He spun around to kneel
backwards in his seat and roughly seized Bully One by the lapels of his shirt,
the fury of a collapsing star smoldering in his eyes.
"What the fuckdid you just say?" hissed Morty.
"Hey!" said Bully One, doing his best to pry the hands off of him, but with all
the times that Morty had been stuck climbing or clinging for his life, there
was no escape from his vise grip.
"Don't you everfucking call Rick a freak!" growled Morty, a line that left the
whole bus in stunned silence, watching the scene with rapt attention. "My
grandpa could mop the floorwith your sorry ass, literally!He-he-he could mutate
you into a living mopjust for the sake of wordplay!"
Bully Two laughed. "Pfffft! 'What-what-what's' the matter, Lab Rat?" he asked,
mockingly mimicking Morty's stutter. "Are you wowwied we're gonna huwt
gwandpa's feewings?"
Morty grabbed a fistful of the second bully's hair and rippedit clean off of
his scalp. The now-partially-bald teenager let out an eardrum-shattering shriek
of pain and horror as Morty threw the clump to the floor and plopped himself
back down in his seat.
"I don't get paid enough for this," muttered the bus driver, taking a moment at
the stoplight to don a pair of noise-cancelling headphones.
===============================================================================
 
If anyone asked him about it, Rick would tell them that Morty had done a
terrible job of cleaning the garage. However, he couldn't lie to himself;
Morty's handiwork was impressive, especially considering the limited timeframe.
The counter had been wiped clean, his chemistry glassware had been properly
sterilized, and his computer had been polished off with electronic wipes.
The mere fact that Morty was capable of basic lab maintenance, however, was
hardly noteworthy; he'd spent enough time around Rick that it would have been
stranger for him notto know how to clean a beaker. No, the realkicker was that
he'd volunteered at all. Rick had expected him to be a little more
accommodating, but not necessarily eager to assist. As it was, though, he'd all
but shooed Rick off to go get some rest. Rick wasn't sure he could even
remember a time when someone had said something like that to him since he was a
child. It was pretty patronizing. He would have to tell Morty to knock it off.
…Well, okay, maybe it was kind of nice.
And so, while Morty was out at school, Rick put the pieces together for his
next invention, eager to do something new for the first time since he'd started
Project 'My Morty.' The hours ticked by quickly, and before he knew it, Rick
heard the sound of the bus rolling up to the stop. It wasn't long before Summer
strolled up through the open garage door to take a peek at what he was doing.
As usual, Rick pretended to be annoyed while secretly reveling in the fact that
his family found his work interesting enough to be curious about.
"What'cha working on?" asked Summer, leaning against the counter.
"Weapons of mass destruction," said Rick curtly. Wait a minute, if Summer was
here… "Where's Morty?"
"Detention," said Summer.
"Detention?" repeated Rick in disbelief. "Morty? For-for-for what?"
"Yeah, I was gonna ask you about that, actually," said Summer, giving him a
strange look. "I guess some dumbass on the bus called you and Morty freaks, and
he just sorta snapped and ripped the guy's hair off." Holy shit. "You're not
giving him some weird testosterone or steroid shit that would make him all
moody, are you?"
Rick scowled. "Oh, Morty finally gets fed up with being the school punching
bag, so clearly I'm- it's somehow my fault, right?"
Summer shrugged and began heading to the door. "Nine times out of ten."
She was right, of course, but Rick wasn't about to let her know that, choosing
to instead flip the bird at her as she departed. Rick combed his fingers
through his hair and frowned. That probablywasn't entirely the fault of the
nanobots, right? Morty had always been a little bundle of repressed angst and
rage. Even if the nanobots were the spark that ignited the inferno, there had
been a metaphorical gas leak going on in his head for quite some time. It
wasn't a cause for concern, so Rick got back to work.
He lasted about five minutes before grabbing his portal gun off the shelf to go
collect his grandson from school. Not because he was actually worriedthat his
nanobots had melted Morty's brain, of course! He just needed someone to pass
him tools so he didn't have to constantly walk back and forth across the room.
Rick stepped out of the portal into what he recognized as Morty's math
classroom. It was mostly empty save for a few scattered souls and Mr.
Goldenfold keeping watch. Morty himself was sitting off in a corner, twiddling
his thumbs and clearly trying to avoid eye contact with another, angry-looking
teenager who appeared to be missing a large patch of hair off the top of his
head.
"Morty!" addressed Rick. Morty turned his head. "Come on, let's go."
Mr. Goldenfold stood up. "I'm sorry, but I can't just let-"
Rick set a vial down on the desk in front of him. "Here, this makes people more
susceptible to suggestion. Put a few drops in your boss' coffee and ask for a
raise."
"Are you kidding? I've got a marriage to get back together!" said Mr.
Goldenfold, swiping the vial and making a break for the door. "Detention's
over, you're all free to go!"
As the other high schoolers headed for the door, Rick grabbed Morty by the arm
and dragged him back through the portal.
"Oh geez," said Morty as the portal vanished behind them. "Thanks for getting
me out of detention, Rick. I-I-I don't know what came over me."
Rick shrugged. "It was bound to happen sooner or later. At least you didn't
shoot up the school, right?"
Morty went pale. "What? No! I-I-I would never do that!" He hesitated. "Right?"
"The fact that you're asking me means you think it's possible some other Morty
might have done it, and if youthink it's possible for you to be pushed to that
point, it's probably happened in at least a handful of dimensions," said Rick
with a dismissive handwave. "More importantly, Morty, I need you to shine a
flashlight into this robot so I can see what I'm doing."
"Oh. Right," said Morty, looking fearfully contemplative.
===============================================================================
 
Thanks to Rick's intervention, Morty hadn't spent long in detention, but in the
fifteen minutes or so that he'd actually been there, he'd had a lot to think
about.
The school day had been an unusual one. Things had started off normally enough,
aside from the whole 'getting detention for tearing someone's hair out'
business. It wasn't until he'd accidentally bumped into Jessica on his way to
his first class that things had taken a strange turn. The collision had caused
her to drop all her books to the floor, and naturally, Morty stammered out an
apology and bent down to help her pick them up. The funny thing was, he hadn't
actually felt nervous at all, at least not beyond what he would have felt
bumping into anyone else.
After they'd gone their separate ways, Morty had found that the more he thought
about it, the more he was struggling to remember why he'd been nervous in the
first place. Was it because he was trying to impress her? Why? Because he liked
her? Did he even like her that much? Morty struggled to remember just what it
was he loved about her that wasn't completely superficial. He still found her
attractive, to be sure, but it was almost like the layers of obsession built up
in his mind had been stripped away.
Morty frowned. Was it even possible to fall completely out of love with someone
overnight?
Things only got stranger when it came time for class. Ordinarily, he'd spend
his time daydreaming about Jessica, but with his interest gone, that was no
longer enough to keep him occupied. Instead, he was left wondering what Rick
was up to. Would he pop in to drag him off on another adventure today? Or would
Morty get to spend the rest of the day at school learning about quadratics and
the limbic system and such?
Really, for as much as Rick could annoy him, Morty couldn't help but find him a
comforting presence. Sure, his grandpa didn't give a fuck about his personal
problems, but then, neither did anyone else, really, and at least Rick enjoyed
spending time with him. In a lot of ways, he was Morty's only friend in the
world, a thought that didn't depress Morty nearly as much as it probably should
have. And the adventures they went on together? They weren't ALL bad. Some of
them were actually kind of fun. It certainly didn't hurt that Rick wasn't all
that bad to look at…
Wait. What?
And so, Morty had spent the rest of the school day coming to terms with the
fact that, yes, his grandfather was actually pretty attractive. He wasn't weird
just for noticing, right? It was completely possible to realize that a person
was attractive without actually being attracted to them, just like how a
straight guy was capable of picking a hot dude out of a lineup of average or
ugly ones. In the same way, he was merely recognizing that, to a gay man or a
straight woman, his grandfather was Hot with a capital H.
It was on this line of thought that Rick had shown up and picked him up from
detention. And now, as Morty stood at his grandpa's side with a flashlight in
hand, it was beginning to become impossible to deny the stirring in his loins.
Their close proximity had his heart racing, and the smell of sweat and alcohol
emanating from his lab coat had Morty wanting to press his face against the
fabric and just inhale.
"Rick…" he murmured unconsciously.
"What?" said Rick, looking annoyed.
"Huh? Oh! Nothing, sorry," said Morty quickly, doing his best to focus on
Rick's hands as he twisted screws and soldered wires. There was nothing sexy
about hands, right? Slender, bony hands masterfully working machinery, all
smothered in oil and grease…
Morty squeezed his knees together. Shit, he was actually getting a fucking
boner! Shit, shit, shit!
"I have to go to the bathroom!" he said, slamming down the flashlight and
racing out of the room.
===============================================================================
 
Morty was so obvious, it was almost painful to watch.
Rick grabbed a paper towel to wipe his hands clean while Morty raced off to
take care of the obvious bulge in his pants. He took a moment to congratulate
himself for a job well done on the nanobots, which had clearly been a great
success; not only was Morty attracted to him, but there didn't seem to be any
unforeseen side effects. Rick couldn't help the smile that worked its way
across his lips.
Finally.
At long last, Morty would be his and his alone. Oh, not just yet, though. He
wasn't going to rush into things. Rick wanted to savorthis. He wanted to see
Morty pinefor him; wanting him, needinghim, but too fearful of the taboo to
make a move. And then, just when he was about to be driven insane by longing,
Rick would mercifully step in, reveal that he had known about Morty's crush the
whole time, and agree to humor his lust and affection.
It was perfect. He would get everything he ever wanted, and Morty would never
even have to know just how truly, desperately in love with him Rick actually
was. Rick finished up what he was doing and set down his screwdriver. And to
think that there were people who honestly believed in concepts like 'karma' or
'divine justice!' He'd just gotten away with modifying his own grandson's brain
to fulfill his incestuous, pedophilic desires. And yeah, he felt a
littleguilty, but it was almost immediately numbed by the sheer high of knowing
that no force in the universe was capable of stopping him.
"I'm back," said Morty several minutes later, crotch-bulge mysteriously absent.
If he'd beaten one off in the bathroom, he'd finished up incredibly quickly.
Morty reached for the flashlight, then stopped upon noticing that Rick had
already completed his project. "Oh. Sorry, Rick."
"Whatever," said Rick with a dismissive hand wave. "I'm gonna go watch a movie.
You in?"
Morty nodded a little too vigorously. "Yeah, I- Okay!"
It didn't take long to get to the living room, steal the remote control from
Jerry, and pick out a movie from the interdimensional equivalent of Netflix.
Rick made it a point to sit on the very end of the sofa just so he could see
where Morty would set his thirsty ass down. He expected Morty to stay on the
far end so he could cover up any further boners, but his grandson managed to
surprise him by scooting up as close to Rick as humanly possible without making
physical contact. Either he was incredibly confident that his refractory period
would last the duration of the movie, or he was still too stupid to realize
that the thing that had him so aroused all of a sudden was actually Rick.
Or, as Rick was coming to believe as the movie progressed and Morty leaned
steadily closer, he was just a little more forward than Rick had given him
credit for.
"Jesus, Morty, could I get a little personal space?" said Rick as Morty, in
full view of his own father, leaned his body up against his grandfather's.
"Oh, right," said Morty quickly, sitting up straight and focusing his attention
entirely on the movie. "I wasn't really thinking- I mean, I just kind of-
Sorry."
"If you're falling asleep, just go to bed and take a nap," said Jerry, still
visibly bitter about having the remote wrestled out of his hands earlier.
"We'll call you down for dinner."
"I'm not- Never mind," said Morty, wisely realizing that it was for the best to
let his dad think he'd just been nodding off.
The rest of the movie passed without incident. As the credits rolled, Jerry
wandered off to go bother Beth in the kitchen while she worked on dinner,
leaving Rick and Morty alone to chat about the film.
"Well, I thought it was pretty good," said Morty. "What about you, Rick?"
Rick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you wouldlike that sort of thing, wouldn't you?"
Morty frowned. "I dunno, I-I-I thought the plot twist was pretty cool."
"Oh, please, Morty, I saw that coming a mileaway," said Rick. In truth, he'd
been just as surprised as Morty was, but he couldn't just admit to that; he had
a reputation to uphold. "I mean, he was a handsome young man with a mysterious
past in a movie where we know there's a prince missing. It would have been more
surprising if he hadn'tbeen royalty."
"I guess," said Morty, who looked way more bummed out by Rick's commentary than
usual. Just when Rick was about to comfort him (a word which, to Rick, meant
'chew him out for being a pussy'), the reason was made clear: "So, uh, you
thought he was handsome?"
Fortunately, Rick was the master of maintaining his poker face, because the
idea of Morty being jealous of a character in a movie that Rick had just off-
handedly complimented for the sake of making a point was as hilarious as it was
bizarrely heartwarming.
"Yeah, what about it?" said Rick, switching off the television. "Don't tell me
that bothers you."
"No, I- No!" said Morty quickly, incorrectly interpreting Rick's words as an
accusation of homophobia. That was fine; Rick never got tired of watching him
squirm. "I-I-I just don't think he was all that great, is all."
A better person would have let it drop, but Rick was the sort of man who wanted
to fuck his own underage grandson, sooooooo… "Are you kidding me, Morty? That
guy looked like he could bench a tree."
Morty's cheeks went red. "I mean, yeah, he looked pretty strong, but, like…"
"Oh, I get it," said Rick teasingly. "You prefer twinks, huh?"
The look on Morty's face as he fumbled about for the right words to express his
feelings without necessarily letting the real reason behind his words slip out
was priceless. Rick was briefly tempted to whip out his phone and snap a photo,
but unfortunately, the expression faded almost as quickly as it came on.
"All I'm saying is that he's way beneath your league, you know?"
Holy shit, if this went on any longer, Rick was gonna start corpsing.
"Beneathmy league?"
"Yeah, like- You know, he's not good enough for you!"
Rick raised half of his unibrow, intrigued. "Really, now? Well, while I'm-" He
belched. "-flattered that you think so highly of me, Morty, I'd sure like to
know something; if-if that guy is undermy league, who's init?"
Morty's hesitation to answer that question said it all. Luck seemed to be
smiling on him, however, and he was saved from having to provide a response:
"Dad, Morty! Dinner!" called Beth.
"Coming!" called Morty, all too eager to exit the conversation.
===============================================================================
 
Dinner was Rick's first indication that something was wrong.
Things started out normally enough. Beth had prepared spaghetti (even though
Jerry had been home all day and should have been the one to put dinner
together), Summer was texting her friends at the table, and Morty looked too
lost in his own thoughts to do much more than idly pick at his food.
"So," began Jerry in an awkward attempt to break the silence. "How was school
today?"
"Morty got detention," said Summer without looking up from her phone.
"Summer!" said Morty, irritated. "Seriously?"
"Wait, what? What happened?" demanded Beth.
"Some guy on the bus called him a freak, and he just straight-up reached over
and ripped his hair out," said Summer. "It was actually pretty badass."
"Morty," said Jerry sternly. "What did we teach you about responding to insults
with violence? 'Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt
me.' "
"Jerry, saying words can't hurt is like saying waterboarding isn't torture.
Don't be that guy," said Rick. "All that having been said, Morty, that was a
bit of an overreaction."
"You don't understand!" insisted Morty. "It wasn't just me they called a freak!
They were making fun of Rick, too!"
"Aww, so you were just defending your grandpa?" said Beth, her angry eyes
rapidly softening.
"Defending his- Did you not hear the part where he ripped another kid's hair
out?" asked Jerry, clearly still concerned.
"It's not like it won't grow back," scoffed Beth.
Rick rolled his eyes. "Yeah, no offense, Morty, but I don't really need you to
defend my honor against a bunch of sweaty high schoolers."
Morty ducked his head. "I know, but I couldn't just let them run their mouths.
They-they don't get to say those things about you. They shouldn't get to talk
about you at all! They don't deserve it!"
"Okay, you worded that kind of weirdly," said Jerry.
"Don't be jealous, Jerry," scolded Beth.
"But it's not just me, right? That was definitely a weirdly specific thing to
say!" insisted Jerry, and for once, Rick was inclined to agree.
"None of you get it!" said Morty, slamming his hands down on the table and
standing up. The rest of the family stared at him with wide, shocked eyes as he
stormed off out of the kitchen, his food practically untouched.
"Okay, nowcan we agree that something's up?" said Jerry.
"It's called 'puberty,' Jerry. We got through it with Summer, and we'll get
through it again," said Beth, taking a long, longsip of wine while Summer
glared at her from behind her phone.
For the moment, Rick chose to believe that Beth was right, and that this was
just a symptom of Morty's raging teenage hormones pushing him to assert himself
in stupid ways. After all the testing he'd done, Rick refused to believe that
his nanobots were the culprit. All he'd done was redirect and reinforce a few
synapses; nothing major. It hardly even qualified as brain surgery.
No, Rick decided, this definitelywasn't his fault.
===============================================================================
 
For the next several days, life seemed to go on as normal, save for the fact
that Morty seemed to be enjoying Rick's company much more than usual. Rather
than go off to his room to mess with his laptop, he took to hanging out in the
garage to watch Rick work and chat about nonsense.
"The fuck are you doing here?" Rick had asked the first time, even though he'd
known the answer. He just wanted to hear how Morty excused it.
"I just- You know, I was hoping I might learn something," Morty had responded
all too hastily. "I mean, school is just a waste of time, right, Rick?"
Rick, for his part, did his best to feign annoyance with Morty's senseless
nonsense. He got more than his fill of it over long spaceship trips and some of
their more tedious adventures. Secretly, however, he was more than happy to
listen to his grandson go on about all of the dumb shit he was into, and only
occasionally interjected to tell Morty what a moron he was being. Occasionally,
Morty would ask him a question, and Rick would answer in language that was
intentionally way over his grandson's head simply so he could enjoy his
dumbfounded expression before dramatically rolling his eyes and rephrasing his
words in a way that even the dumbest idiot could understand.
Everything was going exactly according to plan, and Rick found himself feeling
confident enough in Morty's mental stability to go out for a weekend adventure.
He'd been pleasantly surprised by Morty's enthusiasm.
"So, uh, where to today, Rick?" asked Morty while Rick stocked his lab coat
with gear.
"The Griddleborp Desert," answered Rick. "Some monk has a jeweled spider
capable of turning water into booze. I don't think I need to explain to you why
I want it."
Ordinarily, this would be the point where Morty expressed ambivalence about the
adventure, or even questioned what was in it for him, but instead, he just
smiled and nodded. "Makes sense! Let's do this!"
Rick popped a portal on the wall.
===============================================================================
 
The monk they were looking for lived in a palatial monastery where jewels were
encrusted into just about everything, and as they strolled up to the front,
Morty couldn't help but run his mouth.
"Isn't this kind of over-the-top for a place where monks live?" said Morty.
"In this dimension, gems are as common as dirt," said Rick. "This building is
their equivalent of a log cabin."
"Really?" said Morty. "Why-why don't we just take some of those and sell them
back home?"
"Because most of them don't existon our planet, Morty," said Rick. "If we tried
to sell them, people would start noticing, and then they'd start questioning
where we found them, and then it would be a whole 'look at these people who
discovered these amazing rocks!' thing, and-and-and grandpa doesn't want to
deal with nosy geologists, Morty!"
He knocked on the door, and was greeted by a short, chubby bald man in a robe
covered in fine jewelry.
"Ah, yes," said the monk, stepping back and gesturing for them to come in. "You
must be here about the spider."
"As if there's any other reason to come out here," said Rick, following the
monk inside. Morty trailed after him, looking around the spacious building with
wide, fascinated eyes.
As they reached the back, the monk knelt down on a fluffy rug in front of them,
then motioned for them to do the same on the splintery wooden plank in front of
him. Morty reluctantly complied and squirmed uncomfortably all the while. Rick,
who'd padded out his pant legs with enough Boogleborg wool to make any surface
comfortable, followed suit.
"To earn the spider, you must demonstrate your worthiness through three
impossible trials," said the monk, setting two bowls down in front of him. He
filled one with smooth black stones. "First, you must move all of the rocks
from one bowl to the next without touching them."
Almost before he finished speaking, Rick grabbed the bowl itself and dumped the
rocks out of it into the other bowl. What kind of grade-school level bullshit
was this?
"Excellent," said the monk, putting the bowls aside and pulling what appeared
to be a grain of rice out of his pocket. "Now, you must take this grain of rice
from my-"
Rick whipped a freeze ray out of his lab coat and blasted the monk, who
immediately stiffened up, his whole body covered in an icy glaze. After
successfully prying the chilled grain from his hand, Rick deactivated the
device.
"-hand," finished the monk, only to notice Rick holding up the grain of rice
with a bored look on his face. "Hmph. Very well. It is time for the third
task," said the monk, holding out his hand. "You must now beat me at thumb
wrestling!"
Rick and Morty both stared at him like he'd grown a third head.
"You're shitting me," said Rick.
"Wait, what?" said Morty. "That, uh, that doesn't sound very mystical."
The monk shrugged. "I don't make the rules, I just follow them. Thumb wrestling
time!"
Rick begrudgingly extended his hand.
"One, two, three, four!" said the monk. "I declare a thumb war!"
With the cybernetic enhancements in his hand, victory here was a trivial
process. As soon as Rick's thumb was on top of the monk's, it was already over.
The monk looked positively shocked by this loss. "…Best two out of three?"
Rick decided to allow it just so he could enjoy crushing the man's confidence
further. Before he knew it, eight rounds had passed, and the monk's thumb was
battered and broken.
"I see…" said the monk, cradling his thumb and clearly struggling to hold back
tears. "At last, I have my final verdict!"
"It's about time," said Rick. "Give us the spider already."
"My verdict is…" began the monk dramatically. "You are notworthy!"
'Bullshit!' Rick was about to say, but Morty, as it turned out, was way ahead
of him.
"What?" said Morty, eyes narrowing. "What the fuckdid you just say?"
"You're not worthy," repeated the monk. "Nice try, thanks for playing! Hope you
have a nice- HRK!"
Morty had jumped forward and pinned him to the ground, his hands wrapped around
the man's neck.
"Not worthy?" hissed Morty as the monk struggled beneath him. "NOT WORTHY?My
grandpa is the definitionof worthy, you son of a bitch!" He punched the monk in
the face, and he cried out in pain. "You should be grateful he even agreed to
play your stupid games!"
"Okay, Morty, maybe you should calm-" began Rick, but Morty was on a rampage
now. He slammedthe monk's head against the floor, and even the fluffy rug
wasn't enough to prevent the man's nose from crunching against the solid wood
beneath it. Blood poured from his nostrils, staining the carpet.
"No, you don't understand!" cried the monk. "That was the secret final test!
You just had to accept the judgment, and then I would have given you the
spider!"
"How dare you breathe the same airas him?" roared Morty, slamming his fists
repeatedly into the monk's face.
"Morty!"said Rick, grabbing Morty by the arm and yanking him off of the
battered monk. He half expected to have to pull Morty into some stupid cooldown
hug, but fortunately for Rick's dignity, his grandson relaxed the moment Rick
grabbed him.
"Yeah, Rick?" said Morty in a sweet, innocent voice that was such a far cry
from the one he'd been using to scream at the monk with that it almost gave
Rick whiplash.
"He's had enough!" said Rick. "Take it easy."
Morty's shoulders drooped as Rick let go of him to check and see if the monk
had survived Morty's brutal beating. Fortunately, he was still breathing. Not
that Rick cared one way or the other; it was just that dead people couldn't
give directions.
"Where's the spider?" asked Rick.
"In-in the back room, on the pedestal," coughed the monk. Rick stood up to walk
to the door that had been behind the monk. "The key is-"
Rick blasted the doorknob off with a laser gun.
"Come on, Morty," said Rick.
Morty leaped to his feet. "Coming!"
===============================================================================
 
Rick's third indication that something was wrong came the following morning.
From the time he'd moved in with his daughter, Rick's room had always been a
bit of a disaster. The walls were plastered with all manner of things, from
concept sketches to blueprints to random formulas. Every surface was covered in
various tools and devices for when he dreamed up some incredible idea and
couldn't afford to risk letting it fade from his head before he made it to the
garage. The closet, however, was by far the worst of the lot; the floor was
stacked up with boxes, some of which were stacked high enough that the pants
and lab coats on the hangers were partially laying on them.
As the alarm clock blared beside him, Rick greeted the morning with a weary
sigh. His bones cracked unpleasantly as he stood, prompting him to grab a
handful of pills from one of the nearby bottles and toss them into his mouth
like candy. Wearing nothing but a pair of underpants, Rick shuffled over to the
closet in search of clothing so he could exit his room and get some coffee
without offending Jerry's delicate sensibilities.
Upon opening his closet door, however, Rick couldn't help but notice that he
seemed to be a little short on lab coats. Still half-asleep, he rubbed his eyes
and counted them out to make sure he wasn't just imagining things. One, two,
three, four, five… He remembered losing one in a river that he and Morty had
nearly drowned in, but that still should have left him with six.
Naturally, his suspicions immediately went to Jerry. Had he somehow fucked up
the laundry badly enough to destroy Rick's lab coat, and was simply hoping its
absence wouldn't be noticed? But then, Rick had constructed them to be all but
indestructible, and it seemed unlikely that even the meat sack his daughter
called a husband could accomplish such an incredible feat of incompetence.
Rick dressed himself in one of his other sets of clothing and grabbed a remote
from the shelf at the top of the closet. After checking the tags of the coats
that were still present, he input the ID of the one that was missing and
activated the homing beacon.
Ding!
"The object you are looking for is approximately eight meters away."
An arrow popped up on the screen to indicate the direction. Rick's eyes
narrowed.
That was Morty'sroom.
He waited until his grandson had gone downstairs for breakfast before crossing
the hallway and slipping into his room in search of his missing lab coat. It
wasn't the first time he'd been there, nor was it even the first time that he'd
snuck in alone so he could rifle through Morty's things, so he already had a
pretty good idea of where to look. Morty was fairly predictable with regards to
his hiding spots.
The first place Rick thought to look was under the bed. Nothing too unusual
there; just some spare tissue boxes and sizable tubs of Vaseline. It was times
like these that Rick was glad he wasn't a teenager anymore; makeshift
lubricants would never be as good as the real thing.
The next place was Morty's underwear drawer. Rick lifted up a sloppily-stacked
pile of half-folded briefs to find a handful of expired condoms. It was
difficult for Rick to decide if that qualified as optimism or pessimism about
his odds of getting laid. Not like it mattered anymore, obviously; Rick had
been exposed to enough STDs to have a cure for just about everything on Earth,
in addition to several hundred more from other planets and dimensions alike. As
long as there wasn't any risk of pregnancy, they could just go bareback.
The final location he checked was Morty's closet, and its contents was shocking
enough to make his jaw drop.
"What. The.Fuck?"
It was like a fucking stalker shrine.Sitting on a short table in the center was
a surprisingly flattering picture of Rick that Morty must have snapped with his
cellphone while he wasn't paying attention. Directly to the left was a photo
album; Rick opened it up to find it filled with even more pictures, some of
which Morty had taken, and some of which had been stolen from his personal
belongings. To the right were some empty cans and bottles of alcohol that Rick
could remember Morty politely offering to throw away for him after he finished
them off.
The most horrifying aberration by far, however, was the blank, dakimakura-sized
pillow sitting in the corner. His missing labcoat had been lovingly stitched to
it along with one of his blue shirts, and what appeared to be a wig from an
Albert Einstein costume had been sewn to the top of its 'head.' It had black
buttons for eyes like something out of Coraline, and its fuzzy blue unibrow was
made out of one of those stupid 'magic worm' toys with the googly eyes removed
and the string cut off.
Rick shut the closet door and took a step back. Since when had Morty been such
a creeper? He'd never done this sort of weird shit when he had a crush on
Jessica!
He swallowed. That settled it. It had to be something to do with the nanobots.
Rick exited the room and made a beeline for the garage, not even stopping to
look at the rest of the family eating breakfast at the table as he passed them.
"What's up with him?" asked Jerry.
"Oh, you know, he's probably busy with something, unlike somepeople," answered
Beth.
Rick pulled up his computer and opened up the application he'd developed to get
status updates on the nanobots. No errors appeared to have come up, so he put
on a headset opened up a direct line of communication with one of the still-
active bots on the list.
"Nanobot Seventy-Two, do you read?" he asked, adjusting the microphone.
"Loud and clear!"chirped the artificial intelligence through the headphones.
"What's up?"
"I need you to give me a status report," said Rick. "Morty's acting real
fucking weird, and you- I need to know exactlywhat you've been doing in there."
"Okie dokie!"said the nanobot. "So, like, today, Nanobot Thirty-Eight and
Nanobot Ninety-Four totally hooked up. Like, they won't admit it, but EVERYONE
knows; they're so obv-"
"I mean what you've been doing to my grandson's brain cells!"
"Huh. Yeah, I guess that makes more sense,"said the nanobot. "But really, we've
only been doing exactly what you told us to. We redirected all his feelings for
Jessica to you, then strengthened all of the positive thoughts Morty already
had about you!"
"Did you stop when you reached the designated max value?" demanded Rick. "Were
there any exceptions that weren't transmitted? What about memory leaks?"
"Yes, no, and no,"said the nanobot. "We haven't gone berserk or whatever, I
promise! We're all just kinda hanging out on standby watching cat videos on the
internet until you retrieve us."
Rick's brow furrowed. "Is there any chance that your WiFi connection is causing
the problem?"
"Nope, we already checked! The WiFi is safe,"the nanobot assured him. "A good
thing, too, since we wouldn't have been able to do our job without it."
A moment of silence passed between them.
"Excuse me?" said Rick.
"Oh, yeah, forgot to tell you,"said the nanobot. "So, like, we were going
through all of Morty's thoughts about you in search of good things to
reinforce, right? Well, all of a sudden, we came across this one memory…"

The nanobot played back a recreation of the memory in Morty's voice.
"He's more like a demon, or a super fucked-up god."
Rick had absolutely no idea when THAT had been said, but he had a very bad
feeling that it had something to do with his current predicament.
"Anyway,"continued the nanobot. "You never actually programmed us with any
concept of religion, so we had to Google whether it was a good thing or a bad
thing, and boy, was it confusing! 'Are demons good?' was simple enough, but
then we searched for 'Are gods good?' and man, what a can of worms THAT was! It
took us FOREVER to reach the conclusion that association with god is generally
considered a positive by human society. We had this whole debate where half of
us dedicated ourselves to either side, and Nanobot Sixty-Six STILL hasn't
recovered. So anyway, we ended up strengthening the association he has between
you and a god, then beefed up all the surrounding religiosity stuff to make
sure Morty also saw this as a good thing."
"Wait, so you're telling me that right now, Morty is acting weird because he
sees me as a god?"said Rick slowly.
"Uh, I dunno what constitutes 'normal' for human behavior, but sure, yeah,
probably."
Well, fuck.
Chapter End Notes
     Originally, this was meant to be a quick one-shot to try and take a
     short break from my current long-runner, but it ended up being too
     long for that. So now, instead of a long one-shot, it'll be a short
     multi-chapter fic. Hope you enjoyed the first chapter! Please feel
     free to leave your honest thoughts in the comments, be they good or
     bad! I really appreciate all forms of feedback!
***** Chapter 2 *****
Chapter Notes
     WARNING: You see that little "graphic violence" warning from before?
     It comes into play this chapter. Be warned.
See the end of the chapter for more notes
How had he not realized it sooner?
Morty did his best to focus on his dinner, too nervous to risk lifting his head
and meeting his grandfather's gaze. Before, he'd been blind to the truth, but
now, it was all so clear to him. This was more than just a crush, it was a
revelation!Rick wasn't simply attractive, he was divine;an eldritch deity
trapped in human form. He was a force of nature beyond mortal judgment whose
will was absolute, and Morty, love, love, loved him! He loved the soft, pale-
blue spikes of his hair and the expressiveness of his unibrow. He loved the
prominent wrinkles of his face and the look of utter contempt for the world in
his eyes. Most of all, though, he loved their special relationship that
transcended dimensions.
The prospect of being dragged around and used like a human shield no longer
bothered him; he welcomedit, in fact. He was his grandpa's special tool who
lived to make his life just a little bit more convenient. He could hardly
imagine a higher honor. Well, he could, but it was never going to happen. Rick
had never expressed any interest in him as…
Morty quickly excused himself from the table and hurried to his room. He
collapsed on his bed and squeezed his legs together, face flushed and breath
growing heavy from the mere thought of getting to be his grandpa's pleasure
toy.(He dared not even dream of being his lover; that would have been a fantasy
to end all fantasies.) Morty pressed his face into his pillow and cupped the
bulge of his crotch through his pants.
"Oh, fuck," he breathed, straining not to touch himself to such sinful
thoughts, but how could he not? He had been born to be used by Rick; it was
only natural that he would want to serve him in every possible way that he
could. He bit down onto his pillow as he unzipped his pants and began furiously
stroking his aching sex, his lust so unbearably strong that he was on the verge
of tears. It wasn't enough. It would never be enough!
Morty stood up, dick still out, and hurriedly pulled his Rick replica out of
the closet to set down on his bed. It was just a repurposed body pillow from
the internet with some vaguely Rick-like attachments, but the shirt and lab
coat were the real deal. He ripped off his pants and straddled his false idol,
face pressed against the white lab coat. The scent alone was enough to make him
moan, and he furiously humped the pillow, silently wishing he had something to
penetrate himself with.
"Grandpa," he gasped softly, his words quiet enough so as to not be heard by
his family downstairs. "Mm, ah, I-I-I wanna be your plaything, grandpa. Please,
please, please…"
More. He needed more.Morty grabbed one of the tubs of Vaseline from under his
bed and spread a slick glob across his fingers. He'd never actually tried this
before, but there was a first time for everything, right? His hand shook
nervously as he reached around behind himself to press them against his virgin
hole. Morty bit his lip as he slowly, slowlyworked the tip of his middle finger
inside. It was a strange sensation, to be sure, but not altogether unpleasant.
Slowly but surely, he worked it in until it was about as deep as he could
physically get it from that position.
Morty took a deep, shaky breath. It wasn't enough. He'd seen Rick's cock enough
times to know that it was a lot bigger than one finger. He gently retracted his
middle finger and attempted to insert his index finger, as well, but this
doubling of even such a meager girth made things significantly harder.
He steeled his determination. If this were the real thing, it wouldn't matter
how difficult it was, because it wasn't forhim, it was for Rick.How could he
even dream of being his grandpa's pleasure toy if he couldn't even do this
much? He had to take it and welcomethe pain as proof of what a nice, tight fit
it would be around his grandfather's girth. Morty squeezed his eyes shut and,
nose still pressed against the stolen lab coat, and forcedthe second finger in,
even as it felt like he might tear.
"Hnn!" he whimpered. He wanted to give himself a moment to adjust, but no. That
would mean Rick would have to wait, and he couldn't do that to his grandfather.
Sex toys didn't need to 'adjust,' because sex toys were made for the pleasure
of the user. Morty gritted his teeth and mercilessly finger-fucked himself as
hard as he could.
Even through the burning pain, his fantasies kept him fully hard and dripping.
It was good that it hurt. After all that time wasted on snark and back-talk, he
deserved to be reminded of his place. Morty panted heavily as, with his legs
still spread on either side of his Rick pillow, he stroked himself with one
hand and fucked himself with the other.
"Oh, Grandpa Rick!" he whimpered. He couldn't afford to risk saying much more
when dinner could be over any minute, meaning someone might come upstairs and
hear him from the hallway. Instead, he imagined how he'd beg for more,
screaming out pleas for his grandpa to use him as hard and as deep as he
wanted.
He was so very, veryclose. He imagined that Rick was close, too. It wouldn't be
long now before he was blessed with his grandpa's hot, sticky essence. His eyes
rolled upwards into his head as he imagined it coating his insides, filling him
with proof of what a good little tool he was for his Rick.
Morty's toes curled as he came, his seed gushing forth like a floodgate had
been opened and splattering against the pillow beneath him. For a long moment,
he simply sat there with his mouth wide open, panting like a dog as he slowly
retracted his fingers.
Shit, now he would have to clean this up.
===============================================================================
 
Rick was in full-on damage control mode.
There was no point in denying it any longer; he'd fucked up, and now Morty saw
him as not only a god, but a god that he had a crush on. That wasn't
necessarily an indicator that all hope was lost, however. This result hadn't
been Rick's original intent, no, because that kind of a mindset could lead to
all sorts of weird shit, but if he acted quickly, he could rein it in and keep
it in the realm of sexy hero-worship instead of ritual sacrifices performed in
his name.
First things first; what fanatical behaviors did he most need to nip in the bud
before they cropped up? Anything that could result in his own demise was
priority one. In the many, manyyears he'd been alive, Rick had seen a lot of
so-called 'gods trapped in mortal form' get themselves killed in some ritual
ceremony by the locals they'd been trying to take advantage of in order to
'free them from their mortal chains.' For that reason, it was pretty fucking
high on the list of potential threats to address. A smart person might have
recognized that any god who wanted to be 'freed' from their mortal body could
just kill themselves,but Morty was not particularly smart, and even if he was,
Rick wasn't about to leave that to chance.
Prior to the incident on the bus and Morty's brutal beating of the monk, Rick
might have believed the possibility of his grandson trying to 'free' him was
his greatest concern. After seeing what Morty was truly capable of, however, he
was going to have to figure out some way to get him to fucking chill, because
life was going to be incredibly inconvenient if Morty spent every adventure
beating people up for minor infractions.
"Hey, Morty!" called Rick, knocking on Morty's bedroom door. After seeing the
way Morty had acted when he'd excused himself from dinner, it was pretty clear
that his grandson had gone off to jack it, so Rick, ever the gentleman, had
waited a generous half an hour after finishing dinner before going to get him.
"Come on, we're going on a quick adventure."
There was a sound of rapid shuffling from behind the door. Rick swore he could
hear something being dragged across the floor and shoved into storage, followed
by the sound of what could only be the closet door being slammed shut. Within
less than a minute, a slightly-disheveled Morty all but threw open the door,
his eyes sparkling with such adoration that it almost made Rick blush.
"Where to?" asked Morty, following Rick down through the hallway with
uncharacteristic cheer.
"To pawn off the booze spider," said Rick, holding up the glittering, gem-
encrusted spider that they'd acquired the other day.
Morty's brow furrowed. "I thought you were gonna use that to make alcohol from
water."
"Yeah, well, turns out that it only stays alcohol while it's in contact with
the spider, so it changes back into water before you're actually drunk, which
completely defeats the purpose of drinking in the first place," said Rick. He
supposed there were some people who would claim to be in it for the taste, and
those people were liars. "Oh, and it's also cursed, so there's that."
Morty looked downright horrified, and for a moment, Rick was concerned he might
rip the spider from his hands and smash it in an overprotective rage. "It
cursed you?"
"What, you-you think I'm dumb enough to try out some artifact from another
dimension on myself?" said Rick, almost offended. "Obviously I tested it on
Jerry, first."
"THERE ARE SPIDERS IN MY MOUTH!" screamed Jerry from downstairs, his voice a
mixture of panic and open sobbing. "OH GOD, OH JESUS, SOMEONE HELP!"
"There aren't any spiders, Jerry, you're hallucinating!" insisted Beth.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
"Oh," said Morty, his look of concern gone, though he still eyed the spider
warily. A loud crashing noise came from downstairs, and he winced. "Is, uh-
Will he be okay?"
Rick shrugged. "Probably. That guy is like a bedbug infestation. You might be
able to get rid of him if you burn everything to the ground in the process, but
he isn't gonna go away accidentally."
Morty's eyes, which had seemed sympathetic to his father's plight mere seconds
earlier, suddenly glazed over with a strange look. Rick knew that face. He'd
seen it in the mirror countless times. It was the look of someone actively and
knowingly kicking their moral compass to the curb so they could get something
done, and it was as hot as it was terrifying.
"Do you want him to go away, Rick?" asked Morty.
Okay. So Morty was quite possibly not just capable of beating people up, but of
straight-up murdering them if Rick implied that he wanted them gone. This was
escalating far more quickly than Rick had initially anticipated.
Rick couldn't bring himself to straight-up answer 'no,' but he also couldn't
have Morty gutting Jerry to placate him. "Well, yeah, but it'd be more trouble
than it's worth to deal with the fallout. The divorce was bad enough. I don't
think any of us want a sequel to that mess."
Morty visibly relaxed, laughing awkwardly as though he hadn't clearly been
prepared to murder his own father at Rick's behest. "Yeah."
"THEY'RE IN MY EYES! MY EEEEEEEEYES! AAAAAAAAAAH!" shrieked Jerry.
"Clearly it's not that big of a deal if you're well enough to do outdated
Nicholas Cage references!" said Beth.
"IT'S NOT A REFERENCE, THEY'RE REALLY IN MY EYES!"
Summer raced up the stairs just as Rick popped a portal on the wall.
"Please, for the love of God, take me with you,"pleaded Summer.
"We're just going to a pawn shop," said Rick.
"Anywhere is better than here!" she assured him.
"NOW THEY'RE IN MY PANTS! I HAVE TO TAKE THEM OFF!"
"Jerry, nothing is in your pants, you reallydon't need to- Uhg."
"That's fair," said Rick, gesturing to the portal. "After you."
Summer practically raced through the portal while Morty waited patiently at
Rick's side until he went first, following diligently behind like a duckling.
They were accosted almost as soon as they stepped out of the portal.
"Hey! HEY!" said the shopkeeper. "No stray portals in the store! You're gonna
cut someone!"
"Cut someone?" repeated Summer.
Rick pressed his fingers to his temples upon realizing that he would be forced
to explain yet another basic scientific concept to his grandchildren. "Long
story short, regular portals essentially eliminate all distance between two
points, meaning its width is zero. Since it doesn't have any width, the edges
are infinitely sharp." He grabbed the edge of his own portal and pressed his
palm against it. The portal's edge stretched like a rubber band, then snapped
back into place, leaving his hand unharmed. "As you can see, that's only a
problem if you're not a genius."
"Wow, Rick!" said Morty even though he probably didn't understand half of what
Rick had just said. Rick smugly closed the portal behind him. "That-that sure
is amazing!"
"Yeeeeeah…" said Summer, giving Morty a funny look before turning her attention
to the rest of the shop. "Soooo, what's the exchange rate for Earth money
here?"
"This shop won't take Earth money," said Rick, pulling out his wallet. "Seeing
as I'm living there at the moment, I might be willing to give you the space
money for what you want here and let you pay me back when we get home. You
know, for-for a nominal transaction fee."
Summer's eyes narrowed. "Fuck that noise. I'll just browse."
"Suit-" began Rick, only to belch. "-yourself. Morty, go hang out with your
sister. Grandpa's got some haggling to do. You can browse if you want, but no
more sex robots!"
While Morty reluctantly wandered off to join his sister in looking through the
shelves, Rick strolled on up to the counter, where the shopkeeper was still
glaring at him, and set the jeweled spider down on the counter.
"What's that supposed to be?" demanded the shopkeeper.
Rick gestured to the man's water bottle behind the counter. "Unscrew the lid
and dip it in."
The shopkeeper looked skeptical, but did as he asked. As the water rapidly
began turning red and wine-scented, however, he took a sip and instantly
changed his tune.
"Okay, I'm interested," said the shopkeeper. "Fifty fuzzledorps."
"Fifty?"said Rick, laughing humorlessly. "I think we both know that it's worth
at leastseventy-eight."
"Not a chance," said the shopkeeper. "Fifty five, and I'm already going over my
limit!"
"Seventy five!"
They were definitely going to be there a while.
===============================================================================
 
It was difficult not to sulk as Rick ordered him to go off and hang out with
Summer. He felt like a child being relegated to the toddler table at
Thanksgiving. Had he done something wrong? He was pretty sure he'd done
everything he'd been asked, but what if that wasn't the case? What if he'd
missedsomething?
"So," said Summer, idly browsing the shelves. "You and Rick seem to be getting
along pretty well lately."
Morty beamed up at her. That was one of the best things she could have possibly
told him. "You think so?"
"Yeah, I don't think I've seen you argue since that whole thing with the bully
on the school bus," said Summer. Morty ducked his head, embarrassed. Not about
ripping that guy's hair out, of course. No, his embarrassment stemmed from the
fact that he'd once been foolish enough to argue with someone who was clearly
superior to him in every way. "Did something happen between you two?"
"I don't think so," said Morty, poking through the shelves in search of
something interesting. "Why?"
"Oh, I don't know, maybe because you guys argue all the time?"said Summer,
looking him over like she was convinced he was some kind of imposter. "You
can't tell me you just stopped."
"I-I-I don't know what to tell you, Summer," said Morty. He could never expect
her to understand. Hell, it had taken himforever to get it, and he was with
Rick all the time! "I guess I just came to an epipen- epifarry- ephiphery?"
"You mean 'epiphany?' " said Summer flatly.
"Exactly!" said Morty, too excited to share the truth with her to feel
insulted. "It's just, our lives are so short and insignificant, you know?"
"So, what, life's too short to spend arguing with Rick?"
"Well, yeah, that too," said Morty. "But more importantly, ourlives may be
insignificant, but Rick'slife? It's the most valuable thing imaginable!"
Summer could only stare at him with bewilderment. "Wait, what?"
"The things he can do are beyond all mortal imagining, Summer! He's a human
being with the power of a god!" said Morty excitedly. "Don't you get it? He's-
Rick is more important than any of us! Rick is the end and the beginning!
Nothing else in entire multiverse could possibly measure up!"
"Uh, this is sarcasm, right?" said Summer. "You're just trying to make a point
about Rick's ego, or something. Right?"
"Well, of course he has an ego, Summer. He shouldhave one. How could someone
not be proud of being so perfect?" said Morty, pitying her ignorance. "The fact
that he even associates with people like us is a miracle, and-and we should all
show a little more gratitude that we even get to have him in our lives!"
For a long moment, things were silent between them.
"Oh my God," said Summer. Morty smiled. Did she finally get it? "You've lost
your fucking mind!"
Morty sighed. What a shame. He'd really hoped that his sister, of all people,
would understand, but apparently it wasn't to be.
"That's fine," said Morty, returning to his shelf-browsing. "You'll figure it
out someday."
"Right…" said Summer, scooting on back to the front. "Listen, I'm gonna go talk
to Rick, okay? You, uh, try not to break anything."
"Rick didn't want us there!" called Morty after her as she left, but she didn't
listen. Ah, well. She was his sister, and therefore of Rick's blood, so he
could afford to be a little more forgiving so long as she didn't take any
direct action against him. After all, he'd been an obstinate fool for ages,and
Rick had still somehow found it in his heart to continue tolerating him even
so. Rick had always placed marginally more value on he, Beth, and Summer than
anyone else, and it was his responsibility as a devout Morty to respect that.
===============================================================================
 
"Grandpa Rick!" said Summer, slamming her hand down on the table where Rick was
currently in the middle of trying to squeeze one extra fuzzledorp out of the
shopkeeper. "We need to talk!"
"Kinda busy, Summer," said Rick.
"This is more important!"
"I'm sensing you're in a bit of a rush," said the shopkeeper with a smirk. "How
about I just give you sixty and call it a day?"
"We'll be in a rush when Isay we're in a rush!" said Rick. "Right now, I want
my sixty-one fuzzledorps!"
"First of all, dumb currency name," said Summer. "Second, are you aware that
Morty has gone completely insane?"
Rick's face paled, something that didn't go unnoticed by the stubborn
shopkeeper behind the desk. Oh shit, what had he done this time?
"God damn it, fine,I'll take the sixty!" said Rick, ripping the money from the
smirking shopkeeper's hand and slamming the spider down on the table so he
could deal with whatever Morty had done. This was what he got for trusting
Summer to Morty-sit. "What is it, Summer? This had better be pretty fucking
urgent!"
"My brother just got through giving me some delusional spiel about how amazing
you are!" said Summer. Well, that didn't sound so bad. It wasn't even
inaccurate. "Hey!Wipe that grin off your face! I'm not talking about regular
old compliments. He sounds like a God-damned cultist! What the hell happened?"
Uhg, now he had to come up with a story. Good thing he'd already prepared one
in anticipation that Summer would figure out something was up. Jerry was too
pathetic to bother with, and Beth wouldn't question him, but Summer? Summer was
a headstrong teenager. She had zero issues questioning her elders. What a
nuisance.
"Look, on one of our adventures, Morty might've inhaled a fungus that messes
with your inhibitions," said Rick. He had very deliberately picked Morty's
'symptom' so as to be able to excuse any future oddities with 'This is just all
the stuff Morty was repressing all this time.' The last thing he needed was for
anyone to realize that he was the true culprit.
"Inhibitions?" said Summer, clearly not buying it. "Are you seriously going to
try and convince me that Morty has alwaysfelt this way about you, and he was
just hidingit the whole time?"
"I'm not going to try and convince you of anything," said Rick, heading down
the aisle Summer had come from in the hopes of finding Morty before he did
something stupid. "I'm just telling you the facts."
"The facts? The facts?"said Summer, storming after him. "Okay, then, Mister
Fact-Man!How long is it gonna take before you get him back to normal?"
Rick shrugged.
"I want adate!"
"Don't we all?" mused Rick, much to Summer's frustration. "Look, Summer, I'm
doing my best, but I don't know how long it'll take to get Morty back to
normal." Well, normal with benefits. "Now listen, because this-this is
important: Do NOT tell Morty about the fungus. He still doesn't know that he's
been exposed, and telling him is just gonna fuck with his head and make it
harder for me to evaluate the effects of treatment on his mental state."
Summer crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine. But you'd better keep me
updated."
"If it'll get you to shut up," conceded Rick. That put a tighter deadline on
the whole 'get Morty to calm the fuck down' thing, but then, he supposed Morty
himself was already a ticking time bomb. Had Rick not sent him away while he'd
haggled, who knew what his grandson would have tried to do to the shopkeeper?
"Morty?" called Rick, spotting Morty down the aisle.
Morty's eyes locked on to him like a laser sight on a sentry turret, and he all
but skipped back to his side. "What next?"
"Well, seeing as Jerry is still probably running around the house without
pants, I was thinking we could go out and get some motherfucking ice
cream!"said Rick. "Who's with me?"
Morty's hand shot up into the air. Summer, after a moment of deep thought,
nodded her head.
"Sure."
"Alright! Let's go get some of the second-best ice cream in the multiverse!"
===============================================================================
 
Morty collapsed into his bed with a weary sigh. He couldn't believe how stupid
he was! How could he have possibly allowed himself to so thoughtlessly squander
Rick's generosity? He wasn't sure he could ever look Rick in the eyes again
after this. It was heinous. It was criminal!To think that he had actually
dropped the ice creamthat Rick had so kindly purchased for him!
He was scum. No, worse than scum! He was that disgusting orange mold that grew
in the shower if it wasn't cleaned regularly! Morty rolled over onto his side
and groaned, unable to shake the guilt. How was he supposed to go on with his
life knowing he'd screwed up so badly? He pressed his face against his pillow.
Even if he somehow atoned for the ice cream, there was no recovering from all
the time he'd spent just generally being a terrible Morty, always bitching
about adventures and experiments just because they could 'get him killed' or
put him through 'unspeakable agony.'
Morty got to his feet. There was nothing else for it; he would just have to
apologize for everything and pray for mercy.
Reluctantly, Morty made his way down to the garage, but it was empty. He wasn't
in the living room, either; it was just Beth, Jerry, and Summer watching some
interdimensional cable sitcom about a single anthropomorphic horse raising
three human orphans.
Morty went back upstairs only to notice the sound of the shower running. If
everyone else was downstairs, that must have been Rick. It would be rude to
rush him out of the bathroom, so Morty instead decided to wait in his
grandfather's bedroom.
For a split second, he almost made the mistake of sitting down on Rick's bed
while he waited, but that would have been just plain disrespectful. He was
there to beg for forgiveness; he wasn't about to just place his ass where Rick
slept. Instead, he took a seat on the floor.
And that was when he saw it.
The trash bin was entirely empty save for one thing sitting at the bottom. It
was a treasure beyond his wildest imaginings, far more valuable than the
bottles of wine and vodka he'd stowed away so he could lick the rims where
Rick's saliva had been left behind. Morty's breath caught in his throat; there,
in the garbage,of all places, was an unrolled condom. Morty crawled over to get
a closer look, his face a vibrant red. With trembling hands, he fished it out
and held it up to the light.
There was fluid inside. It had been used.
Morty just about creamed himself as he stood up and raced back to his room to
stow it away somewhere. Where to put it, where to put it? He eventually settled
for resting it gently atop his Rick-shrine in the closet. He was too busy right
now, but he would be sure to find a nice, sterile jar for it later. In the
meantime, he had to get back to Rick's room.
===============================================================================
 
Rick stretched as he stepped out into the hallway in nothing but a bathrobe,
his damp hair toweled back into its usual spiky shape. Even a genius like him
stood to benefit from the mind-clearing power of a hot shower. That, and he'd
just masturbated into a condom to thoughts of rawing Morty over a balcony in
full view of the street, so he'd been in pretty dire need of a rinse.
Having fully expected his room to be empty, Rick very nearly ripped the
bathrobe straight off of his otherwise naked body before he noticed Morty
kneeling on the floor.
"The fuck are you doing in my room?" demanded Rick. "And why are you on the
floor?"
He figured it would be something weird, but nothing could have prepared him for
the answer:
"I-I'm really sorry about the ice cream, Rick!"
Rick pressed his palm to his forehead. This again? Admittedly, it had been a
little funny back at the ice cream shop; Morty had very nearly cried upon
dropping his cone to the ground, sputtering out such sincere apologies that he
had probably convinced everyone in the vicinity that he was being brutally
abused, Summer included. Rick had gotten him a replacement ice cream and told
him to quit being such a pussy about it.
"Morty, it was four dollar ice cream cone. You need to calm the fuck down."
"But I made you pay eightdollars!" said Morty, visibly distraught. He scooted
forward to clutch Rick's robe, and Rick had to chomp down on his own tongue to
keep himself from getting an erection at the sight of his grandson looking so
desperate. "I'm really sorry, Rick! I-I-I've been a terrible Morty for you all
this time. I'm always complaining, or-or asking you for stuff. I know better
now, though, really! From now on, I'll do everything you say, and I won't whine
about adventures or experiments! I'll be a new Morty; one who-who appreciates
how lucky he is to belong to the smartest Rick in the multiverse!"
Okay, well, that would certainly explain what Summer had been talking about
earlier. Damn if Rick wasn't currently rocking a half-chub behind the bathrobe,
though. "Wait, 'belong to?' "
"Oh, you don't have to worry about using that kind of terminology anymore,
Rick!" Morty assured him. "I know better now. You're the one in control, and
I'm grateful to be your property."
If Morty's words were strictly bedroom talk, it would have been incredibly hot,
but this was beginning to get super weird, even for Rick. "Look, Morty, I need
you to tone it down with this stuff. You-you-you really spooked Summer earlier,
and now she won't stop harassing me about it."
"Oh geez, really?" said Morty. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to screw up again!"
"For the love of-" said Rick, exasperated. This was almost more aggravating
than Morty's complaints! "Stop apologizing!"
"You're right," said Morty, eyes downcast. "You're always right! It-it-it's not
gonna help to keep apologizing." Fucking finally. "I-I-I need to be punished."
Rick's throat went dry. "Wait, what?"
"Please, Rick!" said Morty desperately. "The guilt is killing me! I need you to
teach me a lesson! Make me hurt for what I did!"
Nope. Nope, nope, NOPE. Tempting as it was, he was definitelynot going to
encourage Morty by taking advantage of this. Rick shook his head and batted
Morty's hands off of his bathrobe so he could walk past him and fiddle with the
microscope he had sitting on a table against the wall. He didn't actually need
to use it for anything, of course; he just needed to face a different direction
to conceal the tent that was rapidly forming beneath his bathrobe. "Morty, I'm
not going to punish you."
"Please!"said Morty again, even as Rick refused to turn his head to look at
him. "I can take whatever you've gotta do to me!"
"I'm not doing anything," said Rick firmly. "Punish yourself."
There was a moment of silence as Rick realized what he'd just said. It had been
almost reflexive, in the same way that, when Jerry asked if Rick could get a
water for him while he was going to the kitchen, he would tell him to go get
his own damned drink.
"If that's what you want," said Morty, and Rick could hear him standing up to
leave.
For a moment, he considered stopping him, but then, he supposed this was
probably for the best. Morty would probably snap a rubber band on his own
wrist, or engage in some other equally inane means of self-harm.
It was fine, Rick decided as the door closed, leaving him alone to strip down
and jack off for a second time. Fucked up in the head as he'd become, Morty was
still Morty. He wasn't going to suddenly become capable of coming up with
anything that the old Morty couldn't think of.
===============================================================================
 
This was it. This was Morty's chance for redemption.
Of all the punishments he could have received, Morty never would have expected
that he would have to punish himself,but then, he was just a Morty. It really
was the perfect solution; Rick was giving him the opportunity to show just how
far he was willing to go to earn his forgiveness. Anyone could endure being
bound and tortured, but only a few had the mental fortitude and dedication to
hurt themselves.
Morty hurried back down to the garage for supplies. This would have to be
brutal, but safe; tools weren't of any use to their owners broken, and he
wouldn't be of any use to Rick dead. Perhaps that was just part of the test?
Yes, that had to be it! He would bring himself to the edge of death! It would
be the perfect show of atonement! Morty couldn't help but let out a giddy
laugh. He wouldn't just show Rick that he was a good Morty, oh no. He would
show Rick that he was the best, most loyal, most adoring Morty in all the
multiverse!
But what to use? He browsed the shelves of Rick's garage with an appraising
eye. Lasers would be a good candidate. Morty knew from experience how painful
they were to be hit by, but the heat also meant that any wound would be
cauterized and stop bleeding; Rick had told him as much during a drunken
tangent about how Star Wars characters could survive having their limbs lopped
off by lightsabers. Morty grabbed one of Rick's plasma knives.
Hmm, that was a good start, but it wasn't nearly enough. Plenty of people cut
themselves. It was time to bring out the big guns. Where did Rick keep his
interrogation gear, again? Right, behind the hidden wall panel above the
washing machine, next to the bootleg arcade machine. Morty opened up the panel
to find Troy still in the system. He shuffled some things around and began
plucking things off the shelf. Many of the devices were designed with alien
anatomy in mind, but there were plenty suited for humans.
"Automated denailer…" murmured Morty, grabbing the device with shaky hands.
Yes, that would definitely be painful! "Liquid nitrogen…"
His hands were full, but he was pretty sure it would be sufficient. Now all
that was left was something to keep himself quiet; his unenlightened family
would never understand the importance of what he was doing, and he certainly
wouldn't want to bother Rick with his repentant screams. Fortunately, Rick was
the sort of man who'd created a solution for just about every problem. Morty
rifled through the shelves in search of a device he'd seen his grandfather use
on a few separate occasions to keep a hostage quiet. He grinned triumphantly as
he pulled it out; it looked a little bit like a gas mask, but it only covered
the mouth, and would completely silence any sound that left the wearer's mouth.
Morty strapped the gag to his face for a test run. Not because he doubted
Rick's genius, or anything like that! He just needed to make sure there wasn't
anything he needed to switch on first.
"Hello?" he said, but no sound was audible. Perfect.
Morty didn't bother taking it off his face, since he already had enough to
carry. He picked up his chosen implements in his arms and opened the door with
his foot. It was easy to stroll right on by his family, whose eyes were glued
to the television.
"Do you guys ever wonder what happens to the child actors in these kinds of
shows?" asked Jerry out of nowhere.
"Nope," said Beth, taking another sip from her glass of wine.
Upon reaching his room, Morty set his tools down on the bed and closed the door
behind him. His family had come to understand that when his bedroom door was
closed, it was a bad time to disturb him.
This was it. Morty swallowed the lump in his throat as he looked over his
options, wondering where to start. The liquid nitrogen seemed as good a place
as any. He picked up the small tube, which was already fairly cold. It was a
chemical that could rapidly freeze living tissue, hence its popularity as a
means of wart removal. Morty knew from experience that it was also an effective
means of killing off several other wart-like ailments from across the
multiverse, and that its usage could be quite painful. Since it would reach its
boiling point as soon as it left its vacuum-sealed container and made contact
with something warmer, it produced a lot of gas. One liter of liquid could
create 700 liters of gas, and while it wasn't poisonous in and of itself, too
much could still result in suffocation.
Morty cracked his window open. While he was pretty sure the small tube he'd
taken with him didn't contain enough liquid nitrogen to cause that kind of a
problem, he'd learned on many an adventure that he was better safe than sorry.
"Okay," he said, even though his voice didn't make a sound through the mask.
"Here we go."
He stripped himself down to his underwear so as to keep his clothes from
getting stained with blood and readied the vial. Since this particular
container was intended for interrogation purposes, it had a built-in
applicator. Morty flipped the switch to get it out of storage mode. A handle
with a trigger protruded out of the side while a barrel sprung out of one end,
with the result looking almost like a squirt gun. Morty twisted the dial to
close-range and, after taking a seat on the floor, aimed it at his leg.
He squeezed the trigger.
The pain was not immediate. Rick called that the 'Leidenfrost effect.' Morty
didn't understand the details too well, but he knew enough to set the gun down
while he had the chance.
Shortly after, however, as the splattered liquid turned to gas, Morty cried out
as his skin was frozen. The cold was so intense that it felt more like a burn.
The scattered bits of flesh where the liquid nitrogen had contacted had become
pink like a sunburn.
It was pathetic. Morty had received more intense ice burns on some of their
Arctic adventures. He took a deep breath, retrieved the liquid nitrogen gun,
and shot himself in the leg once more.
"HNN!"
That time, it had splattered against his other leg. Good. The bright pink skin
had turned red. He fired again, and tears filled his eyes as blisters rapidly
started to form.
Once the nitrogen gas cleared, Morty began taking shots at his other leg. Tears
streamed down his cheeks as he repeated the process, freezing his own flesh
until it blistered.
This wasn't enough. Not even close. Months upon months as a disappointment
would not be corrected so easily. Morty crossed his legs and fired at the
bottom of his foot.
By the time he was finished, his entire lower legs looked like they'd been
covered in a layer of wax. Disappointingly, the pain had faded to numbness; it
looked like frostbite had set in. Morty supposed there would be no point in
cutting them up now that he could no longer feel them. He set the emptied
container aside to instead go for the denailer.
This one required far less user interaction. The device itself looked a little
like a solid metal glove, with a few major differences. The separated finger
slots were all approximately the same length, and there was one angled slot on
either side for the thumb so the device could be used on either hand. There was
a screen with various settings on the top. Morty slid his hand into place.
He hit the 'Lock' button. Immediately, he could feel something inside suction
itself to his fingernails. Morty bit his lip. This was going to suck.
"You can do this," he whispered to himself, even if it was impossible to hear.
"You can do it for Rick!"
He had to force himself to keep his breath steady so as to keep himself from
hyperventilating as he readied his finger over the 'Start' button. The fact
that he couldn't actually see what was happening inside the machine only made
it more frightening.
"For Rick," he said again. "For Rick!"
Morty hit the button. For a moment, there was a tugging sensation, then it
stopped. Was it broken?
Click!
With a single, sharp yank,all five nails of that hand were ripped clean out of
his fingertips. Morty howled with agony as his denailed hand was released.
Blood poured from the nailbeds, but it wasn't over. He had another hand to do.
Morty hastily inserted his other hand and locked it into place before his
nerves failed him. Without giving himself time to think about it, he slammed
his still-bleeding hand against the 'Start' button.
Click!
"AAGH!" cried Morty. He let loose a lengthy stream of silent curses as he set
the device aside. Both of his hands were shaking far too badly to hold the
plasma knife, let alone cut himself with it without slicing open something
important. Was this it? Was this really the extent of what he was capable of?
Morty collapsed to his side, sobbing brokenly. It hurt so much. He didn't want
to do this.
But he hadto.
"For Rick," he choked out again as he fumbled around for the plasma knife still
sitting on top of his bed. "ForRickforRickforRick-"
He flipped the plasma blade on. It was like a little laser knife. The colors
were actually kind of pretty, but Morty didn't have time to admire his
grandpa's handiwork.
With another silent, determined scream, Morty swung the blade down through his
left leg, above the knee so as to make sure he wasn't just cutting up the part
numbed by frostbite. The plasma sliced through skin and bone alike like warm
butter. The amount of force he'd used proved excessive, and the knife ended up
slicing through the floor. Overwhelmed by the pain of cutting off his own leg,
Morty struggled desperately to lift the knife and move on to the next one, but
it slipped from his bloody grip and fell to the floor.
"For…" Morty began.
He collapsed onto his back, and everything went dark.
===============================================================================
 
Rick sighed contentedly as he peeled off the second condom he'd masturbated
into in the same day. It didn't feel quite as good as his bare hand, but it
sure made clean-up easier, especially since he wasn't keen on showering a
second time. As he went to toss it in the trash bin, however, he noticed
something troubling.
…Where was the first one?
Rick dropped the latest used condom into the trash. Unfortunately, he was
fairly certain he already knew the answer.
Morty.
For as kinky a fucker as Rick was, that was just a whole new level of
disgusting. Stealing used condoms out of the trash? Seriously?What the fuck?
Damn it, he needed to extract those nanobots and run some proper diagnostics.
There was no way that this was stuff his Morty could actually be pushed into
doing just because he really liked a person, even if he didworship the ground
Rick walked on.
Rick reluctantly dressed himself to go knock on Morty's door.
"Morty!" he said sternly. "I need you in the garage, now!"
No response. Rick frowned.
"Damn it, Morty, quit jacking it and get out here, or I-I-I'll come in there
and drag you out myself!"
Still nothing. Well, he'd given ample warning. Rick opened the door.
Oh.
Oh shit.
Rick's body seemed to switch over to autopilot as he dropped to his knees to
assess the unconscious Morty's condition. Still breathing. That was a good
sign. His legs were completely frostbitten, and one had been cut off entirely,
but the injury appeared to have been caused by a plasma blade and wasn't
bleeding. His hands were covered in blood, and his fingernails were all
missing, but the injuries appeared to have scabbed over. From what he could
see, there wasn't enough spilled blood for that to be a factor in Morty being
unconscious; Rick's best guess was neurogenic shock from excessive pain.
Okay. No need to panic. Everything here was perfectly fixable. He just had to
get Morty to the lab. Rick hurried back to his room to retrieve his portal gun,
then popped one on Morty's bedroom wall in order to get him there without
alerting anyone else. He hoisted Morty's battered body through the portal and
set him carefully down on the table, then went back for the severed leg,
followed by the various tools he'd used to mutilate himself.
He flipped a switch on the wall, and an empty vat rose out of the floor. Rick
opened it up, set Morty down inside, and pulled off the silencer over his mouth
before closing him up inside. With a few more button presses, the vat began to
fill with green liquid. Morty's body began floating upwards, and bubbles
escaped his mouth as the fluid filled his lungs. It was perfectly breathable,
of course, but it would also keep him in suspension for the next few hours
while Rick regrew his leg and fixed the frostbite.
With Morty stabilized, Rick opened up the nanobot communication app on his
computer.
"What the fuckare you doing in there?" he demanded.
"Chilling in brain juice, mostly,"responded the nanobot. "Why? What's up?"
"My grandson just cut his own leg off,and-and you honestly expect me to believe
that you're 'just chilling?' " growled Rick.
"Uh, yes?"
"No," said Rick scathingly. "No fucking way."
"Well, I'm sorry to be the one to have to bring this up, but, like, have you
considered that maybe this was just something he was capable of from the
beginning?"suggested the nanobot.
"For real? Morty?" said Rick. Were he not currently staring down at his
grandson's blistered and severed leg, he might have laughed. "Not a chance."
"Look, the thing is, I told the others about your concerns, and we spent a lot
of time going through thoughts and memories,"said the nanobot. "I don't think
this is super surprising at all. None of the stuff that you say he's done
really falls outside of the bounds of what he already seems capable of. Stuff
like pushing lighthouse keepers down the stairs, attempted torture to protect
that 'Jessica' person… He was already pretty 'fucked up' by human standards.
The only difference now is who he loves and how intense the feelings are."
Rick glared at the screen.
"Nanobots, eject yourselves out of Morty's body and cluster together for
retrieval. I'm running diagnostics."
"Caaaaan do!"chirped the nanobot. "Come on, guys! Time to go!"
Rick shut down the program.
"Fuck," he breathed, making sure to lock the door leading to the rest of the
house before someone like Summer burst in demanding to know what was up.
He couldn't believe the degree to which he'd underestimated Morty's madness. It
was bad enough that he was capable of injuring himself far beyond Rick's
wildest imaginings. It was worsethat he was downright methodicalabout it. If he
were just being stupidcrazy, he might have alerted someone with his screams or
mad ravings, but instead, he'd planned ahead. He was out of his mind, yes, but
he was still sane enough to recognize that other people (sans Rick, apparently)
would find his actions disturbing and try to stop them. Rick had dealt with
enough lunatics to know that the brand of madness Morty was exhibiting was by
far the most dangerous. Regular raving lunatics were fairly predictable in
their unpredictability, but with Morty, it was impossible to know the true
extent of his crazy since he knew enough not to say anything about it.
Rick could no longer afford to sit back and see how everything shook out. He
had to get a feel for Morty's new limits and reel him the fuck in. Until he
understood exactly what made his grandson tick, he couldn't afford to leave him
alone. It would be a pain in the ass, but Morty was going to need constant
supervision. He didn't want to let this happen again.
Rick took another look at his grandson's severed leg.
He couldn'tlet it happen again.
Chapter End Notes
     I hope you guys enjoyed part two of this painfully self-indulgent
     fanfic. Please feel free to leave your honest thoughts in the
     comments; I appreciate both positive feedback AND constructive
     criticism alike. Also, please keep in mind that the thoughts and
     descriptions of characters in the story do not reflect my own. When
     Rick refers to Morty's antics as insanity, it isn't intended to be a
     jab at the mentally ill so much as it is a means of getting across
     that Morty's behavior is abnormal. This story is a work of fiction,
     and Morty's obsessive tendencies are in no way reflective of real-
     life mental illness.
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