Work Text:
Rick doesn’t recognize the number. It isn’t in his contacts--most people would ignore a call like that, assuming it to be spam, but Rick answers with the knowledge that he’d modified his phone line to filter out any spam calls after hearing one too many robotic voices say your car insurance has expired, press 1 to renew --
“Ri-iiick here.”
He shoves his phone between the jut of his shoulder and ear, hands busy twisting wire into a braid-like knot between glowing discs of alien metal.
“Richard Sanchez?” Some lady asks across the phone, and Rick makes an annoyed noise, but she goes on without waiting for confirmation, “I’m from Harry Herpson Highschool, calling on the behalf of a… Mortimer Smith? He is in the office with us at the moment, and requires pick-up.”
“W-wh-why the hell a-are you calling me?” Rick bites, but he shoves his project away and leans back, holding his phone steady and giving the conversation his full attention. “I-I’m the kids grandpa, not his fucking parent. Ha-have Beth come get him o-or something.”
“You were the first contact listed on his file,” the lady on the other end says with dwindling conviction, “If you are unable to come get him, we can--”
Rick makes a loud, exaggerated groan, cutting her off, “No, I-I’m on my way now. G-give me five.”
He hangs up before she can respond, kicking himself out of his chair and up to his room to put on some pants.
God damn it .
When he actually gets to the school, he doesn’t exchange any words with the lady at the desk. She gapes at him--her first time seeing a portal, clearly--before mutely gesturing to a closed, windowed door a bit ways off.
Rick finds Morty there, sitting in the darkness, hunched in on himself and shaking minutely. His hands pull at the circle of his ears and his eyes are clenched shut. His back-and-forth rocking motions make the chair groan uncomfortably. He’s silent aside from tense breath, but the bits of tousled hair by his temples and subtle tap-tap of his foot tell Rick everything he needs to know.
He doesn’t touch Morty, instead pulling his labcoat around the kids shoulders and allowing him to look up on his own. He’s quick to stand, movements stiff, hands locked on his ears and silent tears streaming down his ruddy cheeks. Rick shoots a portal for him and he goes through within the second, never making eye contact, staring pointedly at the scuffed rubber toe of his shoes.
There’s a lady across the room from them who stares at him wide-eyed, stammering out a “Mr- Um, Mr. San-Sanchez--?”
“Mo-OOORty’s excused,” he mutters, sending her an annoyed look through the darkness before going through and closing the portal.
Morty’s already left for his room. Maybe it’s the remains of Rick’s fading empathy, or maybe it’s some weird familial obligation, but Rick makes for the kitchen, boiling and straining some leftover pasta for the kid. Bland and unbuttered, since anything else would freak him out even more.
He goes to bring it to Morty and finds his labcoat, haphazardly tossed across the hallway. His lips twitch in a scowl at the lack of care for his things. Still, he picks it up and tucks it in the crook of his free arm, lightly rapping his knuckles on the door before cracking it open and shuffling into the darkness.
Morty’s blinds are drawn, and the only sign of his presence in the room is the thick lump on his bed--soft hums emit from it, a repeated hm-hm-hmmm, hm-hm-hmmm . Rick recognizes the heavy layering of weighted blanket and soft fleece, and it feels so strange to be on the outside of the scene for once, to be the one walking in and trying to understand.
He wonders if this is how his mamá felt; trying her best to provide comfort as Rick dry heaved in bed, dizzy over the way those bright school lights buzzed and buzzed and buzzed .
Slowly, quietly, Rick sets the pasta on Morty’s end table. He notices a thick pair of headphones on the floor and sets those next to it, too. He stops mid-way through leaving to just kind of… look at the kid, a foreign hesitation gnawing at his stomach. His body itches to do more. He knows shouldn’t do more.
He sees one of Morty’s school notebooks on his floor, and before he can decide against it, he picks it up, flipping to a clean page and tearing it out. He grabs a pen from the holder on the kids shelf, scribbling down a quick message and sliding it onto the end table. As satiated as a Rick can be, he heads downstairs, tightening each set of downstairs blinds as he passes them by.
It’s an hour and twenty-two minutes later--not that he’s keeping count--when a familiar, slow patter of footsteps make their way down the stairs. Rick doesn’t look, but he knows Morty is standing in the archway, headphones flattening his hair and blanket tight around his shoulders. Rick can feel his stare, burning a rough hole into his temple.
He silently sighs and meets the kids gaze, gesturing for him to get the fuck over here already . Morty does, sitting in the middle like usual, pushing himself into a tiny ball with his knees against his chest and his forehead against his knees.
Rick hesitates in the confidence that Morty won’t see it, before sliding his arm over the back of the couch--not touching, but, well.
When Rick seven or so, his mamá had tried to hug him after a meltdown.
It was over something so stupid , he doesn’t even remember what. But Mamá was worried, and wanted to help, so she put her hand on his shoulder. It was such a tiny, miniscule gesture, but Rick had screamed so loud that Dad came running upstairs, thinking Mamá had done something to hurt him. Rick couldn’t stop screaming .
Once he’d calmed down, enough to think, he was alone, curled in the darkness of his closet. Bloody scratches covered his forearms, and he could feel each individual flake of blood buried in his nails.
He left the closet hours after getting in, numbly washing his hands and bandaging his arms before going to bed. He didn’t see his parents in the twenty minutes he was awake, and in the morning, neither of them acknowledged what had happened.
He remembers wishing they would. He’d sat at breakfast, silent, wishing that his mamá would sit him down and apologize for pushing him, that his dad would ask how to better handle his episodes, that they’d promise to not leave him alone again.
They didn’t. Rick doesn’t care anymore, they’re both dead--he was a few galaxies away when his aunt held their funeral, had only learned about it a few years after. He doesn’t really think about his childhood anymore.
Still, looking at Morty, with the hooked nose and thick eyebrows he’d inherited from Rick, curled into himself with his fingers scratching little red lines into his legs; Rick doesn’t want to leave him alone.
Morty deserves to have someone. Rick doesn’t know if Beth or Jerry ever intend on being that someone, but--for now, he’ll have to do.
Rick tries to focus on the show he’d put on earlier, letting Morty lead whatever interaction they have. He hasn’t been close with any other autistic people in awhile--the concept doesn’t fully translate in space, since duh, everyone’s going to function different, different biology--so he doesn’t know how to properly handle another person’s post-meltdown… ness. Ugh.
It differs on the person, doesn’t it? Rick’s gotten so used to being alone during the whole process that it’s gotten uncomfortable to have it otherwise, despite younger-Rick’s internal wishes, but is Morty at that point?
Rick hopes he isn’t.
Jesus.
“Th-th-thanks for p-picking me up,” Morty eventually murmurs. The words are hard to make out, but Rick fills in the blanks. Morty is still curled up, though he’s moved his eyes from their knee-prison to stare ahead at the screen. They’re rimmed red and lidded with exhaustion.
“…Yeah,” Rick says after a beat, because he doesn’t want Morty to get discouraged and shut back up. “No sweat,” he drawls.
“I-I’m okay,” Morty lifts his head up a bit, voice clearing with slow-returning confidence, “Th-this just happens, s-s-sometimes. I-I freak ou-out for no reason, a-a-and they take me t-to the office, a-away from the--the other k-k-kids. Th-they only c-call as a--you know, c-cause they have to. I… I’m usually not ac-actually picked up.”
“Y-yeah, we--” a burp, “--ell, your parents put--put me in as your emergency contact, s-so they called me before either of them.”
“They did?” Morty asks in a small voice.
“E--yup,” Rick drawls through another burp.
“Oh,” Morty shuffles in place, “Um, w-w-well, y-you don’t have to p-panic, or a-a-anything. I-I’m usually not in any… any phys-physical harm w-w-when they call. W-when I’m actually hurt, they--y’know, they just s-slap an icepack on it, a-and call it a day.”
Rick tries to pretend that Morty said ‘if’ instead of ‘when’, scoffing and reaching for the remote to flip through channels for something more entertaining.
“Y-you were having a fucking meltdown, dawg. That--That’s enough of a reason f-for me. Any excuse to g-get you out of that hellhole.”
Morty blinks up at him. “R-right, um… ‘meltdown’?”
“Yeah,” Rick shrugs with a single shoulder, “Y-you know, uh…”
Morty stares at him blankly. Not a flicker of understanding is displayed on his face and in his mannerisms. Rick groans, long and dramatic. He really doesn’t feel like having this talk right now.
“W-we’ll talk some other time, a-alright, dawg?”
Morty squints at him with that odd mix of confusion, anxiety and suspicion only a Morty could possess, before slumping, leaning into the couch and Rick’s arm, by proxy.
Rick keeps flipping through channels, not really looking for anything specific, only stopping when Morty hums and nudges Rick’s arm with the back of his head.
“The--The hell even is this, M-Morty?”
“L-looks weird,” Morty murmurs. “Could be funny.”
Rick rolls his eyes but sets the remote down.
Morty presses a bit further towards Rick--not enough for direct contact, but enough to be sitting together, enough for Morty to be comfortable.
It’s enough.
Later, after the rest of the family has come home and retreated to their respective areas and Morty has crawled off to bed with a quiet goodnight, Rick heads upstairs to the 6-pack stashed next to his bed.
The hallway is dark and he’s already popped out his cybernetic eye for cleaning, so he blindly grabs for the doorknob, knowing he isn’t drunk enough to confuse his room with Morty’s.
He makes an odd grunt-hum as his hand grazes paper, trailing up to the smoothed run of scotch tape. Huh.
He collects it with a force that jiggles the knob, sitting down on the edge of his cot once inside and pulling his lamp on with a small turn of black dial.
It’s the note he’d written Morty earlier--he recognizes the harsh rip of paper from where he’d pulled it out, the way it awkwardly curves in at the bottom.
noodles just have butter. im not remaking them. downstairs.
Lips thinned, Rick goes to shove the note onto the floor for later discard. As he’s balling it up, he stops, noticing a bit of writing on the back he didn’t write. It uses a pencil rather than pen, and the handwriting is shakier, with rounder curves and lighter pressure.
thank you :)
- morty
It’s the plainest, most lackluster reply the kid could give him; not even worth the trouble of giving the note back.
Rick pastes it center above the head of his cot. It sticks out from the messy collection of blueprints and faded posters, and Rick’s pretty sure it’s covering up an old project sketch he’d wanted to revisit, but--
It feels right. So he keeps it up as a reminder, to be there.