Chapter Text
The day started out normal. Wake up, get ready for school, eat breakfast, listen to Rick rant about how school was pointless, get on the bus with Summer, and arrive at school.
That’s where ‘normal’ ended for Morty. As soon as he and Summer arrived at school Morty noticed everyone staring at the siblings, whispering, some pointing and snickering. From what he could tell it was all directed at him.
None of this escaped Summer’s notice, but compared to the shenanigans that normally occurred she couldn’t be bothered to look up from her phone as she and Morty walked to their lockers. That was, until her friend Nancy pulled her aside while Morty continued on without her.
Nancy urgently whispered in her ear about what had happened. Gasping, Summer dropped her phone and sprinted after her little brother, rounding the corner to see Morty staring up at his locker in complete shock.
“Morty?” She cautiously approached her brother, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. She looked up at his locker, squeezing his shoulder. What she saw was news to her, but she wasn’t surprised by it.
There were photos. Photos of her baby brother and their grandfather, kissing, holding hands, some looked like they were taken by either Rick or Morty, others looked like they were taken from a distance without knowledge from either of them. All strung up for the world to see. Summer saw one particular photo of them kissing passionately, the background was clearly them on an alien planet.
She ripped the photos down violently, shoving them into her backpack. As she removed them she saw words scrawled out on the locker, terribly unoriginal insults. ‘Freak’, ‘grandpa fucker’, ‘disgusting’, to name a few. On the photos she saw words like ‘rapist’, ‘abuser’, and ‘pedophile’ written about Rick. She ground her teeth, letting out a growl, when she saw someone drew a crude stick figure doodle of Rick fucking Morty.
She turned to glare at her peers who were gawking at her and her brother, her brother who now had tears running down his face. Summer took Morty’s hand, dragging him back to the front doors of the school.
They were going home. Morty didn’t say a word the entire way back.
Summer figured once they got home then Rick would handle it. All he had to do was erase some memories, right? Hell, she’d ask for her own to be erased, she didn’t want to know her brother and grandfather were doing those… things . Right now, however, she’d compartmentalize her feelings until she felt Morty was safe.
She was lost in thought until a loud shout broke her from her thoughts.
“Fuck!” Summer knew that voice anywhere, it was Rick. She sped up, dragging Morty along, she had a bad feeling. “I was gone 5 fucking minutes! Who the fuck got past the home defense system?!” She heard the sound of something metal hitting the concrete, water flowing down their driveway.
The siblings turned the corner leading to their driveway. Summer drew in a breath, holding it.
Rick stood facing the garage door, his lab coat gone, sleeves rolled up, clenching a wet rag in his hand. On the garage door, in bright red spray paint, was ‘pedophile rapist’, ‘incest’, and ‘abuser’. Some of the words were smeared, clearly Rick was trying to clean off the graffiti before anyone saw it.
“Grandpa Rick?” She heard Morty mumble beside her. Rick snapped his attention over to his grandchildren, surprised to see them back home. His face settled into something grim, putting two and two together.
“What happened?” Rick walked over to them and Summer silently handed him her backpack, full of the photos from school. He sighed, “So, you got them too, huh?”
Too?
He reached into his back pocket, pulling out copies of the same photos, “I found these on my ship while I was off-planet,” he paused to glance at Morty, who was currently clinging to his big sister like he did when he was a small child, “someone is clearly trying to get to me by going through you, Morty,” his expression softened in a way Summer rarely saw when he looked at Morty, “I’m sorry, Morty. Grandpa’ll take care of this, don’t you worry.” He reached out and put a hand on Morty’s head.
Morty unlatched from Summer and threw himself into Rick’s arms, clutching him tightly.
Summer took the washrag from Rick’s hand without saying a word. She picked up the bucket Rick previously kicked over, what little water left sloshed around. Knowing what was going on between them, she really couldn’t stand to look at them being so casually intimate with each other. Her feelings and thoughts were overwhelming her, threatening to spill over from their neat little compartments. She slammed the wet rag on the garage door and scrubbed, trying to ignore the little muffled sobs of her brother crying coming from behind her.
She wasn’t leaving until the garage door was clean.
It had been a few weeks since everything started.
In that time, Beth and Jerry had found out about the relationship between Rick and Morty. It seemed like everyday there were more photos, more graffiti, dog shit on their porch, eggs tossed at their home. Some sick fuck actually strung up a dead dog over their front door. Morty had been the one to find it, his family had never heard him scream so hysterically before.
Rick cut the dog down. The whole family noticed immediately the poor thing was a Maltese, just like Snuffles had been. Morty huddled into a corner, his knees drawn up to his chest. Rick was the only one able to console the boy, finally convincing him that the dog wasn’t Snuffles, promising he’d find out whoever was doing this and he’d make them pay.
All this time the kids had been attending school normally, but today he elected to stay home. People had started to bully him more than ever. At one point Brad and some of his friends cornered Morty in the bathroom, cracking jokes about how desperate Morty must be for a lay if he’s letting his grandpa fuck him. Before it went any further Morty ran away from them, running to find Summer as the jocks ran after him. He hid behind Summer, feeling ashamed for needing his big sister's protection. Brad and his friends skidded to a halt upon seeing Summer. She straight up growled at the boys, daring them to try something. They laughed, backing off.
Morty decided he couldn’t stand it anymore, so he refused to go to school after that. There haven’t been further incidents at school involving photos, but people took to taunting her when Morty wasn’t around. Naturally, she was the sister of the school grandpa fucker, they jumped to the assumption she was involved in their incestuous affair somehow.
A girl from her class boldly insinuated she was fucking her brother. It wasn’t a secret he liked redheads after all and he clearly was fine with incest. One swift punch from Summer, knocking the girl flat on her ass, was enough to put a stop to anyone daring to make comments to her face.
Everyday since then she’d been called to the Principal's office. Principal Vagina wasn’t exactly the best principal in the world but Summer was able to tell he did legitimately seem to care about his students. He was trying to get Summer to confirm what was happening between Rick and her underaged brother, trying to do what was expected of him even though he knew he couldn’t do anything against Rick. Summer chose not to say anything to him.
When Summer got home from school that day there were police cars in front of her house. Officers loitered outside her home, presumably just in case things took a violent turn with the agent inside.
Great. Here we go again.
When she opened the door she was met with screaming. Someone called CPS on them, again. She doesn’t know why, everyone in town knew better than to fuck with Rick at this point. She almost felt bad for the agent and officers who got assigned to deal with them.
In spite of everything Beth refused to let anything happen to her father, vocally defending him. Jerry backed her up, not because he agreed but because he didn’t want to face his wife’s wrath if he went against her.
Now CPS was threatening to take Morty away, claiming he was being abused and this environment was enabling it to happen. Summer scoffed, she couldn’t argue with that point.
“Fuck you!” Rick shouted at the top of his lungs, “None of you know anything about Morty or what he wants! Y- y- you- you people keep showing up, distracting me with this bullshit while I’m trying to figure out the actual problem! Instead of wasting time on us, why don’t you assholes make yourselves useful and find who’s been harassing my fucking family!?”
Rick was fuming.
“Rick…” Morty tugged on the sleeve of Rick’s lab coat, looking up at him, silently pleading for Rick to calm down. He grasped Rick’s hand, his thumb gently stroking the back of Rick’s boney hand.
Rick’s face relaxed, the tension in his body melting away like warm butter. The elder looked down at his grandson and sighed. Rick plopped back down on the couch next to Morty, lacing his fingers together with Morty’s.
Well, it seems like they’re not even bothering to hide it in front of the police and CPS anymore. Good to know.
“Mr. Sanchez, this past week you’ve been lying to us about your ‘relationship’ ,” the CPS agent failed to hide her bias there, “with Morty, your grandson. Now you’ve finally admitted you’ve been in an illicit sexual relationship with him and you think we’re ‘wasting our time’?”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying,” Rick stated flatly, “I lied in the hopes you people would leave us alone, but seeing as how that isn’t working we see no point in lying.”
“We?” The agent responded.
“He means both of us , me and him,” Morty spoke up, it was the most steady his voice had been in weeks, “we’re in love with each other, he makes me happy.”
Before the woman could speak against him, Beth interjected, “I think it’s time for you all to leave, Ms. Ewing,” she stood up, forcing a smile, “it really doesn’t matter how often you keep coming back, you’re not taking my son away and you certainly won’t be arresting my father any time soon, so please leave.”
Beth wasn’t exactly on board with the relationship but she’ll be damned if they were going to take her baby away from her.
Ms. Ewing sighed in defeat, “Very well, Mrs. Smith, but this isn’t over. We’ll be monitoring the situation.” She glanced at Summer as she passed to leave through the front door. Summer suspected this woman was the reason she kept getting called to the school office, the agent must be pressuring the school to get information out of Summer that they can use to justify removing Morty from their home.
Morty exhaled a breath he didn’t even know he was holding when the door closed behind the agent.
After that everyone went their separate ways. Jerry went to his man cave, Beth went to the kitchen to start dinner. Summer, Rick, and Morty went upstairs.
Once they were in the privacy of Morty’s bedroom, the boy collapsed face down on his bed.
“H- how are you feeling, ba- babe?” Rick sat next to Morty on the bed, lightly stroking the teenage boy’s hair.
“R- Rick,” Morty turned to face his grandfather, “I’m just so tired of all this, Rick.”
“I know, baby,” Rick couldn’t help but feel responsible. He hadn’t even been able to find any information on who exactly was doing this to them. He rubbed gentle circles down Morty’s back, wanting to soothe his lover. “I am too.”
“Rick… I- I just- I-,” Morty paused, taking a breath, “Someone a- at school talked to me yesterday, Rick.”
Rick gave him a confused look, but said nothing as the boy continued.
“Sh- she kept asking me if I needed help, i- if you were hur- hurting me, telling me I was being a- ab- abused! That you were abusing me. Saying I couldn’t actually love you because you’re my grandfather and so much older than me. Th- th- then someone else agreed with her and before I knew it I had like five people offering to help, telling me you were hurting me and I just,” Morty wiped the fresh tears from his eyes, “for a second I actually believed them, Rick!”
Morty buried his face in his hands, trying desperately not to cry.
Rick wasn’t going to lie, it stung that Morty thought that even if it was just a passing thought.
“Sweetheart,” Rick moved Morty’s hands away from his face, “it’s okay, I know you love me, Morty.” It had taken Rick a long time to accept it. When they were trapped on the remains of the Citadel together, stranded in space with countless Morties and a handful of Ricks, he finally owned up to his feelings for Morty. He accepted Morty as a partner, an equal, finally letting himself trust in the unconditional love his cute little grandson had always offered him.
That was when he realized he was in love with Morty. Rick was content just to have Morty by his side, but then Morty confessed his own feelings for Rick. After that whole ordeal with Nick, Morty had realized he was in love with Rick. When Rick left with the crows it hurt deeper than any other pain he ever felt.
“And I know you love me, Rick,” Morty smiled up at his grandfather, reaching up to put his hands on either side of Rick’s face. He stroked his thumbs over the wrinkles and lines of his face, Rick was beautiful in his old age, this was the face of the man he fell in love with. “That’s why I feel so bad for doubting you even slightly.”
“The key to brainwashing is repetition, love,” he took one of Morty’s hands and kissed the inside of his wrist, “but you didn’t fall for it, that’s the important thing.”
That seemed to cheer Morty up.
“Hey, Rick,” Morty looked him in the eyes, blush spreading across his face, “maybe we could eat dinner in your room tonight and watch some interdimensional cable together? I’d l- like to stay with you tonight, like we were able to do back in Mortyberg, if that’s okay?”
“Oh?” Rick couldn’t help but smirk playfully, “You want to spend some quality time with grandpa tonight, baby?” Morty squirmed, embarrassed. It was rare they did anything in the house, so the boy was still nervous.
“D- don’t tease me, Rick,” Morty huffed, playfully shoving Rick on the shoulder, “but yes, I do want to spend time with you, Rick, it feels like we’ve hardly spent any time together lately.”
It was true, they hadn’t been able to spend much time together. They were walking on eggshells around the family at Morty’s request, he didn’t wish to make things even more awkward with the family.
“Anything for you, Morty.”
There was a knock on the door, Summer spoke, “Dinner’s ready, Morty,” was all she said before walking off.
“Okay, I’ll get the food and you go down and wait in my room, Morty.”
Rick went down to the kitchen, grabbing two plates. Beth eyeballed him the entire time he loaded up both plates and asked what he was doing.
“Morty and I are going to eat in my room tonight, sweetie.”
Beth huffed at him, sipping her wine, Jerry opened his mouth to say something before thinking better of it. Summer poked at her food while scrolling through her phone.
“Fine,” Beth said begrudgingly, “but we need to talk about some things tomorrow, dad.”
Rick didn’t respond, he’s grateful Beth was letting this happen without a fight. He’d deal with whatever she wanted tomorrow. Right now, his precious little lover needed some quality time with his grandpa.