It’s 3AM and Rick is still awake. He’s been drinking on the sofa snacking on eyeholes and watching inter-dimensional cable, particularly a block of reruns of Ball Fondlers. The Eyehole Man is laying dead on the floor near the sofa. His purple mask is crimson with bloodspray. Rick has stepped on his dead body several times as he’s gone to the bathroom to take a piss or a shit. There are shoe prints on his face.
Rick watches the television through a drunken haze but he isn’t really paying attention to it. He’s thinking about Morty, and their last adventure. The fucking idiot had nearly gotten himself killed yet again. Though Rick was sometimes the cause of Morty’s near-death experiences, he didn’t really want the stupid boy to expire. And yet he kept taking the boy on dangerous adventures. How else was one supposed to bond with their grandson? Rick didn’t know because for all of his god-like brain power he’d never quite figured out how to “people” the right way. So he tried to impress his grandson by dragging him along on adventures that would be any teen boys dream.
And what did the boy do but complain and argue, half the time?
For all their squabbling, and all of Rick’s protests, he wouldn’t trade Morty for any other grandson.
He’d also never be caught saying such a thing.
But he was drunk and his drunk mind thought of plenty of sappy things that he would never say to anyone. He’d keep them in his aching heart and guard them fiercely with sarcasm, rudeness, and sometimes out right meanness. He wasn’t a pleasant person, and he was never going to be. That was just Rick.
Rick popped the last eyehole into his mouth and burped. He took another swig directly from the bottle. His flask had been emptied long ago and he’d not gone to the trouble of refilling it. A trickle of drool hung down his chin and his hair was extra spiky and messy because he kept putting one of his hands in it and pulling on it as a way to try and distract himself from his thoughts-it wasn’t working.
Rick took another glug from his bottle then stood up from the couch.
He went all wobbly for a minute and the room seemed like it was turning upside down. He took a deep breath. Belched. Got a hold of himself.
He headed towards the stairs and then climbed them very carefully with the tail of his lab coat fluttering behind him and his near empty bottle still clutched in one hand.
He arrived at Morty’s door.
His door was open a crack and at 3AM it was surely too late for the boy to be masturbating, his main form of entertainment, so Rick risked a peek through the crack in the door.
Morty was snuggled up to one side of his bed, one arm dangling off the edge, his blankets a snarl at his feet. He was snoring gently.
Who the fuck could love Jerry?
But the boy sleeping in this bed was really the light of his miserable life.
He could never say such things, though. Rick knew better.
Once the words were said aloud they were the greatest danger.
He had loved Diane, he had loved his Beth, he had loved Birdperson, and all of those things had ended so very badly. When you loved someone they became a risk, a target, something that could be hurt, or do the hurting- something that could be taken away.
Rick had learned his lesson the hardest way.
Rick turned away from the door and trundled on down the hallway. He stopped at Summer’s door to peek in at her too, and then he stopped at Beth and Jerry’s room.
Their door was wide open and Jerry’s slippers were just inside the door.
Rick slipped in quietly, took his dick out, and pissed into Jerry’s slippers like a naughty dog.
Then he went back downstairs, stepped on the Eyehole Man’s gut, and sat back down on the couch to watch more Ball Fondlers until sunrise.
