#rickfucker

At first, he was disinterested. Sure, you were pretty, but to him you were just another person with a planetary mindset - you would rather stay ignorant to the universe, content in the little bubble that you called Earth. That assumption quickly died, however, as he overheard you tutoring Morty in the kitchen.

He was a teenage boy; he couldn’t stop himself from bragging. He would interrupt as you taught him about reproduction, telling you about his Gazorpian son. Obviously, he got most of the information wrong, but what Rick noticed most was your unadulterated curiosity. You asked questions that most humans wouldn't even consider, and it led to Rick forcing his way into your orbit.

Naturally, he did it in the Rick-est way possible. Where most people would just engage in small talk, he chose to barge in on your tutoring sessions, using every interaction to analyse you like one of his alien specimens. 

"Tha-urrrp-t- t-this shit is so degrading," he had once slurred, taking a sip from his flask, "M-Morty's been to whoooole other dimensions, h-he doesn't need to know what a fucking cytoplasm is."

He could be as rude as he liked, but your reaction was always a surprise to him. Instead of getting angry, telling him to leave, you would look up at him like he hung the stars and ask endless questions about whatever topic he had mentioned.

Even once his original analysis of you reached its conclusion, Rick continued to stick around, no longer an interruption to your tutoring, but a natural part of it. He had seen the way you gazed at him, how you insisted that he sat next to you at the table, and now he had a new hypothesis that needed testing. He was certain that he was right, but he wanted to be careful – he was a dick, not a creep.

It took a few weeks, but he finally got the proof he needed when you were inevitably dragged into one of his sci-fi adventures. 

It had been one of those days where Morty hadn’t shown up for your session together. When this happened – which was fairly often, hence you came prepared with your own revision materials – you just assumed that he was out with his grandpa. Usually, if Morty was late, it meant that he wasn’t coming at all. Nonetheless, you hung around the Smith’s house just in case – you still got paid after all.

So, you found yourself waiting on the couch with a textbook at your side, studying for your midterms when an unstable green portal opened into the living room. Rick followed it in quick succession, stumbling through and catching himself on the armrest as his eyes scanned the room.

“H-hey,” he said, trying to get your attention as if the portal hadn’t already done that for him, “H-have you- urrrp- have you seen Morty?”

If the spittle on his chin was anything to go by, he was clearly much drunker than usual.

“I thought he was with you,” you confessed.

At that, Rick had let out a groan, his head tipping back towards the ceiling. You weren't sure what to say until he ran a hand across his face, resetting himself. Then he was lunging at you, grabbing your wrist and dragging you through the portal with him. 

Whilst you were on this adventure with him, you did absolutely everything he told you to – terrified to get something wrong. Whether it was fear or adoration making you feel this way, you couldn’t tell.

Either way, it seemed to appease Rick’s constant need to be in control of the world around him.

In fact, when he returned you to the tarmac outside your home, he told you as much, musing about how glad he was to have a companion that actually listened for once. In the morning, the hangover would steal many of his memories, but the way you had blushed wouldn’t be one of them. 

Once you proved yourself useful, he started to take you out more frequently. Partially because you were more helpful than either of his grandkids, but also because he enjoyed your company and how you stroked his ego, laughing at all his quips. He would never soberly admit this, though.

You enjoyed it too, the way that Rick doled out praise when you were around. Morty told you how strange it was, how out of character it was for his grandpa to be civil with anyone willingly. However, neither of you knew that he had an ulterior motive: watching you squirm beside him. He revelled in being able to torment you like this, using all of your weaknesses against you.

This routine continued for several months with little change.

Until one evening, when he had teleported into your living room in a new pair of slacks and a dress shirt. He had told you to put on a nice outfit about half an hour prior which, obviously, you didn’t question.

Rick would never ask somebody out. It was pointless and juvenile (he wasn’t in college) but that didn’t mean that he wanted you to feel unappreciated. So, he took you both to a semi-classy restaurant on Earth – a step up from his usual haunts. 

Together you shared a nice dinner, and for once Rick was the one asking questions. You both knew that this was the start of something more, but it didn’t need to be acknowledged, it just was. 

After dessert, Rick guided you to the men’s bathroom with a hand on the small of your back. He had laughed when you panicked, telling him you weren’t like that. It was only when he drew out his portal gun that you realised what he had found so funny, and your face flushed with heat. 

He portals the pair of you out without paying, because $250 for dinner was “a fucking scam.”

Once you enter this peculiar relationship limbo, there are no big or sudden changes, just small shifts from what you already knew. 

Rick still took you on adventures, but every few weeks you would go somewhere peaceful, no fighting in sight. (You suspected that these were dates.)

A particular favourite trip of yours was the ice cream parlour in the Gloppy Drop system. Rick knew this and made efforts to take you there every once in a while. If you two had plans together after a tutoring session, Rick would impatiently snap at Morty if he caused the lesson to overrun. That time was reserved for him, and he wouldn’t let his grandson trample all over it. 

Rick did also end up developing a new protective streak after a close call on one adventure. It wasn’t a massive deal in your eyes, but he insisted on implementing some safety features into your life. They weren’t anything intrusive, similar to the ponytail modification he had given Summer.

There are certain trips, though, that Rick straight up refuses to bring you on. It didn’t matter to him that you thought you could handle it – he wasn’t going to bring you. Sometimes this upset you, he could tell, but he wouldn’t say sorry though, too stubborn for that. Instead, you would come home one day to find pretty crystals and foreign jewellery laying around your house. They were space souvenirs, apologies from Rick.

And although he was the smartest person in the universe, Rick still couldn’t shed his human desire to be needed. So, he showed it in little ways.

If you complained about anything not working, Rick would make sure to fix it as fast as possible. Once you had mentioned your car in passing, talking about how it was a hunk of rubbish. The next morning, when you got up to go to work, the whole thing had been repaired with a interdimensional radio installed. You knew better than to ask Rick about it because despite his newfound emotional availability, he still relied on that callous façade he had honed for years. 

The only time you ever saw his true feelings was when he was drunk beyond recognition. He would portal into your room, collapsing across your body in bed, murmuring truths that he would never say sober.