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He’s not well, and he's getting worse.
The red button haunts the back of his skull, a pulsing red dot that threatens the end and the beginning. He wishes, wishes so badly he could convince himself the pain would stop when he pushed it. It’d end Ted’s pain, but it’d deliver something much worse. Something worth running away from.
So he’ll stay like this for a little longer, for better or for worse, and worst of all is—he’s so, so lonely.
Ted knew friendship. Ted knew companions and partners and spending quality time.
Rick did not seem to know those things, and this halfway-Rick, halfway-Ted thing who’d burned all his bridges knew even less.
There’s a knock on the garage door. He clutches his beer bottle and thinks of Antonio’s wife catching him drinking, and that keeps him frozen in his chair.
He tries to speak but burps instead and the door is opening already anyway. He raises his eyes to likely meet a complaining Beth or prying Jerry and then drops them as someone of shorter stature slips through. Morty. He quickly shuts the door and leans back, arms tucked behind him and looking over Ted with the same worried stare he’d used a lot lately. Those eyes that have an intimacy deeply buried, a burn that's been tamped down. Distant. Ted wonders if it’s because he’s Ted or something else, something between Morty and Rick. Rick's got a lot of issues, so many that even his good things are tainted. Or he doesn’t know what he has. A beautiful family that worries and cares and checks in on him. Ted shakes his head and wraps lips around the bottle.
I’m your grandson.
Something lurches awkwardly in his chest, just as it did when the boy had disclosed their familial relation. Something is wrong.
He swallows down to empty and drops his arm and the bottle clatters to the cement floor with a corrosive, angry sound, but Morty doesn’t flinch.
Ted drawls out a greeting. “Heyyy, kid.”
Morty’s lips purse, his eyes flit around the mess that’s exploded in the garage since morning. Bottles and spills and emptied baggies.
“H-how’re you uh, doing, T-Ted?”
Ted shrugs and lolls his head aside and reaches for another bottle. His hand grasps air, and he tries again and misses once more. He narrows his eyes and reaches a third time for it, snatching it and clumsily shoving it under the desk to pop the lid.
“Perfect, perfectly fine.” He starts swigging and a blurry Morty shuffles between his feet from beyond the bottle. He walks forward and becomes a distorted visage through the glass.
“Wanted to see if you- you needed anything.”
Halfway gone, it looks like Morty’s inside it, like he’s gonna drink his grandson down next.
“Like, there are things I help Rick with when he’s, he’s kind of like- like you are right now.”
Ted lowers the bottle and lets out a belching sigh. “Do you call your grandpa by his first name or is that just for me?”
“Oh, ah.” Morty twists his hands together, then stops and brings them to his sides. “Mostly his name. Some- sometimes Grandpa…”
There’s a punch that starts in his chest and lands in his stomach; he doesn’t know how to place it. Maybe it’s acid reflux. He burps. Yeah, that’s it.
“Sss- sooo, ya just call him grandpa for special occasions or something?”
Morty steps forward. “You could say that.”
“Hm. Well, what’s this remedy you’ve got for me?”
“Depends. Do you… need anything?”
He glances at the stray bottles at his feet. The empty six pack, the nearly drained glass in his hand. The stain on his pants and the lab coat that simultaneously comforts him and weighs him down, even though all its gadgets and secrets are weightless within its pockets.
“I don’t think I need anything.”
Another shuffle forward. “Do you… want anything?”
Ted squints. That’s…that’s…
Morty lifts a hand and gestures back toward the rest of the house. “Like I could get you food, make you a sandwich, go pick something up. We- we’ve got interdimensional cable. Or I could just, just hang out while you do some inventing.”
Ted intends to quirk an eyebrow but he’s not sure if his face forms the right expression; Morty tilts his head and combs a hand through hair. He looks away, doubt crossing his face. “Uhh…”
“This is- is weird, isn’t it? Are you like his little errand boy? Your voice on the leg phone, you knowing the most about his- his vacations…”
Ted slides off the chair and stands and his vision wavers wildly from left to right, and he belatedly realizes he’s stumbling. He pitches forward and Morty’s hands throw out to catch him. His knee hits the floor but Morty’s got him by the shoulders; he’s stronger than he looks. Ted grasps him by the biceps and holds on with a desperation like collapsing to the floor would mean death, and he feels his comparatively massive weight make Morty strain. But the boy doesn’t break.
“What are you, Morty? Why do I feel so- so-”
Lonely. The void is cavernous, a pit that’s so big it’s got a gravity of its own and it’s hungry for so much—booze, drugs, women, pleasures that he can’t stop pouring inside that just sizzle away into the darkness and keep him running on fumes.
“So-” He’s sifting in his head for the words. Morty’s eyes waver, a bit of that hidden emotion seeping out now, a sincerity that tugs Ted forward on a string. It’s taut. He’s got gravity, too. Ted squeezes and leans into Morty, searching for an answer in that face. He expects it to crumple in disgust, for him to rip away because his grandfather is being a needy, drunk baby on the floor of the garage. But he doesn’t. He stays, waiting.
There’s a burning at the edge of Ted’s senses, a bright blinding light of energy. Underneath his fingers, it thrums. It’s concentrated, a cup of it that he wants to tilt back and see if it’d finally fill him. This time it might.
Why though, why…
“Are you the one?” Ted asks weakly. He blows sour breath and leans even harder, and Morty doesn’t buckle. He stares evenly, eyes popped just a little wider like little open circuits sucking up the question and processing it back there in that head Ted doesn’t understand but wants to.
“I am,” he finally says. He presses forward as graceful as an autumn leaf loosing from its branch. To fall into an incinerator. Ted’s eyes don’t close as his grandson kisses him. He freezes, disbelief dissolving into recognition.
There’s sunlight being poured down his throat.
It survives the darkness inside him and his heart thumps through the flood of it, pushing warmth through him, swilling it around and igniting his extremities.
He kisses like he knows this mouth.
Ted whimpers and pulls him back, bottles running away from them as he rests back into the detritus sea and drags Morty with him, one hand on a wrist and the other clutching the back of his head so he can’t escape. Not that he’s trying to; Morty’s small hands press against his chest, the leverage he needs to angle his head and let Ted abuse his mouth with his own vile tongue. Morty tastes sweet and clean, and Ted can practically feel how he contaminates him, must reek and have a mouth of bitter metal, but still Morty doesn’t wither.
Ted whimpers as a knee grazes his crotch, and he manages the wherewithal to pop off and gasp. “You’re my grandson.”
Morty’s half-lidded gaze alights with a smirk. “You’re my grandpa.” The knee pushes harder, nudges up.
Ted chokes. “It’s… wrong…”
“And we’re partners,” he whispers and slides his arm from Ted, until their hands touch and he can lift them to eye level and fold their fingers together. “Across the multiverse.”
“Rick and… Morty,” Ted mumbles. His vision blurs in and out, Morty’s visage destabilizing and restabilizing as if he’s being pulled into a black hole and reforming, ripped apart and reconstructing, like he’s got an endless supply of mass and energy to give. Can keep rebuilding what’s been taken. Can handle it.
Ted cradles him and gets to his knees, to his feet, and the floor is muddled under his shoes, the air still dizzyingly unstable, but he uses the boy’s weight to sway toward the work bench. He plops him there and gets a small oomph! before he’s kissing him again. Covering that mouth that lets him do what he wants. Soft, almost feminine lips, a pink little tongue flicking against his that makes Ted nearly fall over. Heat is thick in his head. In his hands. Balls. It’s bad. He tugs him closer by the shirt, filling the gap of Morty’s spread thighs hanging over the bench, not being surprised when Morty grinds into him. Their clothed crotches rub and they both tremble, and Ted can’t help it—liquid sunlight is pouring into him so fast.
“Kid, Morty, I—“ He mouths words uselessly against lips, starts to trail down the jaw and relishes Morty’s perfect skin on his small neck. Blood beating against lips, skin kissing him back, and Ted bites. Morty yelps and Ted is already tonguing the spot, soothing it.
“Ohhh, ahh…” Morty hitches forward and ruts best he can. The bulge in his jeans is fierce. Ted cannot comprehend it. Needs it. He doesn’t even realize he’s mangling jeans fastenings, hands moving ahead of his brain as he slides the pants off Morty, getting stuck at the bottom of his legs and grunting impatience. Morty giggles. “My shoes!”
Ted stops up again. He’s a kid. What the-
Morty starts getting his shoes off on his own while Ted stands there stupefied.
“Come, come on. It’s okay.”
Ted’s hands extend out toward the space between them. He’s already so cold for having let go even a moment, the caverns inside him blooming darkness once again. Big violent stains of black under his ribs, the bottom of his stomach pulling out and revealing an endless bottom.
“I want…” He stops talking. Voice is cracking. Pathetic.
Morty takes his hand and he thinks he’ll do that cute handhold thing again, but he drops him to his crotch instead. Protestations evaporate in a flash of brilliant light. Under his palm, blood beats like a mouse’s heartbeat. Impossibly small and fragile and it should send him reeling back. I’m your grandson.
It shouldn’t make him burn low and deep with a need greater than ten times the sum of his whole. Make him feel like he’s about to step off an edge and dive into someone else.
He’s trembling.
“Yeah?” Morty rolls his hips under the hand and grinds so beautifully between Ted’s splayed fingers, cock in underwear slipping between digits, and Morty’s whole face collapses and he bites hard on his lower lip. Ted’s legs are numb with the exertion of his body raising his cock in his pants. It beats an impatient rhythm against his slacks and still he’s frozen, overcome by the way the feeling drowns out the noise of stars dying in his head.
Morty bucks against his hand and says with a quivering voice, “Don’t stop.”
Ted grasps him and makes him gasp sharply, then exhale into a moan as he thumbs around. So sensitive. He can’t stop. Not for all the lawlessness, for all that’s wrong.
Ted drops to his knees between Morty’s legs and slides his fingers under the waistband of Morty‘s underwear, presses his nails into the soft flesh near hipbones while he mouths at him through the fabric. The small topography of his half-hard dick and balls are easy to take mouthfuls off, to cover whole with the press of a tongue.
He slides underwear under his ass and then off his legs and then there the boy is—dick pink and flushed, already weeping a little. The sight widens the famished maw; it’s even more capable of swallowing down whatever is willing to fill such a void. And Morty—he’s here. He’s so willing that it’s insane. Who is Rick? What has he done to this boy, what has he done to his family and the people that know him? The terrifying pondering makes the need burn worse. Fill it. Drown it.
“Morty,” he says. Morty looks down at him with a delirious little smile and nods like he’s telling him to keep going.
Ted is the adult. Ted is the grandpa, but he doesn’t feel so in charge and responsible. Can’t be, drugged and drunk and on the fringes of an identity crisis.
So he won't be responsible.
He puts Morty in his mouth once more, tongue flushed against him. Morty’s head falls back, mouth popped open and releasing soft little sounds of relief.
Ted can’t be so patient as to ease into this, so he tries to swallow down his semi-hard little prick whole. It’s mesmerizing that he can fit him all in his mouth and please this boy who’s come crawling to him for some reason, for some cosmically cruel but fated reason.
Something about sucking this little penis makes him so fucking hard it’s sick. He's getting so riled just flicking his tongue at the end of this kid’s dick while he holds back foreskin. Sliding tongue along the underside. Holding him up while he pops his balls into his mouth and gently swirls each.
He’s so hard it hurts, but he’s making Morty’s dick harder too, hard like his.
Ted isn’t sure if this is supposed to be some mimicry of loving, if that’s what the boy would expect, but he cannot manage much patience. He’s going to collapse in on himself soon.
He pauses, and Morty looks down at him. He says, “Please take what you need. I need to see you happy, I need to see him happy.”
Ted stares at him, both comprehending and disbelieving, and then Morty bucks his hips and grabs at the lapels of the lab coat and tugs. “Grandpa! I- I need it!”
Ted jumps to his feet and starts fingering his belt, and he initially misses the clasp. He's fading in and out of being so drunk he could pass out and somehow so startlingly aware that it’s blinding. Something about this interaction pulls him into a foreign part of his mind that he had been denied as Ted; something that Rick buries when he goes on vacation. It’s making him a little less who he thought he was—the red button pulsates brightly once more, but then his eyes sweep over Morty and his heavy breathing chest, the glisten of his forehead, the twitching need of his cock and those prodding eyes, and that red becomes yellow, bright and flaming, and he needs to swallow it, he needs to take it. Then he does think of something.
He grabs the boy’s leg and lifts up, spreads him apart. He easily falls back and holds himself by his forearms. Ted looks at his ass, the small pucker that’s intended for him. Somehow, and soon.
“Fuck, where’s- where is—”
Morty’s arm raises to a part of the table and taps it. Underneath that spot is a drawer, and Ted rips it open. Loose screwdrivers roll forward. There's some oddball objects, a smattering of dead insects, a couple condoms, and lube! Multiple half-squeezed bottles of the stuff. Ted pulls one out at random and twists the cap off, wiping away little dried crusties and then wiping his hand on his lab coat. Then he takes the coat off, tosses it up and away where it floats down like a ghost. He rolls up his sleeves.
Morty watches, same pleased grin resting on his features. His eyes are dopey with lust but still bright—he almost looks proud.
Ted drops a cool dollop onto two fingers and starts rubbing them together for a bit of warmth, and then he lifts that leg again. Morty chews on a lip and takes a deep breath, timing his exhale perfectly when Ted slides a finger in.
“Ahh—”
“Fuck, Morty.”
He’s so tight, what the fuck? Has he ever had something in his ass before?
Of course he has. He’s adjusting and breathing under him like a pornstar pro which is frightening and alluring all the same. Morty’s a snatch of heat around him.
“Co-come on, more.” He tries to bear down.
Ted slides out and slides in another; there’s more resistance this time, yet Morty’s breathing and flexing in time with the preparing fingers. One hand is tangled in his own hair. Ted stretches his fingers, scissoring as far as he can. Morty utters a little nonsense sound and his hand unravels from his hair and slides down to his own dick resting against his thigh. He picks it up in his hand and begins to stroke himself slowly. Starting from the base, he goes up and down, staggering how he raises higher each time, and Ted can’t tell the pattern but he’s matching something with the way Ted’s fingers are moving inside of him. Ted knows that he should be smart enough to pick up on the pattern and get Morty to do what he wants based on his actions, but he’s too stupid, too drunk, too horny for a kid. He drags his fingers along his inner wall and Morty makes a high pitch keening sound, jerks himself just a little harder and then suddenly releases and gasps. His dick gives a valiant twitch, but he doesn’t come yet.
“Fuck, kid.” Ted feels pre-cum release in his own pants. What the fuck is happening to him?
Morty thrusts forward vainly in a silent demand for more, and Ted gets a third finger inside; he just takes it so damn well despite how small, despite how tight, and Ted can’t help but wonder if he’s been modified somehow, or if there’s something genetically strange that allows this to happen. What kind of world is this one where a boy could exist as a perfect mold for an old man, his own grandfather? Why does he keep drifting into these thoughts of guilt? It’s not like he’s going to stop. He literally might die without this now.
His fingers plunge down to the knuckle one last time; Morty groans when he pulls out and is left empty. “Hurry,” he says, “please.” Ted sympathizes.
He resumes pulling apart his belt, getting his pants undone, relishing Morty’s hazy eyes watching as Ted pulls his own dick out. He strokes it a few times, gets dull blips of bliss in the face of what’s to come. He grabs the lube and drips it onto himself, then just under Morty’s balls so it oozes down. He strokes and slicks himself until that drip reaches his ass.
“Pl-please, now.” Morty scoots an inch down the bench and Ted grabs his leg, hoisting it up and propping it onto his shoulder. He presses forward, hesitating a moment when he’s finally touched his hole. It flutters and Morty groans impatiently, tries to nudge forward again but Ted grabs his hip. He takes a deep breath. Suddenly he has apprehension at being overwhelmed, that his brain will get so scrambled he’ll forget even who Ted is, but—but if he doesn’t he’ll lose something worse, somehow. He pushes, breaches.
Tight.
Morty moans relief like something’s come home, and Ted cries out pitifully like he’s never had his dick inside someone before. Maybe he hasn’t, besides her—if he searches his memory, the notion he’d been a man with many sex partners blows away into the ether. In many ways, he’s more virgin than the boy he’s sliding inside.
Morty’s back arches; his hand slaps down onto the one that holds his hip and he claws at it. Ted watches himself go deeper into his ass. “Holyyy shit!” He pauses and Morty grunts. He tries sliding out a little, back in, clenching his jaw. Heats bursting inside him, stars birthing and filling the void. He fucks with a small rhythm he’d still assume is too soon, but of course Morty doesn’t protest at the pace, only melts into it naturally. So Ted keeps going until he’s snapping his hips between his thighs and Morty’s dick bobs with the force, and Ted pushes his leg back to get deeper and finds himself down to the hilt wrapped in the most ensnaring heat he’s ever felt.
Morty closes his eyes and his insides clamp down for a moment, and Ted whimpers. Morty’s hand drifts back to his thickened dick and strokes, lips parting and tongue poking out.
“So fucking hot, baby,” Ted says and blood rushes to his face, feeling silly for some reason. But Morty grins big and he strokes harder.
“Yeah, Grampa, you like, like fucking me then?”
Ted nods weakly and thrusts another deep one and they both make a sound before he answers. “Yeah, love- love it. Guess we are—are two freaks? Is that it?”
Morty hums thoughtfully but doesn’t answer. He’s working that cock gloriously, sliding his hand over the top half and arching his back again. Ted rehoists his leg and holds him up by the waist, intentionally tries to fuck against his inner wall.
Morty’s face flushes pink and his eyes clamp shut. “Oh, oh oh oh!!”
“Yes! Come on!”
Morty releases with a violent jerk of his body, leg kicking off Ted’s shoulder and cum slapping his shirt, running down his hand, shooting another time as he strokes himself through it. His insides contract and suck Ted in further.
“God damn,” Ted breathes.
Morty rips his hand off and pants wild-eyed at the ceiling. “Finish in me. Please.”
Okay, okay. Ted stops thinking, just does.
He pulls out a painful moment, long enough to grab Morty by the waist and flip him. Morty’s limbs tremble but he manages to follow through. Such a smart boy, really. He leans down onto his elbows and spreads his legs and Ted repositions against the sweet little ass. He slides in like a perfect fit this time. He resumes fucking, now with the desperate need to chase his own end, the one that’ll surely fill him to the brim. The lights are bursting again, squashing the darkness. Ambient heat gets sucked by gravity down to his groin, simmering in his balls and threatening a blinding big bang of energy. He grabs a fistful of Morty’s hair and yanks his head back, gets him arch again and he’s fucking him deep each time, finding himself surrounded when he’d been so lonely an hour ago. Yellow against his eyes when they’re open and shut. Yellow in the back of his brain.
He slaps lewdly into him in the garage of the man he is and isn’t. Could the family hear? Do they know? Is it soundproofed? Things he doesn’t know. It doesn’t matter for Ted.
He bottoms out one last time and comes inside Morty, slurring curses into his back. Long, slow thrusts finish him off, wring him dry.
Ted grasps Morty from behind and when his orgasm subsides, slides out and flips him. Not as filled as he hoped he’d be. It’s a cup of water into a dried up ravine. He’s a fool.
He clumsily reaches out for the portal gun.
Morty looks sleepy and satisfied. He must think he did something good for Ted, or maybe this was about his own desires after all, maybe Ted was more alone than he thought—
No, no. The boy is pure. The boy is his antidote. He just needs more. He blasts a portal beside them and hoists Morty into his arms. His lithe weight is so willing to be maneuvered. He takes them to the cot in the shambled little cell Rick has to his name inside this house, and he drops them to the bed. Morty between himself and the wall. He presses in close.
“Wha’s wrong?” Morty mumbles.
“Don’t go yet,” Ted says.
“M’not.” He’s drifting. “Messy.”
Right. They’re sticky with lube and cum. He doesn’t care but he does see a benefit in skin-to-skin contact, so he indulges the effort to wrangle Morty out of his cum-streaked shirt, and himself out of his own shirt, and then wipes Morty’s ass with the clothes. Tosses them away. He won’t clean that up. Maybe one day Rick will.
He hunkers down next to Morty and presses into him. Once again, he begs, “Don’t leave.”
“I’m not.” Morty wriggles back into him and hums. His back blankets his belly with warmth.
Ted nuzzles into the top of Morty’s head and sniffs. Sweet sex sweat. The pheromones of being a young boy. His hand brushes over his stomach and rests there. Everything is another swallow that keeps him alive and from disappearing into nothing. Living in yellow and not haunted by red or blue or some sterile white lie or the blackest void of death. Yellow. The sun, the lover, the keeper.
“Don’t leave,” he whimpers again, weakly, like he hadn't said that a million times already. His drunkenness taking the reins again. Morty sighs and it seizes his heart painfully.
“I won’t,” he says. But he continues, “Just… give him back to me eventually, okay?”
His heart could burst.
“Sss-sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“It’s okay,” Ted says too quickly and hikes a leg over Morty’s hip. His, for now. All he can manage is to nod pathetically against his head, meanwhile breathing in his innocent smells.
“G’night, Grandpa,” Morty whispers.
Ted gulps. “Night, my sweet little grandson,” he murmurs into his scalp. The sweet little grandson he fucked raw and would fuck again and would consume entirely to make the banging emptiness stop. It’s sated, barely so, and he’s terrified to wake up tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow he’ll push the red button. Maybe he’ll ask for Morty’s help though, one last time—one last chance to make it yellow.
If anyone could save him, it’s Morty. This boy. This grandson. He hopes when he’s inevitably the other guy again, he’ll remember how important he is. How everything he is. Follow Morty, and one day the pain will dissipate, the multiverse will have meaning, the nothing of it all will be enough.
It will finally matter.