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“C’mon, lil’ junebug. I won’t rub your face in this one. I’m guessing you’re feeling pretty stupid.”
He hadn’t meant to say it. It just sort of happened. He knew Morty learned his lesson already; there was no need to rub it in. No real enjoyment in it. He just wanted his grandson to know that. And somehow, that happened.
C’mon, lil’ junebug.
Rick isn’t a pet names kind of guy. He’s not. Okay, yeah, on occasion he’s spat out Sum-sum with his granddaughter, or sweetie with Beth, but it’s never been real. They weren’t his granddaughter and his daughter after all. It was just a means to an end. Endearing names meant people trusted you, and when people trusted you, they did what you wanted more.
That was it. That was all. Really.
And Morty? He’d never bothered with a pet name with him, even before the whole broken portal travel incident. Unless ‘idiot’ and ‘stupid’ and ‘pain in my ass’ counted, but Rick’s pretty fucking sure they don’t. He’d never used them affectionately. Morty really was being a pain in his ass and a little idiot, all those times.
Like now. Taking a sword from some boring asshole dressed like ye olden uneducated knights, after waiting in a fake line for a sandwich you could get anywhere else. Teleporting himself off to the goddamn sun to get dragged into a ritual to cut off his fucking dick. And after calling Rick a boring drunk cranky fuck!
Morty would be fucking lucky if Rick called him anything as affectionate as ‘idiot pain in my ass’ after that stunt. He’s lucky Rick’s even bothering to rescue him from his own mess.
He definitely gets that bullshit from his actual grandfather.
He fully intends to give Morty a piece of his mind when he steps through the portal. But Morty’s panicked expression as he points at the stained glass window above them, the way he wrings his hands and looks anxiously to Rick to help him, freezes his thoughts in his tracks. The lecture dies on his tongue, and based on Morty’s frightened expression, he already knows exactly how he fucked up anyway.
That’s all Rick wants to say. That Morty’s learned his lesson and scared himself enough by not listening to his grandpa who knows what he’s fucking talking about. That’s it. And yet…
C’mon, lil’ junebug.
“C’mon, lil’ junebug,” Rick croons gently, as he scoops up a sobbing little Beth and sets her softly on the counter next to the sink. He runs her fingers under cold water with one hand while he strokes her back soothingly with the other. She clings to his arm with her free hand while she sniffles. “Daddy’ll fix it. I bet you won’t touch the stove again, now will you?” Beth shakes her head hard in agreement.
“C’mon, little junebug, you have to go to sleep at some point,” Rick laughs softly, as he sits in the princess bed next to his little Beth. She yawns, but refuses to rest without another bedtime story. Not from the books next to the bed about ducklings and silly rhymes and cute little cartoon characters. No, Beth likes the stories her father tells best, about planets and atoms and the way the world works. Even so young, her tiny little mind is still brilliant; she’s going to be incredible when she grows up at whatever she sets her mind to. “All right, one more. Let me tell you about the planet Jupiter, and all the moons it has–”
“C’mon, little junebug,” Rick soothes, as Beth crawls into bed with him and Diane during a thunderstorm, dragging her teddy with her and flinching with every rumble and flash outside. She burrows into his side with a whimper, and he puts an arm around her protectively. “It’s just a storm. Everything will be okay. Daddy’ll always protect you.”
C’mon, lil’ junebug.
Fuck. Goddamn it. Shit.
He blames Dr. Wong for all of this. Dr. Wong and her stupid, fucking, asinine, bullshit talk about changing and positivity and being healthy. Life would be so much simpler if he could just go back to earlier seasons and be an asshole without giving a shit. If he could go back to calling Morty a goddamn fucking idiot when he takes swords from knights he meets on sandwich-scamming asteroids who don’t prioritize basic fucking science.
But he’s not that asshole anymore. Not completely.
He’s a drunk, and a psychopath, and a murderer. But he’s also definitively Morty’s grandpa, something that was proven with cold hard data the day the portal travelers reset, whether or not he’s actually related to this Morty by blood and reality. He doesn’t really want to go back to that abusive situation, or keep taking out his bullshit on a fourteen year old that had absolutely nothing to do with the feud between his biological grandfather and his chosen one.
It’s just fucking unfair that it also comes with feeling–ugh– emotions, because he’s really not ready for that shit. He’s barely starting to adjust to the concept of not treating his son-in-law with abject loathing, or ignoring hacks that want to fight him. Or that he’s been holding discussions with Dr. Wong, from one scientific mind to another.
(He fucking refuses to call it therapy still. No matter how proud the family might be about him accepting it. Because he didn’t. It’s not. Nothing to see here).
He’s definitely not ready to address the fact that he accidentally gave his grandson the same nickname that he’d once given so fondly to his real daughter. The one that never made it past childhood. The one that had nearly the exact same distraught expression as Morty did just now when hurt or scared, that expression that always made Rick want to bundle her up safe and protect her–or maybe him, now, or–
Damn it. This fucking sucks.
But Rick is nothing if not a master of concealing his emotions. So if Morty’s plaintive, anxious face twists a little in confusion at the nickname, Rick doesn’t let him dwell on it. He keeps his face in its usual bored, borderline scowling expression as he pulls Morty up and leads him away from the mess he’s gotten himself into.
If he keeps an arm firmly around his grandson’s shoulders as he does, well, it’s certainly not protective and definitely not shielding. The kid had just blasted off to the sun on his own twenty minutes ago. He’s lucky Rick doesn’t put a leash on him at this point. For now, a hand on the shoulder will at least keep him from wandering off.
And if Morty nervously presses a little closer to his side while he glances over at the baffled knights that had been about to chop his damn dick off, well, that probably doesn’t mean anything either. Rick’s the only one who’s not about to castrate him within the closest ninety-three million miles. It’s probably got nothing to do with safety or comfort, because Rick represents neither.
(Though Rick will not hesitate to vaporize any of these assholes if they try to cut off his grandson’s dick. Pseudo-immortal from living on the sun or not, he refuses to stand for that shit. Nobody messes with his grandson’s genitalia and that is a firm fucking rule he refuses to budge on).
Between the sword fight and the unexpected crowning as King of the Sun, the nickname had probably slipped Morty’s mind. Rick is grateful for it, because he doesn’t want to have to try and explain it. He could lie–he’s definitely established by now that he’s known for saying things the rest of the family thinks is random. Rick is a damn good liar. And yet–
“Good night, lil’ junebug,” Rick whispers softly, as he tucks Beth into bed with her favorite teddy bear and kisses her gently on the forehead. “Daddy will see you in the morning, alright?”
–and yet, while Rick Sanchez will curse out gods, spit obscenities, and laugh in the face of faith and belief, he cannot take the few cherished memories he has left of his daughter and his wife in vain. He’s spent decades on a crusade of murder and vengeance and blinding agony for those few precious moments. And while he can lie through his teeth about literally everything else in his life, he can’t turn his back on the only pure thing left in his rotten husk of a soul.
If Morty asked, Rick would have to answer.
Morty doesn’t ask. Rick doesn’t bring it up.
He is a little hurt by Morty’s immediate expectation of abuse. It just makes it clear how much he’s fucked up on the past and taken it out on a fourteen year old. Diane would kick his ass if she knew and he’d deserve it. It’s why he resolves to do better for one adventure with a twenty-two percent increase in agreeability, and maybe depending on how the data shakes out, a slower increase in agreeability over the course of more adventures to come.
This can’t keep going. He’s fucked this kid up enough as it is. If he’d done this to his Beth, his little girl, his little junebug–
Just the thought of it makes him want to kill himself. Not in a suicidal sense. In a ‘protective father wanting to beat the shit out of the asshole who was mean to his little girl’ sense. The fact that they’re one and the same is just coincidence.
So he’s better this adventure. He really tries. It’s frustrating how much Morty doesn’t believe his genuine attempts to not be a giant douche canoe. But he’s fourteen and a stubborn teenager, and Rick remembers being a teenager who thought he knew everything.
(Never mind that in his case, he basically did know everything. Most teenagers thought it regardless of their genius intellect or lack thereof).
And that’s without the years of mental conditioning Rick had worked into him to expect to take shit and be confused by actual sincerity.
Man, Rick had really fucked up with this one.
He tries. He does his best. He learns his lesson. But there’s one thing he doesn’t do again, no matter what. Because even when he praises Morty for using critical thinking and basic physics, or hugs him comfortingly and promises to fix the situation, or even tells him he loves him, he never lets himself say it again. Morty, buddy, man, all acceptable. But that one–
C’mon, lil’ junebug–
Morty would ask eventually. Rick would have to answer.
And he’s not sure he’ll ever be ready for that.