The sky was an inverted, bruising black bowl. Shreds of lightning scraped across its surface and it was vomiting rain down on the Smith family's house in a way that Jerry wanted to cry about.
"C'mon Jerry," he said to himself, skittishly peeping from between the kitchen blinds and into the thunderdome of his yard, sweating bullets. Beth was at the horse hospital, which - on the one hand - meant that nobody was drinking in the bedroom about how their shit-for-brains husband was a pathetic, shrinking pussy willow, but - on the other hand - meant there was nobody he could find in the house to make him feel better about the roof peeling off like a tin can and probably being tipped out into the sky to die inside a cloud.
Where was everybody?
Jerry invoked his own masculinity, frowning. He bet stupid Davyn jerked off about this kind of weather. He could picture muscular, sweatily tan Davyn pulling down his surgical mask past his mouth and breathing something thinly veiled and (throbbingly) sexual to Beth about the primal urges that thunder awoke in him, smelling like testosterone and wrist deep in a stinking open horse. Jerry jittered, opening and closing a clammy fist.
The sky broke and dropped a gutterball of thunder down into the neighbourhood. A tangle of car alarms piped like baby birds in the street; Jerry scuttled into the livingroom, hiding in the arms of the doorway arch.
From there, Jerry could just spy a long leg jutting out into the yard through the sweating screen door. Beth's father was outside, like the maniac he was - probably trying to find a way to get himself electrocuted - Jerry thought, appalled, distaste rising like bile in his throat. The need for solace in human contact won out, though, and he padded across the room in his socks like a child with nightmares. He looked sideways at Rick through the door, not quite ready.
Rick was sunk back on the old wreck of a couch that leant on the back verandah, looking out into the storm spray with his legs stretched out onto a sad little table that barely accommodated both his shoes and a thickly steaming pot of black coffee. To his left sat - Jerry blinked - a plumply winter coated, bemittened Summer, sipping slowly from a Garfield mug with her legs tucked under her. Jerry scooted closer, curious... Breathing...
"Jerry, you're being a menace," Rick said mildly, without looking over. With an arm slung over the back of the couch, he pinched irritably at a tuft of loose threads. "Stop menacing me."
Summer squeezed around to Jerry inside her jacket and mouthed "Hey!" She pressed a mittened gesture to her mouth. "Shhh," she mimed and then waved, smiling a little painfully - like you might at an errant Jehovah's Witness, or a very ugly baby. He raised a hand to wave back, but she'd already turned away and it flapped uselessly against the window.
A bright zipper of lightning peeled down in the distance. Summer, pink and excited, leant down and poured herself a new mug; only half-watching as she looked up into the sky, squinting happily into the onslaught. Rick wordlessly jostled her with his own cup, nosing it into her shoulder and the side of her head with feigned earnestness, both now determinedly pretending to ignore Jerry and his peripheral teetering.
Marshmallowing back around with some effort, Summer tipped Rick a theatrical overfill. She laughed silently as he swore and petulantly blew a spray of coffee at her from across the surface of his drooling mug; spidering to rearrange himself so he could drink without spilling.
"Careful," Summer teased. Rick flicked her face.
Jerry took in the scene with a mounting sulkiness. Rick looked obstinate and cheerful, a stab of happy lightning next to Summer, a puffy little cloud. Inside the wet belly of the storm, a strange cosmic empathy hung beating in the air, doming over his daughter and father-in-law, sealed like a bell jar. Like that Stephen King movie... The Jar? Jerry squinted.
He almost knew better than to try when they were like this - it was the same as when Rick and Morty were sequestered on the couch together watching jibberish alien infomercials; or when all three came up from the garage looking wall-eyed and remote, smelling like space and talking under their breaths to one another. Jerry-Free Zones.
He puffed irritably and decisively poked his head outside into a freezing slap of air.
"Is Morty out here?" Jerry's over-loud voice sailed wobblily over and fell heavily into the couch. Rick and Summer both cringed, Rick tightening his grip on the shoulder of the sofa.
Now that he was partially outside, Jerry could tell his question was stupid. On Rick's other side, tucked under his elbow, stirred a sleeping Morty - almost completely submerged under an ugly, fluffy blanket with arrogant-looking horses strutting on it.
"Hmmmm?" Morty blinked messily. He shouldered some dribble off his chin and attempted to push himself up on an elbow, eyes scrolling weirdly.
"Uuuuuup-bup-bup!" Rick clamped a quick, stern hand over Morty's face and used it to push him back down. "Your Mom forgot to put Jerry's thunder jacket on before she left, Morty," Rick glared pointedly over his shoulder. "That's all."
"Sorry!" Jerry put his hands up, receding slightly. "Just wanted to make sure nothing-" He paused. "You okay Morty?"
"I swear to God, Jerry-" Rick swung his cup to Summer - who almost fumbled it - and reached into his coat, coming out with his portal gun and pointing it at Jerry like a pistol; his other hand still tamping Morty down into all the pretty horses.
"Look, Dad -" Summer cut in diplomatically, looking edgeways at Rick, "Morty's sleeping off some stuff. Can we do this some other time...?"
But Rick was already up, stalking Jerry back into the house and up against a lamp. He squeezed a portal onto the nearest wall and pointed sharply with the gun.
"Make yourself useful for once in your life, Jerry. Go hang out for a few hours." Rick ripped a coupon from a little square book with his teeth, and stuffed it inside Jerry's collar. "Or longer. Go ham."
"This is my house!" Jerry looked frenzied, blindly grabbing inside his shirt at the crumpled paper. Rick took a long step forward, though, and Jerry, disarmed, backed himself straight into the portal's sucking mouth. It whirlpooled and disappeared into itself, leaving Rick staring directly into a framed photo of Jerry, bobbing for apples at a fair. A curling sticker speech bubble loomed over his submerged head. "HUNGRY FOR APPLES?" Photo-Jerry asked himself, in Jerry's own careful, childish handwriting.
Rick swung back outside, swearing into a rumble of thunder. A pink-eyed but awake Morty glanced up at him, a little guiltily. Rick pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes.
"Bed, Morty," He pointed.