AN:

I think I this was a prompt from an old challenge list or something and I've seen some other people do it, so I decided that I wanted to give it a shot, too.
Also, it's not written to be Rick/Morty, but if you want to read it like that I won't stop you.

Warnings: language (more or less on the same level as in the show), some angst and character death (but not really) – it has a fluffy ending though

Nightmares

"What the hell was that, Morty?!" Rick yelled, some of his spittle flying around while he did.

Said boy shrank a bit more down in the seat next to him.
They were in the space car and Rick was angry because his plans were all screwed up and that only thanks to Morty failing big time.
He had every right to be angry with his grandson.

"Oh man, I'm sorry, Rick." Morty apologized meekly.

Rick glanced over to him while still steering the space vehicle en route home.
The boy was more pale than usual and had dark bags under his eyes.

"You look like shit!" Rick commented. "Just what the—what the heck is wrong with you?"

While he more or less waited for an answer from Morty, he fished his flask out of his lab coat and tried to wash down his disappointment with the Henessy that he had put in there this morning, which was mixed with the leftover of whatever alien liquor he had in it before that.

"I don't know, Rick. I-I-I guess, I'm just not sleeping well lately."

Rick snorted.

"I mean, I'm having these nightmares recently that keep me awake all night." Morty continued.

"Nightmares, Morty? Really? How old are you?" Rick mocked him while rolling his eyes.

"C'mon, Rick. There's this one that is always reoccurring and it-it-it's actually pretty realistic. I usually can't tell until I wake up from it."

From the despair in Morty's tone, you could tell that these nightmares were seriously bothering him, but Rick was… still being Rick.

"Morty, dreams don't mean anything. They-they're basically just a side effect from your brain processing information. And no matter how "realistic" they may seem to you, you should really be able to tell that they're only dreams."

Rick stopped talking to take another swig from his flask and released a loud burp while wiping some spit from his lower lip. Then he finally put the flask back in the inside pocket of his lab coat – close to his heart.

"Just get over it already." was the last thing that he said.

The entire rest of the journey home was spent in silence.

Despite the uncaring front that Rick had put up, he wasn't just about to sit around and do nothing in regards to Morty's nightmares.
Naturally, he had to do something about it because Morty being sleep depraved and messing things up more than usual was impeding with his work – not because he actually cared about Morty or something like that. Of course not. Shame on anyone who would make that assumption.

So the very same night, at a time when Rick was sure Morty should be already sleeping deeply, he ventured into the boy's room with his old dream inceptors in hand.
Morty laid in his bed on his side and from the movement behind his eyelids, Rick could easily tell that he had entered REM sleep already.
Ignoring the muscle memory of shaking the sleeping boy awake, he put one dream inceptor in Morty's ear then moved onto the bed and leaned against the wall to get comfortable before placing the other inceptor into his own ear and twisting the switch to activate it.

When Rick entered the dream, he found himself in a rather familiar place – it was his garage.
Fortunately, there were some cardboard boxes stacked up near the garage door where he could hide quickly and had a good view of what was going on in the rest of the garage without being seen himself.

He could see a dream version of himself sitting on the workbench and dissecting some sort of small alien, which Morty's unconsciousness must have made up from several different alien species that they had encountered because he had never seen such a thing before in his life.
Morty meanwhile was standing at the shelf and rummaging around in a box.

"C'mon, Morty. What is taking you so long? Just hand me the damn laser defraculator!" Dream Rick yelled without looking up from his work.

"I tell you, it's not in here, Rick." Morty answered while still frantically shuffling through the stuff in the box.

"And I tell you that it is inside of that box. There-there are like five things in there and you can't find even that one goddam defraculator?!"

"There's at least seven things in here and none of them look like your defraculator! Unless you got a new one that looks completely different from the last one you had!" Morty was almost yelling now, too. "You just put it somewhere else!"

"Morty, I know that I put it in there! I always put it in there!" Dream Rick had stopped working on the alien corpse and spun around with his chair to face him.

"Rick, it's not like you have a set order for more than half of your stuff. You probably used it and then put it elsewhere after that. At least it's not in here!" Morty complained and was getting clearly frustrated with what he thought was his senile old grandpa.

"Morty, I swear, you are such a useless piece of shit that you can't even get done the easiest tasks! All I've been asking you was to get me the damn laser defraculator and you can't even do that!" Dream Rick crossed his arms and his face warped into an ugly visage of uncontained anger.

"I'm telling you it's not—" Morty tried to throw in, but the dream version of his grandfather didn't let him finish talking.

"Y-you're always such a useless piece of shit, always messing up everything! You're so goddamn dumb that it hurts my brain to just be around you!"

"Oh c'mon, Rick…" Morty let go of the box he had been rummaging through and turned to look back at Dream Rick.

The real Rick could clearly see on his face that the words deeply hurt the boy.
Dream Rick however, continued undeterred with ripping verbally into Morty.

"You know, you gotta be the dumbest and most useless Morty in the entire multiverse! The universe must truly hate me that I had to be stuck with you as my grandson! You're the lowest shit in the entire shit-pile of Mortys!"

The boy couldn't hold back any longer and tears finally started to well up in the corners of his eyes.
Of course, Dream Rick immediately noticed it and seemed to get even more pissed off by that.

"Oh, are you gonna cry now, Morty?! What are you?! A little baby?! You gonna pee in your pants again?! Do you need a diaper?!" Dream Rick stood up from his chair and was slowly advancing on him.

Morty sniffled and hastily wiped at his eyes before any tears would actually drop down his cheeks.
However, new tears just replaced them and the closer that his grandfather approached him the taller and more intimidating he became.

"Just look at you! So pathetic! Yeah, I'm gonna fix that. You know what I'm gonna do? I use that voucher to get myself a new Morty that's hopefully more useful than you are. At least he can't be any worse than you 'cause it's impossible for anyone to suck even more than you do!"

As he said that, Dream Rick grabbed a fire ax that was close by and advanced further on Morty.
The boy was frozen in shock and even though his instincts told him to run, he didn't move at all from the spot.

"At least try to be a good boy and die fast for your Grandpa. Don't want you to cause more trouble to me than you're worth. I'm just gonna bury you next to that other Morty corpse in the backyard, right where you belong, you worthless piece of shit."

Morty flinched and closed his eyes just as Dream Rick lifted the ax above his head.
It was at that moment that the real Rick decided that he just couldn't stand by and watch this bullshit any longer.
He jumped from behind the boxes and shot his dream version with his laser gun.

"Man, Morty. That was a close one. I wouldn't have thought that you would actually fall for that imposter." Rick replied nonchalantly as he slowly walked towards him.

Morty's gaze moved from the corpse back to Rick then back to the corpse again.

"Y-you! You just killed my Rick!" Morty looked with wide and glassy eyes at him.

"No, Morty. As I said, this guy was an imposter. I'm you're Rick." He tried to calm the boy down, but Morty didn't look like he would calm down soon.

Rick really didn't get it. He had just saved Morty's life and the boy was freaking out because the guy that almost would have murdered him was dead now?

"No! He can't be an imposter. He knew about the voucher! A-a-and about the grave! An imposter wouldn't know about those things! What proof do I have that you're not the imposter?!"

Really now? Was he serious?

"Morty, what the heck? The guy just tried to kill you ten seconds ago and you still want to think that he's the real deal? After all that he's said and done to you?"

"Yes, because I know that he doesn't care about me. To Rick I'm just a tool and as soon as I'm useless to him he's just going to throw me away and replace me with a new one. I'm nothing more than just an object to him." Morty said sadly, but seriously while he looked to the side.

Wow. Was that really what Morty thought that Rick was thinking of him? Ouch.
Sure, Rick knew that he had the tendency to act like a complete asshole – especially around Morty – but he had been sure that the boy understood that he didn't mean half of the shit that he said.
Even though he didn't like to show his grandson that he cared about him that didn't mean that he was a heartless monster and wouldn't care at all!

"You think I would bother taking you with me on adventures if that was the case?!"

"Well, you need my "Morty waves" as camouflage." Morty could easily justify that reason.

"I don't really need that camouflage! I mean fine, when I came to live with you guys it was to hide from the Galactic Federation and like a few hundred killers who are after my head. And yes, by taking you with me I could be sure to stay undetected, but you know if that was really the only reason I could also just take Jerry with me."

Morty blinked and looked at him with questioning eyes.

"You know, your dad's brainwaves work just like that, too even though he'd probably end up dying on the first real adventure I would take him to. But that's not the point!" Rick rambled while wildly gesturing with his hands.

He looked straight back into Morty's eyes again, looking more serious than ever.

"No, that's not entirely the reason why I have you around, Morty. Maybe I just do these adventures with you because I like you or something? Did you ever bother think about that? Maybe, the reason why I took you with me to this dimension instead of leaving you behind in the cronenberged dimension with the rest of your family is because I like you?"

Morty now looked with big eyes at Rick. He had never really thought about that.

"Listen, Morty. I know that I never say it and also don't really show it, but I do care about you. You're my daughter's son. I'm your grandpa. And I love you, Morty."

A genuine soft smile was on Rick's face as he said that.
He figured since Morty would just think that this was only a dream anyway after he woke up, it wouldn't actually hurt to be honest about this for once.
It's not like there would be any possible consequences or like it would change anything between them in real life.

Morty was stunned.
He looked in disbelieve at his grandfather because he never thought that he would ever hear these words from him.
Rick brought him out of his shock as he crossed the small distance between them and wrapped his arms around him in a gentle embrace.
Again, he could feel tears rising to his eyes, but this time for an entirely different reason.

"D-do you really mean that, Rick?" He asked breathlessly.

"Don't make me say it again, Morty." Rick sounded like he was getting annoyed, but then his tone got soft again as he continued "Trust me, I do."

That was all that Morty needed to finally return the hug.
He sobbed as his tears broke loose and he held onto Rick as if his life depended on it.
And even though he couldn't see Rick's smile, he felt one of his grandfather's hands stroking trough his curls in the most comforting way ever.

It wasn't long after that, that Morty woke up.
Tears clung to his lashes as he sat up and looked around his empty bedroom.
For some reason he still felt pleasantly warm and comfortable and he could very clearly remember the dream that he had just had.
It had felt even more realistic than the nightmares that he used to have recently despite his grandpa's out of character behavior.

Morty couldn't help, but smile brightly at the memory.
He laid back down again and pulled the blanket over himself, closing his eyes and falling surprisingly fast back asleep again. This time into a restful and dreamless sleep.

Unbeknownst to the sleeping boy, the door of his room closed the rest of the way quietly and a smiling scientist put two dream inceptors back into their case again.