AN: yea this is my first story so... I'm sorry. ill update frequently but theyre gonna be just as short as this one. and oh yeah this is rick x morty, did I mention that? yea I know, fuck off

Chapter 1

Rick tipped back his bottle of Glipliq and let the remainder burn a trail down his throat and come to settle in his stomach. When the last drop was gone he tossed the empty bottle over his shoulder, letting it crash somewhere in the corner of his tiny, hardly furnished apartment. Glipliq was the best shit. The drunk it gave was akin to the feeling of napping atop one of the frothy pink clouds of Zordon 9.

He returned to the task at hand. Swaying slightly, he adjusted the output reach knob on the cable box and screwed a smaller, green crystal next to the large pink-purple one that allowed for regular interdimensional cable. This would allow for him to not only view television on a multiversal scale, but locate and observe the actions of any Morty in existence as well through satellite renderings and things of the sort. However, he was only interested in watching one Morty - his Morty. It had been far too long since he'd seen him.

Rick finished the final adjustments and went to connect the wires and launch the newly improved interdimensional transmitter - or as he liked to call it, the Morty Watcher. He gracelessly stumbled backwards onto the torn, black imitation leather sofa, remote in hand, and flicked on the TV. A channel came on with a gaggle of what appeared to be sentient snowballs giggling and flinging balls of compressed gore at one another while a flurry of blood droplets came from the sky.

"Oh - god dammit - " Rick mumbled, and switched the input with the remote. Now there was a panicked looking Morty on the screen trying to defuse a neutrino bomb as a Rick snored in the background with his pants off. Rick rolled his eyes and flicked the channel to C-137.

His Morty was hunched over a desk, surrounded by various books and papers. He was whispering something inarticulate, alternating between writing in a notebook and looking confusedly at a math textbook. From his mussed hair to the puffy circles under his eyes, paired with the fact it appeared to be nighttime as his only light was that of a desk light, it seemed he had been at it for quite a time now.

Rick watched on drunkenly, enraptured by the sight of his Morty. It had been years - holy shit, it had been four years since he'd last seen the kid. Now he was in college. The little dummy had made it into fucking college. Not that that was much of a step up from high school.

This went on for a number of minutes. Morty scribbled and murmured and occasionally grasped locks of his curly hair in a frustrated gesture, while Rick watched with a familiar hole in his chest. He couldn't help it. If there was one thing a Rick was actually affected by - well, this Rick, in any case - it was Morty. They'd been through too much together. Knew too much about one another.

Eventually, Rick sighed and switched the television off. Morty's image gave way to the black reflection of Rick's disheveled appearance. Around him he could see the numerous empty bottles of liquor and beer, the peeling wallpaper, the tattered mattress without a cover in the back. The corner of his mouth crooked wryly. Home sweet home was here, in his shitty apartment on the planet Tychron. Despite its badass sounding name, it was the toilet of this galaxy. It was pretty impressive how they managed to push all of the ghetto onto only one of its planets.

He stumbled over to the fridge, grabbed a beer and popped the cap off with his new gold tooth. It was where his canine was. He had to get the new tooth because he broke his actual canine opening a beer with it.

He would keep an eye on Morty from time to time, he decided. It took a monumental weight off his shoulders to know that he was doing well, studying and shit, probably banging a chick here and there. Doing regular college stuff. Maybe he even got drunk. Rick snorted. Hopefully he wouldn't succumb to his alcoholic genetic makeup. It was like the Sanchez family had liquor coded in their proteins.

He flopped down on the stained mattress, groaning when he landed right on the broken spring. He finished his beer, tossed it, and closed his eyes. He managed to sleep alright this time.

Morty groaned and let his head fall on the table with a thunk. It was at the point in the semester where the professors decided that that was enough fucking around and it was time to really buckle down and teach. His physics class was difficult enough, yeah, but at least he could do the work. Calculus was another thing. He hated it. The only reason he was doing it to begin with was because you can't do the science he wanted to without it.

Morty himself wasn't even sure why he wanted to be an astronomer. It was perhaps one of the most mind-bending sciences, fraught with math at every turn. This also came with the assurance he would be selling his soul to the universe, its origin, and the eventual fate of it, because careers in that field weren't exactly flexible. Most of the rest of his life would likely be work, work, calculations, the occasional discovery, and more work. Regardless, he was inexplicably drawn to the cosmos and planets and fabric of space with a kind of ferocity he rarely felt about anything else. The way he was placed in spacetime he often felt very conscious of - like the breath of the universe whispered to him secretly. Sometimes, when he was just on the verge of sleep at night with the weight of his blanket on his chest, he felt as though he was flying through the air - slowly, then quickly, up and up through the night sky towards the stars. He always fell asleep before he could go farther. It was in small moments like these that he felt whole. He couldn't remember many other times he did.

Morty sighed and forced himself to lift his head and resume attempting to solve the rest of his homework. Tomorrow was Friday, so the whole assignment for the week was due, and of course he had procrastinated. He had a lot of work to finish.

It'll all be worth it, Morty thought, chewing the eraser on the end of his pencil absently. Maybe NASA will want me one day.

Two and a half hours later, Morty was just about done with his work when the door slammed open and Julian waltzed in. "What's good M?" He caught sight of Morty's predicament and laughed. "Put off your homework again, huh?"

Morty smiled at him, embarrassed. "Yeah, n - not that it's anything new. I'm almost done though."

"That's good," Julian said, then proceeded to fall face first on his bed, closest to the door. He let a muffled groan of happiness escape.

Julian was a weird kid. He was tall, skinny, and always overdressed. His family hailed from South Korea, where he grew up until he moved to Seattle when he was six. He was a total music kid, his interests ranging all the way from playing the violin (which pissed Morty off to no end) to DJing. All he ate was shit from the Asian store a few blocks away (or hot cheetos), and he often tried to force Morty to try whatever he was eating or drinking (which Morty did - sometimes it was delicious, other times it was frighteningly strange to him). It didn't take Morty long at all to warm up to him though, thank God, because it would've been unbearably awkward to be roommates with someone he didn't like in the tiny space of the shared dorm room. Julian had been nothing but friendly to him from the beginning, and Morty was grateful for that.

"Long day?" Morty asked, quirking an eyebrow.

Julian responded with another groan, then begrudgingly lifted his head. "Let's get fucking wrecked tomorrow night."

Morty snorted. "A hard day indeed."

"I'm serious Morty. I know we go out drinking every weekend, but tomorrow is gonna be huge. I'm gonna make it huge. We're not gonna remember our own names for the next three days, bro." He wiggled his eyebrows at Morty. "This might be your chance to get laid too."

"W - what, Madison doesn't count as a lay?"

"That was like, what - three weeks ago? This is college, baby!" Julian flung a pillow at Morty, narrowly missing and hitting a world map on the wall right in the middle of Africa.

"Jesus, dude! Chill out, damn. You know I'm always down to get fucked up with you," Morty smirked. "But I'm not gonna feel good about it if I - I don't actually get my fucking schoolwork done. So, you know." Morty reached down to chuck the pillow back at him. It hit Julian right in his face, to which he oompf'd.

"Alright buddy, you got it! Finish that shit and get some sleep cause we're going aaalll night tomorrow, baby. Anyway I'm going to sleep. Night!" Julian wrestled himself out of his tight black jeans (probably designer) and immediately assumed the likeness of a corpse. Morty knew he'd be out in a matter of minutes.

What a freak. But he was sure fun to drink with.

Morty resumed the last few problems of his homework with renewed vigor, happy at the prospect of letting go for another night.