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Hacker Rick doesn't like Masy Kallerax.

In fact, Hacker Rick dislikes Masy Kallerax more than most Ricks do.

His strangely subdued yet simultaneously unnerving presence, his kind, gentle words and his hooded, wanting gaze they so clash with – everything about him is distasteful. But where many Ricks merely find him to be a peculiar nuisance, the skinny, antisocial coding enthusiast despises him. There's something about the way their brain waves collide – something about their thought patterns and mannerisms and how they align – that makes Masy an edging, grating stimulus; that makes him a threat.

Where many Ricks charitably ignore how he looks at their Mortys, Hacker Rick moves to stand rigidly in the way, his unease only somewhat hidden by his unnecessary sunglasses.

He's shorter than most Ricks on the Citadel, which he is reminded of when Masy only smiles vaguely, his dark eyes flickering down Rick's form and back up. Perhaps if he was taller, more imposing, the alien would move back a small step, chuckle and make some remark meant to seem dismissive. Instead he can only hold his stare, pitch black and framed by disconcertingly elegant eyebrows. Hacker Rick's Mortys cluster in his shadow and peer at the other figure, some naively and others more knowingly.

It's not so much what he would do to Rick's Mortys as the fact that he feels he has the right to want. It knots Rick's stomach and makes him grit his teeth in annoyance.

And what makes it all so truly and utterly revolting is the alien's warmth.

Masy Kallerax has the gentlest voice of any being not made of microscopic silk proteins that Rick has ever met. The way he looks at Rick is adoring. There is nothing but honesty in his words and the set of his delicate shoulders, and when Rick lets himself observe the sincere need to give in his eyes, he has no doubt that that Masy expects nothing back.

That's why, when it's night and their Mortys are stowed away in hotel rooms and Masy backs Rick against the wall in a shadowed part of one of the Citadel's many nightclubs, Rick lets him. Why, when the alien presses in close, his pupils dilated and dark though his long eyelashes, Hacker Rick stands his ground and doesn't let himself flinch.

Why his response to the slim body against his and the teeth grazing the pulse in his neck is to weave his fingers into Masy's hair and pull until it hurts, but not pull away.

Because as much as he dislikes Masy Kallerax, Hacker Rick dislikes himself far more.