Morty closed the door and, stifling the jingle of his house keys with a fist, made a surly beeline for the kitchen. Weirdly, both his dad and Rick were sat peaceably at the dining room table – dad hunched maternally over his iPad at one end and Rick poking with a thoughtful belligerence at the innards of a Chinese Takeout box with a fork at the other. Thankfully, neither of them bothered to look up or over as Morty snatched open the freezer door, extricated a frostbitten bag of frozen peas, lumped it in a tea towel and started towards the hallway.

"Hey son, dinner's in a bit," Jerry said, waving complacently toward the kitchen sounds.

"Thanks, okay, hi-" Morty replied, muffled, hurried, to which Rick glanced up.

"Ouf, Morty!" Rick ground out around a mouthful of noodles, his eyes narrowed with amusement. "Lookin' good. N-new haircut, or-?"

Morty froze. He made a rigid hostile gesture at Rick with his free hand and huffed a wet, irritable noise before shrinking from the ensuing curious look from his dad, who immediately clutched at his own neck and gasped.

"Jesus Christ! Morty!" Jerry stood up and sat immediately back down. He gaped as he took in Morty's face: two swollen, blackening eyes and a definitely broken mess of a nose that was dribbling an awful amount of blood into his shirt, pants and the swaddled bag cradled to his face. Jerry stood again, ineffectually.

"Who- what's going on!?"

He started over to Morty who put his arms out, wincing.

"Dad-" Morty backed towards the doorway, shaking his head. "It's-i-i-it's just sports, y'know? Just sports." A drip of clotted blood dotted the carpet. Jerry glanced at it, horrified. Morty continued placatingly, in a tired voice, "I'm just gonna go- gonna take a shower and clean up, okay? It's not... Not a thing, it's fine-"

"You have to go to the hospital!" Jerry protested, his voice rising in pitch as Morty slid from the room and into the hallway. "Hold your nose and tilt your head back!"

Rick fished a piece of ice from his glass with his fingers and, sighing, slid out of his chair.

"Lay off the Gray's Anatomy, Meredith." He slipped the cube in his mouth and stepped around Jerry, crunching obnoxiously. "I'm on it."

Rick caught Morty up in three long strides and followed behind him up the stairs.

"How's the uh- how's the other guy look, huh?" He clapped a conspiratorial hand on Morty's shoulder. Morty shrugged it off.

"Probably pretty smug, probably got a reeeeal shit-eating grin, okay Rick? Probably something like that, who knows?"

"Woof," Rick grimaced. Morty pushed open the door to his room, threw his keys aside and sat heavily on his bed, groaning as he inspected the viscera that clung to the towelled peas.

"I'm not, uh-" Morty said baldly, "not super interested in talking about it?" His voice automatically coasted upwards at Rick's unimpressed expression, despite himself. Rick leaned into Morty's doorframe, crossing his arms.

"That makes two of us, Morty. Don't flatter yourself. What I figure you might be interested in, though, Morty," Rick raised an eyebrow and pretended to examine his fingernails, "is not having a face that looks like- looks like s-seven, seven shades of shit. Or whatever. Up to you."

Morty pressed his head to his knees and scrunched his eyes closed, face feeling like an anvil.

"Rick-" he started.

"I know they say having a weird nose gives your face character, Morty, but- in this scenario, unless the character you wanna b- wanna look like is Vince Vaughn- Vince Vaughn's Thumb, you should probably-"

"Rick," Morty began again, looking up with a sick expression that suggested he was absolutely about to cry, "This actually really hurts? So if you could - y'know, lay off and let me just go to the doctor tomorrow without breaking my balls about it? Okay? That'd be nice."

Rick gave Morty a long look, before peeling away from the doorframe and slipping out of the room. Morty squeezed closed his eyes and listened to his grandfather's retreating carpeted steps. A hot, electric wave of pain rolled over his face, and with it, a thunderclap of anger. His teeth throbbed. In how many realities, he wondered, was he not an underfoot, side-character, sidekick?

How many Mortys were stepping on heads and giving glib comebacks and kissing better-looking Jessica's in slightly more functional spaceships alongside even mildly less shitty Ricks?

Was being the "Mortiest-Morty" the same thing as being the shittiest idiot? At this point, was he pretty much just a perfect Labrador of Mortys, selected because he's a docile, amiable idiot who sits when he's told to and can carry raw eggs in his mouth without breaking them? He tried to picture Inspector Gadget's dog, but couldn't remember what it looked like, or if it was dumb, or - anything else, actually. Ugh- he pulled away from the cold towel and looked at it through a squint. The fabric was soaked through with blood and was starting to look very gross, very concerning. How much blood can you lose from your head before your brain dries up and you die? He sniffed painfully. If he were that Morty with the eye patch and the text-to-speak computer voice, he'd know what to do and how to do it, he thought.

"Here's what we're gonna do, Morty," said Rick, appearing again around the doorway.