Rick wasn't a man given to thanking others, especially not other Ricks lest they think he actually gave a damn about them, but even he couldn't deny what a help AJ-064 and AA-018 had been to him since he and Summer started living at the Citadel full time.
The first job he landed was shit: a Mechanic Rick working on the garbage ships of other, less mechanically inclined Ricks. He hated every second of it, toiling away under the hood, arguing with every Zeep, Zap, and Zip (their names always seemed to start with a Z he'd noticed) in their microverse batteries when they "evolved," and god he hated when they did that. And the attitude! His first week, he got into a fist fight at least once every day, and he literally dropkicked a Morty out of his shop for hovering over him like some kind of...some kind of...thing that hovered.
He didn't have the time or inclination to adopt one of those whiners when he already had his hands full with his Summer.
The second job he landed was thanks to J-412. It was as a part-time Guard Rick. Three arbitrary days of the arbitrary week during "off hours," he suited up and did his best to stave off boredom for twelves hours while he and J-412 patrolled the Citadel and monitored the main portal. After his Guard shift was over, it was straight to work as a Mechanic and his increasing dedication to never ever have a Morty.
And that's where his begrudging gratefulness to AJ-064 and AA-018 came in. For whatever reason, the two of them had taken pity on him. AA-018, nicknamed Mellow Rick because of her relatively calm nature and who's only vice seemed to be her acute desire to fling herself face first into the void, took Summer during the day, taking the young girl to planets and dimensions uninhabited by sentient life, always returning with arms full of heavily perfumed flowers and spending the long afternoons letting the young girl weave flowers into her blue and black braids and color in the many tattoos decorating her dark brown skin with finger-paint. Summer had taken to calling her Grandma Rick and was always sad when Mellow's work studying dimensional rifts kept her away.
AJ-064, Killer B (he'd shorted it even further to just Bee because he couldn't be bothered to say that shit every time), watched her on the nights he had his Guard shifts. He'd been a little wary at first, he'd heard about what Bee did to his assigned Morty and how ruthless he was in the triage unit, but the two seemed to get along well, Summer having immediately taken a liking to the other Rick's cat ears and tail, stubbornly calling him Kitty Grandpa no matter how many times he corrected her. Mellow and him whiled away many a late night sharing a blunt and laughing about Summer's fascination with Bee's tail and ears and the beleaguered man's acceptance of it.
He really needed a bigger place, but...it was nice like this. Mellow and Bee had converted a small section of his lab space into a dining room, unearthing or stealing a kitchen table from god only knew where, and he was starting to get used to the familiarity of walking into the apartment to be greeted by the smell of diner cooking, of seeing Mellow brushing Summer's hair after a bath in the tiny bathroom while Bee stood swearing by the stove top, usually furiously stirring or hitting something in the pot, his medical uniform stained by food splatter and his normally sleek fur mussed from Summer's grimy hands. They'd all sit down to eat, taking turns dragging Bee through the mud for whatever he'd made that night and shoving as much as they could in their mouths when he threatened to portal it away. Afterwards, they'd crowd around the TV, sometimes all four of them, sometimes just him and Summer, but always his little granddaughter would be pressed against his side or curled in his lap, her tiny hands remarkably strong as they gripped the front of his shirt even after she finally drifted to sleep.
Looking at her sleeping form (she'd basically commandeered his bed, and though she took up hardly any space, the army of robotic stuffed animals and dolls he'd made her filled the rest of the space, but he didn't mind sleeping on the floor or at his bench anyway, and he'd kill anyone who said he was getting soft, dammit), the yawning void where Beth used to be didn't seem like such a large and imposing obstacle to face.
Maybe...maybe he could do this...maybe he wouldn't run away this time.