The 'M' doesn't stand for Mom.
"Today is the day." Rivet tells herself, looking over at Ratchet, tinkering on Aphelion, parked right outside her Sargasso hideout. "You're going to walk over there, and finally tell him you love him. No more messing around. It's time to put my foot down, no more putting this off. You can do this."
She'd been putting this off for what must have been weeks by now, and has missed easily over a dozen chances set up by Clank and Kit for her and him to be alone together, but on every one of them, she got cold feet. And as it turns out, Mort's threat to constantly flirt with Ratchet was not a bluff, as, true to their word, they always managed to conveniently end up crossing paths with each other to deliver a compliment to Ratchet, even if they were in his dimension, too.
To say that it disturbed Rivet to some amount upon hearing her adoptive parents comment about how handsome her crush looks would be putting it mildly, and to be honest, it was the main motivating factor for her to finally grow the guts to confess to him. Now, she and him would be able to spend the rest of their lives together, just like she always dreamed of, and better yet, she'd get to stop hearing Mort talk about how pretty his eyes are.
And so, with a deep breath, she begins walking over to Ratchet, still half-buried inside Aphelion's engines, and begins internally rehearsing what she's about to say.
Stopping just before him, she loudly clears her throat, making Ratchet perk up and look over his shoulder back at her, and upon seeing who it was, he smiles.
"Oh, hey, Rivet, what's up?" He asks, returning back to his work on the engine.
"Ratchet, I have to tell you something." She says firmly, steeling her nerves that were trying to get her body to immediately run away from this situation.
Ratchet, sensing the serious tone in her voice, furrows his brows as he puts his tools down and begins wiping the grease from his hands with a rag as he turns around to fully face her. "Erm, what is it?"
"Well… This is something that I've been waiting to tell you for the longest time now, and I just want to finally get this weight off my chest so I can actually rest easy when I'm around you." She says, arms stiff at her sides as she picks her gaze up from off the ground to look back up at him, mustering every bit of courage and willpower to maintain eye contact while uttering those words that have been terrifying her.
"I… I like you, Ratchet." She states.
"You… what?" Ratchet dumbly replies, shocked.
"I really, really like you, okay? I always have been for the last few months, and I can't ever get you out of my mind, and I think about all that you've ever done for me, and what my life would be like if you always here with me, and it just makes me feel really warm and fuzzy when I think about that." She explains. "And I… Just have to tell you, so that you might feel the same way about me, and that we can maybe finally spend the rest of our lives together—"
"Wait a minute, let me stop you right there." Ratchet interjects, raising a hand, absolutely shattering Rivet's train of thought.
"I—erm, what?" She responds.
"I know where you're going with this, so let me just save you the trouble by saying right now that I don't like you like that." He says softly, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"I… you… what?" She chokes out, barely able to hear those words over the sound of her heart shattering into millions of pieces.
"But, don't get me wrong, I do really like you as a friend, Rivet, and I hope that we can still be best pals after this." He follows up with a smile that did nothing to help her feelings, the phrase 'best pals' stabbing into her like a knife.
"But… I… I thought Clank said that you liked me back!" She argues, tears starting to fill her eyes, beginning to hope—beg—that this was all just some bad dream.
Ratchet sucks in his teeth, shaking his head from side to side as he removes his hand from her shoulder to rub the back of his neck. "Well… I honestly did at one point, to tell you the truth." He admits. "But the thing is, I've found someone else who I love."
"Who?!" She cries out, her voice threatening to crack, taking almost everything in her to not break down into a slobbering mess at this outright denial of her feelings.
He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a few seconds before he opens them back up to meet her gaze. "Rivet, I'm in love with Mort." He states firmly.
Those words hit Rivet like a freighter as she was overwhelmed with a surge of grief, dismay, disbelief, sadness, and outright confusion as she heard those words from the man she loved. "…What?!" She cries out.
"It's true, Rivet." He says with a nod, his resolution unwavering. "I admit that it was kinda weird at first to hear that she had a crush on me, and hearing her flirt with me like that. But as she kept complimenting me, telling me how handsome I was, and I kept thinking about the fact that she has a crush on me… it really opened my eyes." He says with a small smile. "As I thought more about it, I began to realize that I think I only liked you so that I could get closer to her, and that she's the one that I hope to spend the rest of my life with. She's funny, she's humble, she makes great lemonade, and to really tell you the truth, she is hot. And that's why I came here to visit Sargasso today, so that I can finally tell her that myself."
Before Rivet can open her mouth to argue what in the actual hell was he saying, they suddenly hear a voice that, for the first time in her life, filled her with absolute and utter dread.
"Why, I don't think ya need to do that anymore, dontcha know." Mort states, making them snap over to see her walking up to them behind Aphelion. "And I'm glad to hear that you feel the same way about me, hot stuff." She says with a smile, looking over to Ratchet.
"Mort?" Rivet chokes out, a fresh new wave of tears filling her eyes, helpless to do anything but stand there in shock, disbelieving that this was actually happening.
"So you really accept my confession, then?" Ratchet asks, completely ignoring Rivet as he kneels down, taking both of Mort's hands into his own, gazing into each other's eyes.
"That I do, little fella." She replies warmly. "And I've been wanting to do this ever since our little Rivet invited you over to our first picnic together."
Before he could ask, Mort pulls on his hands and kisses Ratchet right on the lips, his eyes widening in surprise before he melts into the kiss, removing his hands from her own as he instead wraps them around her small frame, taking her into a tight embrace that she gladly returns, their hands exploring all over each other's bodies, all in front of Rivet, who doesn't know whether to sob, scream, or simply die where she stood, inflicted by a severe mixture of heartbreak and traumatization.
So instead, she simply stands there, frozen in shock as tears continue to flow down her cheeks, deciding that seeing her adoptive mother and the man she loved begin to furiously make out with each other, her able to clearly see their tongues wrestling together in each other's mouths, that this was easily the most horrifying thing that's ever happened to her, including losing her arm.
"Hey, woulda look at that! Mort finally got him!" She distantly hears another Mort cry out, rousing a large round of excited whoops and hollers as several Morts join Rivet in watching Mort and Ratchet continue to tenderly kiss each other, stopping only to get a breath of air before continuing to passionately swap saliva.
Rivet manages to tear her gaze away from the scene as she instead dumbly looks around to the other Morts, wearing glad expressions, happy for the new couple, and as she does, the one next to her looks back up and sees her horrified and confusion expression, and rests a hand on her arm with a warm smile.
"Well, sorry about this, sweetie, but like we said, you had to hurry up and ask him out yourself instead of dilly-dallying about it, dontcha know." He explains softly. "We tried to get you to fess up about your feelings about him, but you never seemed to take it. You were too late, and you just lost him like how Mort lost the lugnuts to his ship after walking away from his repair job for some lemonade."
"Hey, at least I found 'em afterwards!" He argues from the crowd.
"But, I guess you can't exactly get Ratchet back like how Mort got his lugnuts back, Rivet." The Mort next to her continues with an apologetic shrug. "But, you know what they say; you snooze, you lose, dontcha know."
Before Rivet could argue with him and fervently demand what the hell they are thinking that this is her fault and how she could have possibly foreseen them stealing her crush from her, she is interrupted by the sound of Ratchet and Mort loudly breaking their kiss, making her look over just in time to see the trail of saliva extending from either of their mouths, an image that would permanently scar her forever.
"That was amazing." Ratchet states breathlessly, full of pure and utter bliss. "I love you, Mort."
"And I love you, too, Ratchet." She replies with a smile, before a lascivious look appears in her eye, her gaze quickly flickering down before looking back up at him. "And I think I'd like to take this further." She says seductively.
He blinks. "You mean… right now?" He asks with little hesitation, but not enough to overpower the clear eagerness in his tone. "But… she's right there." He says, glancing over to Rivet, wounded by hearing the one she loved refer to her as if she was an unwanted third wheel.
"Don't worry, she's a big girl. And besides, she can just walk away anytime if she really doesn't want to be here, dontcha know." Mort assures him with a smile.
She then reaches for Ratchet's hand, and, to Rivet's horror, places it on the zipper of her jumpsuit with a carnal look in her eye. "Unless, of course, you don't want to?"
"No, I think I'm fine." Ratchet replies with a smirk, Rivet able to hear the sound of him slowly beginning to unzip it, even above some of the other Morts' cheers around her. "And besides, I've always wanted to know with how much you guys drink, if you would taste like lemonade." He says lecherously.
Hearing him say that was the straw that broke the camel's back, immediately breaking Rivet out of her trauma-induced frozen shock, finally able to muster her paralyzed vocal cords to raise out a hand and yell out:
"NO!" Rivet cries out, sitting up from her bed, being met with not Ratchet and Mort about to strip down right then and there, but instead, a normal bedroom.
She is confused for a good few seconds, wondering what the hell just happened, but then, with great relief, realizes that it must have been a nightmare—easily one of the worst, if not, the worst one she's ever had.
She also realizes that she's breathing hard, practically panting as her heart raced from the sheer horror of the scene, and feeling wetness on her cheeks, brings up her hand to find that she was crying, tears flowing as easily as they did in her dream.
But as she looks at her hand, she also looks over to see Ratchet asleep next to her, once again very much confusing her, before the events of last night flooded back into her panicked, slowly-waking brain, with her finally confessing to him in that sunset, and them spending the rest of the evening together before finally falling asleep in his bed, just like she always dreamed of.
But as she looks at him, only being reminded of how utterly terrifying it felt to see him ripped away just like that in her nightmare, he stirs a bit, probably from her crying out and sitting up, and turns his head slightly as he slowly blinks open his eyes.
"Riv…?" He mutters. "You okay?" He asks worriedly.
"Don't be in love with Mort!" She tells him frantically, making his eyes widen in surprise with how fervently she demanded it, still recovering from how vivid the nightmare was, and about just how real her feelings from it were.
"I—what?" He asks, completely dumbstruck by her response.
"Promise me that you'll never fall in love with Mort!" She tells him, looking at him with a serious and worried face. "Ever!"
"I—I won't! I promise!" He hurriedly tells her, sitting up a bit as he looks at her with concern. "But—where is this coming from? Are you okay?"
"I… Just… It was awful!" She tells him, wiping away at the tears on her face. "I tried to confess to you on Sargasso, but then you said you didn't love me, and that you loved Mort, and then you started kissing each other while Mort said I was too slow on telling you so they kept flirting with you and I—I just…" She trails off as her voice starts to crack, feeling a lump in her throat as she buries her face in her hand.
"I thought I lost you forver, and it was horrible!" She states, trying not to outright sob as the emotions she felt in the dream came back to her, now finally able to unleash all of that grief she felt as she was paralyzed in shock.
"Woah, Rivet, shh, it's okay." Rivet calmly tells her, scooting over even closer to her to wrap his arms around her, making her face him. "I'm here, and I'm not going to leave you, and you're never going to lose me, okay? Here, look at me."
He then removes one arm from around her to gently grab her wrist, pulling her hand from her teary-eyed face as he intertwines his fingers in hers, looking right into her eyes with a warm smile.
"You don't have to worry about me doing any of that because I love you, Rivet." He states fondly. "I'm always going to be right by your side, and the only thing that's going to keep me from doing that is if I die, not… well, Mort. You don't have to worry, because I am here for you. Okay?"
Rivet simply stares back at him, sniffling a bit, and that warm look on his face, eyes filled with pure love and adoration that ignited that warm and fuzzy feeling inside of her even despite the grief and horror she felt from the nightmare. She then glances to his hand, holding hers, cherishing the touch and soft squeeze he was giving her, and the warmth of the bed they currently laid in together.
Even though that nightmare was one of the most traumatic things that she's ever experienced, just having him right here with her was enough to make her feel a lot better, and so, she musters up a smile as she gives a nod, sniffling once more.
"Okay." She whispers. "I… love you, Ratchet."
"And I love you, too, Rivet." He states. Before leaning over to give her a peck on the lips, making her giggle a little bit.
"But… Can we stay like this for a bit longer, though?" She asks, snuggling up closer to him, letting go of his hand to tightly hug onto him as she buries her face into his chest. "That nightmare was a lot, and… it feels nice with you here."
"Of course, take as long as you need, I'm happy to be your pillow." Ratchet answers fondly, bringing his own arms around her before they both lay back down on the bed, him squeezing her further into himself.
"Thank you, Ratchet." She replies gladly, smiling, savoring how soft and warm his body felt against hers, already doing wonders at calming her down.
"No problem."
But even as they both laid there, with Rivet's quiet sniffling growing more and more infrequent as they snuggled each other in his bed, Ratchet couldn't help but internally feel very confused at what the actual hell she was saying about dreaming about him and Mort actually kissing each other.
So, I hope this epilogue was extra special just like I promised it would. IT was an absolute blast to write.
Image thoughtfully and very enthusiastically provided by Wolf-Chalk, always very supportive in me and my very provocative ideas, always lending me the strength to share my ideas into the world, even if I'm hesitant about it. Thank you, Wolf-Chalk, you truly are a patron of the arts.
And for readers, be sure to check out this story on AO3 (Archive of Our Own) to see it in all its full glory.