The Mis-Rick-Education of Phoebe Johnson

by The Druid Is In

Phoebe Johnson didn't know what to expect when she went to live with her half-brother, Jerry, to attend graduate school. She certainly didn't expect interdimensional, space, and time travel with his hated father-in-law Rick and his socially awkward son Morty. Cross-posted on AO3.

28. All Roads lead to Phoebe

A/N: Rick and Phoebe make good on their promise not to pretend nothing happened. There are feelings. Small CW for a bit of NSFW content.

…

The next couple of hours were filled with cleaning and repairs, with Phoebe metaphorically at the helm guiding a small army of Meeseeks. Meanwhile, Summer still insisted they do some things, like repainting the living room wall, on their own. On one hand, Rick thanked all fuck that the Meeseeks could lessen their workload. On the other hand, they still needed supervision—the damn things couldn't self-start, wouldn't jump to a task unless you gave it to them—so they all found themselves suggesting tasks that Phoebe would then give out as orders: fix the hole in the wall, mop the hallway, take out all the trash, clean the beer off the window, do Morty's laundry. As a result, he hadn't had a moment alone with Phoebe since that "morning", and he was itching to pick up where they left off before Morty and Summer barged into his room.

At the moment, Phoebe stood back with arms crossed, wearing a self-satisfied expression as she stood with the four of them observing the team of Meeseeks repairing the demolished wall. She tossed her head and glanced pointedly at Morty, her long braid whipping up onto her shoulder. "I guess being predictable isn't such a bad thing, huh, Morty?"

The teen sheepishly ran his hand through his wavy short hair, letting it settle on the back of his neck. "Yeah, I guess not, Phoebe."

Rick rolled his eyes and took his flask out, knocking it back for a long pull. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Phoebe's forehead wrinkle minutely with concern, her fingers brushing against his. The message was clear, a mixture of Are you okay? and Take it easy. How was it that two people could read each other so clearly without a single word passing between them? When did they get to that point?

Summer looked at her. "Do we have to use them for all of the repairs?"

Morty chimed in. "Why are you actually interested in doing chores for once, Summer?"

Summer scowled at him. "What, and you do? Since Grandpa moved in, robots usually do the cleaning so you don't have to."

Rick shrugged, lowering his flask. She wasn't wrong. It was inconvenient to have to postpone an outing because Morty had to wipe down a mirror or clean the toilet. "Robots are—" belch "—they're more efficient."

Phoebe waved her hands to get their attention. "Hey, can we stay on track?" When three pairs of silvery eyes each met hers, she continued. "Summer, what made you ask? You know that the more we do ourselves, the more time it'll take and the longer we'll be outside of time."

Summer crossed her arms defensively over her chest. "Yeah. That's kind of my point. Maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing, you know? We could get a break from my mom and dad, from everything."

Rick whistled. "Wow, Summer, do I detect a hint of desperation there? You really—" belch "—you really find everything that insufferable?"

"Fuck you, Grandpa Rick," she retorted with a scowl. "Not everyone can stay drunk all day and sulk in a garage with their girlfriend."

"Hey!" Phoebe objected. "We don't spend all day in the garage."

Rick noticed she didn't object to being called his girlfriend, but then again, Morty and Summer had walked in on them kissing on his bed, so it would be futile to protest, something Phoebe must have realized.

Summer smirked. "No, apparently you spend time in his room, too," she said coolly.

Rick snorted. "Ooh, she got you there, Pheebs."

Phoebe's eyes glinted, then he watched with a pang of nostalgia and the accompanying phantom of heartbreak as an expression he'd often made himself—one he'd only discovered when he noticed it on a different familiar face—bloomed across hers, not at all out of place there.

Oh shit. What the fuck.

He frowned down at his flask. He'd buried the pain of losing his wife so deeply he thought it wouldn't ever lance through his chest again like a knife between the ribs. Then again, maybe he should have expected it to given the dreams, visions, whatever-the-fuck, that he'd had the night before.

Phoebe's reply, smooth as silk and sweet as honey, brought him out of it. "Yeah, well, there's a first time for everything, isn't there?" Oooooh…

"Ouch. Does that mean you won't be coming back?"

Phoebe turned to him, her expression transforming into a gentle—if teasing—smile. He felt a delicate touch on his arm. His eyes were drawn down to that touch, watching as her hand slid from his wrist to nearly his shoulder. "No te preocupes, querido, nunca te abandonaré." Don't worry honey, I'll never abandon you.

Fuck.

Summer groaned and crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't know what you said, and I don't want to know. Just hang a sock or a tie or whatever next time."

Morty covered his ears and ducked his head. "Summer, gross, stop making me see that kind of shit!"

Summer sniffed and rolled her eyes. "God, Morty, no one told you that you had to picture it, you dingleberry."

"I can't help it! I'm a highly visual person, Summer," Morty snapped, "When you say it I see it!"

Summer shrugged carelessly, not unlike Rick. "Sounds like a personal problem. Deal with it. I'm gonna go hit up the mall while everything's frozen. I want to pick up some new clothes and makeup. Then Mandy Zimmerman can eat her bitch heart out when she realizes I look better than her." She tossed her hair and made her way out of the room without looking to any of the four of them for approval. As she left, she grabbed Edana's wrist. "Edana's coming with me." Not unlike how she'd manhandled Morty earlier, she dragged the poor Android from the room before anyone could protest.

Morty's response was nearly immediate. "If—if Summer can do that, then—then I can score some new video games the same way."

Rick immediately saw an advantage to this and pounced on the opportunity to be with Phoebe alone. "Y-y-you, you go do that, Morty. Phoebe and I, we'll ta—we'll take care of everything here, don't you worry."

Morty narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Y-y-you, you're just—j-just trying to get rid of me, aren't you, Rick?" Morty threw his hands into the air. "I can tell you just want to be alone with Phoebe. I'm not you, but I'm not that dumb, Rick, I can take a hint." He exhaled loudly, huffily leaving the room.

As soon as the teen reached the hallway, Rick made a move to steal a kiss from Phoebe, who had so far been the one to initiate one in the past. To his surprise, she stopped him with a single finger held up to his lips. "This isn't talking," she said with an amused smile, "And we still need to do that."

"Hmm," he hummed, "do we?" He logically knew they needed to for her sake, that they couldn't rush things, that he had to stop his self-sabotaging for things that mattered, for people that mattered—the only problem was that he had become accustomed to nothing mattering until she waltzed into their life and shook up everything.

He could see the exact moment she bit back a laugh. "We should," she reminded him with emphasis. "As much as I want to jump in with both feet, I also don't want to act like this isn't a big deal. You're too important to me for that."

She might just kill him.

As much as Ricks sneered at attachment, Phoebes were their ultimate weakness. They knew what that "following your heart" crap got you, and yet...something about Phoebe drew them in, something irresistible that made it almost impossible to walk away from them if they were given an opportunity to get close to them. And though they'd never admit it, and though they insisted they didn't believe in love...really, all Ricks craved to be paid attention to by others, to be wanted, to be needed, to be loved—by certain people anyway, even if not by anyone else.

Rick ran his eyes over her face, thinking. She stared back at him. If they went back to his room now to 'talk', how much talking would actually get done? Phoebe seemed to have come to the same conclusion—that's what her tone suggested, at any rate. "Maybe we should get out of the house for a few minutes, go for a short walk while we talk things over?"

Oh, yes, he'd like to take her for a 'walk', all right, straight to his room to—

Rick shook his head, forcing himself to concentrate on their conversation and not the images dancing before his mind's eye—the sheen of bare flesh, the first beads of sweat, purple love bites….

Unbeknownst to Rick, despite his otherwise stoic expression, his eyes darkened with lust. He missed the answering flicker in Phoebe's eyes when she caught sight of it.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah, we should—" belch "—we should go ahead and do that, then see where it takes us."

Phoebe bounced a little on the balls of her feet, a sudden burst of energy overtaking her. "Great! I'll just change and grab my things." Right. Changing. She still wore her pajamas. She withdrew her portal gun—he still felt a small thrill seeing her use it—and soon disappeared into a familiar swirl of energy.

She re-emerged a short time later wearing a long, pleated yellow skirt and peach-colored shirt with bell sleeves. The strap of a small purse circled her shoulders while a dagger hung off of the belt around her waist. And, of course, completing it all and making Rick hot all over and even more turned on, was her lab coat. Goddamn.

It wasn't an item of clothing that people usually found arousing, but for Rick, already sensitive to anything sensory related, the day was stacked with alluring sensory cues—the smell of his soap on her skin, the tactile sensation of her holding his hand until he woke up, the sight of her in a lab coat using his invention. There was just something about seeing it on her, about seeing that portal gun in her hand and that dagger at her waist that made the blood in his veins burn with desire. Waking up to part of his scent mixed with hers had given him a heady sensation that had yet to fade, and this only added fuel to the fire. He was already attracted to her, had been physically since they met and now was emotionally as well, but somehow it made her all the more alluring, more intoxicating, more delicious. Now more than ever, after everything else, after everything they'd been through and seen together, and after feeling her soft lips on his and her hands in his hair, he wanted more. He wanted to expand his sensory knowledge of her further, to taste her, to feel her skin and her tongue and her teeth. He was hungry for anything she'd offer him. Anything.

The intensity and clarity of his feelings surprised him, especially when, if he examined them, he knew how much he cared for her. By god was he hot for her, but it extended far beyond that. At any rate, he knew he needed to rein in his emotions more tightly than usual, to match her pace. He knew he needed to meet her where she was. If he moved too quickly, he could put her off of anything, and so didn't want her to feel rushed or forced into a corner. If she wasn't at 'fuck him speechless', so be it. If she wasn't there in five months or five years, so be it. He could be impulsive in general, but not with this. Not with her. Phoebe could never be some split-second decision or a forgettable fuck that he'd be happy to ditch in the morning and never see again. He knew she wouldn't see him that way either, and that she'd want to think things through and talk it out. He would talk for the next ten years if she wanted to be with him. His dick would just have to get over it because his stupid "heart" was taking over.

Ugh, you've gotta be shitting me. I'm turning into some love-struck moron.

No. That wasn't true. He wasn't being a moron, he was being reasonable. He knew that if he fucked this up, he'd have far more to lose than getting off: more than losing his chance with Phoebe, he'd lose his only human friend, one of the only people he actually genuinely liked instead of merely tolerated, his best fucking friend friend, his fucking spirit mate, if Bird Person was to be believed. He couldn't be careless with her: he'd seen where that led a few other Ricks. He couldn't be overrun with only his own feelings, his own attractions, his own desires. He couldn't be selfish. Phoebes fell hard, loved deeply and passionately. It would never be solely physical attraction for her. Not that it was for him—at least not at the moment.

At first he'd tried to bury his attachments, deny how deeply they ran, but that had failed. He wasn't the type of person to use the word 'love'. He still didn't believe in it wholly and fully the way his best friend did, the way Phoebe did, and would, and he knew that. He was intelligent enough to realize that denial would be a futile pursuit. No Rick would ever admit how driven by emotions they actually were, how much they drove their actions. It was easier to embrace indifference when you felt so deeply. Too highly intelligent, too self-aware, too feeling to ever escape no matter how much they threw themselves into not caring. Phoebes felt just as much if not more, but they refused to numb themselves. They bore their wounds proudly, fought their battles freely, felt openly and unapologetically.

Fuck.

He was so not doing this right now. He was the Rickest Rick. Now was not the time to spiral into introspection and emotion.

"Rick?" Phoebe's voice drug him out of his tangled thoughts. She stood close to him now, a hand on his cheek and her eyes concerned. If she kept looking at him like that, either she'd destroy him or he'd explode. His fucking hands were shaking for fucks sake. Every time she touched him, every one of his nerves ignited. He once more felt the reoccurring urge to drop kisses down her throat, to run his hands down her sides. He wanted to see the soft, affectionate look in her eyes that came over her when her hands were threaded through his hair.

The smartest being in the universe could apparently still fall prey to something as idiotic as feelings and attachment.

This woman was his weakness and he knew it and yet he simply didn't care. How could he, especially when she was also his strength? How could he when she looked at him like that, with such deep concern and tenderness? How could he when he would rather be weaker than live in any world in which she didn't exist?

Rick's eyes met hers, dragging over the shape of her lips along the way. She moved forward and pressed her lips to his. Her other hand slipped into his and she tugged lightly at his arm. Wordlessly and without question, he allowed her to pull him along, out of the house and down the street. He was at the point where he'd follow her anywhere.

XXX

Rick seemed content to let Phoebe decide their destination without offering any input of his own, apparently still wrapped up in his thoughts as he had been since she'd made her move the night before. Since then—when he'd been conscious, anyway—he'd been silently preoccupied and slightly withdrawn. Phoebe wondered what thoughts managed to be so distracting, but tried not to worry about it too much. They had things that they needed to discuss, so she instead tried focusing on the perpetual mid-morning sun shining down on them.

At first Phoebe didn't know quite where to go, but she soon found her feet taking them to the local park. She would often pass by the place on her morning runs. It was surreal to pass people on the street frozen mid-stride or as they got into and out of cars and buses, people who stood stiff as statues waiting for the crossing signal to change, for doors to open. Everywhere she looked she saw arrested movement, a pause in a stranger's life that they'd never notice. It was a bit like being trapped in a painting.

They arrived at the park without much conversation passing between them. Phoebe made a beeline for the play area and settled into a swing—all of which were miraculously unoccupied—without touching the weathered and rusted chain-links hanging to either side. Rick took the swing next to her, coming out of his head enough to give her a questioning look. She shrugged, sighing softly, lips tugged upward into a nostalgic smile. "I've always loved swings," she told Rick fondly. "They always made me feel like I was flying, like I was powerful and free, like I could do anything. Never really grew out of that feeling."

Rick arched an eyebrow, but rather than criticism aimed at holding onto that thread of nostalgia he said instead, slightly disbelievingly, "What, you—you think you're not powerful and free now, Phoebe? Are you kid—are you kidding me? You—you're intelligent and fearless and you have the entire universe at your disposal, Phoebe. The multiverse, time, space. You can go anywhere, be anyone, do anything. You have that—that power in your pocket right now, Phoebe, next to a throwing knife and an energy pistol."

"So do you, Rick." She made an aborted motion. "Well, not the throwing knife part, but you know what I mean."

The way he looked at her then made her chest tighten. The fondness for swings transitioned into her fondness for Rick, tinged with a bittersweet realization, a mental image of Council Phoebe swirling to the forefront of her mind. Without realizing she had even raised her hand, she grazed his cheek with her fingertips. "Besides," she added, "none of that power means anything without you by my side to share it with, and that's what I want to do: I want to share everything with you."

Phoebe could spot a flicker of vulnerability in his eyes as he tilted his cheek into her fingertips.

"And by everything you mean...?"

"What do you think?"

She took one look at his face, which had changed to show something quite different from the vulnerability from seconds before, then groaned and facepalmed. "I meant sharing my life with you, asshole!" She rolled her eyes and sighed, then gave him an affectionate but long-suffering grin and a friendly nudge in the side. "This," she gestured between them, "is some serious shit. We're unbreakable. You're my best friend and you always will be. But…" Phoebe took a deep, fortifying breath. "I think I might be…" She hesitated, then started again. "I think I might be falling for you, and that's terrifying to me because I—I know how you feel about love, Rick. It's like you're allergic to the word. I don't want to drive you away, but I can't just let you think it's only physical attraction." She stopped abruptly and inhaled another huge gulp of air.

Rick looked at her, obviously conflicted, his hands coming up to gesture as he spoke. "Y-y-you won't drive me away, Phoebe. You can't. Despite what I've always thought, I honestly couldn't go back to life without you. Y-y-you think I haven't struggled with this, Phoebe? My entire fucking life has shown me the reward people get for believing in love. My wife, my ex-girlfriend Unity, Beth, Morty, our friends. If we believe in love, we just—we just leave ourselves open to weakness and destruction like every other fool out there." The scowl that had formed as he spoke softened when he looked at Phoebe, his voice dropping slightly. "But I—I'm The Rickest Rick and somehow I'm still a damn fool, being destroyed every time you touch me, every time you look at me. I'm on my knees, Phoebe. On my knees. Me, Rick-Fucking-Sanchez. And you're a Phoebe and so unrelentingly giving and open. Before us Ricks knew any of you existed, we thought someone with so much unrestrained compassion and empathy, someone who felt so deeply, couldn't possibly be mentally stable or intelligent, but then here you are, proving us all wrong. If anyone's unbreakable, it's you."

Phoebe laughed, making Rick's scowl slide back into place. She encircled his slender body with her arms. "I'm not laughing at you Rick. I'm laughing at the assumption that we're unbreakable. Us Phoebes do break, all the time. We just choose to embrace it. We don't let it stop us, and we don't see it as a weakness." She reached out and traced lightly along his cheek. "Have you ever heard of the concept of kintsugi?"

Rick raised an eyebrow, sounding skeptical. "That Japanese concept of something being more beautiful for having been broken? Yeah."

"It's more than that, Rick. It also means that broken objects are not something to hide in shame and self-loathing, but to display with pride—in other words, that your brokenness isn't something to hide, to shove out of sight, to be ashamed of, and neither are emotions. It's about more than repairing broken pottery so that all the fault lines glimmer with gold. It means being broken and surviving that is something to be acknowledged instead of forgotten."

Rick's eyes narrowed as if he knew where she was going with the thought, but he didn't interrupt her, instead waiting until she paused to comment. "What kind of assbackwards idea is that? No one's proud of their mistakes, Phoebe. No one wants to display every failure and fucked up thing that's happened to them to be seen by the world."

Phoebe traces around his eyes tenderly. "The mistake you Ricks make is in assuming that being broken is the worst thing imaginable, that acknowledging it instead of never even thinking of it means weakness. You'd never admit it to anyone else, but you all know you're broken in some way, and you resent it, resent knowing it, and resent yourself. There isn't a single loss that isn't painful. There's not a single grief that doesn't feel all-consuming. After, though, when you pick up your pieces and refuse to stay fragmented and reform into something stronger than before, that's what's worth it. Loving even after you've been hurt doesn't make you stupid or naive, it makes you brave." Phoebe leaned her forehead against his. "Every scar and break and imperfection you have is proof that you were stronger than anything that's tried to shatter you."

This time when he closed in to kiss her, she let him, a pleased hum in her throat. "I don't know that I believe in all of that," he muttered gruffly. He placed his hands on her shoulders. "The only belief that's served me has been belief in me, in Rick Sanchez, not in humanity, not in some god who doesn't give a crap about anyone in the multiverse or exist anyway. But now I believe in you, too, Phoebe, and I believe in us. I don't know if I can believe in love, but I believe in Rick and Phoebe. I believe that we're unstoppable together, and I believe we should do whatever the fuck we feel like, and fuck the rest. I know what I want, and it isn't to ignore the obvious thing that's been building between us, or to pretend that I don't know how you feel. I want you, Phoebe. I need you. Wherever you want to take this, I'll—I'll follow, Phoebe. Even if it means all this confusing emotional crap gets dumped on us along the way." His hands slid onto her upper back as he brought her into another, longer kiss.

"That's what I needed to hear," she whispered against his lips as she pulled back from it, her hand sliding into his lab coat. "I wanted to know where we stand."

Rick pulled away slightly, looking down at her hand with hooded eyes as she aimed it at the ground near them and activated a portal. "We stand wherever the fuck we want to stand—together."

Phoebe stood, tugging lightly on his hand and catching his eye. "Fall with me."

Wordlessly, Rick stood with her, eyes now on the portal. "Fall with you, huh? This isn't some weird metaphor for falling in love that you're creating, is it?"

Phoebe rolled her eyes affectionately. Tall fucker that he was, his mouth was much harder to reach when they were both standing, but she could fix that. She knelt down, pulling him into the portal with her when he copied her movement. They landed painlessly in a heap on his bed.

"We could have just opened a portal on the wall and walked through," he muttered with fake grumpiness as he sat up.

Phoebe shrugged, echoing something he'd said to her often. "Where's the fun in that?"

It was Rick's turn to roll his eyes. "Fun, Phoebe? Do you still know what that word means?"

A mischievous glimmer danced in her eyes. "Of course I do. Now, where were we?"

Rick crossed his arms. "Last I checked before you dumped us back onto my bed, we were talking about what we wanted to do about our mutual attraction to each other, which we could have done here." Well, they could have tried, anyway, Rick amended mentally.

Phoebe shrugged carelessly as she swung her bag onto the floor and shimmied out of her lab coat, draping the latter across the table by his bed. She unclasped her belt and dropped it, dagger and all, next to her bag. "Given what happened this morning, I wanted to make sure we would actually be productive and that we'd be on the same page."

He smirked. "If by same page you mean 'confirm that we're both suffocating under sexual, emotional, and romantic tension—mmph!'"

As Phoebe stole another kiss from him, he felt her pick up his hand from where he let it fall. She pressed the palm of it flush to her side, then slowly guided it up her body. She paused just underneath her right breast, breaking the kiss to give him a little breathing room. Rick sucked in a breath. "Jesus, Phoebe."

"I didn't think you'd care what he thought about this," she teased with a shaking voice. She hesitated for an infinitesimal amount of time, then seemed to come to a decision. She drug his hand onto her breast and left it there. "Touch me," she instructed, adding, "If you want to. I don't know how quickly you'd like to move forward, but I think here would be a safe start."

Rick swore softly under his breath in Dutch. "Are you shitting me? Of course I want to touch you. How would you—what do you want me to do?" He didn't want to overstep, not here, not with this. Phoebe wasn't shying away. She was watching him intently and telling him what she wanted matter-of-factly and it was destroying him.

"Not too rough. Try to be gentle. They're a bit tender." She trailed her hand up his side.

Rick's hand flexed involuntarily into her skin. His throat felt suddenly dry. "Just my fingers?"

Phoebe considered it, nodding. "For now."

Rick dropped his hand to the hem of her shirt. It seemed to take ten years to work his hand underneath the fabric, then his skin was touching more of hers than he ever had, his fingers and palm gliding over her stomach without a barrier between the two. He reached the underside of her breast with almost trembling fingers, following the curve of smooth flesh currently trapped underneath another thin layer of fabric. Phoebe held still, though it sounded as if she was breathing harder, perhaps with excitement. Rick kept eye contact with her as he slipped his fingers into the cup of her bra and traced her areola, flicking her nipple gently after three slow circles. He could feel himself becoming aroused with every passing moment, but his concentration never wavered from her.

He took her nipple between thumb and forefinger, the small protrusion already a little stiff, and tugged on it as softly as he could. A low, breathy gasp escaped from Phoebe. "Yes, like that." Her head dropped down and she pressed her face into his neck as he repeated the motions twice, keeping in mind the tenderness she mentioned.

He had just adjusted his touch so that his palm cupped the swell of her breast while his fingers worked when she pulled the collars of his lab coat and shirt aside and bit him. It didn't break the skin, and if he were honest, he'd been bitten much harder over the course of his life. But Phoebe biting him sent a fresh wave of arousal through him, all of it funneling to one place. "Damnit, Pheebs, don't do that if we're taking it one thing at a time like you wanted."

"What, this?" Phoebe taunted playfully, and then she bit him again, dragging a moan from his lips that he couldn't have restrained no matter how hard he tried.

"Son of a—" Rick shuddered, his hand squeezing harder than he intended. Phoebe whimpered in pain, making him remove his hand. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "Let me—let—let me make it up to you."

He tugged her shirt upward until he could expose the half-covered breast that had been receiving his attention.

"Rick, you don't have to, it's all right—" Her voice cut off when he pushed the lavender cup down the rest of the way and lowered his mouth to her nipple. His lips gathered around it as he pulled it into his mouth, using his tongue to lave over it twice. He kept his hold as steady and gentle as he had with his hands, the grip of his lips carefully measured. With his nose trailing along her skin, he felt goosebumps rising on her skin. Next to him, Phoebe squirmed, panting slightly.

Rick wriggled his hand between them to lightly rub her other nipple through her clothes. He disconnected his mouth to mutter thoughtfully, "I think these need to go."

Phoebe laughed shakily. "Yeah, then you'll suggest our pants go, then the rest, and we'll be lying here naked."

Rick rolled his shoulders, unrepentant. "Only if you agreed. I wouldn't force you to do it."

Phoebe eyed him critically, desire hot in her gaze. "Shirts off only for now."

Rick didn't need further encouragement. As soon as they sat up he ripped off his lab coat and his own shirt like they'd been strangling him. He wrapped the two garments into a ball that he then flung across the room. Phoebe removed her shirt and bra much more calmly, pulling her shirt over her head like a normal person and tossing it onto the bean-bag chair. She unclipped the hooks holding her bra to her chest, then hung her bra on Rick's lamp.

Seeing her bare-chested hit Rick like a ton of bricks. He shoved aside the impulse to act rashly and instead carefully drew her close to him, their chests inches from touching. Rick bent his head to continue his attentions, the fresh scent of her clean skin in his nostrils as he tended to her other nipple, this time starting off with a few closed-mouth kisses first. He dropped only a few before he graduated to sucking again. He could feel it the moment she set her palms flat against his sides and swept her hands upward. He reminded himself to be easy with her tender flesh as she tentatively flicked both of his nipples with her thumbs. He broke contact with hers to mumble a request of his own. "I'm gonna need you to do that harder, much harder. I'm gonna need you to pull on them."

"I don't want to hurt you," Phoebe objected instantly.

Rick stopped lavishing his attention on the small peak of flesh he'd been suckling to give her his best reassuring glance. "You won't, Phee, you won't. Just. I've done worse things to myself than this. Now are you gonna do it or not?"

Phoebe experimentally grasped his nipples tighter, tugging on them with more force than she'd previously applied when flicking them. "Harder," Rick grunted as he released her nipple and blew on it.

Phoebe shook slightly at the sensation, but fulfilled his request. She tugged even harder, twisting and pinching his nipples as she did so. Rick pulled back, seeing stars. If they kept going he was going to need either a very cold shower or about an hour of alone time, possibly both.

When his vision cleared, he got an eye full of his work: by that point the woman in question was breathing raggedly, her chest heaving and her nipples glistening with a fresh coating of his saliva. Her areola and nipples had darkened. He buried his face into the valley between her breasts and inhaled deeply, trying to calm himself down. Despite her desires for touching and kissing getting the better of her, it seemed like Phoebe wanted them to pace themselves, to take things in pieces rather than rushing. He'd give that time to her if she wanted it, no matter how much he wanted to be pressed against every inch of her skin available while buried in her as deeply as possible.

"How did that make you feel?" He could feel the vibrations of Phoebe's voice with every word as she stroked his head, fingers sinking into his thick hair. She seemed a little anxious.

"I'd show you if we weren't pacing ourselves," Rick murmured.

"I just wanted us to see if it felt right to us," Phoebe admitted to him. "To do this." He peeked at her, his own still pressed to her skin. "I wanted us to feel out...whatever this is, to act on it without taking it too far to see if this is what we really wanted."

"And?" He turned his head to drag his teeth over one of her nipples without biting down. "What's the skinny?"

Despite the involuntary shiver that traveled up her spine, she kept her composure as she said, "And, when I think of you, I realize that if I could only ever see one person again before I died, it would be you….And that I do want this, and I want it with you."

Rick kissed his way up to her collarbone, then licked his way to her throat, gently thumbing both nipples at once. He whispered into the crook of her neck. "Do you trust me, Phoebe?"

She didn't hesitate. "Yes."

He pressed another kiss to her pulse point. "That might be a mistake."

They both laughed, but then Rick cleared his throat. "Anyway, point is, you're—you mean more to me than sex, Phoebe. I've had plenty of people be only that, but you—you do things to me Phoebe. You're in my head, you're under my skin—so save your breath and stop worrying that I don't want you the same way that you want me."

Phoebe slid her arms around him, burrowing against his chest as she embraced him. "Just don't take my head off again if I ever want to tell you that I love you, you complete and utter ass of a man. I've felt something for you for longer than I've been willing to admit."

Rick's arms encircled her in an answering embrace. "You know how I feel about you," he replied roughly. "You're my person, Phoebe. I could rationalize leaving nearly every single person in this god-forsaken multiverse, but not you. Never you. You're not an acceptable loss. You haven't been one for a while."

She did know. Those seemingly ruthless words from Rick in that moment illustrated to her just how deeply he really did care, but even if he'd denied it, she'd experienced his care enough to see through his bullshit. She hummed, allowing her ear to settle over his heart. Its steady thrum grounded her. "You're my person too," she whispered. Her left hand trailed down to his waist.

Once more, Rick shuddered. "Don't. Not unless—"

"Yes. I'm aware." Her voice wavered into something sultrier than before, her desire bleeding through into her speech. "Take them off, Rick."

He pulled away from her, looking down at her with the same burning intensity she'd seen during the night of the party. He stood with purpose and determination, his hands going to his belt. The clack and clatter of the belt buckle and the sharp hiss of his zipper seemed unusually defeating. Phoebe couldn't draw her eyes away from his willowy body: from the lean muscles that she could finally observe with her eyes instead of just feeling under fabric, from the faint crisscrossing lines of scars mottling his skin, from his pale chest and long limbs. When he finally shucked his pants off and straightened, her eyes travelled upward from his ankles to his milky thighs, back up to his navel.

"Yes?" Despite the slowly growing smirk on his face, Phoebe could read the insecurity lurking just beneath the bravado. She flashed what she hoped was a smile that came across as reassuring without seeming condescending. His face shifted with some sort of resolve. "I'm gonna do this the right way, Phoebe," he whispered. "Still trust ole Rick Sanchez?"

Phoebe gave him an oddly solemn look. "With my life."

Rick swallowed thickly. "There's something—there's something I'd like to do. Stop me if you feel uncomfortable."

Only when Phoebe gave another affirmative did Rick rejoin her on the bed, crawling on next to her and softly caressing her neck. He ghosted his fingertips up and along her jawbone, used them to trace the outline of her lips and to dance them lightly across her cheek. By the time he got to outlining her eyes, Phoebe's eyelids fluttered closed. After a few delicate strokes against them with the pads of his thumbs, he tenderly took her face between his hands and kissed the original path his fingertips took, from her neck to her eyelids, while allowing his thumbs to stroke her ears. Phoebe lay completely relaxed under the wash of caring caresses, which she found more intimate than how they originally started out, every muscle and nerve both electrified and mellowed by the sweet, feathery touches. Her eyelids opened a fraction to look at Rick as he kissed the side of her nose and nuzzled it with his own.

His lips traveled to her neck again, then up to her ears. He continued gingerly running his hands over her face and neck as he drug the tip of his tongue along the shell of her left ear. A content sigh left her lip, suddenly turning into a moan when he sucked her earlobe into his mouth. He released it and pressed a kiss onto the skin just behind her ear, tracking his fingertips and lips down her neck, over her throat and shoulder. He rested one hand carefully against her throat without exerting any pressure while he nipped faintly at her neck. Phoebe twitched, but otherwise laid still, giving him a chance to continue.

Rick nuzzled his way to her left breast, picking up where he left off from earlier but at a more sedate pace and an even daintier touch. This time when he enveloped her right nipple, it was stiffer, standing at attention and thrumming with more sensitivity. He trailed one hand along her side, while the other continued its path between her face and neck. He hunched over her, balancing all of his weight on his knees. Suddenly and without warning, when his lips descended on her left nipple and the hand on her side drifted onto her breast, Phoebe felt the sensation previously condensing in her lower abdomen seep outward and take control of her body with two small pulses. Her arms wrapped around Rick and she pressed her face into his chest, gasping slightly. She felt like she was floating weightlessly along with an idle current. As she let go of him and lay back lazily, she silenced the distant scientific voice in her mind attempting to neutrally relate the facts of what she'd just experienced, instead focusing on the sensations. There was no room for clinical objectivity where they were heading. They'd had their talk of logistics and decided this was what they wanted, to drown in each other's oceans, to bask in the light of that sensual-emotional-spiritual place that someone could only ascend to with someone else.

Through still half-closed eyes she could see the light in Rick's eyes that meant he felt pleased about something. Pleased with himself, or pleased by her response? Those questions left her mind as his body shifted and he took his time to kiss down her stomach, his hands dancing down her sides. He paused when he got to the waistband of her skirt, making meaningful eye contact with her. "Do you want me to stop here or to keep going?"

Phoebe reached for him and ran her hands through his wild hair, her trademark show of affection and quiet intimacy with him. "Keep going."

He kissed along the top edge of her skirt, dropping his hands to her calves and gliding his fingers up her legs the way he had on her upper body. Every inch his fingers crept took the fabric of her skirt with them, revealing unblemished skin. Eventually most of her skirt lay around her waist, exposing silky brown thighs and soft lavender underwear. The caged anticipation Phoebe felt made her want to climb out of her skin, but she continued to hold perfectly still, watching and waiting patiently. Rick bent down and gently drew the flesh of her left inner thigh into his mouth while carefully massaging her right. Phoebe's body bent so that she pressed more firmly into his bed. Her fingers pressed into his scalp, her lip between her teeth.

Rick cut his eyes at her. Seeing her face made him bite his own lip. Watching her tore at his resolve to go as slowly as possible, and he found himself moving the hand on her thigh to rest directly between her legs, applying slight, indirect pressure with the heel of his palm. He leveraged it back and forth languidly as he continued to tease her inner thigh with his lips, creating a ghost of friction. He nipped up and down both thighs, scraping them with his teeth and sucking at the most sensitive spots. Phoebe gasped each time he did, louder and more explosively than she had before. Her eyelids wrenched themselves open fully and she gave him a single heated look. She bit down on her bottom lip, letting her chin drop onto her chest. Rick was rewarded two minutes later when her entire body clenched as if she'd been shocked, then suddenly relaxed. On her end, Phoebe found herself floating again, this time swirling away with a strong wind, then set down gently in that same lazy current, ready to drift away. Like before, Rick served as a touchstone, an anchor, an eye in the storm.

Staring down at her, Rick's lips curled with delight. Phoebe tenderly stroked his face, fuzzy with sensation. Her mind snapped out of her daze with sharp clarity when Rick hooked the fabric of Phoebe's underwear with his fingers and moved it to the side. His mouth left her thigh, and he trailed a single finger along the newly exposed skin. Every muscle and nerve in Phoebe's entire body jumped. Rick peered at her face, carefully assessing her body language. "How do you feel, Pheebs?"

Was Rick capable of sounding earnest? She wasn't sure if she would call it earnest, if it were anyone else, but for Rick, always wound so tightly as he clung to stoicism and indifference, it was earnest. Phoebe lovingly caressed his cheek. "Don't stop, Rick."

Rick immediately leaned forward, and the intensity of his gaze as he dropped his first tender, open-mouthed kisses onto pink lips swollen with arousal almost sent her floating aimlessly again. When his tongue slipped out between his lips and his fingers found their way inside of her, Phoebe's breath left her suddenly in a low, wordless shout and her spine curved away from the soft sheet underneath her. As her head fell back onto the mattress, her fingers tightened their hold on his hair and her hips gained a life of their own. The longer Rick touched her, his tongue and fingers stroking lightly at a steady pace, the fuzzier her mind became, and soon it felt like all she was the nuance between the slow eddies and the dancing breeze over the surface of the water. It didn't help that as soon as he started, Rick couldn't stop moaning deep in his throat, his breathing harsh. The air from his exhalations and the vibrations from his moans both went straight to her clit. His free hand wrapped around one of her hips and tugged her even closer to him, until his cheeks were flush with her thighs and short, curly black hairs brushed along the bridge of his nose.

Phoebe thrashed around, drifting into that lazy current twice. Rick could have kept doing what he was all day, would have. Doing this for her was enthralling. Tasting her, hearing her quiet, breathy moans that still escaped no matter how hard she tried to stay quiet, seeing the moment when that dazed, contented look came over eyes, what could be better than this, than using his usually sharp tongue to pluck musical notes from her, to steal her breath, make her come undone with only his mouth and his hands as she whispered his name? Of course he'd love it, he'd be honored, if she wanted all of him, but in some ways being the source of her pleasure was pleasure enough, was exhilarating, mesmerizing, hypnotic, intoxicating even. It was a greater high than he'd ever received from kalaxian crystals, Purple Passion, Blue Fire, Ecstasy, cocaine, or LSD.

Rick paused, suddenly off-kilter as he stumbled from his spinning thoughts. Phoebe was tugging at his hair. He pulled away his touch: his lips, his tongue, his fingers, dreading that he'd gone too far. Phoebe dispelled that notion when she spoke, husky and breathless. "Rick, I need you."

Rick climbed her body to hover over her, battered between his desire to listen and his desire to keep going. He bent his head and measured how many kisses fit between her eyes. "Tell me."

Her arms and legs wrapped around him and pulled him flush to her body. Leaving a trail of kisses in their wake, her lips followed his jawline to his ear. "You said you wanted to show me. Do it."

Rick paused to tug at her remaining clothing. Phoebe lifted herself up enough for him to slide the garments off of her and toss them away without seeing where they landed. As her ankles locked around his waist, Rick dropped his head onto her shoulder, taking a moment to breathe in the scent of her skin again. Phoebe's hand felt between them until she found what she was looking for, her hold gentle as she arched her spine and undulated her hips upward. Rick thought he might not be able to support his weight over her for one long, terrible moment as he slid into place. He couldn't move at first, could only marvel at the feeling of their bodies joined together, at how they could interlock in a way that could bring tears to his eyes if he let it. His stillness ended when Phoebe bit hard into his shoulder, one of her hands once more entangled in his hair and the other lightly gripping his throat. Dutch and Spanish swears fell from his lips, then the dam broke and they were all motion, intermingled breath, and rushing blood.

Their moans twined together as tightly as their bodies so that to Rick's ears, in the explosion of sensation that followed he couldn't tell when one began and one ended, couldn't tell for a moment whose hand was on whose chest. Everything shifted, and suddenly she was the center of the universe, not just the honey staining his lips or the sweet nectar still lingering on his tongue, but a goddess who stepped from the realms of the heavens to lay with mortals, exquisite from the top of her halo of wild curls to the soles of her feet. Rick had never been a religious man. He'd always considered it beneath him, a fool's errand run by naive people who needed comfort and a way of denying how insignificant their pathetic lives really were, but now? Now he felt that he'd found one between her legs, in the number of kisses between her eyes, in those dark brown depths that looked at him just so, in the breathless way she whispered his name and squeezed gently at his throat. He was the supplicant praising her name, wanting to worship in her temple, to pray inside of her holy walls until she took every breath from his body, and he'd absolutely let her.

He ran a shaking, reverent hand up her sides, across her stomach, over her breasts, between her thighs. He simply couldn't not touch her as they moved. He was spinning, endlessly spinning. There was a god, and she was a woman. Her name was Phoebe Johnson, her soft body currently molded to his, and he was quite possibly dying now, sacrificing himself to her in one of the most intimate, beautiful, desperate ways someone could. And he would gladly do it again, a hundred times, a thousand, spilling libations at the foot of her altar to feed her, because gods demanded your breath, your tears, your blood, your deepest pains and greatest joys, your heart and your imperfections. He wasn't a religious man, but he would happily fall at the feet of this god, tasting her, touching her, being choked by her, whispering her name.

Rick sensed himself spiraling. He watched hungrily as she came undone two final times, her hand tightening on his throat involuntarily with each jolt to her nervous system, her insides crushing him, her chest heaving, her legs shaking even as they pulled him closer, her lip back between her teeth. Her eyes closed momentarily, her breath rushing out of her in a satisfied whine.

And like that, he was hers indefinitely.

For one breathtaking moment, he could taste color and see sound and smell heat. It felt like his entire body would melt as he shattered, rutting frantically into her, chasing after stardust. He didn't even realize at first that he'd spouted nonsense in Spanish, "Dos rojas lenguas de fuego," the first line of some Rima by Bécquer that popped into his scrambled brain. It didn't hit him that he said it until they rolled onto their sides, still connected and numb with ecstasy. They stayed that way—breathing each other in, listening to each other's heartbeats, reveling in the feel and closeness of each other, kissing until their lips became swollen—until Morty, Summer, and Edana came home, not bothering—or not willing— to move from each other's arms.

Sometime later ass his fingers mapped every inch of her spine, Rick muttered next to her ear, "What was that again about pacing ourselves?"

Phoebe hid her face against his shoulder, lightly slapping at his bicep. "Shut up, Rick."

...

Note: If you listen to Explosion by Zolita and Empire by Shakira, you'll see the frame of mind I was in when I first got the idea for this story (after also binge-watching Rick and Morty seasons 1-3 sequentially for the first time, mind).