#they always go so dark with birdperson’s character

[hazelnut-u-out]

Somehow never caught this before, but does this imply Birdperson’s mom killed his dad and he remembers seeing it?

The fact this memory is somehow tied to Blood Ridge in his mind makes me wonder if that’s part of why he didn’t accept Rick’s advances— maybe even subconsciously. If that’s what this implies, no wonder he had commitment issues. Makes the shit with Tammy hit differently, too…

I know it’s a throw away moment, but I really hope we get a follow up on that… Regardless of what that memory is, it’s dark shit.

[rickfucker]

10 Ways to Say I Love You (young!Rick Sanchez/Reader) - Pt. 1

I have hit my follower goal!!! thank you all so much for reading my nonsense and giving me a follow. it’s literally always been a goal of mine to be one of those popular fanfic writers and idc if that’s silly.

Link to the inspiration for this ficlet. 

AO3 Link

young!Rick Sanchez/f!Reader 3441 Words - SFW CW for Explicit Language, Canon Compliant Violence, & Minor Character Death

One

Though the windows are only tinted by the dark blue of the outside, the fluorescent lights of the meeting room are plenty to wake you up. Your head is only being held up by your hands, which are only being held up by the heaviness of your head. Simple physics that plagues your existence.

Other members of your fleet chat away with one another, the gross smell of eggs filling your nostrils. It makes you internally gag; not enough energy to even fully commit to that. Once you have to get up, you’ll make your tiny Styrofoam cup of tea with the scorching hot water sitting readily in front of you. For now, you just welcome its warmth on your hands through the plastic.

Leave it to Rick Sanchez to convince you that going out to that stupid Interplanetary Club the night before a mandatory morning meeting was a good idea. The man was too charming for his own good. Definitely for yours.

Your stomach churns as you take meditative inhales through your nose and exhales through your mouth. If it really turns out to be worth it, you aren't going to decide until after this feeling subsides. 

You lift your head as you sense someone's presence at your table. Speak of the devil.

His signature smirk adorns his face as he takes a seat diagonal to you. He looks fine. Great, even. You glare at him.

It only makes him laugh, a sound that tickles your ears but bangs against your skull. You hide your head in your crossed arms.

“Oh, come on. I didn’t get you that drunk, did I?” You can hear the smile in his voice.

You sigh deeply, your voice groggy as you start to speak. “You should know by now that my tolerance is shit compared to yours.” You shoot him another glare. “And clearly my refractory time, as well.”

“Ooh, talk dirty to me, baby,” he flirts, but you’re too tired to be bothered by it. 

The night was mostly a blur of drugs and dancing and colorful drinks handed to you - which you drank without question. You trusted Rick in a sense. More like you trusted Birdperson, and they trusted Rick.

He was fighting the same cause you were. He was a bit brash, but it was a welcome change from the rest of the people on your team. You had gotten sick of the polite, forced niceties that came with sharing a living space with a hundred other aliens. Rick is a wild card, named a rogue. His motivations are unclear. But if there is one thing you really know about Rick, it’s that he knows how to party.

A lot of the things he came into the club with were incredibly rare and hard to find. Even if Rick didn’t have the greatest attendance record when it came to anything that didn’t include firing guns, you can’t imagine he has that much time on his hands to go hunting down illicit substances. 

But he’s always there to take someone down when he’s needed.

“I’m surprised to even see you here. You usually skip these, don’t you?” You prop up on your elbow, letting your eyes adjust to the bright light. You take note of the two to-go cups in front of him. Earthly looking.

“Noticing when I’m gone, hm?” He lays it on thick, one lengthy hand wrapped around one of the cups.

You point at the free cup with a questioning look, curiosity officially piqued. He gives mock surprise.

“Oh, this? Ye-yeah, I may have made a pit-stop while I was deigning to show up.” He smiles, pushing it your way. “Two sugars, right?”

Your mouth falls open as the smell finally wafts your way; coffee. Your hands immediately wrap around its warmth, mouth falling open in awe as you look at him with wide eyes. 

“Shut up!” you whisper. “Where the hell did you get this?” Another rare commodity around here. You had switched over to caffeinated green tea, but it just wasn’t the same. Especially during a hangover.

“I can’t divulge my sources.”

You smile at him while you take a sip. You relish in its heat and bitter aftertaste. “I’ll take it.”

You don’t think to ask how he knew your order.

--

Two

When you wake, your room is still covered in darkness. Your hand flies to the digital clock on your nightstand. 2:35AM

You flop back onto your bed with a sigh. Most nights were like this; you either struggled falling asleep or staying asleep - at your worst, both, spending your night counting the ceiling tiles. 

You can hear the sound of hushed voices outside of your room and into the shared hallway of your fleet members. You didn’t function on a typical schedule most times. Most other solar systems didn’t even subscribe to time in the way of weeks, months, and years. The present is only the present. There’s a yesterday and a tomorrow, but time doesn’t really exist beyond our perception of it.

You think you prefer the daily trials of life with that mindset in clutch.

You eye your door longingly, silently wishing you had just made plans for tonight instead of turning in your bed for hours on end. You need to catch up on sleep, yeah. But trying your best to sleep whenever you can clearly isn't working for you.

There’s laughter and footsteps. Shushes followed by more demure giggling. The sound slowly fades out of your peripheral hearing, your eyes closing in defeat.

They snap open to the quiet, quick succession of knocks on your door. You furrow your brow as you flip the blankets off, making your way to the entrance while pulling your robe tight around your waist.

Your hand print scans beside the door with a blue light and a beep, the aluminum sliding open to reveal a somewhat disheveled Rick, dressed casually and leaning on the door frame.

Your eyes squint to adjust to the hallway lights. “Rick?” A glance to your right reveals the rest of the group has gone, leaving the two of you alone. “It’s two in the morning.” You cross your arms in indignance, trying your hardest to look annoyed.

He speaks in a whispered frenzy. “Yeaaah, yeah. Listen, listen. So, BP and I went to the cantina after hours to steal some of the good cereal ‘cause if I have to eat bran one more fucking time I’m gonna- gonna blow up this whole f-fucking station - and there were these other crew members trying to break into the main office to forge some shit. Get this: This chicks best friend slept with her boyfriend - like who gives a fuck, right? But they were gonna fake a mandatory transfer for this guy to get ‘em out of our station, so I helped, and now we’re gonna go stink bomb this chicks room while she’s out in exchange for whole milk for the fucking. Cereal! Do you want to come?”

You blink at him. 

You could describe Rick as many things. Intimidating. Charismatic. Mysterious. 

Upon getting to know him better: childish.

It was never unwelcome and was almost always charming. You could watch him 180 in a team meeting - from planning an assassination attempt to whispering flustering mnemonic devices in your ear for each of your crew members in the room.

You glance back at your messy bed, a sad reminder of what you know you’re missing. But yeah. You do want to go.

A sound passes your lips, somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, shedding your robe and going for one of your sweatshirts instead. He whispers a ‘yesssss’ with a punch of his fist in the air. Your smile grows.

“Only if I can have the kind with the marshmallows.” you add.

He grins. “A girl after my own heart.”

--

Three

You barely had time to register it in the moment - an enemy’s gun pointed toward one of your own. Your finger twitching on the trigger, shooting the alien dead like second nature. When you angrily met the eyes of your teammate, leaving their station and ducking out from everyone's eyesight, you barely shot the offender down in time. 

Rick wasn’t paying attention.

No, his back was turned. He was alert when you spoke to him, but not toward the fight at hand. 

“Rick, what are you doing?” you yelled from across the room, your voice quiet among the lasers, pistols, and the burning of your ambush explosives.

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied, his eyes hard. He took off. You didn’t see him until long after the mission was over.

You catch him hanging low in the hallway by the cantina. Rage flares in your nostrils, and you shove him before he even knows you’re there.

He stumbles a bit to the side, shooting a crazed look at you with an accompanying ‘what the fuck?’

“What the fuck was that earlier? Abandoning a mission?”

He protectively covers where you pushed him with a hand, rolling his eyes but softening. “How about you worry about yourself, sweetheart.”

You scoff. “That fucking mosquito almost shot you, idiot.”

His lips turn down. An annoyed scowl you’re so used to seeing. “Right, my bad. Forgot to pick up a thank-you card.”

He presses the right buttons, your fingers fisting and stretching out anxiously by your side. The flicker of the fluorescent lights makes you nauseous. “Don’t be a dick,” you say dumbly.

He crosses his arms. “Be- because ambushing me and starting a fight was so fuckin’ polite of you.”

You sigh, ignoring him. Your eyes glance up and down the hallway to make sure no one can hear you, though you’re not sure why. “What were you doing?” you whisper, your true curiosity spilling.

His arms fall away, turning. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he deadpans.

Your anger turns way into disappointment, and suddenly he’s walking away from you. “Rick-”

“Hey.” His voice has a bite, annoyance or warning, you don’t know. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to.”

It shuts you up, stops you dead in your tracks. You stand there and watch him walk away, wanting to blow your head off for a reason you can’t explain. Why did he piss you off so much? Why did you act so stupid? If you were trying to express concern for him, which you told yourself you were, you did a shit job at showing it.

You awkwardly nod at the others hanging around down the hall as you pass them on your way back to the cantina.

--

Four

Your tray of boring cafeteria food sits untouched and cold to your left. You don’t have much of an appetite these days.

Your fingers are occupied with spinning the tiny screws that hold the fluid component sturdy to its top. You’ve never thought you had overly manly hands until this moment. Your fingers are stubby and huge and tinted red from being stabbed by the screws flipping out of their sockets from the pressure. 

You aren’t particularly gifted with in-field tech, but you’re trying to improve. Which is why you repeatedly refused the help of your friends when you complained to them about the gun malfunctioning. You should learn these things in case of an emergency. You should be self-sustaining.

The screw slips back out of the socket and you curse as it scratches your cuticle, slamming your fist on the table - maybe a little too hard. You reel in your frustration in hopes nobody heard it and is looking at you like you’re crazy from past your peripherals.

You eye your abandoned tray with exhaustion, reaching for your water. Your hands burn as they scrape against the plastic cap. 

He appears then, just to the left of you, body leaning cooly against the table. The look in his eyes spells trouble to you, his brow raised in questioning. You take a long sip of your water while Rick’s eyes meet yours, glance down to the pile of hardware in front of you, and look up at you again. 

You set the cup down, willing yourself to keep his eye contact though your body tells you to break it. “What?” You finally ask.

He nods toward the pile. “Looked like you were having some trouble.”

His tone isn’t exactly mocking, but given the last conversation you’d had with each other, there was no telling if he only came over here to get back at you for poking the bear, or if he was actually trying to be helpful. He’s too nonchalant; you can never quite get a proper read on him.

“No trouble,” you say in as neutral a tone as you can, “I’m figuring it out.” That sounded more sure in your head.

“I could take a look at it,” he offers, but your stubbornness wins out.

“I’ve got it handled, Sanchez.” Well, that was a little too aggressive.

The longer he stares at you, the more you shrink under his gaze. He looks away for a moment, working his jaw in what you can tell is annoyance, before he’s moving into your personal space. He leans onto both his elbows propped on the tabletop, just close enough that you instinctually scoot back. He looks up at you, now. 

Suddenly, your mind goes blank.

“Come on. Let me fix it.” 

The close proximity leaves you speechless. Your heart picks up speed. Your stomach churns.

It’s just sour enough that you immediately recognize the feeling.

You simply nod, eyes dancing off his face, scared that your voice will fail you if you speak.

He only flashes you a small grin, one that makes you go even stupider, before stealing your equipment in an armful and sitting next to you. He gets to work right away. When he undoes the handiwork you had put in, you don’t even question it. You knew Rick was a scientist; an engineer. He was responsible for a lot of the equipment the fleet used - explosives, armor enhancements, ammo. And you definitely weren’t going to be touching that gun again until it was fixed lest God smite you.

You sit with silence between you, your eyes not leaving his hands at work for even a moment until he’s finished. Your gun, somehow, works better than it had when you first received it years ago.

--

Five

You squeeze your eyes shut tight, counting each beat of your heart as you try to slow your breathing. You calculate it’s racing somewhere past 150, and if you’re going to get out of this alive, you need to not have a panic attack. 

Isn’t your body supposed to function on auto-pilot in times of distress? You’ve been in plenty of fights. Your hands, your arms, your chest; your body branded the kind of scars you only get from years in the force. On the front lines, at that. You’ve been shot, burned, stabbed, everything short of torture.

So why is now the time that your body decides it can’t move?

The mission was supposed to be routine. You were picking up a supply drop with one other team member, Doss. You were often paired together because of your particularly complimenting skill sets and fighting styles. You didn’t mind marching into battle with melee weapons, swinging batons and punching your way through any situation you encountered.

Doss, though? He was a trained recon sniper. He stayed back to watch your six. You would scout out locations together, catch enemies when they weren’t looking, steal supplies, and get the fuck out without so much as a scratch on your knuckles.

Not today.

Food rations were getting low, so that was your number one priority. Medical supplies came next; as much as you can carry on your back. You had walkie’d back to your teammate from the inside after filling your packs to no response. You knew what protocol told you to do from here; hold your position and wait for backup. But you were an idiot who didn’t follow protocol.

You worried on your lips when you tried to make contact again. Static. Nothing.

Doss was on the outskirts of the building, half dilapidated and abandoned. You hadn’t been to this location before, but you were assured of its neutrality and safety. 

It was uncertain if it was a planned ambush. If you were in some group's territory and didn’t know it. It certainly wasn’t the Federation. They had particular styles that gave them away.

You made your way through the halls back to the front entrance, moving slowly. You abandoned one pack, too much to carry on you while trying to be inconspicuous. You heard the voices, saw shadows as you ducked behind a wall. How many were there? Six, seven, maybe… There could be more outside, out of range for you to hear. 

Still no sign of Doss. 

You can feel the tears pricking at your eyes, burning in a humiliation you can’t explain. You should have stuck together. You didn’t want to admit it. 

They’re filing in slowly, now, and you can hear the voices getting closer to you as you skirt down the hall and quietly shut a door behind you, a shaking hand dialing on your walkie.

“Supply team seven to base, please respond.” You keep your voice low, though it shakes with the sheer effort it’s taking you to not fucking cry.

No response. 

There was no way you could fight the lot of them. You didn’t come prepared with a firing weapon. Your power fist wouldn’t help you if you got shot.

You try again with no response. Your walkie was still working properly, no signs of malfunction. Who the fuck is manning the radio servers?

You squeeze your eyes as they burn, wiping your cheeks as you try to come to your current reality. You do the first thing you can think of. What were the chances he even kept his walkie on him? 

You dial Rick’s number and extension.

You take a shaking breath, pressing down to talk. “Rick, I swear to fucking God, please have your walkie on you right now.”

The static crackles for a moment, and you silently count your blessings before the rough melody of his voice breaks through the tiny speaker. 

“What is it?”

You laugh quietly, hysterically, reminding yourself to add Rick’s existence to your list of blessings. “There was some kind of ambush. Or we aren’t where we’re supposed to be. I don’t fucking know.” Your voice wobbles. “Doss is-” a hiccup, “he isn’t responding, Rick, I think he… There’s so many of them. I don’t- I don’t have anything, I-” Word vomit that you can’t stop, tears now freely flowing down your face. 

His voice stops you. “Stay there. I’m coming to get you.”

You’re hyperventilating just a little, and the first wave of relief washes over you. You don’t bother responding. 

You stay vigilant, furiously wiping your tears away as you wait for him, for some signal that you’re going to make it out of this alive. Raiders and marauders were all over the place these days; you weren’t the only side getting antsy against the Federation. As it turns out, the void of space doesn’t consider the enemy of it's enemy to be it's friend. Unknowns are always enemies.

When Rick shows up, it’s without grandeur. He grabs you to leave out the front door, and your eyes gloss over the wasted aliens that he took out before he found you cornered away. He took them all out himself, it looks like. You don’t know how. A single human of all things taking out a whole swarm of raiders? You would be criticizing his work ethic in any other circumstance, but only now does your body fall into autopilot. Blood and guts all over the floor, now on your shoes as you scrape them against the hard concrete outside. 

You see him, Doss, or at least, what’s left of him. Face down, by the looks of it, brains and blood splattered against the ground in a sight that would normally make you queasy, but you don’t feel anything.

They sniped the sniper. It probably happened so fast that it was relatively painless. He didn’t suffer. You say it to yourself over and over again. He didn’t suffer. He didn’t suffer.

You leave the planet relatively unscathed, though Rick bears the blood splatter of your enemies, already fading into the worn leather of his duster.

He says nothing to you, but you feel his eyes on you the whole way home.

[katy-133]

Hello :)

Do you have any idea which dimension Birdperson's from/if he's Ricks "original"? I'm assuming he'll be back at some point cos we saw his daughter (plus "I'll see you when I see you" doesnt really sound like a goodybe tbh), and him being Ricks specific bestie has been shown to be important to Rick (i.e. they're not interchangeable). And if he was outside his original dimension and got sent back by the reset it could make things really interesting...

Its pretty ambiguous as far as I can tell, but (unless the writers choose to ignore it lol) I think he must be either from C-137 or the Prime dimension, right? And... probably the Prime dimension? Like, assuming that's where Rick went hunting for Prime first, and then he met BP there? I guess it could be just some random dimension too, but I feel like thats less likely just because it wouldn't add much to the plot?

I'm mostly asking this because I think him and Prime meeting before either of them see Rick again would be excellent tbh, so idk if it'll matter cos they might not do that lol, but I love your dimensions timeline and I figured if anyone has a good argument for one dimension over another it'd be you katy-133

Hi there!

I'm not sure at all. We know that Birdperson lives in "Bird World," a place that has homes that look like bird's nests (and a cityscape with different architecture). It seems to be its own planet. But that doesn't determine its dimension--just that it's not on Earth.

Trying to build a timeline, Birdperson met Rick after meeting Rick Prime, so Rick could have done a lot of dimension-hopping before meeting Birdperson (at the music festival seeing in Birdperson's memories). Did he meet Birdperson in another dimension, in his own dimension? It's unclear so far as I can tell. And there's even a memory of Rick looking like he's in his 30s to add to the confusion:

In Birdperson's house, we see that there's a picture of Rick holding a baby who appears to be Morty, so it looks like that Birdperson from season 2 knew our Rick, even after Rick and Morty jumped from the Cronenberged Dimension in season 1.

The "you matter" line Rick says to Birdperson makes me think that Birdperson is always the same dimensional version of himself when he's seen on screen. Rick could have replaced Birdperson with another BP from another dimension (his garage's AI suggests it and Rick refuses it) instead of going into his memories.

Also, in the Rick and Morty Character Guide (Dark Horse Comics) includes this:

"Homeworld: Bird World. Affiliations: Unknown." [Source: Den of Geek]

So the idea of Prime and Birdperson meeting each other before seeing Rick looks possible, as it doesn't contradict anything as far as I can tell.