James traipsed up the stairs, groaning as he did so. Each step felt like a betrayal by gravity, his thighs burning from the seven-flight climb. The hallway smelled of mildew and old take-out, the kind of stench that clung to cheap apartment walls like a bad memory. He got to his door on the seventh floor and paused. The lock was busted in, metal teeth splayed open like a grin that had seen too much. He sighed. Fuck, that was all he fucking needed.

He pushed the door in, frowned, and looked inside, pausing. Nothing out of place—at least not at first glance. The couch still sagged in the middle, the coffee table still hosted a graveyard of empty cans and pizza boxes, and the TV remote lay half-buried under a hoodie. But something itched at the back of his skull, a wrongness he couldn’t name.

The fuck?

He slid his hand over the baseball bat’s handle—smooth ash wood, taped grip worn soft from years of little league dreams and adult frustrations—slipping his shoes off with the other. Bare feet on cold linoleum, he moved like a cat through the dim kitchen light. And then it came: a loud burp, wet and resonant, echoing off the cabinets. One he recognized half-drunk, half-doped up on some strange shit snorted on a planet he’d never heard of.

“I hope you at least brought me a beer, Grandpa,” James said with a groan.

Another burp, deeper this time, like a bass note from a broken subwoofer. He turned the corner just as a silver can arced through the air, spinning end over end. He snatched it mid-flight, the cold aluminum kissing his palm. He cracked it open with a hiss and grinned, foam bubbling at the lip.

Rick sat sprawled in the recliner that wasn’t there this morning, lab coat stained with something purple and glowing faintly. His hair stuck up in defiant tufts, eyes bloodshot but sharp, portal gun resting on his lap like a sleeping cat. The old man wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and belched again, softer, almost polite.

“You need a new lock,” Grandpa Rick stated with a burp. He paused, looking James over with a critical eye that dissected every detail like a scalpel through flesh: the paunch straining the T-shirt, the slump in the shoulders, the faint stubble that screamed neglect rather than style. “You look like shit.”

“Thanks.” James popped the can open and flinched—no spray, thank God—and drank it down. Lukewarm. Bleh. The beer slithered across his tongue like tepid dishwater, but it dulled the serrated edge of the day.

He sighed. It’ll do. Take the edge off a bit.

“Getting a stomach.”

“So, you turn up after five years to insult me?”

“What are family for?” Rick grinned and wiped his mouth. “So, this is the shithole you live in?”

“Yeah.” James shrugged.

“I had a look. The lease sucks. You’ve got a year left, and it’s expensive as hell. Fuck, you don’t even have a maid.”

“Who can afford one in this economy, Grandpa? Look, I’m tired. I’ve had a long, shitty day. What do you want?”

“Nice to see you too.” He took a swig.

James folded his arms, stance set.

“Fine.” Rick burped. “I check in from time to time, to see how shit’s going. Your mums are doing great. Summer’s sad, and Jerry’s fucking Jerry.”

“Is that literal?”

“Yes.” Rick snorted. “He found another copy of himself, and like your moms, the two are fucking.”

“Nice.” James grinned. At Rick’s look, James shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind being in that sandwich.”

“Between your two dads?”

“He’s got a nice cock,” James defended.

Rick laughed. “Kids these days. Personally, were I you, I’d choose your moms.”

James laughed. “Why can’t I just fuck all four?”

“Five. Summer’s not had cock in years.”

James groaned at that thought. God, he loved Summer. She had perfect tits—full, high, the kind that made you believe in miracles. But he couldn’t go back like this. Not with the paunch that strained his belt, the debt that metastasized monthly, the job that paid just enough to keep the lights flickering and the ramen stocked. Not with the way his reflection had become an estranging caricature, a man who’d lost a protracted skirmish with gravity and ennui.

Rick watched him, eyes narrowing behind the flask he’d conjured from nowhere. His fingers drummed on the portal gun, a staccato arrhythmia. The old man’s presence filled the cramped kitchen like ozone before a storm—electric, acrid, inevitable. The silence stretched, taut and accusatory, as Rick waited for James to fill it. The fridge hummed, a lonely drone beneath the flickering fluorescent light. A single roach skittered across the counter, paused, then vanished behind the microwave.

James’s gaze drifted to the cracked linoleum, the scuffed cabinets, the stack of unpaid bills peeking from beneath a pizza box like a guilty secret. Five years. Five years of scraping by, of pretending independence tasted better than family chaos. Five years of pretending he didn’t miss the portal gun’s hum, the smell of alien gunpowder, the way Summer’s laugh could cut through any dimension’s bullshit.

Rick took another slow pull from the flask, eyes never leaving James. The old man’s patience was a weapon, honed by centuries of outwaiting galaxies. James felt it pressing against his ribs, heavier than the beer in his gut.

The bat leaned against the wall, wood grain scarred from a thousand half-hearted swings at life. He thought about grabbing it, about telling Rick to fuck off, about slamming the busted door and pretending tomorrow would be different. But the thought dissolved before it formed, ephemeral as the steam curling from his breath in the chill apartment air.

Rick’s burp finally broke the spell—low, wet, deliberate. He wiped his mouth again, slower this time, and leaned back against the counter. The portal gun glinted in his lap, a promise and a threat.

James exhaled, the sound ragged. He set the crumpled can down with a hollow clink. The kitchen light flickered once, twice, then steadied, as if the universe itself were holding its breath.

“Exactly why I’m here,” Rick said. “I have two solutions for you, that I think you’ll like.”

“Oh?”

Rick stood up and lifted his top to just above his stomach, or lack thereof. James stared. Not only was there no beer gut, but holy cheese-graters, Batman. The old man’s abdomen was a lattice of lean muscle, each ridge etched like topographical lines on a hostile planet. Veins traced blue rivers across the taut skin, pulsing faintly with whatever alien steroids or nanotech kept Rick in perpetual, infuriating shape. The lab coat hung open, framing the impossible physique like a mockery of human aging. A faint scar—jagged, purple, definitely not Earth-made—curved beneath the left ribcage, glowing with residual bioluminescence.

James’s mouth went dry. The beer can dangled forgotten in his hand. Rick’s torso was a testament to multiversal defiance: no sagging, no softness, just predatory efficiency wrapped in wrinkled skin. It was the kind of body that made gym bros weep and personal trainers quit. James’s own gut, soft and traitorous, seemed to shrink in shame under the fluorescent glare.

Rick let the shirt drop with a smirk, the fabric whispering back into place. He didn’t flex—he didn’t need to. The image was already seared into James’s retinas like a brand. The old man’s eyes glinted with the smug satisfaction of someone who’d weaponized biology itself.

James swallowed hard. The apartment’s stale air suddenly felt thicker, the walls closer. Rick’s presence wasn’t just filling the room—it was rewriting it, turning the peeling paint and unpaid bills into a backdrop for his silent indictment. The portal gun on the counter hummed, a low, hungry note that vibrated in James’s teeth.