Tired Jack - Infodump 1

[moonshadows]

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Birth to 18
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Jack Daniel Morrison was born on June 14 in a hospital in Bloomington, Indiana, although his parents lived in one of the tiny towns scattered around the city. His father had a drinking problem and his mother either liked the name Daniel enough to ignore the unfortunate connection or was too cowed to object. He had a fairly normal small-town childhood, with the exception of a collection of bottles that all had his name on them, and when he was six his little sister Madeline was born. Jack was an attentive big brother, helping his mother with the baby as much as he could while his father was at work. When he was seven, his mother was diagnosed with cancer. Whether through financial difficulty or inconvenience or just the type and severity of the cancer, she didn't last much more than a year and at the age of eight, Jack found himself thrust into a parental role.

Mr. Morrison was, to be frank, an ass. The extent of this will become clearer as we explore Jack's life. It's uncertain to what extent his father encouraged it, but his mother's illness left Jack with a hesitation to express anger because he was aware that every day might be his mother's last, and he didn't want to risk her dying with anger between them. When he got frustrated or upset, he would ask himself if it was worth expressing knowing that could be the last thing he said, and he always backed down and typically expressed affection instead, so that if the worst should happen, his last words to his mother would be 'I love you'. As his mother weakened, he started performing more chores around the house from caring for his sister to cleaning to some cooking. When she died, his father informed him that he had to fill his mother's shoes because he had to work to financially support the family.

The next few years strengthened Jack's reluctance to express anger as his father deliberately preyed on the grief he didn't give his son the freedom to express. Anything that got Jack angry, no matter how justified, was met with a "suggestion" from Jack's father to reconsider in case his father died during the night. He also "taught" his son that love was all or nothing - either he loved and accepted his father with all his faults and flaws, or he didn't really love his father at all and if that was the case, then he should just cut his father out of his life entirely. By the time little Maddie was old enough to start school, Jack was completely unable to let himself express anger and had learned that protesting his father's temper gained him nothing but a guilt trip.

Jack was expected to keep the house clean and see to his sister's needs on top of providing meals for the family and keeping up with his schoolwork. Presumably, Maddie spent her days in a daycare close to Mr. Morrison's place of employment until she reached school age. Although the meals Jack provided were initially what you'd expect from a particularly intelligent 8-year-old, he taught himself from cookbooks and quickly got better. He had almost no time to himself during the school year between his schoolwork and being the mother-figure of the household, and the little free time he had he spent learning skills that would help him be a better parent to his sister.

During holidays, vacations, and the summer, Jack had more personal freedom and he spent as much time as he could in the woods doing outdoorsy things that had nothing to do with school or cleaning. He hunted (initially with snares, but later with firearms) and fished, climbed and swam, and taught himself how to cook on a campfire. When Maddie was old enough, she joined him and he studied first aid and outdoor safety so he could keep her safe. He learned early on how to clean and cook his catches, and what could be safely eaten in the woods. His prized recipe, though, was the biscuits he'd first learned from his mother and those were Maddie's favorite, so he experimented until he could cook them on a campfire.

Jack has only vague memories of his birthday being celebrated. He didn't have any relatives close enough or young enough or who liked his parents enough to visit, so after his mother died, it was on him or his father to celebrate and his father declined on the grounds that there were "better things" to celebrate that day - Flag Day. There may have been active discouragement of Jack doing anything for his birthday. However, being right in the middle of strawberry season, there was no objection to Jack and Maddie going to a u-pick place and coming back with tons and tons of strawberries. Jack loves strawberries. You can practically catch him in a cardboard box if you leave a bowl of strawberries underneath it as bait. Make a "cake" of strawberries, whipped cream, and some thin spongecake or sweet biscuit, and Jack will cheerfully stuff himself silly.

For school things that require parental permission, Jack's father reluctantly signed or attended - but only for him. For Maddie, Jack was the one who signed slips and went to parent-teacher meetings and such. The fact that only the most tentative objections were placed (usually an uncertain phone call to the house, and his father angrily confirming that Jack was authorized to act as Maddie's parent) gave Jack a deep mistrust for authority figures actually looking out for him, no matter what they were supposed to do or how much they claimed to care. Everyone knew his father was an alcoholic (it was a deep disappointment when he realized why there were so many glass bottles with his name on them in the house) and that Jack was almost single-handedly raising his sister, but no one got any authorities involved. Between his inability to express anger and the helplessness of a pre-teen struggling to be his own parent, Jack just started walling away pieces of himself so he could keep going.

Despite all the pressure he was under at home, Jack was an excellent student. Of course, part of that was that he walled away his emotions, his hopes and fears and needs, so that he could focus on what needed to be done, and that came across as being studious and sometimes tired. He got a lot of teasing for doing "girly" things like cooking and sewing - because it was either he make Halloween costumes himself or try to get his father to give him money to buy them, and the only way Maddie was going to have a birthday cake or cupcakes to bring in was if Jack baked them - and he just sucked it up. Sometimes he'd calmly explain that he had to do those things because his mother was dead, and that tended to shut up the one giving him flak. He had no time to participate in extra-curricular activities, very little time for social activities during the school year, and he didn't have the mental or emotional resources to figure out anything in terms of his own sexual or romantic preferences.

Maddie got into anime around age 8, and Jack spent many hours watching with her, learning to sing various anime and j-pop songs with only a vague understanding of the lyrics. This destroyed what was left of his socially-constructed reluctance to depart from "male" gender roles, leaving him comfortable playing dress-up in cosmetics, jewelry, heels, and other "girly" trappings. When it came to "what other people think" versus "what my little sister thinks", Maddie's opinion won every time. Maddie adored Jack. He was the one who cooked her breakfast, helped her get ready for school, packed her lunch, helped with her homework, and made dinner. He was the one who played with her, who took care of her when she was sick, who kissed the boo-boos and made them better. He wrapped all the presents (their father reluctantly allowed Christmas, but only as far as providing a budget for it), he left quarters under her pillow in exchange for baby teeth, he brushed her curly hair and tied it back, and he answered all the uncomfortable questions children ask their parents.

In Jack's senior year of high school, when Maddie had already turned twelve but Jack was a few months away from graduating high school and then turning 18, the inevitable happened. Their father had been driving drunk for years, but Jack couldn't protest (because that would mean that He Didn't Love His Father and he should just cut his father out of his life, which would mean leaving the family, and that wasn't happening) and Maddie didn't know any better or trusted that if something was wrong, her big brother would say something. Jack either never got or didn't care about or walled away the details, but the pickup crashed into some immovable object and both his father and his sister were killed. The very cold comfort to that was that Jack's last words to her had been "I love you".

Jack took three weeks of intermittent bereavement leave to arrange the funerals, attend them, and deal with the estate. The joint funeral was...awkward. Some of Mr. Morrison's co-workers came, and a lot of Maddie's classmates and their parents. Some of Jack's teachers and classmates he had time to be friends with during the summer. No one had anything nice to say about Jack's father, so almost nothing was said about him at all. The priest gave a lame speech full of vague platitudes, damning with faint praise. It was different for Maddie - she got called an angel repeatedly, and there was a lot of crying at such a vibrant young life being snuffed out so suddenly. Jack was the picture-perfect grieving survivor. He sat silently, tears running down his face, looking so dead inside that you would have half-expected him to get up at any moment and climb into the casket with Maddie.

An older veteran, either a distant relative or one of his father's co-workers, spoke to Jack at the funeral and suggested that he go into the military if he needed to keep busy and not think. Jack took that suggestion to heart and got in touch with a recruiter who got him in touch with people who helped him deal with the estate. Jack went back to school, almost completely closed off emotionally, and devoted himself to his schoolwork as if that were the only thing holding him together. Which, in all fairness, it kind of was. He went through his classes like a particularly eloquent zombie, aced all his finals, and then spent the 2-3 weeks until his birthday cleaning the house and preparing it for new owners. Clothes, toys, and other belongings were sold or given away. He kept only a handful of mementos for himself and made sure all the perishable food was gone and all the dishes clean and trash taken out and on his 18th birthday, he joined the United States military.

===
The military
===

Basic training was not as demanding as Jack had hoped it would be. Mentally, at least. The schedule was actually lighter than what Jack had been used to, and the physical aspect wasn't enough to tire him out enough that he didn't have the energy to think. Jack was used to not getting to bed until close to 11pm and waking up at 4am during the school year, so he actually had a hard time falling asleep at lights-out and sleeping until wake-up. He wrapped himself up tightly, walled almost everything away, and focused on being letter-perfect despite his disappointment that he wasn't been kept too busy to think. This had the effect of making him look not only dead inside, but disgusted that he wasn't dead outside as well, and his drill instructor was on him almost constantly for 'insubordination', trying to either get a rise out of him or break him down. Jack took the verbal lashings and the punishments with the same insolent acceptance that had earned them in the first place and was, frustratingly, a model recruit otherwise.  A few future squad leaders hovered around the edges sometimes, taking the measure of the recruits ahead of time, and Gabriel Reyes was one of them.

If the squad leaders had been allowed to pick their recruits, no one would have picked Jack. He looked like it was just a matter of time before he became A Problem, and that assessment was probably correct. But Reyes got stuck with one Jack Morrison, and he decided to nip whatever-it-was in the bud. He pulled Jack aside on the first day for a conversation that went something like this:

     "Why are you here, Morrison?"
     "Because you called me over, sir."
     "No. Why are you here. You don't seem like you want to be here, so why did you join the army?"
     "Didn't know what else to do after my dad and sister died, sir."
     "What about your mother?"
     "Died when I was eight, sir."
     "Aunts? Uncles? Grandparents?"
     "No family, sir."

...and that's when Gabe realized that Jack was very, very broken and probably needed a mental health professional because he was just killing time until something killed him, but all he had was one hard-ass Latino whose people skills were questionable to begin with. Gabe spouted the first piece of trite drivel that came to mind - "Your squad is your family now, Morrison!" - and then watched in utterly baffled astonishment as Jack thought about it and then lit up. He watched dead blue eyes come to life as Jack realized he had people again, he had a purpose again, he had a reason to live, and all the apathetic, sullen insolence vanished right before Gabriel's eyes, leaving hope and determination and life. He dismissed Jack to rejoin his squad in their barracks and stood there like what the fuck just happened, how the fuck did that even work, and that's how Jack managed to worm his way past Gabe's defenses.

Jack's attitude did a 180, which got Gabe some attention from above, but he brushed it off with some bullshit about finding the right motivation for his problem recruit because fuck if he knew how he'd managed to do that. Nearly the first thing the new squads were put through was a two-week wilderness survival training exercise to promote bonding and teamwork: eight men and their sergeant dumped in the middle of the woods, hiking to a cache of supplies (tents, firearms, basic foodstuffs including some eggs and dairy in a cooler, some tools, etc.), and then just trying to get through in one piece until pickup. Gabe was not looking forward to this. He was a city boy, born and raised, and had not dealt well with this training exercise at all when he was a recruit. He hadn't learned to love the outdoors much more since then, and now he was going to have to keep eight noobs fresh out of basic in one piece. This from a man whose cooking skills extended as far as reading the directions on frozen dinners and regularly ate cold ravioli from the can because microwaving it was chancy. And to make it worse, one of the other new squad leaders had been in his squad and knew that Gabriel's relationship with the outdoors could best be described with "Lord of the Flies".

Being deposited in the woods and hiking to the cache went without incident. Tents were pitched, camp was made, latrines were dug, and the squad ate MREs for dinner before setting watches and going to bed. The most Gabriel was hoping for the next morning was maybe a small fire he could heat some water over for instant coffee. What he woke up to was Jack Morrison cooking fried eggs and biscuits over a tidy campfire, coffee already hot, and apologizing for having taken the initiative without waiting for Gabe's orders.

In the years before Gabriel joined the military, his childhood and teenage years, he'd never really had good cooking. His mother had mental issues that should have been medicated but weren't, and he wound up with a mindset that the better something tasted, the more love had gone into cooking it. He'd dated a few girls who cooked him some meals, but none of them were very good and the relationships (either because of that, or for unrelated reasons) never lasted long. Cooking, as far as he was concerned, was wizardly. He took one bite of Jack's homemade biscuits, a family recipe honed and perfected over a decade of practice, and fell in love.

To Jack's utter confusion, his CO put down his plate and mug, stood up, crossed the small camp, took Jack's face between his hands, and licked his forehead. "There," he declared as the rest of the squad watched and tried not to snicker, "I licked you. You're mine now." Because, of course, Jack was fairly attractive but he was still 18 years old and of average build and Gabe liked his men meatier. But aside from that, Jack was one of his soldiers and Gabe's not exactly open about or accepting of his own emotions, so like hell is he going to act on what he feels. Unless by 'act' you mean 'act like an elementary school kid who expresses affection through mild playground torments' in which case, yes, Gabe is absolutely acting his feelings.

While the squad ate breakfast, Gabriel announced that Morrison would be in charge of cooking and thus was exempt from a list of other camp chores. There was one complaint, but it was hissed down by his neighbors because none of them had been expecting fresh biscuits either, and they didn't want to risk anyone else's cooking. Jack was Gabriel's godsend the rest of the day, hesitantly offering suggestions that Gabe turned into orders with a raised eyebrow and a "Well? You heard the man." He stood with arms crossed and 'supervised' as Jack taught the squad about campfires and cooking and foraging for edible plants.

One guy tried to mock Jack for knowing how to cook, but it didn't get very far because what he said was "did your mommy teach you how to cook?" and Jack's reply was "before she died, yes" in a tone of wounded calm. Three days into their training exercise, someone pissed off a bull moose. Gabriel got its attention and stood his ground as it charged him, emptying his firearm into the moose's neck before dodging at the last second. Then there was some keep-away as it thrashed and finally died, and while the other guys are still letting it sink in that they could have died but holy shit they're alive, Jack pipes up that they're looking at dinner. The rest of the afternoon is spent dressing and butchering the moose and hauling it (and the head) back to camp; the evening was spent gathering dry and green wood, building multiple fires for smoking almost 500lbs of moose meat, and trimming the meat for smoking. Everyone had moose steak for dinner.

Men being men, and especially military men, there were countless joking comments about Jack's meat and everyone's wood, which did absolutely nothing for Gabriel's ability to ignore his newfound feelings for Jack. At one point, jokingly protesting an insincere demand, Jack rhetorically asked "what do you want?" and Gabriel replied, "cookies". Jack asked what kind and was told chocolate chip, and he half-challenged, half-promised his CO that when presented with the proper ingredients, he would gladly bake cookies. The rest of the two-week training exercise passed a lot more pleasantly than anyone had anticipated, and no one ate the emergency MREs. Gabriel spent a lot of time cleaning the moose's skull to keep as a trophy. Between the supplies they'd been given and what they were able to fish, hunt, and forage, they actually ate better than back at base. Throw in Jack's familiarity with forest injuries and first aid and his tendency to fuss over his squad in a motherly sort of way, and he quickly got nicknamed Mr. Mom, which pleased him.

The squad leader that had been with Gabriel for his wilderness survival trip was smugly anticipatory when they arrived back at base. They had a bit of a rivalry going, and he was looking forward to giving Gabe hell over spending two weeks in charge of a squad in the woods. But when he asked Gabe how his "camping trip" was, Gabe smugly replied, "Delicious. My compliments to the chef." The other squad leader protested he hadn't been given a chef. "Ooooh, yes I was," Gabe replied, smirking. "I already licked him, you can't have him." Then he beckoned Jack forward, having appointed him (with many "head" jokes) the Bearer Of The Skull, to show off his trophy. (Jack kept one of the moose's hooves as a trophy for himself; Gabriel insisted.)

Later, there was an attempt at someone mocking Jack for his taste in music. Jack defended himself by saying it had been one of his sister's favorites. The asshat smarmily demanded to know if Jack's sister was cute, wanting to see pictures, and then protested when he was shown a picture of a 12-year-old girl because 'hey, this is a child' and demanded something more recent. Jack said there was nothing more recent, that was taken three weeks before she died. No one really teased him after that, and the guys (in his squad and otherwise) who'd gotten used to him stepped in when new guys thought he would be an easy target for raising their social status by pushing him down. Blowhards in the military are a dime a dozen; Mr. Mom is special. Initially, "Mr. Mom" was a mocking nickname from guys not in his squad, but he never got mocked for long. It was like verbally kicking a puppy. That didn't mean he didn't wind up doing a bunch of things for other guys because they'd asked him to, and he was nearly incapable of saying no. Gabriel urged him repeatedly to stand up for himself, tried to convince him that it was okay to have boundaries and say no, but he didn't have much success.

Soon after their return from the wilderness training, Gabriel demanded that Jack provide him with a list of what he would need to make cookies, and Jack complied. A few days later, he was ordered to report to what turned out to be a kitchen, with all his required ingredients and utensils laid out on a table/counter and Gabriel sitting beside them, smirking. Bemused, Jack proceeded to make chocolate-chip cookies with Gabe watching because he wanted to see this wizardry in action. The huge military kitchen meant he could get all the cookies in the oven at the same time. As soon as they were cool enough to touch, Gabriel took a bite and then stuffed the whole cookie in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, grabbed Jack's head in both hands, and licked his forehead. Then he dismissed Jack and proceeded to devour all four dozen warm cookies (Jack made them a little big) and waddle back to his room to pass out. Jack got asked why there was a brown streak on his forehead and could only answer with "Reyes licked me again". Gabe looked almost hung over the next day, but completely and unrepentantly satisfied.

As mentioned, Jack hadn't had time to figure anything out with regards to romantic or sexual attraction in high school. But he was developing some confusing feelings for his CO and, with no other coping mechanism, was just walling the whole issue away. Gabriel noticed the change, because Jack was usually bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at what Gabe considered an unholy hour of the morning. ("You're just a goddamn ray of sunshine, aren't you, Morrison?" "Sir, yes sir!") After a few days of Jack being less enthusiastic and more dead-eyed, Gabe ordered him into a quiet room and plunked a root beer float down in front of him. He ordered Jack to drink it and tried to get him to talk about what was bothering him. Naturally, Jack wouldn't talk, but some of the walls did come down and Gabe encouraged him to come to him with any issues he had. They wound up talking about how Jack wasn't used to having anyone to lean on. ("Damn it, Morrison, I'm your CO! You're supposed to lean on me, it's in my fucking job description!") The fact that Gabriel genuinely cared about Jack only strengthened those new feelings, but it also cemented his status as The Only Person Jack Trusts To Care About Him. Whenever Jack started to look closed off or dead inside, Gabriel would wait until late evening and drag him off somewhere quiet for a root beer float and try to get him to talk. Sometimes he succeeded; other times, he had to settle for Jack literally leaning on him and knowing that he was doing everything he could.

When Gabriel learned that Jack could sew and was comfortable enough with himself that he didn't object to doing "feminine" things up to and including wearing dresses and cosmetics, he gave Jack the most scarily delighted look. Jack found himself recruited for doing the basic sewing on a pair of Halloween costumes while Gabe did the more complex aspects, and also recruited for wearing one of the costumes. He didn't really object, partially for the novelty of not being the one in charge and partially because he was fairly sure he was in love with his CO and dreadfully aware of the fact that this was strongly frowned upon and Bad Things would likely happen if anyone found out. But if his CO was joking around and giving him a hard time and he was just rolling with it and joking back, well, that was fine, right?

And that's how they wound up going as Gomez and Morticia Addams for Halloween, with Jack unabashedly playing up Morticia's mannerisms and grateful for his four years of French in high school. The first time he uttered a phrase in French, however, Gabriel froze. "Jack," he exclaimed, "that's French!" Then, to the amusement of everyone present, he did the kiss-up-the-arm thing. Jack did his best to play it with Morticia's graceful dignity, but under his makeup and wig, he was blushing. Following years saw Jack dressed as Team Rocket's James/Kojiro and Tenou Haruka/Sailor Uranus. There was also some incident involving fishnets, high heels, and the song 'Gay Bar'.

Periodically, Gabriel challenged Jack to make certain foods. He was fascinated by Jack's ability to turn components into delicious, and literally hungry for what he perceived as Jack's love since their normal schedule didn't give Jack much opportunity to cook otherwise. Jack was just happy to make his crush happy by cooking for him. By far the most successful of these challenges was the pizza. Jack hadn't thought there was much special about his pizza, but he grew up in a small town and then went into the military so he didn't have much to compare it to. He made a pizza, the same as he'd made in the past, with sliced sausage and mushrooms and tomatoes. Running on habit, he cut it into six slices - two each for him, Maddie, and their father - and served two to Gabriel and himself and then froze as he realized what he'd just done. He didn't have time to think about it, though, because Gabriel took a bite and made a scandalous sound of pleasure. Jack ate his pizza cheerfully, enjoying and trying to hide is enjoyment of how much Gabriel was enjoying the pizza. Gabe devoured his two slices, then reached for the last two and paused to throw Jack an uncertain glance. Jack shook his head and waved the issue away, and Gabe devoured the last two slices. Then he leaned back and groaned in a way that made Jack blush because it was so physically satisfied that it sounded sexual. But Gabriel wasn't done disturbing Jack's composure, because in a very post-coital tone he announced his intention to marry Jack for his pizza.
     "But then I couldn't come with you on assignments," Jack protested. "I'd be a military spouse."
     "But pizza though."
     "Pizza on the weekends, or pizza on deployment?"
     "...Point."
Of course, this just started a pattern where once or twice a month, Gabriel demanded pizza and threatened afterwards to marry Jack, and Jack gave reasons why that couldn't happen, even though he really liked the idea.

The squad went on a cold-weather training exercise somewhere by a pond, with a good few inches of snow on the ground. Gabriel was not looking forward to this one either, but not for food reasons. Although cultural opinion had shifted away from knee-jerk "same-sex = bad", the "no homo" toxic masculinity was still alive and well, especially in the military. Anything that might come off as less than "manly" was anathema to 90% of the guys there, and some of that effort to maintain a "manly" image could be hazardous to continued survival in some situations. He thought his worst fears were going to be confirmed when the ice on the pond started cracking underneath two hotshots, but Jack was familiar with the dangers of ice and had a long branch in hand to help pull the hotshots in from the shore. He got one in, but the other panicked as the ice broke under his feet and, in his flailing to get on shore, he knocked Jack into the now-broken ice, and Jack went under. Gabriel shouted for a blanket and grabbed the branch, shoving it into the water for Jack to grab because finding the hole in the ice is not as easy from underneath as it is from the surface. Jack grabbed the branch and clawed his way onto shore where he immediately started stripping and then clung, naked and shivering, to Gabriel, who wrapped the blanket around them both and barked furious orders at the two hotshots to get the fire built up, pitch tents, etc. After that object demonstration on the dangers of being wet in sub-freezing temperatures, followed by a lecture on surviving being wet in sub-freezing temperatures, the rest of the training went smoothly. Although that wasn't the way he'd wanted to have Jack strip naked and fling himself at him, Gabriel was deeply grateful that he hadn't had to convince Jack that getting naked in the snow was something he had to do immediately. If part of his checking on the health of his soldier involved checking the dryness of his hair or the warmth is his skin through the more sensitive skin of his kips, well, no one can prove he wasn't kissing Jack's head, right?

On April 12th, during something routine and inconsequential, Gabriel shouted "Morrison! Get over here and give me your hand!" Jack came running and thrust out his hand, and Gabriel just reached out and held it. After a moment, he grinned and said, "You gave me your hand, that means we're married and you're my husband now."  It's not like Jack never got any good-natured teasing over being the squad darling before that, but it became an open joke after that, with both Jack and Gabriel taking it in stride and Gabe encouraging it. There may have been some "Sergeant Dad and Mr. Mom" joking because Gabe does tend to adopt people, but Jack's the one that then tends to them.

The first time one of Gabriel's squad turned 21, he smuggled in booze for everyone. Jack declined with a simple "I'm not 21" that could have sounded insolent from someone else but was almost apologetic from him. Gabriel jokingly appointed him the designated driver - a joke because they weren't driving anywhere - and Jack made himself quietly useful in fetching drinks, snacks, cleaning up, etc. He made sure everyone got safely to bed, carrying them if he had to, and left water in easy reach of everyone. He brought or made breakfast as well, slipping quietly and inoffensively into Gabe's room with all the skill he'd learned avoiding his father's hung-over temper. Gabriel crankily accused him of being a ray of fucking sunshine while Jack set breakfast and coffee on his bedside table. "Are you ever not a ray of fucking sunshine, Morrison?" "No, sir." "...well, you're the only sunshine I want to see before coffee." "Yes. sir."

After that, Jack was the "designated driver" for every 21st birthday celebration, quietly bringing non-nauseating breakfast to Gabriel the next morning. At some point, Gabriel was going through Jack's file for something (probably his birthday) and saw something he'd dismissed before: Jack's middle name. He was in the middle of rhetorically asking the empty room who the hell names their kid "Jack Daniel" when he remembered that Jack was scarily good at knowing how to soothe an angry and hung over man and put two and two together. After that, he stopped getting regularly trashed on hard liquor (which Jack hadn't known he was doing except when it was part of a 'party') and saved it for special occasions, switching to beer otherwise and keeping it to just a few. Apparently learning that your crush's dad was an alcoholic prick will make it less appealing to get shitfaced, go figure.

When it came around to Jack's birthday, Gabe made vague noises about celebrating, but Jack brushed them uncomfortably off with mutters about there being better things to celebrate and Gabe let it go...for two years. The week before Jack's 21st, Gabriel took him aside. "I let you skate by without making a fuss for two years," he told Jack, "but it's your 21st and there's no way in hell I'm letting that go without being celebrated. So whatever you want - drinking, strip clubs, I'll even buy you a hooker if that's what you're in the mood for." He wasn't surprised when Jack declined the drinking, and slightly heartened when he had no interest in female flesh because Jack hadn't expressed any interest in either men or women (he'd confessed to Gabriel that he just hadn't had the time or energy to figure it out, and Gabe was waiting for him to figure out what he was into so he knew if he had a chance with Jack or not), but that left Jack trying to figure out what he did want and eventually he decided he wanted to try Indian food. So they had a wide assortment of Indian food and leftovers for days.

===
The Soldier Enhancement Program
===

When the Soldier Enhancement Program was (quietly) announced, certain military personnel were approached and asked if they were interested, and also if they wanted to recommend anyone for it. Gabriel was one of them, and he accepted, but he also recommended Jack for it as well. In the field for reasons why the recommended soldier should be considered, he wrote, "Have you ever heard of Captain America?" Jack found that out when he was brought in for an assessment and told that Reyes had recommended him with that - and only that - as a reason. Jack was secretly pleased that Gabriel thought so much of him, and that he hadn't taken the "small town farm boy" easy route and compared him to Clark Kent. Of course, he also knew that Gabe had more respect for the skinny inner-city scrapper than the invulnerable godling, but that just made the comparison more touching. Jack was put through an extensive interview process, including a psych eval, and finally accepted into the SEP. Whether they were the first group or only the first group to survive, Jack didn't ask. It was him and seven or nine others, with Gabriel as their CO, all going through the same enhancement treatments.

The enhancement process was a lot less structured than anyone had anticipated. The treatments induced a state of increased receptiveness to development, mentally as well as physically. There were only two problems with this: it wasn't a general or overall development, and the focus of development couldn't be pre-determined or changed. The ones in charge of the SEP wanted Jack and the others to focus on military applications - tactics or fighting methods or whatnot. What happened instead was a soldier would wake up with a BURNING NEED that would consume them for hours. Maybe Gabriel had intended to study tactics when he woke up, but instead he discovered that he needed to run 25 miles RIGHT NOW. Or maybe Jack had intended to practice a martial art. Too bad, he's just read 3 dictionaries in 45 minutes and now he's demanding all the materials on learning Italian that can be provided, and he needs them RIGHT NOW or he's going to start hurting people. And sometimes, they'd wake up with an insatiable hunger. Two dozen eggs, an entire loaf of bread, and a gallon of milk? Toss in a pound of ham or bacon and that's breakfast. For one man.

With all their enhancement subjects experiencing what they came to call "SEP cravings", any kind of coordinated activity was completely impossible. Denying the craving led to irrational aggression, fury, and violence. Satisfying the craving was borderline orgasmic, but once satisfied the subject needed a good 8-12 hours of not doing whatever the craving had demanded while their body or brain recovered, and this period usually involved pain. That was to be expected with physical cravings, such as running or lifting or learning a new fighting style. It was somewhat more surprising when the craving was mental, such as gorging on tactics or learning a new language, and especially uncomfortable in the latter case because the entire language center of the brain hurt to use. That meant not only using the new language, but processing any language in any way resulted in migraine-like pain. Listening to music or speech, reading, even thinking in words hurt like hell for eight to twelve hours. 

The first few days of enhancement treatments were uneventful; it took time to build up to a level where the cravings started, so initially there were structured periods of exercising, training, and studying. Jack first realized he was experiencing enhancement when he found himself digging up memories of listening to a specific song in Japanese. However, he had memories of two different covers of the song, with two sets of lyrics that had never been more than sounds to him, and now he was comparing them like they were lined up in front of his eyes. Furthermore, he was dredging up all his memories of Japanese and reverse-engineering the meaning of the lyrics from comparing memories of subtitled anime containing the same words and deducing their meaning. He reported this development - it was his first craving - and got permission to spend the day learning Japanese.

Once he'd stuffed his brain full of Japanese and what he would come to call "language migraine" had set in, Jack wandered the halls of the complex seeking some non-lingual distraction to keep his thoughts quiet. It was evening, so there was lots of distraction, but hearing words hurt so he kept moving. Fortunately, Gabriel was also experiencing his first craving and had found a small music room with a piano. He was angry at himself for wasting time doing something as dumb as teaching himself piano, and angrier that it felt so good, but then he looked up and Jack was curled up on the benchlike couch in the room, apparently asleep. When Gabriel stopped playing, or cursed out loud, Jack would look up with a look of dark resentment soaked in pain, and laid his head back down and relaxed when Gabriel started playing again. Gabriel might have been stubborn enough to try to fight his craving, but he wouldn't fight something that eased Jack's pain. Several hours later, when just looking at a piano made his head hurt, he kissed a now-sleeping Jack on the temple and carried him back to his bed. The next morning, over biscuits and eggs and bacon, Jack explained what he'd been going through and Gabriel shared his experience. The day after, Gabriel handed Jack a recording of himself playing piano for six to eight hours so that if Jack had another language migraine, he could get relief even if Gabriel wasn't around or available to play for him. This turned out to be excellent foresight, because Jack wound up stuffing several more languages into his head including Italian, Greek, Korean, Arabic, and Mandarin.

While Jack learned languages, Gabriel learned martial arts, but languages weren't the only thing Jack was learning; aside from the generic "must run 25 miles" and "must jump rope for five hours" that all the enhancement subjects got, Jack found himself with cooking cravings. The first one was conveniently timed, and Jack prepared enough fresh ravioli in alfredo sauce to satisfy a handful of his peers who were experiencing the need to eat ALL the things (plus Gabriel, who was determined to not miss out on either good food or the opportunity to make jokes about Jack's cream sauce). Of course, the head chef initially refused to clear out so Jack could cook, and Jack dislocated his arm.

The eclairs were...less fortuitously timed. Initially, Gabriel raced to the kitchen and bellowed EVERYONE OUT, MORRISON NEEDS TO COOK and then just sat there and ate eclairs as Jack finished them. After the first dozen or so, however, he started calling in the other soldiers technically under his command and they feasted on the next few dozen, but Jack kept baking. Gabriel loaded eclairs onto plates and sent his other soldiers off to the executive and administrative offices in the complex to deliver the treats with a brisk salute and no explanation. The cleaning staff were next. Jack kept baking. Gabriel and the others re-arranged the contents of fridge and freezer and just started packing them in. Gabriel took one of the other guys (and a pile of eclairs) and went to the store for more ingredients before Jack ran out, and they forcibly gave eclairs away. ("Do you love your country?" "Uh...yes?" "Then take these eclairs and eat them. Compliments of the US military.") After close to a thousand eclairs, Jack's hands gave out and he pretty much fell over. He woke up the next day in his bed, with a smirking Gabe sitting on his bedside table holding a plate of eclairs that he declared were breakfast. Some of the leftover eclairs were handed out to passers-by, compliments of the military. Some of them were sent to some catered function(s), much to the confusion of the caterers.

Inevitably, all the enhancement subjects bulked up. In Jack's case, this just strengthened the running joke associating him with Steve Rogers. It also meant that Gabriel was suddenly much more interested because he'd gone from "not my type but I'd give it a shot" to "exactly my type, holy fuck, get into my bed". One of the cravings Gabriel had gotten was for costuming, bringing his skill level up from "I can improvise a few things" to something that could produce professional-quality costumes. Jack cheerfully went as Captain America for Halloween. Gabe brought back the "Tish, that's French!" kiss up the arm gag, unabashedly kissing up Jack's arm every time he said something in a language that wasn't English, even if he had to ask what language it was halfway through. Another craving Gabriel wound up with, inexplicably, was learning to tango. Naturally, he conscripted Jack as his partner.

Once the physical enhancements kicked in, Gabriel held a booze party to test the limits of their new metabolisms. For science. Jack was charged with tallying how many drinks people had and their level of inebriation, bowls of chips and dip and pretzels were provided, and the drinking commenced. Gabriel had decided to host the party so that he could just roll into bed when he got too drunk to sit up, which meant that as the other soldiers called it quits, threw up, or passed out, Jack helped or carried them back to their rooms to tuck them into bed on their sides with aspirin and bottles of water within reach. When he returned from one such mission, he discovered that Gabriel was sitting contemplatively in an armchair with a half-empty bowl of chips in his hands, and the last soldier was in the bathroom. Before he could say anything, Gabriel vomited into the bowl - not the first time Jack had seen him that drunk, he'd had to help his CO to the bathroom once in the Army, but still something that scraped against memories of his father. Jack checked on the man in the bathroom, helped him to bed, and came back to Gabriel drinking vodka like it was bottled water and drunkenly requesting pizza. His faulty logic was that now that his stomach was empty, he had to fill it again. Jack microwaved some cheap pizza Gabriel had in his fridge and helped Gabriel eat it, surreptitiously trying to distract him from the alcohol, and set about doing some cleaning once it was gone while Gabriel slumped, barely awake, in the chair. A few minutes later, he got up and stumbled around looking for something to drink because "the vodka and the pizza are fighting and I need to help the vodka win". Jack was too slow to stop him from chugging the rest of the bottle, but with him upright and looking distinctly sick, he was able to guide Gabriel to the bathroom and get him in front of the toilet only a few seconds too late. Now fighting the sullen resentment nurtured over long years of tending to his alcoholic father, he dumped Gabriel in the tub to keep him in one  place while he finished cleaning up the quarters. Then he stripped and washed Gabriel off and made a pot of coffee because this was more drunk than he'd ever seen his CO and he was going to spend the rest of the night watching over him and trying to get water into his system.

When Gabriel finally woke up and registered Jack's presence, the first thing that came out of his mouth was an attempted joke - 'What's for breakfast?' He figured out almost immediately that this was the wrong thing to say, and that Jack's late, unlamented father had probably said that, when Jack's expression turned closed and angry. He knew that Jack didn't get angry, that he swallowed and internalized it, but this was too much to swallow and Jack stalked out before any of it could escape, leaving Gabe feeling like shit physically and emotionally. By the time he'd downed coffee and water and frozen waffles and showered and dressed and felt human again, Jack was locked and barricaded in his room, sleeping. Gabriel checked on the others, made sure they were okay, and then sat by Jack's door waiting for him to wake up so he could apologize. When Jack woke up, however, he had an angry crying jag as he tried to reconcile his anger at Gabriel's actions with the fact that he did still love the man, and he refused to come out or open the door or respond at all past a short, sullen 'no' when Gabriel demanded he answer. Realizing how badly he'd fucked up, Gabriel did his best to apologize via the expression of love that was cooking, and left his best efforts on a tray outside Jack's room around dinnertime. Jack opened the door later, once the others would be at dinner, and the sight of the tray sent him right back into his room to cry again because this was proof that Gabriel cared, which in Jack's mind meant that he was the one who was failing to uphold his half of the relationship because he was hiding and crying when he should have been out there doing all the perfect spouse things his father had expected him to do. Having let Gabriel down so badly in his mind, both in not being able to accept and forgive and not being there to uphold his end of the relationship, shook Jack a second time and he went back to crying because he couldn't reconcile the abusive bullshit his father had shoved down his throat and he didn't feel up to facing Gabriel.

Early the next morning, emotionally wrung out and absolutely starving, Jack crept out of his room and down to the kitchen - where Gabriel was sitting at the table, head propped up on one hand, sleeping. After dinner, he'd waited until lights-out but Jack didn't emerge, and Gabriel figured his cooking wasn't good enough to convey his feelings, so he camped in the kitchen and lay in wait to ambush Jack with a root beer float (which he was confident in his ability to not fuck up) and then apologize. But Jack never came out of his room, and Gabriel fell asleep. When he woke up, Jack was setting breakfast down in front of him. Gabriel stood up, made a root beer float, and set it down in front of Jack before sitting next to him. Jack understood this for the apology it was, and cried into Gabriel's shoulder while Gabe held him, his quiet "I'm sorry, Jack" the only words either of them said. Gabriel didn't drink past a few beers again until the formation of the Overwatch Strike Force. He'd made Jack the angriest he'd ever seen the man, hurt him enough that the man with almost no sense of personal boundaries had pulled away, and regardless of his own self-worth issues and self-destructive tendencies, he refused to do that to Jack again.

Despite the fact that neither of them really discussed what happened during and after the booze party, they both knew that apologies had been tendered and accepted and that all was good between them again. So when Gabriel was hit with a craving to stuff pizza into his body until he couldn't physically hold any more, he signed out a jeep and took Jack to a local place - or as local a place can be when you're in a military research facility some thirty miles away from the nearest town. After an hour-ish drive down gravel, dirt roads, and finally some pavement, they arrived at the pizza place and Gabriel announced that he'd called ahead for six large pizzas. Before paying, he turned to Jack and asked what Jack wanted. Flustered, Jack ordered a large pizza for himself. Gabe handed him the card and took his pizzas to a table, where he started chowing down. Jack paid and sat at the table with him. When his pizza came out, he ate with more restraint but still finished the whole thing. Gabriel was on his third pizza, and the scent made Jack realize that he wasn't actually full yet. Hesitantly, he ordered a second pizza. While he ate, he and the staff watched in awe as Gabriel got through the fifth pizza and leaned back with a mighty belch to unfasten his pants. Then he asked Jack to start handing him slices from the sixth pizza so he didn't have to try to reach them himself. At this point, Jack figured it was best to play along and get Gabe out of the store before anything unfortunate happened. He'd eaten two large pizzas and was feeling comfortably full, but Gabriel was finishing his sixth and looked like he'd stuffed an entire roast turkey under his shirt. Once the last bite vanished down his throat, Gabriel let out another impressive belch and tossed the jeep's keys to Jack.

It was a slow and careful shuffle to the vehicle, Jack practically holding Gabriel up while Gabe supported his belly with both hands. They got him carefully settled in the reclined front seat, where he lay groaning and rubbing his belly gently. Jack climbed into the driver's seat, started the jeep, and drove slowly and carefully off into the night. It was a slow and harrowing drive for Jack, who focused on making the drive as smooth as possible because some of the groaning Gabriel was doing suggested that any unnecessary jostling would cause him to miscarry his food baby. But, because it had been an SEP craving and he'd satisfied it, the other half of the groaning made it sound like his wandering hands were stroking something other than his belly, and Jack was very grateful that the darkness hid his blush. Once they left the pavement, Jack slowed down even further.

He estimated they were about halfway back before Gabriel directed him to stop because he had to pee. Unfortunately, he was way too full to sit up and leave the jeep. Jack scrambled to search the vehicle and found an abandoned half-empty bottle of water, which he emptied and offered to his bloated CO. After watching Gabriel try and fail to line up the mouth of the bottle and the head of his penis while not being able to see what he was doing, Jack blushed harder and stuttered out a 'let me do it'. The second half of the drive was, amazingly, even more uncomfortable for Jack because he was being whiplashed between erotic groans and the memory of handling Gabriel's penis, and nauseated groans and the fear that the pizza would make a second appearance because he wouldn't feel right going to bed until the jeep was cleaned out. Finally, roughly three hours after they left the pizza place, they returned to base and shuffled slowly and carefully - with many pauses to let Gabriel breathe - to Gabe's room. The endorphins had worn off by that point, leaving Gabriel less than comfortable, and Jack made sure to lay him down on his side just in case. Fortunately for Gabe, the food baby stayed put.

In the end, not all the SEP subjects wound up fit for combat. Gabriel came out almost exactly the way the heads of the program had wanted: a tactical genius and master of almost all forms of combat, capable of incredible feats of death and destruction. Three of the subjects had their sanity shattered by the experience, one going feral and cannibalistic. Gabriel was tasked with hunting him down and shooting him in his makeshift lair, where he'd dragged the half-eaten body of a cleaning lady. One of the subjects wound up with incredible mechanical proficiency, and was transferred to a research and development position. The rest were physically superior soldiers with a scattered array of proficiencies that did not lend themselves neatly to anything useful. And then there was Jack, whose psychological profile and mastery of languages laid the groundwork for him being a useful figure to put in the public eye later. Whether the program would have been continued with more thoroughly-vetted candidates or not, no one will ever know because the Omnic Crisis demanded action, and the United States had two sterling examples of exceptional soldiers to contribute to the international strike force.

===
The Omnic Crisis
===

The international collection of bigwigs that formed the Overwatch Strike Force were more than happy to have Gabriel Reyes named commander with Jack as his lieutenant. They had a few days of leave to settle their affairs, and Gabriel took the opportunity to have a private "for tomorrow we may die" party. Remembering what had happened last time, he put Jack in charge of the alcohol and they both ate while Gabe drank. At some point in the late hours of the evening, Gabriel drunkenly declared his freedom from the military by twirling his dog tags around on his finger and semi-unintentionally hurling them at a wall. When he passed out, Jack picked them up. He slid one tag off each chain, his and Gabe's, and switched them. When he put his own chain back on, the top tag was his but the bottom was Gabriel's. Gabriel's chain, he put in a safe-deposit box. When Gabriel asked why Jack was still wearing his dog tags, Jack answered that it wasn't out of loyalty to the military, it was a reminder of the past and something that made him feel grounded and happy.

The first international task force member Gabriel and Jack met was Ana Amari, along with her infant daughter Fareeha. Ana and Gabe didn't get along smoothly at first, but Jack endeared himself immediately by proving himself as a surrogate parent. He served as the buffer the other two needed to get used to each other without things exploding messily. When it came to actually going on missions, Gabe and Jack were the two most suited to surviving in uncivilized environments and many times, being able to approach the target from the wilderness meant the difference between success and failure.

On one occasion, they were hiking through a mountainous forest and Gabriel felt they both needed to cool their heads after some heated joking, so he pushed Jack off-balance while the other man was crossing a frigid stream by balancing on a fallen log. The water wasn't cold enough to be dangerous, but it was still enough that they made camp right there and Jack stripped to let his clothes dry in the sun while he stole body heat from Gabriel in revenge. It definitely quieted both of them, but getting Jack in his arms had been Gabriel's plan and Jack wasn't going to shy away from the opportunity to be held by his crush.

During one otherwise-quiet night, Gabriel and Jack had a long, in-depth discussion of the joke that they were married, and whether it would be more accurate to call Jack a husband or a wife. It went into gender roles and traditional division of labor and cultural assumptions and the division of labor and roles specific to same-sex couples. In the end, they didn't reach an solid conclusion past "the terms are too gendered, we don't have words for this."

At the conclusion of the Omnic Crisis, Gabriel was on edge and significantly high-strung. He'd heard talk of making the Strike Force a permanent thing, an international organization for peace, and he was afraid the Powers That Be would make him the head of it and shackle him to a desk, and to paperwork. He was completely unexpected for a shaken and almost terrified Jack coming to his quarters to confess that he'd been pulled into a secret meeting and handed the position in such a way that he couldn't refuse. Somewhat panicked, Jack told Gabriel that he refused to take the position without having Gabe there to watch his back and they talked it over and roughed out what would become the Overwatch/Blackwatch dynamic. They both knew that Jack would be bound by red tape, a figurehead and scapegoat all in one. He'd do the talking, be the public face, while Gabriel went behind the scenes to make sure that all the things that needed to be done, got done. Jack went back to the Powers That Be and told them he'd be their poster boy as long as he had Gabriel to handle the more martial aspects, and he spun it in such a way that they didn't suspect how big a role Blackwatch would have. The double-edged sword of making a gifted speaker your figurehead is having that gift turned against you, after all.