Give Him The Cookie 2

[moonshadows]

Jesse

 

When he woke up, Jesse first slapped his alarm off and then spent a few seconds waiting for his brain to switch from dream to awake and remind him why he’d set it in the first place.

Reyes was smol.

Right.

Half an hour later he had a covered tray prepared and was knocking on the door to the commanders’ quarters. A bleary-eyed Morrison opened it, smol Gabe sleeping in the crook of his arm, and accepted the mug of extra-strong coffee Jesse had brewed for him.

“Brought your cereal,” he said as he set the tray on the table, “but also some pancakes and bacon and eggs.”

The large plate came off the tray first: a stack of buttermilk pancakes with butter melting on them, followed by a small pitcher of maple syrup. The first smaller plate held three fried eggs and four strips of bacon. The second smaller plate held a dozen tiny pancakes the size of old half-dollar coins and four tiny fried quail eggs, sunny side up, along with a single strip of bacon. One shot glass held syrup, one held orange juice, and the third was full of cream mixed with decaf coffee. A tasting fork sat on smol Gabe’s plate, while Jesse placed full-sized silverware next to Morrison’s and finally, unloaded the glass of orange juice, the bowl of Cheerios, and the pitcher of milk.

As though drawn by the delicious aromas, Morrison sat down and smol Gabe woke with a start. Jesse picked him up and held him in one arm, the shot glass of lukewarm decaf in his other hand, and helped him drink. He struggled to be set down after a few mouthfuls, and made a beeline for his breakfast while his husband poured syrup on his pancakes and started cutting them up. Jesse took a moment to congratulate himself on the tasting fork, which admittedly was a little long but with the short little arms smol Gabe had, still functional. He was delighted by the smol breakfast, even if he needed help pouring the syrup on his pancakes, and when he sat down to eat the strip of bacon almost as long as he was tall, Jesse took a picture.

“This is really good,” the Strike-Commander mumbled through a mouthful of eggs and bacon. “And if Gabe could form more than one word at a time, I’m sure he’d say the same.”

Jesse grinned. “He doesn’t need words; just look at him chowing down. I figure he’ll…”

Smol Gabe belched, blinked, and drained half the shot glass of orange juice before yawning widely.

“I’ll just…grab the bed,” Jesse finished dryly.

With kisses delivered and smol Gabe napping in his shoebox on the table, his husband polished off his pancakes and coffee and let out a belch of his own.

“I think I might actually be awake now,” he said with a rueful grin. “Kept waking up every half hour to check on Gabriel. Nearly had a heart attack the first time I woke up and he was gone, but he’d just gone for a snack. Did that twice during the night.”

“So he needs to eat about…”

“Every two or three hours,” Morrison confirmed. “He had more Chinese just before bed.”

Jesse nodded. “That gives us a timeframe, then. And he slept in the box okay?”

The older man looked chagrined. “Towards the morning, he got fussy and wanted to sleep with or on me. That’s when I stopped sleeping, because I didn’t want to risk accidentally hurting him if I rolled over or something.”

“D’you think it was because you were there?” Jesse asked carefully. “What I mean is…out of sight, out of his smol mind. If you slept in your bed and I slept on the couch in your place…?”

Morrison rubbed his temples. “It’s worth a try. I need to grab a shower and try to make myself presentable. Hopefully I can sneak out before he wakes up. Thanks for breakfast.”

“Hey, no sweat. You go get cleaned up, boss.”

That earned him a tired smile, and Morrison retreated to the bedroom. Moments later, the shower turned on.

“Gonna have to bathe you in the sink, I think,” Jesse murmured to the sleeping form of his shrunken boss. “Maybe make you a little bubble bath with the body wash. I think you’d like that.”

Looked like Morrison hadn’t finished the quilt, he noticed. His tiny boss was still sleeping under a shirt, and his head...

Jesse frowned. He needed to sew a smol pillow, because smol Gabe couldn’t be comfortable with his head tilted like that. While everything was still quiet, he packed the empty dishes onto the tray and moved it out of the way before finding the pile of clothes to be sacrificed. He’d passed over the sweatpants initially because the fleecy inside was too much for a smol body, but maybe…it would take some work to cut the material into small enough bits, but it could be made into a decent filling for a little pillow and then he could layer the rest in an outer layer of slacks and put together a workable mattress. The flannel would be freed up to get repurposed, and he figured smol Gabe would rather cuddle up to a mini-husband in flannel PJs than one in full dress uniform.

He’d gotten the pillow shell done and made good progress on preparing the stuffing when Morrison emerged, damp and a bit disheveled but presentable.

“Makin’ him a pillow,” Jesse said before he could ask. “Gonna make a mattress after that. Want me to save you any of these sweatpants for the quilt?”

The Strike-Commander shook his head. “He’s small enough that it doesn’t need a filling layer; I’m just doubling the tee-shirt material and sewing it to the backing. I have a meeting, can you-”

“Jack?”

Jesse watched as despair overshadowed Morrison at his smol husband’s sleepy voice calling his name.

“Jack?” Smol Gabe stood up, blinking, and held his arms out to be picked up. “Jack!”

“I have to go to a meeting, babe, but McCree will…”

The words trailed off as smol Gabe’s big eyes filled with tears.

“Sweetie, no, I have to-”

“Jaaack!”

The Strike-Commander scooped up his husband and cuddled him, unable to withstand the whimpering noises accompanying his name. “I have a meeting, sweetheart,” he pled. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours, I promise. I’m coming back.”

Smol Gabe was unconvinced, judging by how hard he was trying to cling to his husband’s neck and repeating ‘Jack! Jack!’ in heart-wrenching tones.

Jesse cleared his throat and stood up smartly. “Commander Reyes, sir, we need to get you cleaned up for that thing you have.”

Instantly, smol Gabe stopped crying and kissed the corner of his husband’s mouth. “Uh oo,” he enunciated vaguely in a more casual tone.

“Love you too, babe,” Morrison returned in relief. “McCree will take care of you. I’ll see you in a bit.”

And with that, he handed his smol husband over, saluted, and beat a hasty retreat.

“Right. Let’s go get you cleaned up, boss,” Jesse said sauntering through the bedroom and into the bathroom.

Smol Gabe, it turned out, loved the makeshift bubble bath and splashed around happily for half an hour before finally getting tired. Jesse rinsed him off and swaddled him in a fluffy hand towel, then brought him back to the living room and set him on the coffee table so he could choose clean clothes. He distracted himself with the crayons and paper after that, giving Jesse enough time to finish the pillow before using his little ashtray toilet and coming back around the privacy screen to put his little fists on his hips and frown at the cowboy.

“What’s up, jefe?” Jesse asked.

The sounds smol Gabe uttered didn’t make much sense, but it was hard to misinterpret pointing at his open mouth. Jesse carried him to the table, where he devoured the rest of his breakfast and looked around for more. All that was left was the cereal and milk, but Jesse poured a handful of dry cereal onto the small plate and poured milk into an empty shot glass, and smol Gabe entertained himself quite nicely by picking up one piece of cereal at a time, dunking it in the milk, and then shoving it into his mouth. The shell of the mattress had been sewn together by the time he lost interest in eating, and Jesse arranged the Strike-Commander figure to be laying on its side, head on the pillow, arm out to drape over the smol as he yawned and trundled into the box for a nap. Smol Gabe kissed the figure on the cheek, chirped some sort of incoherent endearment, and tugged the arm over himself as he lay down as the little spoon. Jesse couldn’t help but take a picture before tugging the makeshift blanket over them. Then he took another picture and settled in to sew.

Once the mattress was done, Jesse emptied and refilled the little toilet and transferred the whole miniature bathroom to the table. Smol Gabe awoke almost as soon as he’d done that, and toddled off to relieve himself while Jesse swapped out folded flannel for mattress and did some rough measurements with the figure. 

When the little guy came back out from behind the screen, he was wearing a businesslike expression that looked out of place on his smol face. “Own,” he demanded, one hand out expectantly.

Jesse swallowed. “Uh. Phone? You want your phone, boss?”

“Own,” he repeated with a nod.

The cowboy laid Reyes’s phone on the table and watched as the little guy crouched down to unlock it. Then he navigated to the messaging app and opened a message to his husband.

Crud. Had it been an act all along? Jesse craned his neck to see what Reyes was typing-

I <3 U

And the heart was a scribbled thing done using the touch portion of the app. Jesse swallowed his grin as smol Gabe sent the message and then began a new one, forsaking the keyboard to just draw with the touch portion. It was nowhere near as advanced as an actual art program, but it kept him amused and Jesse settled in to sew the Strike-Commander figure some flannel PJs. Naturally, he’d only gotten them cut out when smol Gabe started getting fussy, and Jesse plucked the phone away from him just long enough to open the games section and look for something appropriate for a smol-

Wait.

Commander Reyes had Pac-Man on his phone? Jesse had it open in a flash and set the phone back down in front of smol Gabe, instantly entrancing him. One little hand touched Pac-Man, and then drew a line towards the dots. The yellow figure followed, eliciting delighted laughter that had Jesse scrambling for his own phone to take video. The excitement of discovery was a roller-coaster: dismay when Pac-Man got eaten, glee when the cherries bounced their way across the screen, utter astonishment when he directed the yellow figure off one side chasing them and it appeared on the other side. That gave Jesse plenty of time to finish the flannel and put it on the figure.

“I think it’s time for a snack,” Jesse announced as he admired his handiwork. “The Strike-Commander’ll be getting out of his meeting soon, and I’ve got a thing to take care of once he does, but you’ll get hungry long before that’s over. So whaddaya say we mosey down to the kitchen and get you a little somethin’ before he gets back?” Guiltily, he looked around. “I mean…not that cookies aren’t tasty, but I know you gotta be hankerin’ for salty or savory about now.”

Solemnly, smol Gabe nodded at him.

“Alright.” Jesse held his hands out, and the little fella climbed into them. “Let’s see what we can find.”

Although he’d meant to fetch a handful of pretzel sticks, he got to the kitchen and opened the cabinet and smol Gabe said “chip!” in the clearest word he’d used all day aside from ‘Jack’. Obediently, Jesse grabbed a snack-sized bag of Reyes’s favorite salt and vinegar chips and immediately opened it up to hand over the biggest chip sitting on top. With his passenger momentarily placated, he grabbed the pretzel sticks and a handful of fresh cherries and booked it.

Once back in the commanders’ quarters, he emptied the chips out onto a plate and added a few pretzel sticks. Smol Gabe immediately grabbed one and began eating it like he was playing a flute, cheeks puffing out as he fed it slowly into his mouth, nibble-chomping it as he went. After taking a picture, Jesse got out his pocketknife and started slicing cherries into halves, and then quarters, removing the pits as he did.

“I see you let him have his phone,” the Strike-Commander announced as soon as the door opened, making the cowboy jump. He sounded amused, at least, and not annoyed.

“He insisted,” Jesse said loftily. “Oh, uh, he likes playing Pac-Man. Might want to set up a tablet on a stand and try some older, simpler video games as well.”

“And you’re feeding him…what?”

Smol Gabe looked up, directed a brilliant grin at his husband, and held out the contents of his hands: a slice of cherry and a broken flake of potato chip the size of a thumbnail.

“Just a snack,” Jesse assured him, finishing the last cherry and cleaning his knife. “I’ve got a thing I gotta take care of for Blackwatch, but I was thinking I could hit that barbeque place after and bring you both some lunch.”

Morrison gave him a tired smile. “That would be amazing, thank you. I’m just going to pack him up and take him to my office; there’s things I have to do that I can’t do here.”

“You got it,” Jesse promised. “I’ll text for your order when I get there.”

---

 

Jack

 

Jack was finding it difficult to get any work done.

It wasn’t just the exhaustion, although he was tempted to put his head down and nap while his shrunken husband napped away a belly full of chips and cherries. The fact that the love of his life was the size of a toy and Winston still had no idea how to get him back to normal was a distraction in and of itself, one that made it hard to concentrate on things that should have been a higher priority. He was able to knock out a few tasks while Gabriel slept, but once he woke up…

He covered his face again, then let his hands drop. “Peekaboo!”

Gabriel shrieked with delight and clapped his little hands.

How could he resist that innocent laughter?

“One more time,” he said, trying to sound firm. “Then I’ve got paperwork to do, and so do you.”

Gabriel nodded solemnly.

Jack covered his face, then pulled his hands away. “Peekaboo! And now it’s time to work, okay?”

The serious little nod Gabe gave him was almost too adorable, but he went over to the corner of the desk where his things had been set up and frowned cutely at the crayons and paper before selecting one.

Relieved, Jack tried to get as much done as possible and was successful…for a while. The demands of his position seemed incredibly petty and irrelevant, and he found himself getting frustrated, the world narrowing to the screen before him until-

“No.”

-suddenly Gabe was there, doing his best to tug Jack’s hand away from the screen. When that failed, he sat down right in the center of the workspace and gave his startled husband a look that tried to be firm but wound up pleading.

“No,” he said in his piping little voice.

“But babe, I have to finish this report for the Prime Minister.”

“No.”

“But…” Jack let the protest trail off. Those were tears in his tiny husband’s eyes.

Sensing his victory, Gabriel rushed to Jack’s arm and began scaling his sleeve, tiny fingers and toes gripping, until he’d climbed up to the shoulder and could kneel, one hand on Jack’s ear for balance, to lay a butterfly-light kiss on his husband’s cheek.

Even distilled down to basic needs and nature, he still did his best to make Jack happy. Sighing, he picked Gabriel up and cuddled him while with the other, he dashed off a quick note to the Prime Minister, explaining that the report would be delayed because something had come up that Commander Reyes needed him for.

McCree’s text was a welcome diversion, and he sent back a request for pulled pork, mashed potatoes, and corn on the cob. Then he added that they’d be in the Officers’ Mess and began packing up.

Ana was just finishing her lunch when he arrived, and she expressed her approval for the bed upgrades while helping him set everything up on the table.

“You can delegate to me,” she chided when he told her how much work he hadn’t gotten done.

“I have delegated a lot to you,” he sighed. “Tomorrow should be better. McCree offered to spend the night on the couch. But he’s got responsibilities, too.”

“Sleep on the couch?” Ana frowned. “Why…?”

“Gabe wakes up to eat. I don’t want him trying to find me and getting hurt.”

“I know the feeling,” Ana said, laying a hand on his shoulder in commiseration. “At least you don’t have to change his diaper.”

Moments after she left, McCree came in and started unpacking food. He scooped out a little bit of everything for Gabe: pulled pork, beef brisket, mashed potatoes, baked beans, and a corner of cornbread. With a tasting fork in one hand and a tasting spoon in the other, Gabriel went to town on his lunch and the other two followed suit. In under ten minutes there was nothing left, which was to the restaurant’s credit, but meant there would be nothing for Gabe’s second lunch. Jack picked up his husband and kissed him before setting him in bed and tucking him in, the arm of the Strike-Commander figure holding him to its flannel-clad chest. Gabriel snuggled down under the makeshift blanket and sighed happily. Big or small, he was happiest bundled up and warm, and Jack couldn’t help but smile.

“I don’t know what to feed him when he wakes up,” he confessed to the cowboy. “I also didn’t get a lot of work done.”

“I gotcha covered, boss,” was the relieving reply. “I’ll keep him here and feed him when he wakes up – want to get a head start on making dinner, anyway. You go do what you need to get done.”

Jack sighed, feeling a tiny bit of tension leave his shoulders. “You are a blessing, Jesse McCree.”

The cowboy grinned. “Just make sure you remind your husband of that once he’s back to normal.”

“You have my word,” Jack promised with a tired smile.

---

 

Jesse

 

The filling for the stuffed shells Jesse was planning for dinner was mixed up and in the fridge chilling when a rustling announced that smol Gabe was awake. Quickly, Jesse grabbed the jar of baby pickles and fished out two. One of them, he sliced lengthwise into miniature spears and had them on smol Gabe’s plate before he came out from behind the toilet screen. The other, he sliced into thin coins. His ward was happily munching on pickle before he even had time to announce he was hungry, and that bought Jesse time cut to a hot dog into a dozen slices and lay them in a skillet. While the skillet heated, he sliced a pair of soft breadsticks and piled them on a plate in pairs. The hot dog pieces cooked quickly, and he flipped them to sear the other side before assembling a dozen little hot dog sandwiches, each with a squirt of spicy mustard on one side and ketchup on the other.

The look on smol Gabe’s face was priceless.

While his tiny boss feasted on improvised hot dogs, Jesse carefully cooked both the jumbo pasta shells and the regular little ones and rinsed them in cool water. The post-meal nap let him fill the shells in peace – the little ones required the icing bag, as he suspected they might – and lay them in a sauce-lined pan. Once the shells had been fully prepared, he covered he pan with foil and put it back in the fridge. Smol Gabe was still sleeping, so he carefully packed everything up and brought him back to the commanders’ quarters.

Commander Reyes liked to get in a good workout every day, and Jesse doubted that the smol version would be any different. A dozen big sheets of paper and some clear tape were all he needed to set up an obstacle course of paper tubes, with the first one directly in front of the shoebox door.

As soon as smol Gabe woke up, Jesse knew he’d done good.

The delighted gasp was the first sign, and then the paper tube shook as he crawled down it. When he poked his head out of the other end, Jesse was there grinning at him and he squealed in excitement and threw himself down the next tunnel…but when he reached the end of that, Jesse was there again, and it became a game. Smol Gabe crawled down the tunnels as if racing Jesse to the other side, delighted when the cowboy got there first. At first, the tunnels were just a circle around the table, but it didn’t take much to move them and provide an ever-changing landscape. When the little guy started looking tuckered out, Jesse sent him through one more ring and then had the last tunnel come out in front of a plate of little cookies.

For a few minutes, it was snacktime. Both of them crunched away and washed the sweet cookie down with cool water. Then smol Gabe started pushing the tunnels off the table and frowning when Jesse put them back. Curious as to what the little guy was up to, Jesse stopped and just watched.

Once the table was clear of paper, smol Gabe took cookies from the plate and set them down in a ring around it – an incomplete ring, because he left a space open in the front. Then he laid more cookies on top of those, and repeated it until he ran out of cookies at the third or fourth layer.

Jesse didn’t need the pleading look to tell him what smol Gabe wanted. “Okay, I gotcha,” he said, grabbing one of the tubs of cookies. “Just hang on a sec, I’ll get you more.”

The cookies he piled onto the plate turned into building materials, smol Gabe standing in the middle to place each cookie until the walls got too high for Jesse to confidently reach inside and then running back and forth between the cookie pile outside and the growing walls of the…igloo? Something. Jesse started helping build when the walls got too high for the little fella to reach with his teeny arms, causing more delight as the walls started to converge into a roof over that beaming face. When the last cookie was placed, incoherent glee and faint applause rewarded him from inside.

Naturally, that’s when the Strike-Commander walked in.

“What…” he started, then shook his head and approached at Jesse’s gesture.

“Jack?” announced the little voice from inside. “Jack!” smol Gabe shrieked as his husband crouched down to see into the igloo.

“He’s so proud of himself,” Morrison said quietly. “Did he do this all by himself?”

Jesse shook his head. “Nah. I did the top third, but the idea and the base construction was his.”

“That’s more than enough to be proud of. Come on out so I can kiss you, babe.”

Cheerfully, smol Gabe crawled out to be scooped up and shriek-giggle at the kisses raining down on his head.

“I’m gonna go put dinner in the oven,” Jesse said, and retreated when Morrison gave him an absent nod of approval.

---

 

Jack

 

Ana joined them for dinner, which made it feel weirdly familial, but the stuffed shells were a hit and the teeny stuffed shells for Gabriel were a huge hit. The dollhouse silverware, not so much. It was perfectly shaped and proportioned, but that made the prongs too close together to actually stab food securely and McCree fetched him a tasting fork instead. While he stabbed tiny pasta shells and stuffed them into his mouth, Ana and McCree caught up on some of the workings of Blackwatch. Jack gave them a brief summary of his day – including his little husband telling him no when work was making him too stressed – and they caught Ana up on how Gabe-sitting was going.

“So the only time you can get anything done is when Gabriel is napping, or Jesse is watching him?” Ana said at the end of story-telling. Although she tried to hide her smile, the corners of her mouth twitched. “It is comforting to know that even in this limited form, your husband watches out for you.”

Jack sighed, but he was smiling. “Yeah. Not gonna let him live that down come Valentine’s day. Not with all the love-notes he’s been drawing me, or the texts he sent while I was in that meeting.”

“Uh,” Gabriel announced. Although he’d been using the tasting fork to spear his tiny stuffed shells instead of eating with his hands, he’d somehow gotten sauce all over his face and hands anyway.

“Right, let me get you a paper towel,” Jack said when he saw the sauce-smeared hands stretched towards him.

He cleaned his husband carefully with a damp paper towel and was tucking him into bed – the poor thing was falling asleep – when Gabe suddenly grabbed his fingers in a deathgrip.

“Uh oo,” he said insistently.

“I love you too,” Jack assured him, but the tiny face of his husband didn’t look reassured.

“Uh oo!” he repeated. “Uh oo!”

Jack threw a panicked glance to the other two – his tiny love looked about ready to cry, and he didn’t know what-

Oh.

Apologetically, Jack lifted Gabriel back out of his bed and pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head. “Love you, babe,” he murmured.

Gabriel tilted his head up to press a tiny kiss to the corner of Jack’s mouth with a contented hum. “Uh oo,” he repeated happily.

This time, when Jack lowered him into bed and tucked him in, there was no complaint.

“Kissin’ is an important pre-nap step,” McCree said sagely.

Jack blushed. “If you could pack his second dinner for me, I think we’ll be okay for the evening,” he told the cowboy. “Just drop by around ten for bedtime.”

McCree saluted. “You got it, boss.”

At first, the evening passed quietly. Jack sat on the couch, quilting, while his husband napped and ate and napped again. He seemed thrilled by the little quilt when he woke up again, but was too restless to be entertained by it for long. McCree had acquired an assortment of doll shoes and socks, and Jack helped his little husband try them on, but none of the shoes fit and he kept pulling the socks back off because they made him slip on the coffee table. After a handful of minutes, Jack gave up and transferred him to the big table, where he played Pac-Man on a propped-up tablet and occasionally nibbled a small cookie left over from the igloo construction. Jack nibbled the spare cookies as well while he started working on a quilted carry-pouch, and when they ran out, absently reached for one of the cookies that made up the igloo.

“Noooooo!”

Gabriel was looking at him with an expression of hurt betrayal.

“Sorry, babe, I wasn’t paying attention.” Gently, he scooped his husband up for a brief cuddle against his chest. “It’s a very nice igloo and I’m very proud of you.”

“Uh oo,” was the chirped reply.

They played peekaboo for a bit, with Gabe hiding in the igloo and poking his head out to Jack’s delighted exclamations of “Peek-a-boo!”

When Gabriel tired of that game, he moved on to something Jack didn’t follow but involved sitting in the igloo muttering quietly to himself in sounds that weren’t full words. With a mental shrug, Jack left him to it and went back to working on the carry-pouch. He had no idea how much time had passed when the igloo suddenly collapsed and a heart-rending wail emerged from the pile of cookies. Frantically, he brushed them away to unearth his little husband, who was crying with all the intensity he’d ever seen little Fareeha use as a baby. Jack was terrified that Gabe had somehow hurt himself, but a quick check showed that he was only bruised and startled and he held his sobbing husband gently to his chest, practically covering his body with both hands, murmuring reassurance until the small body shuddering against him calmed somewhat.

“We can build it again,” he suggested, but Gabe made unhappy sounds. “Okay, how about this? I’ll bake cookie bars in the morning, and we can use them like bricks and build you a cookie house. We’ll use toothpicks to hold them together so they can’t fall over on you, how does that sound?”

A tiny sound that could have been ‘yeah’ floated up from under his hands.

“Okay. We’ll do that after breakfast, then. What do you want to do until bed?”

“Ogga.”

Jack frowned. “Ogga?”

Gabriel struggled to be put down, and Jack set him on the table. He went over to the tablet and poked a few things until the ancient Atari graphics almost a century old came up: Frogger.

“Right,” Jack murmured, smiling. “Ogga. Well, babe, you have fun trying to get the frog across traffic and safely into its little house. Just watch out for alligators, okay?”

“Ay,” Gabe agreed cheerfully.

Gabriel wasn’t great at Frogger, but he didn’t seem to get discouraged when his frog got squashed or drowned or eaten, either. Jack had the shell of the carry-pouch done by the time McCree knocked on the door and let himself in.

“Aw, no,” he cried in dismay. “Our igloo!”

Gabe’s eyes filled with tears, and his lower lip trembled.

“I’m going to bake cookie bars to make bricks out of,” Jack announced, “and we’re going to build a very sturdy house that can’t fall down.”

Instantly, McCree brightened. “Hey, that sounds like a great plan! But for now, let’s get you cleaned up and in a nice, warm nightshirt and tuck you into bed.”

“Eh!” Gabe announced, arms out to be picked up.

The cowboy carried him off to the bathroom, and Jack transferred the shoebox and toilet setup to the coffee table before picking up the scattered cookies and piling them back onto – or mostly onto – their plate. A handful, he left on a smaller plate by the shoebox. Quickly, he changed into pajamas and made sure Gabe’s nightshirt was set out. When McCree emerged from the bathroom with a towel-wrapped Gabriel, Jack exchanged goodnights and kisses and retreated to make use of the bathroom himself before he slept. Still, he couldn’t resist peeking on the other two.

McCree had set out a handful of strawberry slices and pretzel sticks to go with the cookies, and three shot glasses of water with little coffee-stirrer straws in them. He grinned at Jack as he stretched out on the couch in pajamas of his own, with a pillow and blanket he’d brought with him.

“Night, boss,” he said cheerfully.

“Goodnight,” Jack returned automatically, and retreated again.

Sleep, although better than the previous night, was still a disorienting experience that jerked him from deep, dreamless sleep to waking in sudden panic and checking the security camera feed to confirm that his shrunken husband was still there and either sleeping peacefully or snacking and then sleeping again. Thankfully, he had no problems dropping into sleep again after reassuring himself that Gabe was okay.

When his alarm finally went off, he felt like he’d gotten at least half a night’s sleep, and a hot shower left him feeling awake enough to fake it. He dressed, thanked a groggy McCree, collected his sleepy husband, and strode off to the Officers’ Mess in search of pre-baking breakfast.

Yogurt and cereal may not have been the most lavish meal, but Gabe seemed to enjoy it – even if he did fish his cheerios out of the saucer one at a time, by hand, instead of using a spoon. Once they’d finished, he hung the carry-pouch around his neck and tied the bottom laces around his waist, like an apron, before tucking his excited husband into it and preparing to bake. Gabriel seemed happy enough to watch the proceedings, although Jack did have to take quick breaks to find him snacks to eat – a slice of cheese folded into quarters, or a strip of cooked bacon, things he could eat without leaving the pouch. As the first pans of cookie bar came out of the oven to cool, however, he became fussy and wouldn’t be calmed. Finally, he shrieked “Give!” with both hands stretched out towards the cooling pans, and Jack understood.

Naturally, he wanted cookies.

“Good idea, babe,” he said, searching the cabinets. “Let’s have a cookie break.”

Gabriel didn’t understand what was going on until Jack had one of the giant cookies from the other night on a plate, and had taken his shrunken husband out of the carry-pouch to set him down squarely on top of it.

“All for you,” he said, smiling at the delighted surprise so complete that it blanked out Gabe’s little face for a long minute.

When he recovered, the wordless squeal of excitement didn’t need words, and he tore a chunk off the side to chew on happily while Jack sat and nibbled his own giant cookie, basking in his husband’s glee. He submitted readily to the demand for pre-nap kisses and tucked his little love in, feeling the stab of irrational envy for a brief moment as Gabe snuggled up to Mini-Jack, and then he went back to baking.

---

 

Jesse

 

After an intense morning handling Blackwatch responsibilities, Jesse didn’t want to think about making sure both his bosses – tol and smol, as he’d been thinking about them – were fed, and he wanted comfort food. So he strolled into the Officers’ Mess with a pepperoni pizza from his favorite pizza place, the one with the floppy New York style crust. Morrison was cutting pans of cookie bars into bricks, and smol Gabe was sitting on a cookie practically the size of a dinner plate.

“Pizza,” he announced as he set the box down and grabbed plates.

Morrison looked up in surprise. “Is it lunchtime already?”

“Depends on if you want pizza or not,” Jesse joked.

He slid two slices onto a plate for the Strike-Commander, two for himself, and one onto a plate that he set in front of smol Gabe – and then grinned as the little fella let out a tiny gasp and opened his eyes so wide that they fairly sparkled. Just as he was about to grab the non-alcoholic beer out of the fridge, however, he got socked with the puppy eyes because this was clearly too big for his tiny hands. Before he could blink, Morrison was there with a pizza cutter, husband to the rescue cutting the slice into little triangles and trapezoids and parallelograms as he ran the blade across it in horizontal strokes from tip to crust and then haphazardly across the strips until they were small enough to not need both hands.

Grinning, Jesse poured smol Gabe a shot glass of ‘safe’ beer and was rewarded with a tiny, heartfelt groan of appreciation. Then he handed the bottle to his tol boss and grabbed a real one for himself.

“Drinking on the job?” Morrison asked dryly as he caught the label on the bottle.

“Worked my butt off this morning,” he countered, sitting down to his pizza. “I’m off duty until tomorrow, ‘cept for smol-sitting for you. And anything else you need me to do, of course.”

Morrison grunted at that, but didn’t protest, and they all spent a few minutes inhaling hot pizza and washing it down with cold beer. Jesse couldn’t resist taking a picture of smol Gabe beaming, a miniature piece of pizza in each hand.

When his plate held only crust and a handful of pieces, smol Gabe stood and walked very purposefully towards the pizza box.

“Whatcha need, jefe?”

The shrunken commander pointed. “Ehoni.”

It took him a second to process that, but then Jesse reached in and peeled one intact pepperoni slice off the remaining pizza and handed it to him. It was nearly half the size of his face, and he sat down happily to nibble the edge, turning it as he went until he could shove the rest into his mouth and chew in satisfaction. Of course, then he glanced down and saw that his hands were fairly dripping with grease, and turned to his husband with a distressed look while uttering unintelligible sounds. Morrison seems to understand what he wanted, though, because a faint blush tinged his cheeks as he leaned over and stuck his tongue out. Smol Gabe giggled and wiped his hands on the twitching surface, then held them out for the napkin Morrison offered and dried them off.

“Not a word,” the Strike-Commander growled, not looking at Jesse.

“Word about what? I didn’t see anything.”

“Heh. Gabe taught you well.”

After the ritual kiss, the shrunken Blackwatch commander curled up for a nap and the other two finished off the pizza. Morrison did a quick calculation under his breath while staring at the pans of cookie bar, and then sent Jesse down to requisition a couple boxes of toothpicks. Being able to growl ‘Trust me, it’s better if you don’t know’ in answer to ‘why do you need these?’ was amazingly cathartic, and he sauntered back to the Officers’ Mess feeling like he’d bonded with his commander somehow. Morrison loaded him up with a tub of cookie bricks and led the way back to his quarters, where he handed over his supplies and went back to prepare the inevitable second lunch for smol Gabe.

Considering the giant cookie he was sure his miniature boss was going to be munching on, Jesse opted for a low-carb option and cut some roast beef and cheddar cheese into small squares, with a quarter of an apple sliced thinly and half a banana given the same treatment. He returned to find the Strike-Commander measuring with his hands on a serving platter and laying cookie bricks out to form the outline of the future house. Once the outline was settled to his satisfaction, he opened a box of toothpicks and began inserting them into the bricks, one at each end, so that they stuck up like some sort of fence. Then he carefully pressed a second layer of bricks down onto the toothpicks, and suddenly Jesse understood that this was how he was ensuring the house didn’t fall down no matter how hard anyone huffed and puffed.

Smol Gabe was beside himself with excitement when he woke up, dashing around and into the foundation of the house with little squeaks of joy before rushing to take care of his biological needs. He sat, eyes wide, and watched his husband pile bricks inside the outline while he double-fisted fruit and lunchmeat, and in the end was too excited to finish his lunch. He scurried into the house foundation and started placing bricks on top of the low walls. They settled into a rhythm – Jesse transferred bricks from tub to pile, smol Gabe hefted them onto the growing walls, and Morrison skewered them with toothpicks to ensure they didn’t move. They took a break to discuss window placement while the little fella finished his lunch, and then kept working for as tall as he could reach – even though production slowed down as he started yawning.

Once smol Gabe had been kissed and tucked in for a nap, Jesse and Morrison worked to get the rest of the walls built, and then they stared at the roofless building.

“We could whip up some icing and use the little cookies as shingles,” Jesse said doubtfully, “I just ain’t sure what we’d attach them to.”

Morrison frowned at them. “It’s a good idea, it just needs some refinement. You measure out how many rows and columns of cookies we’d need for each side of the roof, and I’ll go mix up a batch of icing.”

“Wait,” Jesse said as the man stood up. “There’s an icing bag in the cabinets. I used it to fill the little shells with cheese.”

“Excellent foresight,” joked Morrison. “I’ll be back soon.”

Jesse lined up cookies against the base of the house, measured them against the rough slope of the roof, and then got distracted cutting spare bricks into triangles to smooth out the slope and provide a slanted surface for the bottom and top. He didn’t even notice that the Strike-Commander had returned until a hand plucked one of his triangles away, squirted a thick, white gel onto it, and pressed it back into place.

“Good plan,” he muttered as he worked. “I did some thinking. If we laid the cookies out on a flat surface and used the icing to glue them in place as a sheet, we should be able to lay the sheet against the frame and just glue it in place.”

“Then don’t glue those bottom triangles,” Jesse yelped, grabbing one out of Morrison’s hand. “We’ll need them to keep the bottom cookies at an angle.”

“Oh.” Morrison blinked. “Right. Good thinking.”

“Whatever happened to the socks and shoes?” Jesse asked as he lined up cookie triangles.

“Shoes didn’t fit and he kept taking the socks off,” answered Morrison, squeezing beads of icing onto the slanted surface.

“Captain Amari’s not gonna like that after she stressed how important warm feet are.”

“I’ll deal with her.”

And that, Jesse thought, took care of that.

With Jesse laying the pieces out and his tol boss manning the icing bag, they got both roof slabs assembled before smol Gabe woke from his nap. The icing wouldn’t be fully dry for a few hours, so Jesse transferred the smol to the coffee table for more adventures with ‘Ogga’ while Morrison created curtains and a door out of facial tissue and tacked them to the house with more icing. Then he shooed the Strike-Commander out for an important conference call and cleaned up the construction mess on the table.

After about an hour, smol Gabe tired of guiding digital frogs through traffic. Jesse was impressed that he didn’t get frustrated, despite never actually making it past the first level, and opened a basic art program on the tablet for him instead. The little guy’s face lit up as his touch spread streaks of color on the screen, and he immediately set to creating a picture that made no sense to Jesse. He was so intent on it that he didn’t notice Jesse answering the door and letting Angela and Winston in.

“We just need some current data,” the gorilla apologized as Angela crept closer to smol Gabe, scanner held out.

“Got any ideas?” Jesse asked quietly.

“Maybe. Could you, uh, provide any data on his metabolic needs? Intake, uh, excretion…”

Jesse frowned. “Exactly what kind of info are you looking for?”

“Frequency,” Winston said quickly. “I don’t need…uh…conversion details.”

“You sure?” Jesse asked with a grin as Angela retreated, data presumably gathered. Smol Gabe shifted uncomfortably and abandoned the tablet to disappear behind the toilet screen. “Looks like he’s about to provide some fresh data.”

Angela peered at her device for a moment and then looked up at him. “With these readings, we may have a solution in a few days.” She glanced at the little guy. “How has he been?”

Shrugging, Jesse said, “Pretty good. He’s easy to entertain and happy unless he’s hungry. Or the Strike-Commander forgets to kiss him before he takes a nap,” he snickered. “Making sure he has food small enough for his mouth has been the biggest challenge, and that’s still pretty easy.”

“Naps?” Winston echoed. “Could you, uh, add that information to your report?”

“Sure.”

“Many thanks,” Angela said, giving him a brief hug.

The doctor and scientist filed out, and when Jesse closed the door, he turned to find smol Gabe glaring at it. It was tempting to explain that they wanted more data, to reassure him that they were gone, but instead he grinned.

“Hungry for more of your giant cookie?” he asked brightly.

The scowl evaporated, and his little hands came up. “Give!”

With bits of cookie as rewards, Jesse set the paper tubes up in a zig-zag on the floor and delighted shrieking giggles floated up as smol Gabe raced down each one to devour the morsel placed at the end. It was several minutes before the laughter faded, and his shrunken boss sat between a pair of tubes nibbling his treat. Jesse had just picked him up when Morrison returned.

“There you go,” he said cheerfully, handing the Strike-Commander his smol husband. “Tuckered him out for you.”

The little guy yawned and curled up in his husband’s hands, asleep before Morrison could even kiss him.

“I was thinking maybe nachos for dinner,” he said to keep himself from commenting on the tender expression on his tol boss’s face. “Either that or shrimp scampi.”

“Nachos,” Morrison sighed. “That conference call left me with things that have to get done. I’ll take Gabe with me to my office.”

“You sure?” Jesse asked carefully. “You…seem like you need a break,” he finished lamely, unwilling to say ‘you look like you’re going to pass out’.

“I worry about Gabe less when I can see him,” he said quietly.

Jesse couldn’t argue with that.

---

 

Jack

 

At first, Jack was able to make progress on things. Gabe was napping peacefully, and seeing his little face gave Jack the strength to push aside the growing exhaustion caused by the nagging thought that his husband might be stuck like that forever. Also the interrupted and restless sleep he’d gotten.

“Jack?”

He looked over to see Gabe emerging from his shoebox, a worried look on his little face.

“Just doing some work, babe,” he said with a tired smile as he reached for the tablet. “You’ve got work, too – all those little frogs need to get into their houses.”

As he’d hoped, that distracted his shrunken husband and Jack was able to knock out the report from yesterday and a handful of other pressing tasks – skim this and sign off on it, skim that and say yea or nay – before the effort of keeping his head up and his eyes open became too much to bear.

Jack let his head rest on his crossed arms and slept.

Some time later, he woke to something small tapping his face lightly and peeled one eyelid open to see a blur that resolved into Gabriel grinning at him from way too close.

“What’s up, babe?” he asked blearily.

Gabriel tugged one finger until Jack lifted his head, then ran over to point excitedly at the tablet.

All the frogs were in their houses, and the screen had a CONTINUE button in the center for moving on to level two.

“That’s amazing,” Jack said, smiling at his little husband. “Stay right there, I want to get a picture.”

Jack took a picture of Gabriel proudly standing by the tablet, and then McCree entered with a covered serving platter, complete with a folding stand to set it on.

“Nachos and beer,” he announced, removing the cover with a flourish once the whole thing was secure. “One for you…”

He set a plate in front of Jack, heaped with little round corn chips and a generous amount of cheesy salsa/beef mixture with green onions and black olives and sour cream on top.

“…one for me…”

A second plate, this one with red splotches of hot sauce and chopped jalapenos but otherwise identical, was set on the corner of Jack’s desk.

“And one for you, jefe,” he told Gabriel, setting down a plate covered in the same round corn chips, but each one was topped with a glob of the cheesy mixture, a thin ring of jalapeno, and a drop of hot sauce inside that.

“That’s too hot for him.”

The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was going to say them, and he flushed as both McCree and Gabe looked at him. Slowly, defiantly, Gabe picked up one of his…what, mini tostadas?...and took an enormous bite of it, making sure to get some of the pepper and the hot sauce. Without breaking eye contact, he chewed, swallowed, and stuffed the other half of it into his mouth.

McCree started laughing.

“He’s got this sensitive little system,” the cowboy chuckled, “shouldn’t have booze or caffeine, but he can still handle the heat better than you.”

Gabriel gave his husband a look of pity and patted his hand. “Uh oo,” he said comfortingly.

Jack sighed in defeat. “Love you too,” he told his tiny husband.

The nachos were actually very good and, as with lunch, he and Gabe were sharing a non-alcoholic beer while McCree drank a real one. Probably just as well, because he was pretty sure if he had actual beer – even just one – he’d get completely trashed between how tenuous his consciousness was and how much tolerance he’d lost from years of not being able to drink on duty as Strike-Commander.

Actually, that was a thought. Gabe kept a bottle of some really good scotch in their room for ‘special occasions’. Maybe having a nightcap would help him get something resembling a good night’s sleep…or at the very least, and hour or two of uninterrupted sleep.

By the time they finished dinner, Jack was feeling marginally rested from his nap and Gabriel was a drowsy, roly-poly ball of adorable struggling to keep his eyes open.

“Time for a nap,” he murmured as he scooped his husband up to kiss his forehead and get a tiny kiss in return. “Love you, babe.”

“Uh oo,” Gabriel sighed happily, eyes slipping shut as he fell asleep in Jack’s hands.

Carefully, gently, he tucked his little husband into the shoebox bed and pulled the quilt up to his chin.

“Got more work to do?” McCree asked quietly as he loaded the dishes back onto the tray.

“Yeah. If you could bring his crayons and paper when you bring his second dinner…?”

“You got it, boss,” the cowboy assured him.

“Thanks.”

Jack’s world narrowed to screens and paperwork, and he barely registered sound and motion off to one side. When he was finished with the task he’d been wrestling with, he glanced over to find Gabe scribbling intensely with his crayons. It made him smile, seeing his husband hard at work even though his little head couldn’t hold complex thoughts. Heartened, he opened his correspondence. Maybe he could get some of that backlog cleared away.

He got through half a dozen emails before his eyes started crossing, making it impossible to focus on what he was reading. He closed them, rubbed them, and it felt so good to just sit there for a minute, eyes closed, breathing slowly…

Something brushed against his hand and he jerked awake, breath caught in his throat. He’d fallen asleep with his head on one arm and drooled all over it, while his shrunken husband was using his other hand as a blanket and his thumb as a pillow. There was a little square of paper propped against his screen with a rough drawing of what he guessed was him, judging by the shock of yellow hair and scribbled blue circles that were meant to be eyes. Hearts of every color surrounded his head.

Gabe had drawn him a love note.

Gently, he picked his husband up and kissed him and tucked him into his little bed before turning back to his screen, but he had to cover his mouth and stifle laughter. There, right in the middle of his unfinished email, Gabe had typed “Jack u r the BEST” and he saved a screenshot before backspacing the message away.

“I guess I’m done for the night,” he said softly, shutting everything down.

It was late enough that when he got back to their quarters, McCree was setting up camp on the couch and he already had Gabe’s midnight snacks portioned out.

“Was beginning to think you’d spend the night in your office,” he said cheerfully as Jack walked in.

“Almost did,” he replied, yawning. “Fell asleep in the middle of an email. Gabe drew me a love note and left a second one typed in my drafts.”

Jesse took the shoebox and toilet setup and arranged them on the coffee table. “Well, I’ve got this covered. You get some more of that shut-eye you need so desperately.”

“I plan on it. Good night, McCree,” Jack said as he retreated into the bedroom.

The bottle of scotch was just where Gabe had left it, and Jack took three burning mouthfuls before putting it back. Lightheaded from exhaustion, he wove his way to bed and lay down before the alcohol could kick in.