#lifewhatisthat

The house was everything Jack had ever dreamed of, and at the same time, none of it. Mostly because they didn’t have a dog yet. He was still working on that, though Gabe insisted that they had to have enough funds to put Jesse through college, and a good college, Jackie, my son isn’t going to be writing instruction manuals for spare change in between novels. As far as Jack was concerned, Jesse could have a fantastic career as is, but he wasn’t about to get between Gabriel Reyes and his dream of well-educated children.

The house was, besides that, a mess. Even though two (long, exhausting) weeks had passed since they moved in, the hallways were still crammed with boxes, to the point where the only room in the house where anyone could actually move was Sombra’s room, because she insisted on unpacking and sorting her every possession as soon as possible so that she could continue hacking the universe or whatever. Jack had been good with guns, back in the day, but he never had much of a knack for computers, so he just nodded and listened as politely as he could manage when his daughter detailed her schemes for world domination. At least her room was clean.

Therefore, when Gabriel was tearing half the house apart because he couldn’t find a single razor anywhere, Jack reminded him that one of their children had, in fact, unpacked her stuff, and that maybe she would know where literally anything in the house was. “And you know,” he added, “all those times when I said we should really start unpacking and you said no, this is the Big Game, it’s the world cup—”

“The World Cup is a championship, Jack. It’s sixty-four matches.”

Jack fought not to roll his eyes. “You and the kids could’ve tag-teamed them or something. And then you’d have razors. You don’t trust Sombra to catch all the good plays?”

“Sombra, yes. Jesse, no,” Gabe chuckled. He had a point; Jesse had the attention span of a goldfish, when it came to things like marathoning soccer games. “You look perfectly clean-shaven. Are you hiding razors from me?”

Jack snorted. “As entertaining as it is to watch you run around like a chicken with its head cut off, I’m not actually trying to impede progress here. Why do you need razors so desperately?”

A subtle glance to each side, and Gabriel moved in close enough that Jack could catch the scent of his ruggedly warm cologne. “Jesse’s got five entire chin hairs. No better time than the present!”

“You’re teaching him to shave?” Jack struggled to keep his voice low, though he clearly conveyed his excitement well enough, by the smile warming Gabriel’s stoic face. “I would’ve helped you look if you told me that!”

Gabriel shook his head, even as he leaned in to peck Jack on the cheek and nuzzle against his hairline. “You can go find Sombra, see if she knows anything. Since, as you said, she’s the organized member of this family.”

“I’m right. You’ll see,” teases Jack as he extracts himself from the surrounding boxes and heads for the stairs. As much as Sombra tries to hide her surveillance hideout, or whatever codename she comes up with on a given week, Jack knows full well that she has taken up residence in the attic crawlspace for good.

Or, at least, for as long as an investment in some bulk purple velvet to make slapdash curtains is good. Sombra tries to be discrete, but she’s also somehow more dramatic than her father, so it’s not hard to find her. When Jack pulls the curtain back, she tilts her head to one side, but doesn’t move otherwise; of course she knew he was on his way. She would claim that she’s tracking him, but he knows that she’s just very aware of her surroundings. And it’s hard to walk quietly when you’re Jack Morrison-sized.

“Are you shaving your fingers?” he murmurs, flopping onto the floor next to his daughter. “I hope you’re at least using lotion or something.”

She snorts. “Papi didn’t teach me to shave dry, dad, don’t worry.”

Jack shakes his head and rests his hand in the center of her back, making sure that she knows he’s about to touch her before he does. “Is this some kind of new fad? Hairless fingers?”

“Yes. It’s to go with my new fashion line, Boredom by Sombra.” She pulls a tissue out of the fuschia box in front of her and wipes the loose hair off one thumb.

The pack of razors is open on the floor in front of her. They’re the really nice ones that Gabriel buys, since he considers touching up his precisely-shaped goatee to be an art form, and apparently they came with one free super-soft-smooth-curvy-gentle-feminine women’s razor as a bonus, because the one in Sombra’s hand is, of course, purple. “So. You don’t want Jesse to shave? I don’t think any of us want to know where his peach fuzz is going.”

Sombra’s mouth twists downward on one side, and she shrugs, gentle enough that Jack’s hand barely moves. “I don’t know, I just wanted to mess with Papi. It’s… whatever.”

“And what about Jesse? Punishing him for his dad’s misdeeds?”

“He totally deserves it,” she chuckles. “Little shit.”

“Language.”

She rolls her eyes and finally turns to face him. “Whatever you say, bigger shit. No, biggest shit. Papi is bigger shit.”

“Sure. I doubt that has anything to do with hoarding razors, though,” prompts Jack.

The laptop in front of Sombra’s crossed legs crackles, like interference on an audio transmission, though no sound was coming through a moment before. “Fine, I’ll bite. I don’t want him to go to college.”

No surprise there. “He knows, Sombra, and that’s why he’s gonna come back all the time, remember? That’s why we moved in the first place. So you two could both have the support you need while you’re at school.”

“That makes it sound like he’s my therapist or something.”

Jack frowns. “He’s not. We’re all going to miss him, though, and it makes perfect sense for you to worry about how our family will change when he’s not around every day.”

“You two are already like high-class military helicopter dads,” she grumbles.

“I hope that’s a compliment.”

“Of course.”

Shaking his head, Jack nudges the pack of razors closer to her. “This is a really big deal for Jess. He was worried that it would take him way longer than other boys to start growing facial hair.”

“Yeah, I know.” She’s avoiding his eyes again, looking a bit guilty but mostly like she’d rather be moping in her hideout alone. “His life is so—he has so much fun now. Things happen to him, and he doesn’t have to go digging in the deep web for entertainment all day.”

Jack presses his lips together. “Again, the fifth page of an eBay search for some obscure computer part does not count as the ‘deep web.’”

“Like you would know,” she jabs back.

“Touché.” He rubs her back in a few slow circles, then takes his hand away before she gets too tense. To his surprise, she follows the touch, and ends up nearly faceplanting in his shoulder. “You know, if you can shave your fingers, you can handle a face. Why don’t you ask Gabe if you can help teach Jesse?”

She wrinkles her nose, but still turns to look up at him with guarded hope in her eyes. “Isn’t it some big father-son thing?”

“It can be, but you’re just as important to Jesse. And you’re also the only person in this house with a clean room at the moment. As far as I’m concerned, you can do whatever you want.”

Those are Sombra’s favorite words. She jumps up and grabs the razors off the floor, and before Jack can drag his middle-aged body off the floor, she’s already tumbling down the stairs at full speed. “Hey, jackasses!” he hears her shouting. “Dad says I can do whatever I want. You’re both getting haircuts!”

“That’s not what I meant,” Jack yells after her, not that she cares.

By the time he gets downstairs, Jesse and Sombra are swordfighting with razors—thankfully still capped—and Gabe is looking on in outright horror, unable to do much once his teenage children get this wild. Jack just bites sidles up to him and wraps his arm around his husband’s waist. “See, you can’t pay any more attention to one than the other, or else they get all survival-of-the-fittest in our brand new living room.”

“They definitely get this from you,” Gabe mutters.

“Slander.”

If there was ever a thing that simultaneously boggled Jesse beyond belief and also made him more excited than a kid in a candy store, it was the Morrison-Reyes’ household's attitude towards holidays. Whenever any holiday that involved festivities of some sort rolled around, without fail, the house would be covered from floor to ceiling with enough decorations to rival even seasonal shops. And it wasn't just the decorations that embodied the holidays either, Jack and Gabriel themselves would go full out in their celebrations, cheerful and excitable and dressed to the nines in whatever apparel was most fitting. Hell, Gabriel even went so far as to hand-make costumes for the entire family for Halloween, each and every one just as detailed and elaborate as the next; they even had a dedicated shelf for all of the awards for Best Halloween Costumes Gabriel had won over the years — many of them earned before even Jesse and Sombra were adopted.

Nevertheless, despite the somewhat jaded attitudes Jesse and Sombra held about the various holidays thanks to their years spent at the orphanage, Jack and Gabriel's collective holiday spirit was simply too contagious to fight, and after a rather rocky first year in the Reyes-Morrison household, Sombra and Jesse found themselves just as excited about seasonal festivities and holiday celebrations as their adoptive fathers.

For certain, no one could ever accuse Jesse of lacking holiday spirit. If anything, Jesse had it in spades just like his fathers, as evidenced by his excited shouting at six in the morning on Christmas day, yelling for everyone in the house to wake up to open presents. Sombra wasn't quite as keen on waking up so early, but after a rather excitable shake that jolted her to full alertness, the two children all but hurtled themselves into their parents’ bed like twin wrecking balls.

“WAKE UP! IT'S CHRISTMAS!!” they squealed, slapping loudly on the comforter and playfully bapping the sleeping figures with pillows they had taken from their own rooms. “WAKE UP! PRESENTS! MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

After several moments with no response, the two children looked at each other with concern and stopped. Jesse pulled down the covers, wary of what he'd find, and to his and Sombra's surprise, what laid beneath the blankets weren't their fathers at all, but piles of pillows along with a rather sizeable stuffed purple rabbit — Jesse reckoned it was almost the same size as Sombra — with a bow on its head and a gift tag on its ear that read “ Sombra ”.

“It's a bunny!!” Sombra shouted gleefully, pulling the stuffed animal from under the covers and squeezing it in a tight hug. Though happy his sister got something she'd wanted, Jesse was still confused as to where his parents had gone to, and began to look around for clues.

He didn't have to wait for long, however, as the deep sound of someone clearing their throat rumbled from the door and immediately drew his attention. Sure enough, in the doorway stood Gabriel, dressed in an almost obnoxious amount of Christmas-themed clothes: a poofy Santa hat on his head, the ugly laughing reindeer sweater that read  “You SLEIGH me”,  flannel pajama pants patterned with elves and presents and trees all over, and slippers in the shape of Santas covering each foot.

“It's Christmas,” Gabriel said, “What are you kids still in bed for?” He snorted at his own joke, and turned to make his way down the hall, but not before nodding his head in a gesture for the children to follow. The two scrambled from the mess of pillows and covers, shouting in delight as they followed their father downstairs into the living room, nearly tripping over themselves in glee.

The smell of pancakes and cookies and bread greeted them the moment their small slippered feet crossed the doorway, and they immediately plopped themselves down on the couch and on the floor in front of the coffee table to tuck into the traditional Reyes-Morrison Christmas breakfast. Neither of them wasted any time digging into their meal, the two of them rumbling in content and happy noises as they stuffed their faces with the fluffiest pancakes ever known to man and the sweetest fruit preserves courtesy of the Morrison family farm.

“Where's daddy?” Sombra asked, after cutting into her second pancake. Suddenly realizing Jack was nowhere to be found — he hadn't even heard a single sound from the kitchen since he'd woken up — Jesse too swiveled his head around to look.

“He had to do a quick errand,” Gabriel answered smoothly, taking a sip from his coffee.

“For eggs again?” Sombra asked, knowing Jack's almost chronic issue of running out of eggs every Christmas due to his overzealous amount of baking on those mornings. Not that anyone in the house could complain about it, though, what with the piles and piles of baked goodies that lasted them through the entire week and into the new year — even after losing half to the guests at the holiday party they hosted at their own home.

“Something like that,” came the somewhat cryptic answer. Jesse eyed Gabriel suspiciously, and as if to distract him from investigating any further, Gabriel added, “He'll be back any minute now, so after you finish stuffing your faces, each of you figure out which present you're gonna open. Remember, only one for now. You'll get to open the rest later at the party, okay?”

All suspicion went out the window, as just like that, a switch was flipped and Sombra and Jesse began to chew furiously through their food, motivated by their one-track minds now focused on the colorfully-wrapped mysteries beneath the trees.

“Pace yourselves, for crying out loud! I raise children, not animals!” Gabriel playfully scolded, trying not to laugh at his children's excitement, “If either of you choke, I'm gonna take your presents for myself, y’hear? And then neither of you will-”

Before he could even finish his sentence,noises at the door interrupted him, followed by the sound of a familiar voice calling out.

“Babe, I’m home!” came Jack’s voice, echoing from the foyer. “Come help me?”

“Yup! Coming!” Gabriel called back, getting up from his place on the couch. Jesse and Sombra moved to follow, but Gabriel shook his head and said, “Nah, you two finish your breakfast first.  Slowly , please. Your father and I would rather not come back in here to see the two of you passed out because you gluttons couldn’t pace yourselves,” before leaving the room.

The words  “No peeking,”   didn’t need to be said, as Jesse and Sombra knew very well of the repercussions that would occur if they did, and neither of them had the gumption to take Jack’s   “I’m-not-mad-at-you-just-very-disappointed”  face head on, which somehow had the power of Grandma Morrison’s and Ana Amari’s combined with the power of a sad puppy. Not even Gabriel himself could brave such a look for more than a few seconds before crumbling like the tops of one of Jack’s famous Christmas coffee cakes.

The two children watched as Gabriel walked down the hall to greet Jack at the door, smiling that tender smile of his that he always had on whenever the two of them were together, and pulled him into an embrace.

“Gross! Get a room!” Jesse called out playfully.

Jack merely stuck his tongue out at Jesse from over Gabriel’s shoulder, making a show of hugging his husband even tighter and rocking side to side in place to emphasize the embrace. Gabriel played along, as usual, even going so far as to say, “Look, Jackie, mistletoe!” as he pointed up to the flowery sprig hanging from the light hanging in the foyer before kissing his husband sweetly on the lips, the both of them making exaggerated “Muah muah muah!” kissing noises to taunt their children even further.

The noises of laugher and exaggerated affection continued for a little longer until the two men disappeared back out the door to collect what Jack had brought home in the car, and the children went back to their breakfast, eating slowly and methodically as Gabriel had requested of them.

After finishing their meal, the two watched the Christmas movie Gabriel had originally put onto the television for background noise, barely cognizant of the noises and clamoring of their fathers in the kitchen.

“Jesse? Sombra? Could you two come to the kitchen, please?” they heard Jack call to them suddenly. The two looked at each other questioningly, as if the other had the answer as to what their father would possibly be calling them for. When they both could only respond to the other with an equally confused shrug, they figured it would be best to heed Jack’s request as quickly as possible.

They padded to the kitchen, wary and clueless until the distinct and curious sounds of yapping called their attention.

Immediately, Jesse broke into an excited run at the sound, so eager to confirm his suspicions as to the noises’ origins that he nearly slipped and fell face first onto the hardwood floor had it not been for his clever little sister on his heels pulling him upright before he toppled over. Not a split second after he got his bearings back did the two of them break back into a run, barrelling towards the kitchen in their curious glee.

The sight of their fathers standing behind a waist-high gate in the kitchen doorway that had never been there before greeted them, and the two children stood in awe and anticipation as to what that could only mean.

“Merry Christmas, Jesse!” Jack and Gabriel called out, stepping aside with flourish and waving hands to reveal a very large box with a bow stuck to the side.

As if on cue, a furry head poked up from inside the box, letting out a happy yelp as if greeting the sight of the two children. Though the dog seemed to be missing an eye, that didn’t put any sort of damper onto the children’s spirits.

“A pupper!” “A dog!” Sombra and Jesse both cried out in unison, bouncing in place with excitement. Jesse clambored to unlatch the gate, hands shaking in excitement at the prospect of meeting his present face-to-face. He’d always wanted a dog, but had never even thought to ask for one - let alone even put it on his Christmas wish list. After several moments of fumbling, Gabriel moved to assist, only for the both of them to be brushed aside as Sombra competently opened the gate and all but forced her brother into the kitchen before her.

Just as the gate clicked shut behind them, Jack tugged on the ribbon and undid a hidden latch on the side of the large box, letting the front flop forward down onto the floor and freeing the golden retriever — which seemed much larger now that Jesse was up close — of its confines. Without any hesitation at all, the dog rushed forward, just as eager to meet the children as they were to meet her, and all but knocked Jesse to the floor as she bounced up to lick his face.

“Oh my goodness!” Jesse exclaimed happily, laughing as the dog covered him with wet, sloppy licks, barking happily all the while. His hands rubbed at her all over, petting and stroking the soft fur with just as much affection, if not even more so. “Thank you! Thank you! I love it! Thank you!” he cried to his fathers, tears of happiness forming at the corners of his eyes. How could they have possibly known?

“Sombra overheard you talking to Genji about your dog-walking one day,” Gabriel spoke up, as if to answer Jesse’s unasked question, “And made a case for us to get you a dog for Christmas.”

“We were thinking of getting you one anyway,” Jack chimed in, “I mean, what dog-loving 12-year-old boy doesn’t deserve a dog of his own?”

“So,” Gabriel gestured to the furry bundle of joy still piling Jesse with affection, “Merry Christmas, Jesse.”

“You’re welcome,” Sombra said smugly, taking a sugar cookie from the pile on the kitchen island.

“Thank you all so much,” Jesse replied, nearly in tears at how grateful he was, “I love it! Thank you!”

“Her,” Gabriel corrected, “We got her from the pound and kept her at Ana’s for the last week or so-”

“We still need to thank her for that,” Jack interrupted.

“Isn’t that what the limited edition tea set we got her is for?”

“No, that’s just her normal Christmas present, babe.”

“Anyway,” Gabriel shook his head at Jack, pulling the conversation back to the original topic, “They said her name’s Peppermint, but I don’t think she’ll mind if you give her a different name, do you?”

“What do you want to name her, Jesse?” Jack asked.

“Don’t pick something stupid,” Sombra scolded, stuffing the rest of the cookie into her mouth and reaching for another.

Jesse paused for a second in thought, hands resting idly on the dog’s neck. As if to give him the chance to think, the dog pulled back sat down, panting happily as she waited for Jesse’s hands to resume.