134: Christmas 2014
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| Ducky's "Friend" |
His grandmother swept him into a warm hug
seconds after she got into Gibbs’ house, Ducky at her side.
“What are you doing here?”
“I knew I was going to be in DC for the
holidays, and Ducky thought this would be a pleasant surprise.”
“Ducky?” Okay, yeah, they’re friends, but
Ducky’s never brought a “friend” to their annual Christmas party before.
Granted Penny’s in town, and she is family…
Ducky smiled up at Tim and took Penny’s coat
from her to hang up on the hooks at the door. “Yes, I’m between campuses right
now, he’s been kind enough to let me stay with him this week. After the third
I’ve got a spot as a guest lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania for their
next semester.”
Or they’re not just friends, and his ability
to pretend they’re just friends has just been shot to hell and gone so…
“Uh huh.” Tim’s giving Ducky a look best
described as just because you’re almost eighty doesn’t mean I won’t kick
your ass if you hurt my grandma. Ducky laid a gentle hand on his arm and
nodded.
“Abby!” Penny wrapped her in an enthusiastic
hug, then pulled back, hands still on Abby’s arms, and spent a moment really
looking at her. A slow smile spread across her face. She looked at Abby, looked
at Tim, and quirked an eyebrow.
Tim quickly glanced at Abby, saw her
minuscule nod of affirmation and quietly said to Penny, wrapping his arm around
her, kissing her cheek, “Yes, in July. Ducky’s probably got a copy of the
sonogram picture on him.”
“You don’t?”
“Of course I do, but we haven’t told
everyone yet, and if I whip one out, it’s pretty obvious. Ducky does it and
everyone’ll assume it’s Sammy.” He pulled back from Penny and took Abby’s hand.
“Oh.” The fact that Penny knows who Sammy is
makes him think her relationship with Ducky is probably quite a bit further
along than he suspected. The fact that she didn’t know about their baby reminds
him that Ducky is an excellent keeper of secrets.
“How long are you in town?”
“Until the second.”
“Unless we catch a case, Shabbat is at Ziva
and Tony’s tomorrow, I bet they’d be happy to add an extra chair to the table.”
Tony came over, kissed Penny on the cheek,
and said, “She’s already been invited.”
“You knew she was here?”
“Of course, hence the invite. When it looked
like this party might be snowed out we made plans to shift this Christmas
surprise to our place for tomorrow.” He nodded toward Gibbs’ living room. “My
dad and L.J. are in there somewhere, I’m sure they’d like to say hi.”
“I’ll find them in a sec.” She hugged Tim
one more time, kissed his cheek, and said, “You’re looking really good, Tim.
Being married agrees with you.”
“Yeah, it does.”
Tim has always been vaguely aware of the
fact that for a lot of people, the real kick of Christmas is having small
children to give presents to.
And while it’s true that Amira, Emily (who
was with her mother this year), Kayla, and Jared filled some of that need,
they’re all sort of old for it.
But this year, it became absurdly clear that
the extended Gibbs clan was a group of people who were craving grandbabies, and
suddenly there was a ten-month-old baby girl with big hazel eyes, curly brown
hair, and a wide drooly grin, just waiting to be doted on.
Molly Palmer, of course, won’t remember this
Christmas. But everyone else noticed that Ducky especially, but Gibbs and
Senior as well, went a bit bonkers on the Christmas presents. And the fact that
LJ and Jackson also showed up with presents for a baby girl, might suggest that
there’s a pretty strong hankering for great-grandbabies as well.
So, Molly sat, adults cooing over her,
basking in their attention, laughing baby laughs, and grinning a six toothed
grin, as Breena and Jimmy opened most of the presents, and she played with the
boxes, chewed on the wrapping paper, snuggled the stuffed corgis (presents from
Ducky), and had as much of an absolute blast as a ten-month-old can.
Senior was holding Molly with one arm and
had the other one wrapped around Ziva. He stared right at Tony and said, “This!
This is what it’s all about.” He kissed both of the girls. “Wife, children,
family! And you aren’t getting any younger. Fifty’s just around the corner,
Junior, and if you don’t want people mistaking you for your kid’s grandfather…”
Tony rolled his eyes and mumbled something
along the lines of, “Yeah, Dad.” As Senior continued on about wanting
grandbabies and how a pregnant woman is the most beautiful thing on
earth—flirting very heavily with Breena as he did it, and eyeballing Abby in a
way that strongly suggested that he’d noticed her breast size was larger, and
he knew exactly why that had happened—and how if Ziva was pregnant come wedding
time she’d be so beautiful people would go blind by staring directly at her.
Eventually he wound down on that and then
his gaze drifted over to Tim and Abby, and he said, grin on his face, “How
about you two, any plans in this direction?”
Abby had been standing in front of Tim,
leaning against his chest. She turned to toward him, the expression on her face
clearly signaling Now? They’d been talking about how to announce it, and so
far the mass email/Facebook update seemed awfully impersonal, but would spread
the news really fast. She was eleven weeks along, so trimester two was right
around the corner, and a better opening wasn’t likely to happen anytime soon.
Tim kissed her shoulder, then said, “Yeah,
we do.” He raised his voice, “Hey!” That got the attention of the crowd. “All
yours, Abby…”
She twined her fingers in his, seeing
everyone watching them. “We’re having a baby in July!”
Granted, this wasn’t news to a lot of the
crowd at Gibbs’ Christmas party, and for that matter, it wasn’t precisely news
to a bunch of the people who weren’t supposed to know about it, either. (Vance
is looking remarkably unshocked, for example.) But there were still lots of
hugs and congratulations along with the traditional questions: are you going to
find out if it’s a boy or girl (yes), what are you hoping for (girl), name
ideas (yes, but they kept that under wraps and left it with the somewhat vague
‘family name’), and a decent amount of commentary about how this place was
going to be hip deep in babies next year.
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| "Fornell and Wendy" |
Now, maybe part of that was that Emily was
with her mother this Christmas, which meant Fornell wasn’t trying to protect
his now fourteen-year-old daughter from the idea that romance, men, and babies
were a whole lot fun. (Fornell was firmly convinced that a career as a nun was
a really good choice for Emily. Those ladies get a great education, go on to do
important things, usually actively making the world a better place, and stay
way the hell away from men. Both Emily and Diane laughed in his face when he
said that to them.)
Of course, it could be that the reason he
wasn’t scowling was hanging on his arm, sharing a cup of eggnog with him, and
laughing with Gibbs about something.
Wendy Eccles was warm, pleasant, fun to be
around, and for the life of him Tim couldn’t understand what she saw in
Fornell.
But whatever it was, he appeared to be
responding well to it, because Fornell’s been smiling all day, and actually
congratulated him about the baby.
Still, the idea of Fornell with a
girlfriend, let alone one who wasn’t some version of acid-tongued Diane, was
just a whole lot for Tim to wrap his mind around. And the idea of Fornell
flirting, which he thought was what’s going on as the two of them share the cup
of eggnog, let alone being affectionate, (Yes, that was Fornell’s hand resting
gently on Wendy’s hip.) really blew Tim’s mind.
Amira was asking Breena and Abby, “Is it
weird?”
“Weird?” Breena replied.
Amira, now ten, and starting to look like
she might share Mike’s long, lean build, stared at Breena’s tummy. “Having a
person inside you? All squirmy and stuff.”
Abby shrugged. “She’s about the size of a golf ball. The docs say she moves
around all the time, but I can’t feel it yet. So mostly, for me, I’m just
really tired all the time.”
“I am so glad to be past that. More glad to
be done throwing up.” Breena patted her tummy. “Sammy’s pretty quiet. Molly
felt like she was training to be a gymnast in there, but Sammy’s just chilling
out. Really, it doesn’t get weird until the end, when you can see them moving
around. That’s kind of weird. Like, you’re on the sofa, and then your stomach
suddenly bulges and shifts. That’s almost creepy.”
Jimmy kissed Breena’s neck, handing her a
cup of punch. “Not creepy at all. You get to feel her scooting all over the
place, but if you’re the dad half of it, it’s not really real until you can see
that little elbow or whatever poking out. And toward the end, you can sort of play
little games with them, tap on the stomach and see her kick back. That was so
cool.”
Amira just stared at Jimmy, eyes wide. “That’s weird.”
Abby put her arm around Jimmy. “Yeah, but we
love him anyway.”
“So, how far along are you?” Wendy had
drifted over and asked Breena.
“Nineteen weeks.”
“Wow! You look amazing! I would have guessed
closer to sixteen weeks. I know with my second boy about ten minutes after the
pregnancy test turned positive I was in maternity jeans.”
Breena half-smiled. About ten minutes after
the test had turned positive she had gained five pounds. Two months later they
and five of their buddies were gone. “I had morning sickness so bad I was
throwing up twice a day even on the anti-nausea drugs. I’ve only been feeling
good for the last month.”
Wendy winced, and Amira looked like she was
seriously reconsidering ever having children. “I’m so sorry. I remember being
sick like that. Not fun at all.”
“Yeah. Only upside is that I look great.
Losing ten pounds over the course of the first trimester’ll do that. So, how
old are your kids?”
“Trevor’s twenty-six, John is twenty-four,
and Dave is twenty-two. We had them over at my place last night.”
“Any grandbabies?”
“John has a little girl.”
The girls continued to chat about the soon
to be babies McGee and Palmer, and got to know Wendy Eccles a bit better.
“You got it done?” Fornell asked as Gibbs
led him into the basement.
Gibbs flashed Fornell his of course I
have it done, I wouldn’t have brought you down here if I didn’t look.
“Good.”
Gibbs handed him the intricately carved
rosewood jewelry box. Three months ago Tobias had asked him if he could make
one for him. It was small, delicate, a rose carved into the top, and inside
there was a space for the ring that was currently sitting in Tobias’ sock
drawer, waiting to be put into a box worth giving to a woman you want to marry.
“When you going to ask?”
“New Year’s.”
Gibbs smiled at his friend. “I like this
one.”
“You liked the last one, too.”
Gibbs smirked. “I think you should marry
this one.”
“Me too.” Fornell grinned. “Let’s get back
up there before they notice we’re missing.”
“I’ve got to ask, McGee, did you get
taller?” Senior asked.
“It’s the boots; he always wears those
things with the skirt, Dad.” Tony handed his father another cup of Jackson’s
eggnog.
“No, it’s not the boots,” Penny added. “By
the way, I really like the kilt, Tim.”
“Thanks, Penny.”
“It’s always good to see your playful side
come out, and even better to see a man who doesn’t feel pressured to conform to
patriarchal societal norms of the gender binary.”
“Uh… thanks. And no, I’m not taller. Just
have better posture. Started doing some yoga with Abby, and I’ve been standing
straighter because of it.”
“Yoga!” Penny’s grinning about this, and
he’s really hoping she’s not about to start asking about Tantra, while both
Senior and Junior DiNozzo look really surprised by that.
“Yeah. It’s… um… a lot harder than it looks,
but it’s good exercise.”
“Exercise?” Tony didn’t buy it. “No, no, no.
Exercise involves moving around, fast, heart pumping, sweat pouring down your
body. Exercise is not twisting yourself into a pretzel and breathing deeply.”
“I didn’t say it was a sport.”
“That’s because you aren’t totally insane.”
Palmer headed by, plate of goodies for
Breena in hand, and stopped. “What’s not a sport?”
“Yoga.” Senior said.
“Duh.”
“It’s also not exercise.”
“Really, Tony?” Jimmy was suddenly looking
very cocky.
“Really. Meditation, sure. Stretching, yep.
Exercise, nope. You aren’t sweating; it isn’t exercise.”
“Uh huh. Here, hold this.” He handed the
plate to Penny and did something. All Tim knows is that it was graceful,
elegant, slow, and then Jimmy was doing a handstand, feet in the air,
supporting himself on his forearms, and from there he got into a one-handed
handstand, and then, once again, slowly, gracefully got himself back out of it,
then hopped back up, took the plate from Penny, and said to Tony. “If you
aren’t sweating, you’re doing it wrong. Gotta give this to Breena.”
Tony and Senior just stared at the place
where Jimmy had been. Penny blinked slowly, then said to Tim, “Can you do
that?”
He shook his head, eyes wide. “Nope, and
even if I could, I certainly wouldn’t in a kilt.”
That got the other three laughing.
Things were starting to wind down, getting
quieter. Because of the snow most of the crew had decided that heading home
earlier than usual was a good plan. Tim was helping to wrap up some of the food
when he looked over and saw something that made him smile. He got a quick
picture of it, and then went to find Gibbs.
“Hey, you want a copy of this?”
He showed Gibbs the shot of Jackson on the
easy chair, Molly sleeping on him, sucking her thumb, snuggling one of the
stuffed corgis, as he patted her back.
Gibbs nodded.
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