They had been dating for two and a half years when Uncle Jethro decided he'd give this marriage thing another go. He'd asked Grandmother for permission, and then he'd asked Dr. Mallard, his oldest friend (in both senses of "oldest") and a good friend to our aunt, to go along with him to help find a ring for Aunt Kate.
He'd finally bought one and had brought it in to NCIS to get one last opinion, but that turned out to be a huge mistake. While Dr. Mallard was looking at it, Abby got a good look at it and figured out what was happening nd blurted it out to the entire bullpen: "IS THAT RING FOR KATE?!"
"Hey, boss, you going to try this marriage thing again?" Tony ribbed, then quickly shut up when Uncle Jethro glared.
"Congratulations, boss!" McGee was just as excited. "I'm sure you can make it work this time. I mean," he replied, instantly realizing his ginormous faux pas, "I mean...um, not that you didn't make it work the other times...maybe it wasn't entirely...I'm sure you'll be very happy."
All the while, Abby was bouncing up and down, from excitement or from caffeine overload, chanting, "Gibbs is going to ask Kate to marry him! Gibbs is going to ask Kate to marry him! Gibbs is going to ask Kate to marry him!"
"Maybe that means he'll go easy on me," Tony mused, and then brightened at the thought, then joined Abby, bouncing around the office, hand in hand, cheering, "Gibbs is going to ask Kate to marry him!"
Kate just happened to enter the bullpen then, headed back to her own, new team, and Tony hollered at her across the way, "Will you marry Gibbs?"
"Tony!" Abby scolded. "Why did you do that! You know how much Gibbs likes to propose!"
There were snickers, and a couple comments about "practice making perfect" until a sweeping Gibbs glare shut them all up.
The whole bullpen was on their feet, watching, quietly eager, and Uncle Jethro was looking pretty exasperated, and Aunt Kate was just standing there, staring at them all dumbfoundedly.
Abby went over, catching up Kate's hands in anticipation. "Kate?"
"YES!" she laughed, and Abby and Aunt Kate just hugged each other and laughed, hopping up and down and hugging as the entire bullpen was cheering and clapping and whistling.
Needless to say, Uncle Jethro hadn't wanted it to go this way.
Proposing to somebody in public, Uncle Jethro once said, was a dumb, dumb idea. Skywriters, banners in ballparks - they were a waste of money and most of all, you'd never get a straight answer. Most women would never want to embarass their boyfriends in front of people, and what if Brunehilde really wanted to say 'no'? She'd not do it in front of all those beach suntanners who saw the skywriting plane. They'd toss her out to the sharks.
He was pretty sure that Aunt Kate was just saving him face, and the more he thought about it, the more sure he was that Aunt Kate didn't really want to marry him. She was young - much younger than he, beautiful, and with her whole life and career ahead of her. So he made up his mind to go to her apartment and give her one more chance to say no. This time, it wasn't Tony proposing for him, and it wasn't Kate answering to Abby instead of to him.
"Nobody's here," he began awkwardly, standing in front of her with his hands in his pockets.
"I can see that," Aunt Kate replied, smiling up at him tenderly.
"Now THINK," Uncle Jethro said firmly. "One more time. Do you really, really want to marry ME?"
She was shocked at his question. "What?! YES!"
"Are you very, very sure." Because Uncle Jethro wasn't sure she did.
"YES!" Aunt Kate shouted, her initial shock beginning to turn into annoyance. For some reason, Uncle Jethro never seemed to believe that Aunt Kate really loved him. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Why WOULD you?"
"JETHRO GIBBS!" she hollered. "Give me the d-mn ring." She snatched it from him and shoved it onto her finger, then glared at him. Again.
Unfortunately for Uncle Jethro, Memorial Day was in a few weeks, and Grandmother and Aunt Kate thought that was a fabulous time to bring Uncle Jethro to meet the rest of the family. Aunt Kate had tried to bring him before, but they got so few days off and the one time she could come he had to go to a terrorism conference. This was the first time anybody was going to get to meet him, except Grandmother.
Uncle Jethro had done a round-trip to our home, flying in and out the same day, to ask Grandmother for permission to marry our aunt. We three had been on a camping trip with Uncle Jay, our oldest uncle, and our cousins. When we discovered that we men of the Todd family had been "conveniently" away when Jethro Gibbs came, we were unimpressed. We were sure somebody as old as he certainly didn't deserve our aunt Kate and his "sneaking" around behind our backs to talk to our grandmother certainly didn't get him any points.
We ourselves were also pretty sure he was going to be boring, and he was nearly as old as OUR parents, and Aunt Kate was only fifteen years older than we were (although it seemed much more because of how she took care of us). From Aunt Kate's stories, Tony sounded a lot more fun - like one of us trapped in an adult's body, like Robin Williams in "Jack" or something. We were sure Uncle Jethro was going to be an old, boring adult.
Before Grandfather died, he'd admonished us and our uncles to take care of Grandmother and our aunts. We'd just assumed that with all the guns she wore when she was at work, and the fact that she'd protected the President, no one would try anything funny with Aunt Kate. We'd seen plenty of her boyfriends in our time come and go. We certainly hadn't counted on her LETTING some guy do that, especially some old wheezer like Uncle Jethro looked like in the photos.
H-ll, he had gray hair, and we weren't even sure he wasn't in the Just for Men club.
Grandmother told us to behave ourselves. We wouldn't hurt the man, we promised. He'd walk away without a scratch. Physical scratch.
When they arrived that weekend, we greeted Aunt Kate with (manly) kisses and offered to take in her luggage. Grandmother nodded at us approvingly as she ushered Aunt Kate in to look at a new painting she'd gotten a few months ago, leaving us in the garage with the man who wanted to marry our aunt.
Alan handed out latex gloves to Bill and to Charlie as he put his own on. He gave Uncle Jethro a look, then tugged up on the back of Uncle Jethro's sports jacket. "Look at the suit. Sears."
"He's wearing a BRACELET," Charlie huffed, tugging at the metal chain on Gibbs' wrist with a gloved hand.
Bill pulled out a tape measure and measured Uncle Jethro's height. "Only six foot. The lawyer Aunt Kate was dating before him was 6'2"," he said.
"His chest's wider," Charlie replied, spanning Grandmother's cloth tape measure along Uncle Jethro's back.
"Take a look at his hair," Alan puzzled. "Interesting haircut, mister."
"Starting to thin a little," Bill replied, shaking his head. "Maybe he does use Just for Men."
We had up a whole string of ways to be rid of Jethro Gibbs. Our upstairs bathroom had a clear shower curtain, and worse, whenever somebody was showering and the toliet was flushed, the shower water would turn piping hot. We were sure that we could scare the daylights out of Uncle Jethro - whom Aunt Kate said was very private - by parading through the bathroom. Alan and Charlie were going to go in to brush their teeth while he showered, and after they left, Bill would go flush a bug down the toliet. We were also planning next to help Aunt Kate "make" coffee in the morning. We'd managed to scare off more than one irritating boyfriend that way.
Our uncles were coming that noon time, and if we couldn't do it by then, they'd have this loser run out of town by the end of the day.
Uncle Jay, our oldest uncle who was a year younger than Mom, lived nearby in a big house. Whenever they came by, Uncle John and his family lived over there. Uncle Jerry, our youngest uncle, generally stayed in a hotel, but this weekend he and his family were staying with us. With our small house, Grandmother gave Uncle Jerry and his family the den in the basement. She gave Bill's bedroom to Aunt Kate and Charlie's to Uncle Jethro, packing the three of us into Alan's bedroom. We didn't mind, not for Aunt Kate - she'd basically helped to raise us, and we loved her to death - but for this stranger...?
"There's no need for that," Uncle Jethro said the minute Grandmother and Aunt Kate had headed downstairs. Surprisingly, he turned correctly to Charlie, picking out the owner of the bedroom without a problem - no small feat with us triplets, considering that our grandparents sometimes mixed us up. "I don't doubt you'd like to sleep in your own bed, and I'll sleep on the floor. Let's take one of those futon mattresses back into your room."
Charlie was stunned. Never quick on his feet, he stared dumbly at him, and then managed, "Huh?"
"I was in the Marines. We were packed like ants on a log in foxholes, and we slept jampacked in planes in pallets slung between cargo seats," Uncle Jethro replied, shaking his head. "I'm totally used to it. And there's no reason for you three to be all packed up like that in one room."
Charlie blinked, then helped Uncle Jethro move the futon mattress back into his room. He came running back in a few minutes. "I don't want to do the bathroom trick anymore," he whispered.
"Yeah," Alan replied, shaking his head. Uncle Jethro was pretty cool if he didn't mind sharing rooms with teenagers.
"It doesn't matter," Ben concluded. "He's most likely had to shower with his Marine buddies all around, anyhow, and in all kinds of cold and hot water. We couldn't faze him."
That was when we decided that we wanted Uncle Jethro as part of our family, and d-mm-t if we wouldn't make sure Aunt Kate wasn't going to lose him.
We discovered, much to our horror, that Uncle Jethro got up at insane hours of the morning and didn't go to bed until late. It explained, of course, the incessant coffee drinking. But Aunt Kate always needed her sleep, and SOMEBODY had to entertain him. We devised a rotating schedule, where Alan and Bill got up early with Uncle Jethro until Aunt Kate woke up. Bill took an afternoon nap - his first since preschool - and then he and Charlie would stay up with Uncle Jethro while Alan went to bed early so he could wake up early enough the next morning.
We all learned how to make strong coffee really fast.
"Aunt Kate is generally up early," Alan would say at their breakfast, when they watched the sun come up. "She had to, because of us."
"We'd be up running around," Bill would continue. "She'd cook us breakfast sometimes. She's a really good cook."
"I'll bet she is," Uncle Jethro would smile.
"She'd bake us stuff a lot for after school," Charlie would say that afternoon, opening up a tin of peanut butter cookies. "She makes all kinds of cookies and cakes and pies, and she can make them from scratch if she has the time. She's a great baker."
"So I noticed," Uncle Jethro would chuckle.
"She's good with kids, too," Bill would add. "She helped Grandmother and Grandfather raise us. Grandma used to say that she didn't know how they'd keep up with us without Aunt Kate."
Aunt Kate, however, was less than impressed.
"Mom," she complained to Grandmother. "Jethro's going to think they're trying to get rid of me."
"A man his age ought to be wiser than that, hon," said Grandmother mildly.
"They sound like they're trying to sell something," Aunt Kate groaned. "Me."
"It just means they want him to stay around. Remember what they did to that lawyer you brought home?"
Aunt Kate rolled her eyes. "Do you know what else they're doing? They keep running around turning off the lights in whatever room Jethro and I go into. 'Saves electricity,' they say. Then they crank up the air conditioning and when I asked them to turn it down, they say something like 'I'm sure you two can find other ways to keep warm'!"
"Honey," Grandmother consoled her. "Be glad. They like Jethro."
"MOM!"
"I will talk to them, honey. But stop worrying."
Uncle Jay had three kids, and Uncle John two. Uncle Jay's were about to enter middle school; Uncle John's were younger. They had been instrumental in running off Aunt Kate's pilot boyfriend when she brought him by. But now we were afraid that they'd scare off Uncle Jethro, too.
It got worse. Uncle Jerry had four children - two sets of twins. The first set was three, the second, two.
It was impossible to keep a handle on them. They weren't bad - they were just EVERYWHERE. We'd turn off the lights, and then a few minutes later there would be a loud crash and then crying, because apparently one of the twins had been playing hide and go seek under the couch and then couldn't see the table when she was crawling out. She'd spent the rest of the afternoon happily snuggled in Aunt Kate's lap or wedged between our aunt and Uncle Jethro, refusing to play with anybody else.
With Uncle John and Uncle Jay's kids here too, it was still a constant running in and out. That all our little cousins loved Uncle Jethro was clear - whether or not it was going to help us keep him as our newest relative was far less so.
"'Ncle Jet-ro, can you zip me up?" (It was eighty degrees outside.)
"Uncle Jethro, can you tie my shoe?"
"Uncle Jethro, can you read us a bedtime story?"
"Uncle Jethro, carve me a wood animal too!"
"Uncle Jethro, can I sit by you at dinner?"
"Uncle Jethro, can you cut my meat?"
"Uncle Jethro, want some SEAFOOD?" (Which was followed by the kid opening his mouth and showing him mushy, chewed up food.) "Seafood? Get it?"
"Uncle Jethro, I want to ride in your boat!"
"Uncle Jethro, do you LIIIIIIIKE Aunt Kate?"
"Uncle Jethro, my bear got a booboo. Can you kiss it?"
"Uncle Jethro, I got a booboo. Can you kiss it?"
"'Ncle Jet-ro, I's hot! Can you unzip my jacket?"
No amount of candy could keep them from leaving Aunt Kate and Uncle Jethro alone to have some time together. We promised to let them play with us on our video games. We promised loads of ice cream when their parents weren't looking. We tried tying them to the furniture.
At evening time, Aunt Kate and Uncle Jethro went outside to walk, and it was like a day care center out on a field trip. Each of the older children were in charge of a younger child, and Aunt Kate and Uncle Jethro each carried one of the youngest twins because they didn't want anybody else. When they got back to the house and sat down on the porch swing, we watched in horror as both sets of twins crawled into their laps and Uncle Jay's kids happily wedged themselves in between, with Uncle John's at their feet. It was awful.
Even at nighttime it was never ending.
"'Ncle Jet-ro," whispered a small voice from the kitchen doorway.
Uncle Jethro and Aunt Kate turned from their seats in the porch swing to see one of Uncle Jerry's two-year-olds standing in the doorway with his stuffed dog.
"Hug'n tiss?" he whispered, tiptoing out to the bench. He got a hug and a kiss from each of them. Beaming, he went back into the house.
Uncle Jethro put his arm around Aunt Kate's shoulders and settled in for a quiet night.
Aunt Kate just laughed at him. "You are truly an only child."
"What?"
Two minutes later, Uncle Jerry's other children stood at the doorway. "WE WANT HUGS TOO!"
We finally complained to Grandmother about the children ruining Aunt Kate and Uncle Jethro's time together. She just laughed and laughed. When we complained about it to our uncles, they just said, "Good. Those two aren't supposed to be getting romantic."
"Grandma," Alan groaned when Grandmother wouldn't do anything. "We like this boyfriend and don't want him to leave! Aunt Kate brings home some losers sometimes."
"Another loser," Uncle Jay grumbled.
"He's a nice boy," Grandmother reprimanded her oldest son.
"Not a boy," Uncle John retorted. "Look how old he is! He's older than Jay, even!"
Uncle Jay whacked his younger brother in the head.
"Kate likes him," Grandmother replied.
"Kate also liked those ugly bell bottoms and you let her have them," Uncle Jerry retorted.
"He's a good man and he loves her."
"Of course he does," Jay snorted. "Look at her. She's young and gorgeous and he's old. He'd never get another shot."
"He's hot for a middle aged guy," retorted Uncle John's wife, and our other aunts agreed. Grandmother laughed. Our uncles glared.
"Thank God for those kids," Uncle Jerry muttered. "Without them who knows what baby Sis would be doing with that old geezer."
"You PLANNED this?!" Uncle Jerry's wife was not happy. "You wanted to stay at your mother's house so our children could disrupt Kate's love life?!"
"You like it here!" Uncle Jerry defended himself.
"This is not about me!" she roared. "This is about Kate and what you are doing to sabotage your sister's love life!"
It didn't take long for a big fight between our uncles and their wives to break out.
"I wouldn't worry about it," Grandmother finally said quietly, sipping her tea, looking quite calm and collected. We supposed that having raised five children - three boys, too - and then us three triplets, there was little to faze Grandmother. "I think Kate finds the children rather endearing."
"Huh?"
"Look," Grandmother said reasonably, hiding the smirk on her face. "Kate might be independent, successful, with a mind of her own. She might carry three guns and be able to knock out men, but she loves children, you know that. I think she finds Jethro's ability to juggle this many children...well, rather endearing." She smiled benevolently at her sons over her cup.
Uncle Jay looked like he was going to throw up. Uncle John looked horrified. Uncle Jerry ran out to get his children.
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.