We were happy, of course, that Uncle Jethro liked our family so much that he stayed. But he still wasn't doing well about the marriage. Like they were supposed to, they went to counseling with the padre, Father Klein, whom Uncle Jethro had known for a long time - since the divorce from Seven Iron #2. He was a nice, actually funny priest, and a great guy all around.
"So, Kate," Father Klein began, leaning forward with a gentle smile. "Why do you want to marry Jethro?"
Aunt Kate opened her mouth, then closed it, and took a deep breath. She smiled, and then she said softly, "Well, when we first met...he...was intelligent, bold." She paused. "And he's not intimidated by the fact that I carry a gun. Guns. It's...rare. A lot of men get scared off when they hear what I do."
Father Klein chuckled and nodded. "Go on."
"Jethro is...he's so kind and sweet."
Father Klein blinked, quite successfully masking his doubt and his surprise.
"It...it comes out in different ways," our aunt continued. "It's very quiet, very subtle, but he can be so sweet."
Father Klein looked slightly puzzled, but he looked at her with a very concentrated look and nodded seriously. "Really."
"I've just felt so...comfortable with him," Aunt Kate continued. "He...he has this very quiet, subtle sense of humor, too. He makes me blush but he makes me smile."
Father Klein blinked, but said as encouragingly as he could, "So you think Jethro is...kind, sweet, and funny."
Kate smiled and nodded. Father Klein tried to mask his surprise. Gibbs muttered, "Rule #7. Always be specific when you lie."
"Are you lying, Kate?" Father Klein asked immediately.
"NO!" Aunt Kate exclaimed, horrified.
"Oh," Father Klein replied, obviously relieved. "Well, then that was beautiful."
Aunt Kate tried to recover her composure.
"Jethro, why do you want to marry Kate?"
There was a long silence.
"Jethro?"
There was a long pause, and Uncle Jethro looked briefly like a deer caught in the headlights.
Father Klein took a long look at him. "I'll assume we're going with the traditional vows and not writing our own." He paused. "So. Both of you work at very demanding jobs. Have you discussed how you will schedule time for each other?"
"We will certainly take time to talk," Kate nodded firmly. "We're going to schedule that in."
Father Klein nodded, then waited. Kate poked Gibbs in the leg. "Jethro?"
"We...will work on communication," he said vaguely.
"Uh," Father Klein replied, standing up. "Uh, I'm...um...quite busy. Let me just say, Jethro, that marriage requires a lot thought, which I believe you know. To make it work, you two must learn to communicate with each other. Whether you really wish to take this chance again, Jethro, you need to be sure. You owe it to Kate and to yourself." He looked at his planner. "Oh good! Prison visit. Go right ahead...and...stay and talk. That means you, Jethro. You, too."
Aunt Kate turned to Uncle Jethro and glared.
Father Klein, of course, wasn't ready to let the matter go. He was concerned that something might be wrong, and he certainly didn't wish to see either our aunt or Uncle Jethro hurt, and so he called Uncle Jethro in a few days later to have a quiet chat.
"Jethro," Father Klein said patiently. "I got the sense that perhaps you're not as prepared for this as you ought to be."
Uncle Jethro just groaned.
"Jethro, you have to make a decision. YOU."
Uncle Jethro finally exploded. "I can't do it myself!" He threw up his hands. "This marriage thing - Father, I am NOT good at it. Every time I consider it the little voice in my head goes" he raised his voice to an unchararacteristically Gibbs high-pitched voice "'What are you, an idiot? You didn't get enough pain and torture the first THREE times?'"
Silence ensued after that outburst, and the two men just sat there for a long, still moment.
Father Klein blinked. "Your little voice is a sarcastic Tweety Bird?" At his parishioner's look, the padre sighed. "I'm sorry. It's just unlike you." He paused. "I would have thought that your little voice would sound something like James Earl Jones or - "
"FATHER!"
The padre just sighed. "I'm sorry." He paused. "Jethro, you've made decisions on your own."
"Oh yes. That's true. I've made brilliant decisions. I married three women who all decided to leave me, most of them whacking me with sports equipment on the way out. Yes," Uncle Jethro replied tonelessly. "I ought to trust my keen instinct."
"Then why did you go so long with Miss Todd?"
He sighed. "I love Kate. But I would never have had had the guts to ask her if there hadn't been that pressure."
"From Kate?" Father Klein asked, surprised.
"No...from Ducky," Uncle Jethro grumbled. "'Jethro, I want to make sure there's somebody to take care of you before I die. I'm not going to be around to stitch you up constantly!'"
Father Klein coughed, trying not to snicker. He straightened and then said in a serious tone, "So what made you ask her in the first place?"
"I don't know," Uncle Jethro mumbled. "It was a bad idea from the start. Our schedules. Being agents. Romance between agents doesn't work." He paused. "Me."
"And the others?"
"They wouldn't say a thing," Uncle Jethro continued. "They didn't want to get caught between us if something happened."
"I'm sure the Todd family wasn't much help."
"Her brothers kept making allusions to Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes," Uncle Jethro grumbled.
"So...you decided to call up Miss Todd yourself, hm?" Father Klein waited, and seeing the other man's expression change, he continued, "You two had just had a huge argument over her agreeing to be reassigned by the director." Father Klein waved. "And despite all this, you still asked her. And you've dated two years, and you haven't run. See? You can trust your instincts. Go home and ask yourself if you can and you want to do this again."
Uncle Jethro did go home, and he did think about it long and hard. (He sure hadn't planned on telling anyone about his self-examining session, but Aunt Kate basically dragged it out of him the day of the wedding: he'd been smiling the entire ceremony. Aunt Kate was sure that meant he was roostered on scotch, because she'd never seem him smile that much in one place at one time, and Uncle Jethro had to admit to the whole story to reassure her.)
He thought about all his marriages, what had gone wrong with his choices, what he had done wrong in his relationships and how he didn't want to do this again.
And then he thought about Aunt Kate, and what he knew about her, and how she was different from the mistakes he had called wives. And now he knew why he'd been "dumb" enough to try this all over one more time.
(And then Uncle Jethro went and threw all his sports equipment into the trash.)
The days BEFORE the wedding went without fanfare. To us, Aunt Kate looked like a gigantic snowball in that dress, but she liked it and so did Grandmother and our aunts and everyone else, so it's not like any of us had much opinions about the matter.
We got to stay with Uncle Jethro that week before the wedding. During that time, he seemed pretty tense, and boy, were we afraid he'd call it all off.
Uncle Jay was supposed to pick up Father Klein and almost forgot. Aunt Kate accused him of forgetting on purpose, but Uncle Jay swore that he really meant to remember. Aunt Kate didn't believe him and sent along a coworker to make sure Father Klein arrived. He drove so fast that Agent Tony, who was riding in the car with him, threw up all over his tuxedo, and then he had to get that cleaned and rent a new one.
In the meantime, Uncle John and Uncle Jerry went to Aunt Kate's room and give her three thousand dollars, a thousand from each of them. "For when you come to your senses and leave him," Uncle John had said. Aunt Kate hollered. Aunt Mary, Uncle John's wife, started grumbling at that point that she should have used the two hundred dollars her father had given her for that same purpose.
We were all waiting in the sanctuary, ready to go. Father Klein was even here, ready to begin the ceremony, but still no Uncle Jethro or Aunt Kate.
Aunt Kate is the punctual type, and Uncle Jethro is a stickler about being on time, so everybody was a little concerned when neither showed up in the chapel at the appointed time.
That was when Uncle Jay exploded and said he was sure that Jethro Gibbs was up to no good and had run off with an impressionable Aunt Kate to Las Vegas.
When Director Morrow heard that they were both late, he called the NCIS security guards to make sure they weren't at work.
When Agent Tony heard "impressionable" for Aunt Kate, he started laughing so hard his stomach hurt.
When Abby heard "Las Vegas", she asked if she ought to book tickets for everybody.
When Dr. Mallard heard "up to no good", he stood up and lectured Uncle Jay about not knowing Jethro.
When we learned of the absences, we pointed out that our aunts and our grandmother still hadn't appeared, either, and why would they be going to Vegas?
When all of our female cousins, who were little flower girls in the wedding, heard that the wedding might not happen, they cried.
It turned out that Mauren Ingalls, our aunt's and our uncles' cousin from Alexandria, had brought her kids to the wedding. They had all been outside, playing in the sandbox in their nice little kid suits - all those who weren't in the wedding (who were inside crying about the wedding that had been delayed). Cousin Maureen's kids told our little cousins that after Aunt Kate and Uncle Jethro married, they were going to move far away and they'd never seem them again.
If a zillion kids covered in sand weren't enough, they came running in, crying. The littlest ones ran straight to their mothers, but the older ones decided to head straight to the source. It took half an hour to calm down all the sobbing children, and then another half hour to get the sand out of Aunt Kate's dress and Uncle Jethro's tuxedo.
In the meantime, while everybody was waiting, Agent McGee removed his tie and one of the relatives' kids accidentally set it on fire when he dangled it too close to one of the candles at the front of the church.
Uncle Jethro finally appeared at the front of the church, and we all turned to see Aunt Kate standing in the back, her hand in the crook of Uncle Jay's arm. Uncle Jay had his hand over Aunt Kate's protectively, and he walked her up the aisle.
When they got to the front, Father Klein smiled down at them. He asked who was giving Aunt Kate away. Uncle Jay looked like he was going to say something smarta** but didn't - most likely because the heat from Aunt Meg's glare from the second row had a fifteen mile burn radius.
Aunt Kate started to pull her hand from Uncle Jay's arm, and look stunned when Uncle Jay just stood there, looking at Gibbs and clutching his sister's hand like he was hanging on to his daughter's in the face of a bank robber. Aunt Kate tugged harder, and Uncle Jay let go.
"We are gathered here today to marry Leroy Jethro Gibbs and Caitlin Suzana Todd," Father Klein began. "If there is anyone here who knows any reason why these two should not be joined in holy matrimony, let them speak now or forever hold their peace."
Grandmother glared at her sons, daring them to open their mouths.
Throughout the ceremony, Uncle Jethro was smiling widely (which was kind of scary). It was all quite beautiful and immensely boring, and we were trying to be on our best behavior, sitting beside Grandmother.
Thankfully it was going pretty fast, but it just wasn't going fast enough for the ringbearer. Michael was Uncle John's, the only boy they'd managed to sucker into participating in the wedding. He was being unusually quiet, sitting beside his mother in the first pew.
Normally, we were always grateful that Mikey had the uncanny ability to amuse himself. Now, as the wedding dragged on, Mikey started exploring his mother's purse, taking out one thing, examining it, and then putting it back. Like a typical child, the money and the credit cards weren't that entertaining. The keys came out, then went back in. The lipstick went untouched, deemed too boring. But a bottle of his mother's lotion was considered well and good.
Happily intrigued by the tube, he turned it around and around. His mother was preoccupied, watching the wedding. Mikey popped the flip-top cap and silently squirted a small bit of lotion into his hand.
Then he kept squirting, happily piling up the lotion until it reached a baseball-sized green glob in his hand and threatened to spill over the edges of his chubby fingers.
Grandmother glared at us for laughing, but we couldn't help it. Alan's eyes began to water.
Mikey was now sitting in the pew, very still, looking concernedly at the huge, heaping puddle of lotion in his hand, apparently wondering what he was supposed to do with all the lotion. He poked at it with a chubby index finger. He looked around, wondering what to do with all that lotion, and then decided the pillow holding the rings was an appropriate place to dump the excess. What remained on his hand he patted onto his face and onto his hands, covering all visible skin with a thick layer of light green slop.
Just then Father Klein asked for the rings.
There was a stunned silence for a moment, everyone staring at Mikey, sitting with the pillow on his lap, and green lotion all over the pillow and his face and his hands and smelling like a gigantic cucumber and melon (what kind of melon, we never found out...Aunt Mary just glared at us when we asked). The wedding stopped as Agent DiNozzo and Abby Sciuto went to fish out the rings and was them off, and the whole church was giggling.
What was strangest, though, was Uncle Jethro - he never did any more than just smile, and here he was laughing - laughing so hard both he and Father Klein had to sit down. Aunt Kate teetered between laughing at Mikey's lotion episode or being shocked at her husband-to-be's behavior.
When Abby and Tony returned with the cleaned off rings, Uncle Jethro and Aunt Kate said their vows, and then Father Klein folded his arms in front of him and announced, "I have something to say."
Uncle Jethro never looked more worried in all the years we've known him.
"I have known Jethro Gibbs for a long time," Father Klein began. "Longer than even his agents have." He paused. "We came over on the Mayflower together."
Tony laughed outright. "Mayflower. That's pretty funny. It means - " When Uncle Jethro glared, he quickly shut up.
"I had my doubts about this decision," he continued. "But I have to say that I was wrong." He took a look at our soon-to-be uncle, about to say something insightful, and then just stopped and smiled. "Well, this may come as a great surprise to many of you, but I have never seen Jethro look more happy than he does now."
Our uncles had gone into the marriage sure that our Aunt Kate was making a huge mistake - but any doubts about Uncle Jethro himself basically vanished at this moment.
To be quite honest, the one thing we learned from attending Aunt Kate's wedding was that this wedding stuff was for the women. We were so bored we almost hoped one of the kids would set something else on fire. We were hoping that we might actually get to taste champagne for the first time at the reception, but Aunt Kate wasn't one to be fooled, and neither was Grandmother. The closest we got to any kind of alcohol was standing next to Abby, one of Aunt Kate's bridesmaids, in the wedding photo - Abby in her "wine" colored dress.
So we thought it was awesome when we discovered Agent Tony was the one giving the toast. Aunt Kate used to joke that she and Uncle Jethro had made the horrible mistake of allowing Agent DiNozzo to make the toast at the reception, but we thought it was rather funny.
"I was thinking a lot about today," he began, his voice solemn and serious. "About my boss, and how he had the courage to take this step - again," he added to a few small titters. "About my coworker, and how she had the courage to marry my boss." There were a few more small, nervous laughs. "And I thought about how much money I blew on this tuxedo rental." There were laughs now. "And I thought, 'Who here is responsible for bringing together Gibbs and Kate?' In other words, 'Who can I give this tuxedo rental bill to?'"
He cleared his throat. "After Kate officially left our team to be trained as a profiler and to lead a NCIS profiling team, we didn't see her for almost six months. We wouldn't have seen her if it hadn't been for the Hewitt case, and so, I thought, that serial killer Hewitt. Hewitt counts as...bringing my boss and Kate together." He coughed. "So...if you don't mind, I'll bring a big piece of wedding cake to maximum security...and eat it in front of him."
There was laughter, and then Tony continued, "So then I thought about Kate and Gibbs...and how neither of them would ever break the fraternization rules," he said pointedly to the face of the director, who sat amusedly at a table near the front. "And so that's when it hit me. If Director Morrow hadn't reassigned Kate and took her out of Gibbs' chain of command, then we wouldn't be here. So, we all owe Director Morrow a big thank you."
After the applause, Tony - who was notorious for trying to get NCIS to pay the bills for his expensive suit clean-ups after mishaps on the case - said, "So I thought I'd submit my tuxedo bill to the director." He looked eagerly at Morrow.
Morrow just gave him an amused, "don't even think about it" look.
Tony sighed. "Well, it was worth a try." He straightened, still holding his champagne glass, and then said, "Gibbs always tells us that romance between agents doesn't work, and his rule #12 said never to date a coworker." He held up his champagne glass. "Here's to Boss eating crow. And many more."
All our aunts had tears in their eyes, and Grandmother dabbed at her eyes as Uncle Jethro and Aunt Kate intertwined their arms and each took a sip from their glasses. And, well, as mushy as it is, it was kind of nice, seeing them: Aunt Kate smiling up at Uncle Jethro, and him looking back at her gently, his soft, half-smile on his face.
Aunt Kate smiled up at Uncle Jethro, and he looked back at her gently, a soft, half-smile on his face. "How could you doubt I wanted to marry you," she said quietly, her dimples deepening as her smile widened.
"I'm still not sure this isn't a dream I'm about to wake up from."
Behind them, their daughter and their oldest son were taking turns whapping each other with their stuffed animals and giggling with each hit, and one of the baby twins was busy making dirty footprints on their headboard while drinking from his bottle. The other was busy poking at his father's glasses with the nipple of his bottle, dribbling milk all over the nightstand.
She chuckled, long and soft, and kissed him on the cheek. "Sweet dreams."
END
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