Section 6

Tony refused to open his eyes. He was enjoying lying cuddled back against Jethro, his husband's breath on his shoulder. He'd had such a wonderful dream. Jethro and he were parents to two little babies.

"Not a dream." Jethro's arm tightened around Tony's waist and he shifted to prop rest his chin on Tony's shoulder.

"How…" Tony started.

"Had the same thought when I woke up." Jethro's breath tickled Tony's ear. "Then I heard our daughter expressing displeasure."

"I should…"

"The grandpas took care of it or we would know." Jethro laughed. "Otherwise, we would definitely know. Our daughter is no shrinking violet."

"Our daughter…. God, Jethro. We have a daughter. We have a son." Tony whispered in disbelief. "What did we do to deserve to have so much?"

"I prefer to think we don't get what we deserve. I can't think of anything that Hollis and Leland could have done to deserve what happened." Jethro said a touch sadly. "I know I don't deserve you or the twins but…"

"You are a good man, Leroy Jethro Gibbs. Let's leave it that neither of us deserved the blessing but oh, God, I am so grateful to Hollis and Leland."

"I can't believe they picked us." Jethro said. "I can't believe I'm a father, again."

"Is it hard?" Tony adjusted his question quickly. "Does it bring back the memories?"

"Some. I guess that's natural. Linnie isn't a substitute for Kelly, though. When I hold her, I only see our daughter. I remember holding Kelly at that age but it seems to have dulled a bit."

"Is Linnie like her?"

"No. She was more like Chris. Kelly was really laid back. Uh-oh…"

"Speak of the little angel." Tony snickered. "That sounds like the 'I'm dirty' cry again."

"Guess we should rescue the grandpas."

"It is your turn." Tony reminded him.

"Dad can handle it."

"But can poor Zuma?"

"Did you see his face when he got a whiff?" Jethro snickered.

About that time the bedroom door edged open a bit and a moment later forty pounds of pup landed on the bed on top of the two men. Zuma gave a woof and then plopped down on their hips.

"Oof… Zuma." Tony scratched his ears which put the tail into action.

"Silly thing, did you escape from diaper detail?" Jethro laughed as Zuma sniffed the air gratefully.

A second cry began and Tony gave Zuma's ears one last scratch. "It was nice while it lasted, but I think the Grandpas have done their duty."

"So, have the twins." Jethro said as he rolled out from under Zuma and got up. Coming around the bed, he laughed. Taking advantage of having Tony alone, Zuma was covering him with kisses as Tony tried to ward him off. Taking pity, Jethro grabbed the pup and gave him a good scratch while Tony eased out and sat on the edge of the bed. Jethro extended his hand to help his husband up; conveniently right into his arms. "I love you, Mommy Tony." He said as he kissed his husband.

"I love you, Daddy Jethro." Tony kissed him back. "And I'm not the mommy."

"Coming, pup?" As if in answer to Jethro, Zuma plopped back down on the bed with a woof.

"If he spoke people, I think he just told you not on your life." Tony laughed. The sound of crying increased. "Better rescue the grandpas."

The two men made their way into the living room where they found all three babies fussing. Tony took his daughter from relieved Ducky. "She isn't wet or hungry. I've tried burping her for gas." The elderly man offered.

"Sometimes she cries in advance." Tony comforted him.

"In advance?"

About that time, a familiar stench arrived. "I think she wants us to be ready and waiting. Don't you, sweetheart? I know, you hate being dirty. I'm moving." Tony comforted her as he moved towards the meager supplies the girls had laid out on the coffee table. "Aunties Abby and Breena better hurry. We don't have many clean diapers left. Now, hush, sweetheart. Daddy's taking care of you."

Jethro had scooped his god-daughter out of the bassinet. She appeared to be crying in sympathy. Cradling her, he handed her a small rattle which she immediately began sucking on it. "Is he dirty, too, Dad?"

Jackson did a careful sniff test. "No. Just a little wet, it appears."

"Let me take him." Jethro handed Victoria to Ducky who held out his arms. "Hey, little fella, what's wrong?" Moving to the sofa he sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Tony and laid the baby on the top end of the blanket Tony was using for a changing pad. This put the two babies' heads next to one another. Immediately, Chris appeared to change the tenor of his fussing. Linnie turned her head in his direction and her cries seemed to ease a bit.

"My word. They appear to have bonded already." Ducky said fascinated.

"They did spend nine months alone." Tony said. "The nurses said that sometimes they would be fussing and wouldn't stop until they were in the same bassinet."

"Amazing." Jackson said as his grandson seemed to comfort his irate sister.

Taking advantage of Chris' help, the two dads quickly handled diaper changes. Jethro had gotten lucky, a fact Tony intended to remind him of when the next two special changes were required. Finishing his once again sweet smelling daughter, Tony leaned towards where the babies were facing one another. "Hey, sweetpea, is that better?" He smiled as the two babies tried to look at him. "Hey, pumpkin, are you soothing Linnie? You are such a good boy." Two sets of hands began waving in the air.

"Easy, son." Jethro hurried to fasten his son's onesie. "I'm hurrying. Watch this," he said to the two grandpas. Jethro turned his son to lay sideways on the sofa while Tony did the same to their daughter. The two babies were laying side by side and Tony moved to kneel between the sofa and coffee table where he could "talk" to both babies.

"Hey, how are daddy's angels?" Tony crooned. The hands began to wave again. "Are you being good? Yes, you are." Little legs began moving and tiny eyes stared towards Tony. "Daddy loves you both." Tony took one of Chris' hands in his left hand and one of Linnie's in his right. "Daddy and I are going to take such good care of you. Yes, we are." The twins' world appeared to have shrunk to just Tony and each other. About that time, the expression on the tiny faces shifted.

"They're smiling." Ducky stared.

"Of course, they are," Tony crooned. "They love it when Daddy plays with them. Don't you? And we're going to get some toys to play with, aren't we?"

Jackson patted Jethro on the shoulder. "I can't believe how comfortable the twins are with you already."

"Hollis couldn't really interact with them." Jethro said quietly. "Tony and I are really the first to hold and care for them. The nurses tried but they had other patients. It seems that they latched onto us, particularly, Tony. I remember Kelly initially focused more on Shannon."

"Children often focus on the mother as they are used to hearing her voice during the whole pregnancy." Ducky offered as the trio watched Tony and the twins. The look on Tony's face was awe and joy and love.

"We thought it was that Tony held Chris first." Jethro said. "Then we noticed that Linnie would try to coo for him. You should have seen them on the plane." He told the grandpas proudly. "He put them both in one carrier and sat and talked to them and played with them. He even narrated the in-flight movie." Jethro laughed.

"Is Daddy telling tales?" Tony crooned. "I wonder who it was that laid both on you on his chest and just cuddled you for hours. I wonder who that was." Tony laughed. The twins worked their mouths as if to imitate the laugh. "Daddy's being silly? Isn't he?"

Jackson examined Leroy's face carefully looking for any signs of jealousy. Leroy only looked thrilled at the interactions between his husband and his children. Jackson saw love and pride. Leroy was clearly proud of his husband's connection to their children.

"He was scared at first." Jethro spoke quietly seeing his dad look at him. "I had them on my chest the first part of the flight, because he was afraid that he wouldn't be a good father. He was scared that given his role models he wouldn't be able to connect with them. When the first set of changes occurred, he almost freaked out but then Linnie waved her little hand at him. When he took her hand, it was almost miraculous." Jethro smiled at the memory. "He just melted. He picked her up and I handed him Chris, too. The connection was just there. Just love."

"Anthony is a wonderful man. He has risen so far above how he was raised. The two of you will be wonderful fathers. Hollis could not have chosen better parents, Jethro." Ducky smiled.

"Thanks, Duck." Jethro turned back to his husband and children. When he spoke again, Jethro's voice was sincere and full of emotion. "I feel like I have been given a whole second chance. To have Tony and now children…. I am the happiest and luckiest man in this world."

Section seven

Eventually, the family heard the sound of returning cars, followed by two chipper voices rapidly approaching. Tony looked in the bassinet where the twins lay snuggled side by side. "Do we have time to run? They sound more hyped then when they left."

Jethro smirked at his husband who had been playing pat-a-cake with Victoria. "Too late," he said as the front door opened. From his place, next to the bassinet, Zuma looked up as his aunts entered talking merrily and loaded down with bags.

"Is there anything left at the store?"

"Two babies." Abby reminded them. "Twice the things to buy."

Behind the girls, Tim and Jethro were dragging in a large box. "Where do you want the crib?" Tim called into the living room.

Tony looked at Jethro. "I don't really want them on a separate floor."

"We could move our bedroom back upstairs and give the twins the spare room."

"It's really small though."

"We could ask Dad to move down and give each twin their own room."

"One crib is all we bought." Tim interjected.

"Besides if they're down for a nap, they'd be upstairs."

Jethro eyed his husband. He knew where the crib was headed but he wasn't giving in without a fight. He looked at Zuma and sighed. "Where do you want to put it?"

"I was thinking we could put it in our room," Tony started. "It's only temporary until we move…" Tony's face drained of color.

"What's wrong?" Jethro reach for Tony's hand as Breena dropped the bags and rushed to pick up her daughter.

"There's no room for the babies." Tony stated grasping Jethro's hand.

"We'll make do for now." Jethro comforted him.

"NO!" Tony raised his voice. Jimmy and Tim exchanged glances. They weren't used to seeing Tony having a meltdown. He was usually the one cracked jokes and kept them calm. "Our dream home. We have no room, no nursery for the twins. What are we going to do? Babies need a nursery, a play room, a…"

Jethro pulled his husband close. "Tony, take a deep breath. Let it out. Another. In…. Out… That's it. Don't worry. We'll call the architect first thing tomorrow and get an appointment. It may set our move back a bit, but we'll manage. For now, we can put the crib in our room." Zuma and the twins two, Jethro none, he sighed to himself.

In order to distract Tony, Breena handed Victoria to Ducky and picked up the discarded bags. "Wait until you see what we found, Tony." Reaching into the first bag, Breena pulled out a stack of onesies. She held up the first two. Both were decorated with tiny lambs. One had pink accents and the other blue.

"Oh, Jethro, look…" Tony took the onesies. "They match." Tony touched the little lambs. "They are going to look so cute in these."

"And look, Tony…" Abby dug into another bag. She held up blue and pink sleepers with lambs and little lamb heads on their feet. Both had a white cap with lamb ears. "They coordinate."

"I can't wait to see them in these." Jethro admitted. "But shouldn't they have their own individual styles?"

"Oh, we only got a couple of matching outfits. The rest are individualized. They don't make a lot of matching outfits for boy/girl twins." Abby said as she used a small pair of scissors she had produced from somewhere to begin removing tags. "We got some gender-neutral outfits."

"Gender neutral?" Jackson said. "What the devil is gender-neutral?"

Breena laughed. "It's outfits that work for boys or girls."

"Humph. We used to just call them yellow and green."

Abby looked at Jackson earnestly. "Outfits today aren't limited by color. Especially pastels. They make clothes in all colors, red, black, purple. You can even find outfits in blue for baby girls and pink for baby boys."

"Leroy, if you put pink on my grandson…" Jackson threatened. "You will be wearing pink underwear." Jethro winced.

"Don't worry, Breena wouldn't let me buy any." Abby pouted.

"When you have a baby, you can dress it in anything you want," Tony patted her on the head. "Until then we'll be more traditional."

"Spoilsport."

"No, that's him." Tony pointed to his husband. He was distracted by the stack of bibs that was steadily growing on the table in front of him. "How many bibs did you buy?"

"The baby checklists recommend between six and ten for one baby. I discovered that was not enough." Breena admitted. "Sometimes Victoria can go through those in one day. I have about twenty right now. Some will get stained and not come clean."

"Baby checklist?" Tony was intrigued. "They have a checklist."

"Several of them." Abby said. "All over the web and some stores give them free. So, what we did was take the estimate of say ten onesies and then double it. Of course, in some areas, Breena knew whether that was too many or too few based on Victoria's needs. So like, the onesies which can quickly get dirty. We picked up fifteen each."

"Wow. So, we have how many bibs?"

"We picked out forty. Again, most are different but we did buy some in pairs."

"What else is on this list?"

"Well it called for seven to ten sleepers."

After listening to most of the list, Jethro picked up the pile of clothes and blankets that Abby had removed the tags from and went to start the washer. He wanted to have some of the clothes ready before the twins needed changed again. Rather than return to the living room, he decided to help Tim and Jimmy with the crib.

Looking at the picture on the front, he expressed approval. "Good choice."

"We knew there wasn't a lot of room for nursery furniture." Jimmy spoke up. "So, McGee and I went online while the girls were shopping."

Jethro raised his eyebrow and looked from one to the other. "And they let you pick the crib?"

"With their approval," Tim admitted. The crib that the men had picked had a dresser built into one end with a changing table on top. There were additional drawers under the crib mattress itself. It even had a couple small shelves for the baby powder and lotions and all.

Jethro looked it over again. "How much was it?" Tim fished the wad of bills out of his pocket and found the right one. It really wasn't that bad, Jethro reasoned for the variety of purposes it handled.

"We figured you'd like the pecan finish." Jimmy pointed to the lovely grain in the wood. "They had cherry, maple and white, too."

"Abby approved of it?" Jethro asked.

"It makes a lot of sense for people without a lot of space. She figured that the sisters would be thrilled with it."

"You may want to think about keeping it, at least for a while."

Jethro looked at Palmer and waited for him to explain. "I'm sure that you and Jackson will build each baby a set of cribs and changing tables and dressers. This would be nice to put in a corner somewhere on the ground floor. I know that there are times that it would be nice to have something like this downstairs at Ducky's."

Jethro considered the suggestion as he tapped the bill against his hand. "Do the sisters have a lot of people needing these things?"

Tim winced as his hand slipped and he skinned his knuckle. "Yeah. I've done a bit of helping out, lately." Tim admitted. "I was surprised by how many families are in need. A lot of the furniture that comes in needs fixed or repaired. I've been helping scrub it down and painting it after Abby fixes it." Tim shifted his hold on the end of the crib. "It seems the list of those in need just keeps increasing."

"It comes in cherry, maple, white and pecan?"

"And black." Jimmy whispered. "We didn't tell Abby that."

"Good move." Jethro confirmed while Tim swore as his hand slipped again skinning another knuckle. "Move over, Tim." Gratefully, Tim allowed Jethro to take his place. Content to watch as the older man competently used the wrench to tighten a nut.

"You can take little electronics things apart, soldier this, replace that but you can't tighten a nut?" Jimmy said in amazement.

Tim shrugged. "I don't work well with the bigger tools."

Before the conversation deescalated, Jethro spoke up. "They have more of these in stock, Tim?"

"I guess so." At Jethro's glance, Tim went for his phone. "I can find out."

"If not, order them."

"Them?"

"I want a cherry set for Ducky's and five of each color delivered to the sisters."

"Jethro, you don't…"

"Victoria deserves it. So do you and Breena. Well, get on with it, Tim."

"Yes, sir." Tim pulled out Jethro's credit card that he had confiscated from Abby.

Three feedings, three diaper changes, two loads of laundry, another skinned knuckle, this time where the crib pinned Jethro to the doorframe and a lot of laughing later, the group took a break to dig into the casseroles that Jackson had popped into the oven earlier. Zuma had joined them for the meal crawling up into his chair to eat with them. The three babies were snoozing in matching bouncy chairs under Zuma's watchful gaze.

"Trust me, Tony, you will love the bouncy chair." Abby said before taking a bite of her vegetable lasagna.

"I can't believe she gave you one free." Breena shook her head still in disbelief.

"Well, we had bought so many of the bigger items from her. The crib, the mattress, the twin carrier, the monitors."

"It also didn't hurt that you mentioned that the bulk was for Agent Zuma's "new siblings" and it would be nice if their god sister had a matching bouncy for when they were together." Tim sold her out happily while eating his own beef enchilada casserole.

"Abby." Jethro said sternly.

"I know. But the news about the twins isn't going to stay quiet. Most of the people at NCIS already know and I'm sure it is spreading like wildfire." Abby said quickly. "Besides aren't they sweet in their chairs?"

"No more." Jethro pointed his fork at the Goth. "We have money to pay for what is needed. And we don't need to help the press." Abby pouted but nodded her understanding.

"I had no idea babies needed so much stuff."

Tony popped a bite of chicken casserole in his mouth before responding to McGee's comment. "Clothes, food, diapers, it all adds up, Tim."

"There's still a lot that you'll still need." Tony and Jethro looked at each other and then at Breena. "Seriously." She added before continuing. "Before the first cold, you'll need a humidifier. Jimmy is going to put a kit together for you with the children's Tylenol, diaper rash cream and everything like he made for Victoria. It's like a miniature doctor case with the thermometer and everything."

"Thanks, Jimmy!" Tony said gratefully.

"No problem." Jimmy looked at the three babies lined up. "Anything for my god-children."

"Speaking of which." Ducky wiped his mouth before continuing. "As one of the grandfathers, I shall provide the pram for my newest grandchildren. In fact, Timothy assisted me in placing the order earlier."

"Ducky, you didn't have to do that." Jethro protested.

"Indeed, I did, Jethro. I provided a pram for Victoria and I will provide one for Jacqueline and Christian."

"I wasn't sure about a pram," Breena spoke up. "I'm more used to strollers but it was wonderful. I can't imagine why they fell out of use."

"Indeed," Ducky said. "Much better support for their spines. Luckily, the company in London informed me that there had been a cancellation for the exact pram I wanted. It will be shipped just as soon as it is finished."

"Exact? They make different ones?"

"Of course, my dear Anthony." Ducky laid his fork down. "There were several options for twin prams. Side by side, front to back for example. What I choose was a double pram. It is one pram with a much more spacious inside that will hold both babies easily. As twins, I assume you will be keeping them on a matching schedule."

"Definitely, Duck." Jethro took another serving of the vegetable lasagna. "Tony and I agree a schedule is essential. We want to get them used to eating together, sleeping together, and all. Bedtimes and naptimes."

"That's good to hear." Jackson nodded in approval.

"Maybe not at two in the morning when they need clean diapers and are both crying."

"Speaking of diapers," Tony turned towards Abby and Breena. "I hope you brought more diapers than that one pack. And don't we need things like a diaper pail?"

"Well…" Breena looked at Abby.

"We… I thought we should talk about that." Abby took a long drink. "With two babies, you are going to go through a lot of diapers. You know that diapers clog the landfill. I was hoping you would consider using cotton diapers."

Jethro and Tony looked at each other. "Abby, I'm sure that is better for the environment, but the thought of being out and having to carry dirty diapers around..." Tony said carefully.

"I know. I know. There are times that it would be difficult but in those cases, you could use one or two disposable. I'm just thinking that when they are at home that cotton could be used." Abby jumped up and got her purse. She brought out a handful of brochures. "I picked up literature on diaper services that serve this area. It's better for the babies and the environment. The services provide the diapers and the other supplies."

"Tell you what, Jethro and I will talk." Abby squealed. "Abby, the babies…" Everyone froze and looked at the chairs. Except for a few movements all was quiet. "No guarantees but we will look at everything before deciding."

"That's all I ask." Abby passed the pamphlets down.

Zuma gave a small whine. "What's wrong, Zuma?" Tony turned to the pup who had shrunk down in his chair. "Oh, that's…disgusting." Tony shuddered as Linnie started fussing, but he rose and went to pick his smelly girl up. "Baby girl, two words. Toilet training."

Jethro laughed. "Few more years before that, Tony."

"Just as soon as possible." Tony headed for the bedroom and the new changing table. "As soon as possible."