Their time at the cabin had been great, but passed quickly, and sooner than he liked they were home and both he and Kelly were back to work. He and Shannon had both managed to get a lot of yard work done and do some touch-ups around the house. He had also ended up running over to Kelly and Maddie's to help fix their leaky kitchen sink.
He had, however, decided to enlist some help with building the extension that he was wanting to add on, and so discussed what they wanted exactly with Shannon, drew up the plans, and then handed those over so that they could get started and the work would hopefully be finished by the time they wanted to go to the cabin again.
Needless to say, Jethro had definitely been kept busy. The next week seemed to fly by and before he knew it it was Easter Sunday. Which hadn't been any calmer.
His father had come to town for Easter weekend and between Mac and him the pair had somehow managed to drag Jethro to Mass. He hadn't gone to Mass in years and nor had Shannon despite the both of them being raised Catholic, but they'd ended up agreeing to go and found themselves at St. James Catholic Church about fifteen minutes away in Falls Church.
Jethro wasn't thrilled initially at getting dragged to Mass but did slowly come around to the idea. Especially given the fact that Joann seemed to be getting past her issues with him, the tension fading.
His mother-in-law had very clearly blamed Jethro for not protecting Shannon and Kelly back in '91 and although when the truth came out about the girls being live a lot of that had been, well, forgiven was not quite the right word for it, some issues had remained. She was normally rather passive-aggressive about it though, rarely actually saying anything or raising her voice, especially if anyone else was around.
"You!" his mother-in-law said. "You are the one who took my family away from me."
"I'm a Marine," he said. "I had orders. I didn't have a choice. I had to go."
"They were still your responsibility," the woman immediately shot back. "Why weren't you there to take care of our girls?"
He sighed. "It wasn't my decision." Never mind the fact that he had been deployed for almost a month when the girls had witnessed Sergeant Tanner's murder and Jethro'd had no way of knowing they'd end up being in danger.
She eyed him. "You weren't thinking about this family."
It looked like that particular relationship was finally well on the mend, which he could not deny being happy about. Jethro didn't want to be at odds with his mother-in-law. Joann was family after all.
Maddie had gone back to Oakland for a few days, so didn't join them for Easter Dinner, but Kelly had and she'd brought her boyfriend Michael along as well.
That was an adjustment in and of itself for Jethro... He had really wanted to, at the very least, cuff the guy on the back of the head when he saw him and his daughter kissing. He knew she was twenty-seven, but still... his little girl. It just brought up a whole lot of other things that he really didn't want to consider. Jethro wasn't naive, but neither was he thrilled about the idea of his daughter engaging in certain activities.
That Monday morning, Jethro's team got called in for a messy hostage situation that had, thankfully, ended quite well, all things considered, and then the team all met at Ducky's at 1630 for yet another Easter Dinner.
Jethro'd been expressly asked by his longtime friend to bring a dozen dinner rolls from the bakery that was just a couple of blocks away from his and Shannon's place.
"I'm glad that you both could make it," Ducky said, greeting both Jethro and Shannon. It was just the two of them as their daughter had been invited to a little get-together with a couple of friends of hers, which was fine by him. He was glad that she'd settled in so well to life back in D.C. "Come on in. Everyone else is already here and I'd quite prefer to not leave Anthony alone near my mother's good china for very long."
He snickered. "Fair enough."
His wife gave him a look. "Do I wanna know?"
He raised an eyebrow. "He really likes football."
Shannon just shook her head in feigned exasperation at his lack of explanation as they walked in, quickly spotting Palmer, DiNozzo, McGee, Abby, and Ziva seated around the rather large table, clearly having started on the wine.
Abby immediately perked up. "Gibbs, Shannon, you're here!"
He gave Abby a warm smile. "Said we would be."
"My dear husband's not getting into too much trouble at work, I hope, Abby?" his wife asked the young forensic scientist in jest.
"It's Gibbs!" Abby deadpanned. "He's a magnet."
DiNozzo snickered. "She's not wrong, Jefe."
"She does have a point," Ziva agreed with a pointed look.
Jethro smirked at his Senior Field Agent. "Okay, gang up on me, but remember who's doing your OCATs this year." There were a few classes that the agents were required to take every year and/or every couple of years. There was, of course, the Firearms recertification and then they had Sexual Harassment, First Aid, Report Writing, OCAT training, and a few other classes. Most of which weren't taught by him, but Jethro was doing the OCATs this year. He liked to throw some Close Combat Training into the mix for his team as well, wanting to make sure his team could handle themselves. There were quite a few techniques and things that he'd learned from MCMAP that were really valuable and his team wouldn't learn any other way. Not that he did anything close to the full program, but Jethro wanted them to be able to handle themselves when they needed to given the nature of their job.
"Hey!" McGee said. "I kept the five."
"I'm with McGee on this one," Palmer said.
Jethro's smirk grew. "Good call, you two."
His wife raised an eyebrow. "Tony, if he gives you a hard time with the training, let me know so that I can put my foot up his keister."
"Come on, Shan!" he retorted. "Getting to kick Tony's ass in the ring and pepper-spray him next week is one of the perks of being management. You can't ruin all my fun."
His wife rolled her eyes. "You're incorrigible."
"I do hope you're not just figuring that out now," he deadpanned.
"No," Shannon quipped, "merely pointing out a fact."
He gave a soft chuckle. "Yeah, yeah."
Everyone sat down, Ducky proceeded to give a little toast and then they finally carved the turkey, the day's stresses forgotten as they all chatted over dinner.
