A/N: Hello people! I came up with this while watching the movie Grown Ups. I don't know if you've seen it, but if you haven't, there's a character in that movie who looks just like Cote de Pablo (Ziva David of NCIS) and it just got me thinking and this was what came out. I hope you like it. I've always wondered what the team would be like with kids and I guess I feel like they'd be like this. Please review! I really appreciate feedback. If I get enough positive feedback, I'll definitely consider writing a second chapter. I do like this and I have some ideas, if you're interested.
Rated T for what is (possibly) to come.
Disclaimer: Thanks to our fandom God, Donald Bellisario, we have this amazing show called NCIS and I would never steal anything from him. Everything NCIS belongs to him, anything unrecognizable is mine.
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I knocked on the door, then there was a pause, then the door flew open. My third and youngest child flung herself at me. "Hi mom!" she cried.
I hugged her back. "Jenny, how are you?" I asked.
"I'm good. You're early," she said, pulling back and making a face. "Auntie Abby was just about to put lunch out."
The two of us went inside. The McGee household was loud, I heard a TV on in the living room and kids voices upstairs. I put my bag down and walked into the familiar house as though it was my own. It practically was, I spent so much time there.
"Ziva! Hey!" Abby called when she saw me. She gave me a hug and said, "You're running a little early."
"I got out faster than I thought I would. Normally, I have to sit for half an hour before I am even seen, but today I got lucky," I explained.
"Good. You're just in time for lunch. Can you go get the boys?" she asked me.
"We will be down in a second," I said.
I went back out to the front hall and headed up the stairs. TJ's door was partially shut and I knocked on it. "Boys, lunch time," I told the two boys in there.
AJ is my oldest child, he is sixteen and looks like Tony, but has my hair and eyes. Other than that, he is the spitting image of his father. TJ is Abby's oldest, fifteen, and is a very good mix of his parents. Both Tim and Abby argue that he looks like the other, but he is fifty/fifty.
I got a chorus of "Hi, mom," and, "Hi, Aunt Ziva," before leaving them to finish the level they were playing. They said they'd be down in a few minutes.
I went back downstairs and smiled to myself. Though I never admitted this to anyone but Tony, this life still surprised me. When I was with Mossad, I never dreamed that I'd have a husband, kids, a house in the suburbs, any of it. I still thanked God every day for what I had.
The last eighteen years of my life had flown by. Sometimes I still couldn't believe my son was sixteen. My second oldest, Katelyn, was almost fifteen, and Jenny, my youngest, was eleven. I imagined Abby felt the same way, what with TJ being fifteen and Erin at eleven. Our daughters were born eight days apart, Jenny being older, and they were best friends. AJ and TJ were close too, only a year between them.
Katelyn generally fell in with the boys more than she did Jen and Erin. I'd seen her kick both of the boys butts and video games and a few other sports, so they accepted her. While AJ looked like Tony, there was no mistaking whose daughter Kate was. She had every trait that I did, though her hair was a little more tamable and she had her father's smile, but other than that, she looked just like me. Jenny, like TJ, was a perfect mix of Tony and me. It all fit together so well on her. Abby and Tim's youngest, Erin, looked very much like her mother. She had paler skin than her father, Abby's green eyes, and her body shape. The only thing she got from her father was his hair color, which was the same as her brother's.
Coming out at the bottom of the stairs, I saw Kate curled up in the living room, a book in her lap. She never went anywhere without at least one book and if we went on vacation, she'd pack three or four. I went into the living room to go say hi.
"Hi, baby," I said, plopping down on the couch next to her.
"Hi," she said, looking up momentarily from her book.
"It is lunch time if you are hungry," I said. "Aunt Abby made sandwiches and macaroni and cheese." When Kate was in the middle of a good book, she could go all day without eating anything. I thought it was funny how my sister could do that too, and Kate's middle name was Talia. Also, my daughter was a very good artist, so she lived up to all of her names. AJ did as well, living up to my husband's name as well as his grandfather's, Jethro. Jenny had the spunk that her namesake had as well, she was also brave and smart, like my mother.
"Yeah, I'm pretty hungry. I skipped breakfast this morning," she said, putting a bookmark in her book and setting it down on the side table.
"I set breakfast out for all of you. What happened?" I asked, remembering calling Kate for breakfast, but then I had to go get ready. We'd had an early morning this morning.
"I just didn't eat. I was reading and…" she trailed off, knowing I'd understand. I did.
"Okay, tatelah. Come on, let's go have lunch."
As I walked back into the kitchen, I saw how hard Abby had worked to make lunch. Each of the kids had a PB&J, something I had learned to love after marrying Tony, and each one was just slightly different. I knew the routine too, making these. Both the McGee house and the DiNozzo house had very similar things in their cupboards. AJ liked chunky with grape jelly, TJ liked chunky with strawberry jelly, Kate liked creamy with grape jelly, Jenny liked creamy with strawberry jelly, and Erin liked creamy with apple jelly. The boys each had two sandwiches on their plates, and they would eat them both and complain that they were still hungry.
"Ziva, what do you want to eat?" Abby asked me, coming back into the kitchen after bringing two sandwiches out and grabbing for the other three.
"Whatever you are having, Abby," I said.
"I was gonna heat up some lasagna from last night, that good?" she asked.
"Perfect," I told her.
Abby put two pieces on a plate and put them into the microwave. When they were finished, we brought the plates to the table and sat down with the kids. I sat down next to Jenny.
"So what did you do today?" I asked her.
"Erin and I played cards all morning. We played a bunch of different games and I taught her the one you taught me the other week," she said, smiling.
"You taught her how to play poker? Oh, Aunt Abby will never forgive me for that," I said, smiling.
Jen giggled and took another bite of her sandwich. The macaroni and cheese had made its way around the table to us and she spooned some onto her plate. I passed because I already had some pasta on my plate and passed it over to AJ, who had appeared in the seat beside me, with TJ right behind him, taking the seat on AJ's other side.
Then there was another knock at the door. Abby got up to get it and, a few seconds later, we heard a cry of, "Tony! You're back early!"
I got up after Abby's exclamation, quickly followed by my three children. Tony had been away on business for the past week and a half and we'd all missed him.
When Tony saw us from the doorway, a big smile erupted on his face. The girls ran to hug him and AJ followed behind his sisters. When the kids let go, I took that as my cue to wrap my arms around his neck.
"I did not think you were getting in until tomorrow," I said into his chest.
"They told me I could go home, my job was done. They weren't sure that they needed me today and they only figured out this morning that I was done," he explained. He'd been away at a conference in New York.
"It is good to see you," I told him, looking up at him.
"I missed you," he said and he kissed me.
When we broke apart, I told him, "I missed you as well. We all have."
"So how long have you been here? I got home and no one was there, so I figured I'd try here," he said.
"I had my doctor's appointment this morning, so I dropped them off here. I figured they could have fun and AJ would not have to watch Kate and Jen," I explained.
"So how did it go?" Tony asked.
Ever since I got back from Somalia, I'd been having some problems with infections and such. When I had first gotten home, I was there almost every week. After a year and a half, it was every month. I still return every two months or so to make sure everything is okay now.
When we found out we were expecting AJ, we were both very concerned that something might happen to him or he might be born with some kind of defect. The doctors feared the same thing as well, so every three weeks I was in there, making sure everything was going alright. AJ ended up being perfectly fine, passing every check-up with flying colors and we all breathed a sigh of relief when he was born, a month early, with no complications.
Flashback
I was sitting at my desk, eight months pregnant and vehemently not wanting to go on pregnancy leave. Tony, Vance, Gibbs and I had held a conference the week before and they decided I could stay in work, but I could not do field work , interrogations, or go into Autopsy or Abby's Lab. To make up for not being able to go visit Abby whenever I wanted, the two of us went out to lunch together almost every day. Abby knew exactly what I was going through with my pregnancy and how stressed I was and I knew she felt it all as if it was her going through this.
We found out the sex of the baby as soon as we could. With it being a male, we were even more concerned because, with only one X chromosome, he had much more of the potential to inherit something from Tony or I. We had picked out a name as soon as we knew we were having a boy. Tony wanted to continue his family tradition of naming the firstborn son Anthony, and I let him have that one.
For the middle name, we were considering David, Jethro, Timothy, or Ari. Tony always shot down Ari, because it brought back too many bad memories for him. I saw his side of the argument, but I argued back that it was my brother and I knew a different side of him than Tony did and Anthony Junior would never know his uncle. For a while, we tossed the names Anthony David, Anthony Jethro, and Anthony Timothy back and forth. We ruled out Timothy after a while, not because we did not like the name, but it was a mouthful. We finally settled with Jethro after Tony pointing out a few times that, with David as a middle name, he would have the initials ADD or ADDJ. We did not like those very much, so we went with AJD or AJDJ. Gibbs smiled a bit when we told him out final choice.
I felt a little kick and I put my hand over the spot on my now huge stomach. "It is alright, little one, you will be out soon. Please stop kicking ima." But little Anthony did not want to listen to me because he kicked again, harder. I got up and started to walk around because this had made him stop kicking in the past. He was already much like his father, he did not like to sit still for very long.
I was rounding a corner when I felt something wet between my legs. It took me about five seconds to realize that my water had broken. Then I thought to myself that it would be my luck that Tony, Tim, and Gibbs were out in the field and not able to drive me to the hospital. I took my cell phone out of my pocket and prayed that Abby would hear her phone going off in the lab.
Mercifully, she picked up on the second ring. "Hey, Ziva!" she greeted.
"Abby, my water just broke," I told her, getting right to the point. I thanked God that the Bull Pen was mostly empty.
"Oh my God! Okay, I'm getting my keys and coming up to get you. Are you okay? Do you need anything?" she said in a faster voice than she usually used.
"I am alright right now. I just need you to hurry up. The last thing we need at the moment is for anything to go wrong right now," I said.
"Okay, I'm coming. Stay where you are," she said and she snapped her phone closed.
I walked back to my desk to grab my bag and wait for Abby. Less than a minute later, she came into the Bull Pen and practically ran over to my desk. "Are you okay? You ready to go?"
"I am okay. Let's go," I said.
We got to the parking lot and got into her car. I was used to it by then, but it was still an odd car. It was very Abby.
Once we were both in the car, I took my cell out of my pocket and hit 2 and send. Tony picked up after one ring. "Hey, Sweet Cheeks," he greeted me.
"Tony, I am in the car with Abby on the way to the hospital. My water broke less than ten minutes ago," I told him.
"What? You aren't due for another month!" he exclaimed.
"Babies do not come on schedules, Tony," I chuckled. "I know you are busy now, so take your time and meet me when you can. I know it is a little harder without an extra set of hands and I do not want Gibbs to lose half of his team because of me."
"Zee, don't be stupid. You're my wife and you're in labor. Gibbs'll let me go. I'll meet you at Bethesda as soon as I can. You are going to Bethesda, right?"
"Yes, we are headed there right now. I will see you soon," I said.
"Hey, I love you," Tony reminded me.
I smiled and blushed a little. I did not think I would ever get used to hearing that. "I love you, too," I told him.
Half an hour later, the hospital was in sight. Since it was around ten in the morning, the ride had gone faster than it normally would. We were at Bethesda because it was both the closest and the best. Though it was a naval hospital, they would not deny me because I worked with the Navy and I was here enough to know the staff. Abby dropped me off out front a few minutes later, telling me that she would meet me after she parked the car.
I was in labor for the next eleven hours. Tony got there about an hour after I did and I do not remember all of it. I was very drugged up, but what I do remember is the pain I was in. And that I broke Tony's right hand, though since we were in a hospital, they tended to him right away. While he was gone, Abby held my hand and I did not squeeze as hard, though I wanted to, but I did not want to break Abby, and she looked much more breakable than Tony.
But I do remember very clearly the first time I held my son. He was so little and adorable. He was very quiet, even as a newborn, and even Gibbs made a comment on how that could not be Tony's son.
End flashback
"It was good, nothing unexpected," I told him.
"Good. Even if there was something wrong, I know we'd get through it," he told me and pulled me close to him again. I knew that in both of our heads we were thanking whatever God was out there that everything was fine. We were fine.
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A/N: So, what did you think? Was it worth a review? I hope so! Please leave something for me! I really want to know what people think about this. Thanks guys!