Chapter Text
#5: Almost Home, 10 years (9 years and 11.5 months) as Director, July 2032
Tim called "Nice catch" to his youngest as DJ jumped nearly 2 feet in the air to catch the Frisbee thrown at him by Arin, landing with an 'ooomph' in the sand. At age 12, Arin was a little more than two years older than his cousin and after a recent growth spurt, several inches taller than the not quite 10 year old DJ McGee. DJ was pretty sure he'd be as tall, maybe even taller, than Arin someday. Andy was 6'5", as tall as Uncle Rob, Jorry and Sean were over 6 feet already and Dad said they weren't done growing yet. In the meantime he'd keep jumping. As he threw the Frisbee he called out to their other cousins also playing this morning, "Henry, Patrick, Mark, heads up!" Henry Metzger, Patrick Powell and Mark Perry, DJ's best friend along with his twin sister Lainey, moved out as the disc flew across the beach.
Tim turned toward the water, ready for a swim when Claire called to him from the sun shelter, "Tim, your phone's ringing." He started to make a face but remembered it might not be work. He stood in the shade, happy it was a friend calling. "Hey Evander!"
"Hi Tim, sorry to interrupt your morning but I've got three houses for you and Lina to look at."
"Great! When do you want us over there?"
"Would this afternoon be possible?"
"Hang on, let me check with my wife." He moved his head an inch and found her standing next to him, nodding at him. He cleared his throat, "Yes, that's fine. We'll catch the noon ferry."
"Wonderful, I'll pick you up. And…how are my two rascals?"
Tim grinned, "Isaac and Samouel are fine. Right now they're in the water with Nicolas and Damian."
"And they're not causing any problems, they're obeying you?"
"Sure, they're fine although they do miss you and Kim!"
"It's so kind of you to give them an extra vacation. We'll be over tomorrow night."
"Good and we like having them! In the meantime, Lina and I will put some real clothes on and see you at the ferry." He kissed Lina as he disconnected, "He's got three houses for us!"
She smiled, "Wonderful! Does he want us to bring the boys home?"
"No, they're coming over tomorrow."
After years of trying for a baby, resulting in several miscarriages and a lot of heartache, Kim and Evander faced the possibility of never having a child of their own. They'd started looking into adoption, still rare in Greece, when Evander's sister offered to be their gestational host. It was an expensive process but worth it as they now had two young boys, twins 6 months younger than Rob and Ned's son Teddy. With Evander's business booming and Kim's work at NCIS, they'd never been able to spend a solid week on Aegina with their friends; when the boys were old enough they began to stay over on the island with the McGees or the junior Mallards for a few days.
Lina asked the Grands to keep an eye on the kids for the afternoon and early evening, explaining why. The two sets of twins, Isaac and Sam and their own DJ and Lainey weren't a worry, not with plenty of older sisters, brothers and cousins to keep an eye on them. Still, Anna, age 20, Gemma, 18, and Andy, 23, had plans to go into Athens with some of their cousins and friends that evening and Lina was not about to cut into their fun. Now coming up on their 17th birthdays, Jorry and Sean had had their splash battle debut the previous summer but not being here when they were out in the waves still made Tim a little uneasy. And every time he heard either of the two call out the words 'splash battle' he remembered little Jorry, age 6, excitedly telling him that all the little kids had had a splash battle of their own in the creek at home, no big kids allowed.
The couple quickly changed and headed to the ferry, deciding to have lunch on the mainland. They smiled at Evander as they walked off the hydrofoil. "Can't wait to see what you have for us, my friend."
Evander grinned, "Oh, I have a big surprise but we'll do this in order." He first took them to a house near the Russells. Although it was two stories, the bedrooms were split between the first and second levels so the Grands and Greats would have privacy downstairs and no one would worry about the Greats having to use the stairs. Six of the children would still be living with them fulltime when they moved after Tim's retirement. Tanya was on her own and loved her work; her family (and her boyfriend's family) expected to hear about an engagement soon.
Gemma had been accepted into NYU's Tisch School of the Arts starting in the fall, she'd be living, at least for the first term, with Ziva, Brian and their three kids in New York; Anna couldn't be pried away from her work in linguistics and sociology at William and Mary in Virginia and Andy wouldn't move here until his Masters' Program started in Athens next spring, he'd be working on a dig in Australia January through April. That left Jorry and Sean who had one more year of high school, Zoe and Cailey, both 15 and the twins, aged 9½. They didn't absolutely have to have all the bedrooms they had on their wish list but they hoped the Grands, Greats and the older kids would spend time here and wanted them to be comfortable.
The house had the right number of bedrooms and just about everything else they were looking for, it was ok but neither Lina nor Tim was bowled over by it and there wasn't a pool. Maybe it was because not everyone would be here, maybe nothing was going to thrill them. If they could pick up the entire clan, whose numbers grew with marriages and births seemingly every year, and their house in Virginia and move them and it to Greece, they would. They loved the place and had enjoyed living there, except for the miserably cold winters and the 'sticky sweaty stinky' summers. But they'd still be living in it, off and on until the twins were all the way through school and probably after, depending on where their kids settled. For now, they'd spend summers here, the fall school term in Virginia, or here…with the international school they could be flexible, and leave for Greece after the Christmas holidays.
The second place was a little better, it had some character to it and there was a pool. But there wasn't an office for Tim, a studio for Lina or a workshop for Dad and Davos, all still essentials for the McGee-Kalivas household. Still, there was room to build so they left it on the list and moved on to Evander's surprise.
And what a surprise! As they drove into a familiar neighborhood, Lina nudged Tim and he nodded, he recognized it too, the street with the very first big house, back when the Greats had been the Grands and their parents were just…the parents. When Evander pulled into the driveway of that very same house, he laughed at their faces, he'd achieved his goal. Well, almost, he couldn't wait to show them the house as it was now, nearly 15 years after the Greats and Grands sold it.
Lina and Tim tried to remember the number of bedrooms; they knew there was a suite downstairs and thought there were five or six bedrooms upstairs. When they walked inside at first everything looked the way they remembered it. But as they approached the kitchen they immediately saw things had changed. Instead of an exterior wall with French doors to a patio, there was an entryway to a new structure and the kitchen and dining area had a large skylight but no windows.
The left side of the addition had two levels. Most of the upper level was a very large master suite, with a private office taking up the rest of the upper floor square footage. The lower level was divided by the staircase with a hall on each side of it, with two good size bedrooms on each side. Each bedroom had its own bathroom.
The right side was set up as a media room and there they found the door to what they remembered as a medium sized backyard. They smiled as they stepped out onto a large deck, big enough for two big patio tables and as many of their fathers' grills as they wanted. It curved around to a swimming pool with plenty of room for sunbathing. On the other side was a garden area and the entire backyard was ringed with trees native to the area. They walked out further and saw there was a fence surrounding the entire back; that was good as they wouldn't live here fulltime for several years, if ever. Back inside, they walked back through to the original structure and went upstairs. Nothing had changed there but they were glad to see that the bedrooms on the back of the house still had nice views; whoever had built the addition had not obliterated those. From the front, everything looked the same. While the addition was functional and spacious it was not at all aesthetically pleasing and they knew Damian would want to redesign it. And if the price on the house was right, they just might ask him to do that!
They'd started taking photos in the new structure and outside, sending them to their parents. As they worked their way back through the house and upstairs in the original structure, they took a couple more but not many, they didn't want to give it away just yet. Finally as they walked out the front door, they took one last photo, of the entire front of the house and sent that.
Before they could open the car doors, Lina's phone was ringing. She showed Tim the id and he laughed, it was Damian. She put the call on speaker as her brother sputtered, "Where are you and what was that monstrosity Evander took you to?"
"Hello, who's this?"
"Melina! Where are you? I'm on my way over." He frowned as he heard his brother-in-law and sister laughing hysterically, asking. "Was this a joke?"
Evander finally took the phone as his friends were laughing too hard to speak. "Damian, it's Evander and no, it is not a joke. Someone added on a functional addition to the house your parents owned here. Unfortunately, it's quite ugly."
"Are they thinking of buying it?"
"Here, Tim is breathing again."
Tim explained, "We don't like the look of the addition although it has all the rooms we'd need and the backyard is beautiful now, has a large deck, pool and a studio big enough for Lina and Rhea to share."
"So you sent this…thing…"
"Ok, yes we wanted you to see it. If we can get a good deal on the house, see what you can do with it."
"Ah, thank you, now that makes sense."
"We really thought we'd show you when we got back this afternoon."
"No need, I'll be there in a few minutes, I rented the fastest boat they had."
"You're driving and tal…oh, Matt's driving."
"Yes."
"Good, we'll come get you, you can see the house, give us an estimate and we'll see what we want to do." Tim disconnected and handed the phone back to Lina who rolled her eyes at him. He grinned, "They weren't on the beach this morning. I'll bet the two of them were already in the boat racing around when Damian got those photos!"
He looked at Evander, "How long has the house been on the market?"
"2 ½ years. The size limited the market and that addition further eliminated potential buyers."
"So they'll be prepared to take less than the asking price?"
"Yes."
Lina also had a question, "Evander, do you know if the sellers are the ones who built that dreadful structure?"
He smiled and nodded, "Yes, Melina, they are." He leaned in, "And they built it themselves."
Tim's eyes widened, "Oh boy, we'll need Dad and Davos too!"
"Yes, although I expected them to look at whichever house you're interested in."
Chuckling, they agreed with his assessment. They drove to the docks where they watched Matt expertly berth the sleek yellow boat.
Both men grinned at them as they joined them. "Do you like our new boat?"
"Yes I do! Love the ferry, but this looks faster and more fun."
Matt nodded, "Oh yeah!" Damian was already walking towards Evander's car. "Come, I must see the monster!"
By the time they reached the island that evening, they'd submitted an offer on the house. Over lunch Damian sketched out a rough design of the addition re-build and a re-work of the original upstairs so there would be a true master bedroom, all of it working with the rest of the house and the property. They used his estimate to formulate the offer.
While Damian designed, the others enjoyed a relaxing lunch at the Flying Pig with Evander, running into the Avramidis' brothers who wereboth now retired. That was followed by a really fast and fun ride back to the island.
By the time they left for home 10 days later, they owned the house. A week later they received a photo of what had been the addition, now a large empty space with only the foundation surviving. Four months later the last photo arrived, their Damian-designed addition and master bedroom complete. They were ready, their new house was ready; now all they needed was…more time. No sooner had they returned from vacation than one nasty situation, political or crime-related, after another had rolled in and Tim wanted to handle them.
His 55th birthday came and went, Jorry and Sean were applying for colleges in the U.S. and Europe, they had a full family Christmas that year with all the 'kids' gathered including Ainsley who arrived with her half Scots, half Greek husband Ian Caras and their infant daughter Teagan Claire. Callum and his wife were also there; he was on leave from his job as a Marine Biologist with the Navy and she from her job as a Marine Biologist with the Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience in Florida.
That had been a surprise when the young man told his parents the name of his mystery girlfriend, by that time his fiancée. They knew he'd met her at a seminar, although his exact words were "we connected…" but they didn't know much else. As they finally heard her name, their faces lit up, it was a young woman they'd come to know through the family and they liked her very much. The funny thing was that they couldn't remember the two ever showing much interest in each other but then Callum was a bit younger than his love and during their summer vacations she'd mostly hung out with the older kids – the Russells, Ross and the Vances.
Later they heard that as he told them the news, the young woman was Skyping with her own family to let them in on her side of the secret. Penny and the Gibbses were inadvertently let in on the news when they heard Davos and Hélène loudly exclaiming in their suite…Davos was actually cheering. Chloe had figured it out months ago and told her husband Peter but neither mentioned it to anyone else. However, now Alexis' parents were finally able to express their happiness, joining in the cheering with the future bride's grandparents.
They were married on Aegina two summers prior to the Christmas visit and further made their family happy that holiday by announcing they were expecting their first child in April. Alexis hadn't realized she was expecting a baby until she was nearly five months pregnant and Tim jokingly warned Callum to keep a close eye when she had Braxton-Hicks contractions. The Kalivas' were still in Virginia that December; they'd planned to help with the move and hadn't been sure whether to head to Florida or Thessaloniki after the holiday. Once they heard the news of their first great grandchild, the decision was made, they'd head to Florida for the winter.
That holiday was also marked by an announcement from Ethan and Tanya. They'd stopped procrastinating and made everyone happy by announcing their engagement.
In the meantime, Evander, Kim, the Vances, the Russells, Eva, Caleb, Tea, Adan and the Morrises were keeping an eye on the McGees' Piraeus home. Caleb was now running the Benaki and Eva and Tea were again working with Kim at the NCIS office in Piraeus, Tea's replacement having retired. Adan was still working with Damian but in recent years the focus was on European projects so the travelers returned home and Adan traveled when necessary. Rusty Mayhew, the agent who'd replaced Ned as Team Lead in 2021, was still the SAIC; it looked like he'd easily break Pete's record as Team Lead.
In mid-January of 2033, Tim had his retirement papers ready once again when the U.S. President suffered a stroke and died, thrusting a relatively inexperienced Vice President into the Presidency. The cabinet, Joint Chiefs and the heads of most federal agencies including NCIS, were asked to hold their positions for six months to allow for a stable transition. That pushed his retirement to June and in April he finally filed with a date of June 27th, ten, nearly eleven months later than planned.
One of the silver linings in that cloud was that they were still in the U.S. in April for the birth of Alexis and Callum's baby boy, Andrew Mikolos,who was almost immediately nicknamed 'Drew'. The second of the silver linings was that Sean and Jorry finished high school in Virginia rather than spending their last year of school in Greece. Violet Palmer and Melody Mallard also graduated and the four of them were given an epic family wide celebration.
After the kids' graduations, Tim was almost unbearably antsy, wanting to make good his escape from DC politics and fulfill his promise to Lina to return to Greece. As the days ticked by, he started packing his office, adding to the boxes already stacked in the garage at home. They'd take their clothes and linens, minus the heavy winter items, most of their kitchenware, but not the dishes, the originals purchased by Tim on that first trip to Aegina with Grandfa twenty years ago. They decided they'd buy a new set from the same shop, the same craftsman, for the new house.
Throughout June, the rest of the family prepared to accompany them to Greece for their usual vacation, trying not to think about the McGees not returning home with them. They'd fly to Virginia for Christmas and Tanya and Ethan's wedding and then the Grands, Penny and the Cranes would return to Greece with them while the senior Powells would remain behind and the senior Mallards hadn't yet decided where they'd spend the winter, either in Greece or the Florida 'big house', where they'd spent the last ten winters. They did think the big house would feel very strange and empty without their fellow 'snowbirds', the Gibbses, the Ks', the Cranes, the Hubbards, the Powells and of course the Colonel, who had died two years earlier. For the first time since Claire and Liz brought Ainsley and Callum over for the summer, the Hubbards weren't going to Greece; they were loath to spend any time away from their grandchildren.
The McGees knew they had room for whoever ended up with them for the winter and just kept packing. Because they were still uncertain how often they'd be back or for how long, they were leaving behind all of their indoor furniture and all of the appliances, which wouldn't work in Greece anyway. Their patio table would be making its third move with them but the rest would stay. With Lina's approval, Margaret and Nicolas had already selected the furniture for the McGees' Greek home and it would be in place when they arrived. Now they just counted the days.