* * * * *

The next morning, Tony was flung out of a dream involving a particularly beautiful snow elf back to reality by a Goth and an assassin bouncing suddenly on his bed. They had eased open the door, tip-toed into the room, done a silent count as if they were SEALs on a mission and attacked. "Merry Christmas, Tony!!" they shouted.

Tony, who was used to waking up alone to the soft sounds of his clock radio screamed like a little girl and reached for his weapon, which, gratefully, was locked in his car in the driveway, buried under a towering snowbank.

"They got you too, huh?" Jimmy asked, poking his head in the door. "I think McGee wet himself," he laughed.

Ziva bounced out of the room, but Abby shifted herself to the top of the bed and snuggled up to Tony, who pulled back the blankets and let her climb into bed next to him. "I'm glad you're here," she said as she laid her head on his chest.

Still coming down from the shock of his rude, but merry, awakening, Tony breathed heavily and rested his head on the headboard. After a moment, he looked down at her and smiled. "Yeah, me too." They stayed in the warm bed talking for a while until the smell of bacon wafting up the stairs was just too much for Tony's growling stomach to take.

Breakfast was a rowdy affair, as could only be expected. Eggs, bacon, pancakes, fruit, and of course, coffee were consumed with gusto, and shortly afterward, everyone was changed out of their pajamas (the girls) and sweats (the manly men) and headed out the door to move some snow.

Once the sidewalk was cleared and the cars dug out, the only logical activity was a massive snowball fight, started, of course, when the quarterback-turned-sniper nailed Tony in the back of the head with a large gathering of innocent little snowflakes.

Tony, thinking it had been Ziva, turned on his partner and tackled her to the ground. In no time, all of them – even Ducky – were throwing snowballs and ducking behind cars and bushes. Jimmy, it turned out, had excellent aim, which he later attributed to years of defending himself from the mean boy who lived in the apartment below his when he was a child. Tim held his own against Gibbs for a while, but when Tony joined forces with his boss, it was more than he could take and he was forced to surrender.

Tony and Gibbs, having decided they made a pretty good team, had snuck around the side of the house and were peering out, looking for their next victim. The next thing they knew, they were both face down in a snowdrift, having been ambushed by Abby and Ziva.

By the time they all decided they were just too wet and cold to carry on, the front yard looked like a battle zone, complete with snow people – some holding stick rifles, some laying on the ground with large chunks missing or heads laying next to them (the latter being Tony and Ziva's work, of course).

The group thinned as people peeled off to go inside, take showers and get warmed up. Gibbs and Tony sat on the front steps after the last group had gone in to use the two bathrooms with showers.

"See?" Gibbs teased, "I told you it would be fun."

Tony laughed as he played with the snow he'd pulled off his boot. "Yeah," was all he said.

* * * * *

Tony emerged from the shower, dried off and put on dry clothes from his bag. He could hear his friends down in the kitchen, and he was starting to smell something that smelled suspiciously like roast beef. He wondered whose idea this all had been – Gibbs' or Ducky's – but after a moment, he decided that he really didn't mind it at all. He wandered down the stairs and found everyone gathered in the warm kitchen. Abby was cutting up vegetables, Jimmy and Tim were washing and drying the breakfast dishes and anything else that was dropped into the sink, Ducky was stirring something on the stove and Ziva and Gibbs were peeling potatoes.

"Feels like I'm back in the Corp," Gibbs joked as he peeled.

"Feels like I'm back in Israel," Ziva said. Gibbs gave her a curious look. "Peeling potatoes for latkes," she explained.

"Ah, Tony!" Ducky called out when he saw him leaning on the doorway. "The plates are in that cabinet over there and the cutlery is in that drawer. Use the glasses in the breakfront in the dining room. Abigail will help you," he said as Abby dumped her vegetables into a pot on the stove. In no time, the dining room table was set and Abby was putting her own special touches on seating cards, having given Tony the job of folding the napkins to look like Christmas Trees.

Dinner was delicious – the second proper meal most of them had had since Thanksgiving (breakfast having been the first). The roast was cooked to perfection, the potatoes had just enough lumps and the gravy had none. When the dishes were cleared and the kitchen cleaned up, Abby raided the pantry and found flour, sugar, baking soda, vanilla, butter and eggs and she, Tim and Jimmy set about teaching Ziva how to bake and decorate the perfect Christmas cookie. Later, it was revealed that she knew exactly what she was doing when she produced a dozen perfectly-formed dreidels and half a dozen chanukiahs – they were harder to make, she explained.

Tony, on the other hand, decided that he wasn't done throwing things at his friends and decided to start a flour fight. The only problem was, no one else wanted to play along. Seconds after he started hearing screams, "Tony!!!"s and "Hey! Knock it off!!"s from the kitchen, Gibbs was in the doorway taking in the scene. Flour covered the floor, counter, Tim's head and the front of Abby's skeleton t-shirt. Tony was mid-throw when he heard his boss shout.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Gibbs demanded. In no time, Ducky was behind him in the doorway, speechless.

"I was just trying to have a little fun," Tony whined. Then he looked around at the mess he'd made. "Sorry, Ducky," he said sheepishly.

"It's all right, my boy," Ducky said as he turned and walked back to the living room. "I know you'll clean it up."

Gibbs leveled a glare at Tony as the rest of the group hurriedly turned back to their baking, not wanting to have anything to do with the pool of trouble he was standing in. Tony cringed as Gibbs walked toward him, fully expecting a headslap. Instead, Gibbs took his arm and walked him to the window.

"Look out there," he said, pointing into the back yard. "Do you know what that is?"

Tony swallowed hard. "It's a shed, Boss," he said resignedly.

"Uh huh," Gibbs replied. "Pull another stunt like that and you and I will visit it," he said then released Tony's arm. The sharp swat wasn't completely unexpected, but it was quite a bit lower than Tony had anticipated it falling. "Got it?"

"Got it Boss," Tony agreed. True to his word, the rest of the afternoon was without incident. And when he was done cleaning, Ducky's kitchen sparkled, thanks mostly to Gibbs' instruction. And help.

A little later, everyone was settled back in the living room, drinking yet more hot chocolate and nibbling on cookies.

"So," Ducky said loudly, effectively ending all of the side conversations. "Why don't we tell each other our favorite Christmas memory. I'll start. The year I was nine, I came down with the measles on Christmas Eve. I was just miserable and completely inconsolable. My brother had had them a few weeks earlier, so it was only natural that I would get them too. But to have them for Christmas was just more than I could bear. My family tried everything they could think of to cheer me up, but of course, nothing helped. But when I woke up Christmas morning, I found that somehow in the night, the Christmas tree had been moved from the sitting room to my bedroom, complete with presents." He smiled broadly at the memory for a moment then turned to Jimmy.

"My favorite Christmas?" Jimmy thought for a moment. "I think it was when I was six. We had just moved into another new apartment and I was so sure Santa wouldn't be able to find us. But in the middle of the night, I was woken up by a "Ho Ho Ho" (which Jimmy called out in his best Santa voice). My uncle had dressed up as Santa and showed up with the presents my mom had bought. Of course, I was six, so I thought it was the real Santa. But now I know it was my uncle," he explained needlessly, much to everyone's delight.

It was Ziva's turn. "When I was a child, we always had a big Chanukah party at our house on the fourth night. I remember the last Chanukah before my mother died, helping her clean and bake and get ready all day. When our guests arrived, there was more food than I had ever seen, lots of presents and everyone was so happy." She stared into the fire for a moment. "That was the last party we ever had. But I will remember every detail for the rest of my life."

Abby, of course, threw herself at Ziva and squeezed her. She let go and sat back. "Next year, we'll have a Chanukah party," she said decisively, and the moment of sadness was broken with laughter. "My favorite Christmas," she began, "was the year we all loaded in the car and drove to North Carolina to visit Grammy. It was the first white Christmas I ever had. It doesn't snow a lot in Louisiana, you know. All my cousins were there and we roasted a pig and had a snowman building contest to see who would get the tail. I made the best snow mummy you've ever seen. But," she added, "my cousin BillyBob made a twelve-point buck complete with red food coloring and an acorn shotgun shell and he won." The room was silent for a moment as she looked around eagerly. Eventually, everyone started murmuring…

"That's…interesting, Abbs."

"Um, that's…uh…"

Tony though, burst out laughing at the image in his head of a dead deer made out of snow, and soon everyone else was laughing too.

Tim went next. "My dad was stationed in Switzerland one year on an exchange program. We got to go skiing in the Alps, and to the midnight light festival. And the chocolate was incredible! Yeah, I think that was my favorite Christmas," he concluded with a satisfied smile.

Tony sat quietly staring into the fire for a moment, feeling six pairs of eyes on him. "I think my favorite Christmas was the year we actually stayed home instead of going to Cancun or Greece or somewhere. My father decided that he wanted to see what Christmas on Long Island was like, so he rented a bunch of decorations and hired people to put them up, we sent the gardener to cut down a tree, and we had dinner catered at the house. It even snowed a little." He smiled for a moment then shrugged. "But the tree fell over and caught on fire when it hit a candle, my dad got into an accident when his car slid off the road on his way to the store for more Scotch, and then he found out the store was closed anyway. We went to Jamaica the next year." That garnered hearty laughs all around.

Then all eyes were on Gibbs. Tony waited with bated breath for a peak into his boss' childhood. Gibbs looked around the room and a soft smile formed on his lips. His eyes sparkled in the flicker of the fire and the lights on the tree. He sighed contentedly. "My favorite Christmas?" he said thoughtfully and then nodded. "I think it's this one."

Happy Chanukah! Merry Christmas! God bless us. Everyone!