Some things you just can't walk past without buying. Occasionally, these same things you just can't rummage past in your closet without putting on. Vicki had found this shirt in a random tat shop in Seattle while they were on Earth, and she simply had to have it, straightaway. She was never going to forget the look on Jon's face when he'd first realised just what was emblazoned on it, either. It was fairly simple, just a long-sleeved black tee with a little printing ....a picture of Jon's face with the legend "Jon's Girl" across the boob area. Bootleg, of course, but Vicki loved it. And she just hadn't been able to resist wearing it on moving day. Humphrey was still laughing as she slipped out of his study after saying hello, skipping back to the suite where she and Jon were beginning the process of settling in.

Jon's mouth had dropped open when he'd seen the unauthorized bootleg t-shirt Vicki was wearing, but the look of shock had been quickly followed by laughter. Though he knew there was more than likely merchandise out there with his face on it that he wasn't aware of, he'd never personally encountered any, especially not on his own wife. The first order of business upon arriving at Maple Grove Manor was not greeting Humphrey but saying hello to Cosmo, the border collie who'd been a Christmas gift from Vicki and who seemed overjoyed that his master had returned home.

He'd said hello to his uncle, Cosmo at his heels, before turning to the task of hauling suitcases and boxes to the suite where he and Vicki were planning on settling and calling home for a while, insisting on doing most of the work himself, and not delegating it to hired help.

Cosmo had spent most of the morning herding Jon and Vicki back and forth as they unloaded boxes from the van they'd hired for the move, evidently more excited to see them than the dog could possibly have expressed with just drool. When Vicki stepped back in through the open door to the expansive suite of rooms Humphrey had insisted on giving them, the collie skidded across the polished floor of the main room to bump against her leg, turning his curious attention to the bump that everyone else in the house was politely ignoring. Laughing, the redhead scratched Cosmo's head fondly as she walked through the main rooms toward the bedroom. "Jon' You're not buried under a mountain of your own underwear, are you?"

"Hm?" Jon replied, fastidiously hanging each suit in its proper place in the large walk-in closet he had claimed for himself upon moving in. How many suits did one man need anyway' Jon's wardrobe put Carrie Bradshaw's to shame. Fortunately for him, most of them were given to him by designers who he'd either done a modeling gig for or who just wanted him to be seen wearing their label. "More like a mountain of suits," he proclaimed with a sigh, as he hung yet another classic black suit that didn't look much different than the others in the closet.

"Oh, you poor baby. Cosmo, off." The order was given in an absent-minded way, just forceful enough to get the dog off the bed seconds after he'd leapt onto it. Unfortunately not quick enough to save the next suit from being decorated with dusty, doggie footprints. Vicki chuckled, opening up another 'bedroom' box as the dog butted at her hip. "You know, I think the dog's missed us a bit. You more than me."

"Cosmo!" Jon exclaimed, hands on his hips as he eyed the dog who'd just pounced all over his best Armani suit. He sighed again as he swept the suit off the bed and attempted in vain to brush white Cosmo fur from the front of the black suit. "I think Uncle spoiled him. It's going to take weeks to get him under control again." Jon turned to hang the suit in the closet, pushing it away from the other suits hung there and making a mental note to get it cleaned in the morning, along with anything else that needed to go to the cleaners. "Did you say hello to Humphrey?" he asked, as Cosmo barked and nearly took Jon's legs out from under his when the dog squirmed between Jon's legs, demanding attention.

"Yeah, I just came from the study," Vicki told him with a faint chuckle, finally exuming her clicker and a bag of chicken jerky from the box she was rummaging through. "I think you're right about spoiling the dog, though. Cosmo ..." She pressed the clicker. The little sound obviously shot straight to the dog's core, since they'd been working on the clicker training with him for months. The collie's attention immediately turned to the redhead. "Sit. Jon, you okay?" As Cosmo sat down, Vicki tossed him a treat as a reward for behaving himself.

Recovered from his near tumble to the floor beneath an over-excited and overgrown puppy, Jon finished hanging the last of his suits in the closet before joining Vicki on the bed to take a short break. "Did he say anything about....you know." He gestured to the little bump beneath Vicki's shirt to indicate what he was talking about.

While Jon hung up the last of his precious suits, Vicki was sat on the end of the bed, reiterating with Cosmo what did and didn't apply as good behavior. The collie hadn't forgotten much in the couple of months since they'd left, but he'd been allowed to slide. It was going to take another couple of months to calm him down again, and with a baby on the way, they needed to have the dog under control. Relaxing, she leaned back onto her elbows as Jon sat down with her. "No, I think he was too busy laughing at the shirt," she admitted with a grin. "Which is why I wore it in the first place. You need to tell him before he starts finding ways to back you into a corner, stud muffin."

Reminded of the shirt, he looked it over again, furrowing his brows in puzzlement and trying to remember when the photo was taken, but failing, as it had been taken before he'd lost his memory. "Where the heck did you find it?" he asked, changing the subject momentarily from the pending talk with Humphrey.

She grinned cheerfully over at her husband. "Seattle, of course. I was bored, you were busy. I took Randy on a tour of the tourist spots, and we found a stall selling bootleg merchandise. You really think I was going to walk on by and not buy this?"

He rolled his eyes. "You're not planning on wearing that in public, are you?" The next thing he knew, she'd be wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed she was having Jon's baby. He wasn't angry about it; it was just embarrassing walking around with someone who was wearing a shirt with your own face splattered across it. "Although," he added, with a wry grin. "It does declare you as belonging to me." He pushed her back against the bed, hovering over with a mischievous gleam in his blue eyes. "Think it's too soon to christen the bed?"

Dropped back against the bed, Vicki let out a peal of laughter that set Cosmo off barking again. "With all the doors open?" she reminded her husband with a wide grin. "Yeah, I think it might be." Chuckling, she pushed up to kiss him fondly. "Besides, you might want to get a head start on that conversation with your uncle before he comes up here and starts hovering." Because Humphrey was so excited to have more people in the house, he just might move into this suite with them.

Jon's smile faded when she suggested for the second time that he tell Humphrey the good news, a case of the jitters setting in, though he wasn't sure why. "Are you coming with me" I mean, it's your news as much as it is mine." More so even, he thought, since she was the one who was with child. He'd just donated his sperm. "I'm not sure what to say. Hey, Uncle, I have some great news. We're having a baby. Surprise! I don't want to give him a heart attack."

Jon relaxed, breathing yet another sigh of relief, a smile spreading over his face, along with a slight flush. "Thanks. We weren't expecting it so soon." He laughed, correcting himself, "We weren't expecting it at all!"

Humphrey chuckled along with him, resting back in his comfortable armchair. He liked seeing Jon happy. It hadn't happened in a very long time, but these days, it seemed as though a breath of fresh air had taken up residence in his great-nephew's life with the arrival of the redhead upstairs. There had been a lot of tragedy in his life; it was good to see some comedy - in the Greek sense of the word - coming to rest finally. "I think we can safely say you are expecting it now," he grinned to the younger man. "When is the happy event supposed to take place?"

Fortunately for Jon, he didn't remember a lot of the tragedy in his life. Though he'd read about it and been told about it, it always felt as though it was someone else's life and not his they were telling him about. "February. The tenth, I think, unless the doctor says otherwise. We're....She's supposed to be getting a scan soon, so we can be sure." His smile faded a little, as the jitters started to set in again. As excited as he was, he was more than a little nervous about the thought of bringing a child into the world. "You don't think we're rushing things, do you?" he asked, not really unsure of that so much as he was about his ability to be a good father.

"Jon." Humphrey let his own smile fade, meeting his nephew's gaze with equal solemnity, if not concern. "If it feels right to you, then it is right. No one else can tell you anything but what they think, and they're often wrong. And even if it is too soon, you're just going to have to step up and deal with it, because whether you like it or not, you're a married man with a child on the way." His smile returned, warm with experience. "You're not expected to know all the answers, Jon. Parenthood is something you pick up as you go along."

Jon met Humphrey's gaze, that worried expression still on his face. He knew there were things he could control and things that he couldn't, but what worried him most was something he hadn't mentioned to anyone, not even Vicki. He hesitated a moment, as if having to gather his courage before voicing the deepest of his concerns. "I know-I know my father was....I know he didn't..." Jon licked his lips nervously before continuing, his hands clasped tightly together in his lap. "I don't want to be like him." What he knew of his father, he'd read in his journals, and he didn't want to be anything like what he'd read - distant, cold, indifferent, abusive.

The old man held Jon's gaze for a very long time, trying to decide how he should approach this. He could be gentle with his advice, encouraging without being forceful, or he could simply be Humphrey. Being Humphrey won out. "Jon, that is the single most patently absurd thing I have ever heard you say," he told his nephew in a firm tone, brooking no argument. "Your father was a spoiled brat of a boy who grew up into a smarmy git of a man. He was bad news long before he ever married. If you were ever going to be anything like him, you would have shown signs of it by now. And frankly, do you think your Vicki would have married you if you had even a hint of what your father had?"

Sometimes what Jon needed was not the gentle approach, but a swift kick in the rear. Vicki was not above doing it, and neither, it seemed, was Humphrey, getting through to him quicker by being blunt than by skirting the topic with kindness. "No, I suppose not," Jon admitted thoughtfully, wondering what Humphrey would think if he knew about Jon's little journey through Vicki's past. Would he believe him or would he think Jon had been dabbling in drugs again? "Is that why I spent so much time here as a boy?" There were times when he felt he knew more about Vicki's past than his own, having witnessed hers, while he'd only read about his own.

Humphrey's expression grew dark as he spoke about Jon's father. "David wasn't interested in his children, and we were," he explained in a terse tone. "You got to spend time with Caroline and Sterling, and Oliver and Laura when Junior allowed them to come here. And we got to make sure that you had at least a little normality before you went home. Family means a great deal to me, Jon. If I had known at the time what was happening in your household, I would have put an end to it."

Jon arched a surprised brow, not so much at Humphrey's staunch support of family - Jon already knew how important family was to his uncle or he wouldn't be here - but he wondered what Humphrey would have done had he known about the way David had treated Jon and Lena and even their mother, especially after their mother had died. Jon shook the thought from his head. In the end, it didn't really matter. The past was the past, and nothing could be done to change it. "Family is important to me. I want to be a good husband and father. I want to make you proud of me." Like my father never was, he thought to himself.

"I'm already proud of you, Jon. You're a better man than your grandfather was, and believe me, that's saying a lot." The old man smiled affectionately, reaching over to give a pat to Jon's cheek that wasn't quite as gentle as it might have been. "I will give you one piece of advice, something my father told me. When your Vicki breaks down - and she will, pregnant women do this - let her cry, but don't let her think you agree with a word she's saying. Believe me, you don't want to be wrestling with a woman who thinks she's going to be a dreadful mother two weeks before she's due to give birth."

Jon's brows knit in a puzzled frown at Humphrey's advice. "Why would she think that' She's..." Jon broke off, realizing that Vicki was just as human as he was and probably shared some of the same fears he did, for different reasons. "She's going to be a great mom," he continued, unclasping his hands as he relaxed, leaning back against the chair. "Uncle, do twins run in the family?" he asked abruptly, curious. He and Vicki had been discussing the possibility and he wanted to know for sure.

Humphrey didn't bother arguing when Jon refuted his advice, smirking to himself as the sensible side of his nephew's emotional brain kicked in with a reasonable explanation for him. The question of multiples was an interesting one, though. "Well, we've had a few," he nodded. "Not so much recently, but there have been a few multiple births over the years. Your grandfather was a twin, for example."

Jon nodded his head, taking that information in, just in case. He wasn't really expecting them to have twins, since he wasn't a twin himself, but he was curious. "My grandfather?" Jon echoed, not knowing much about him, but what he'd been told, and that wasn't much. "What was he like?"

Humphrey's smile turned restrospective, looking at a memory where he was one of five brothers in a tight knit family, all of them just starting out in the world. "He was a good man," he said quietly. "He never had an unkind word to say for anyone, even when we deserved it. Absolutely devoted to his wife, adored his children. You know, I once saw him get out of his car during a riot and walk through the crowd, just to rescue a little girl who was stuck on a low roof and couldn't get down." He laughed lightly, remembering his brother with deep affection. But the loneliness came with it. Humphrey was the last of those brothers still living, and he found it hard, sometimes, to deal with that knowledge; that he, the eldest of the five, was the last survivor of his generation.

Jon seemed to sense a sadness in Humphrey, mingled with fondness when he spoke of those who'd gone before him. He leaned forward, reaching over to take hold of the older man's hand. It occurred to Jon how much he and his grandfather were alike, that he'd risked his own life to save Vicki from drowning when she was a baby, but Humphrey would never know that. "You miss him," he said, his voice soft with compassion.

Old Man Granger let out a low sigh, covering the younger hand on his own with his other hand. "I miss them all," he confessed quietly, his rheumy brown eyes shining with sadness. "One by one I've watched them leave me before their time, and these past years have taken even more. But then I look at Caroline and Richmond, and you and Victoria, and Oliver and Piper, and I see all the happiness that is slowly making new lives for our family, and I know my brothers would be proud of the children they had and watched grow. Just as I am."

Jon smiled warmly, his heart swelling with love and affection for this old man who so cared so much about his own family, glad they'd decided to move to Maple Grove, glad they could make his final years happy ones. "You're not alone. Not so long as Vicki and I are here. The family is growing, Uncle." New lives would replace old ones in the cycle of life and the family would go on.

((Look! A scene where Jon and Vicki DIDN'T end up in bed! Sound the trumpets! Although, yanno ....I doubt Humphrey would have appreciated them preferring sex over chatting to him. :grin: Guess what? Thanks to Jon's player!))