AN: Obviously, this is a not-secret-agents!AU. It's also fluffy, silly, full of tropes, Team-as-Family-feels, Mac and Jack plus Bozer bromance and a fair bit (in my opinion) of deep emotional stuff. If you sometimes (like me) wish that the team, as amazing as what they do is, were just a happy family who don't suffer betrayal/almost die/in general suffer, you will probably like this! The following, I promise, aren't spoilers - this has a tooth-rottingly-sweet happy ending and Murdoc does not make an appearance (if anybody can successfully put a reasonably in-character Murdoc into a rom-com!AU, massive kudos to you…).

The title comes from the rom-com of the same name, but there isn't really any plot commonality between this story and the film.

MACGYVER FAMILY RESIDENCE

PASADENA

'Daddy, while we're waiting for the cookies to bake, can you tell me a story? Please? Pretty please with sugar and paperclips and duct tape on top?'

His four-year-old daughter Maria tucked a lock of her dirty blonde hair (which Mac was quite sure would darken as she got older) back behind her ear, then clasped her hands together and looked up at him with her light brown eyes wide and pleading and adorable. They could only be described as puppy-dog eyes.

(Mac was not very resistant to Maria's puppy-dog eyes. In fact, he was barely resistant to them at all.)

(He was, at least, more resistant than Jack.)

(They were just lucky that she was a pretty mature and sensible four year old, so used her great powers responsibly.)

(Mostly.)

(God help them if she ever asked for a pony.)

From the other end of the kitchen, Nick, Mac's seven year old, looked up from where he was carefully disassembling one of the family's spare toasters using his dad's Swiss Army knife, determined to both figure out how it worked and convert it into an alien-fighting toaster for the movie he was making with Hedy, Bozer and Riley's seven-and-a-half year old. He grinned enthusiastically, showing off the gap in his teeth.

(Nick looked like a carbon copy of Mac, except for the fact that he clearly had his mother's nose, so that had led to his Uncle Bozer calling him Mini-Mac, a nickname that the little boy, who idolized his dad, loved.)

Both of Mac's kids adored his stories, particularly the ones that involved what Bozer and Jack had dubbed 'MacGyverisms', which given the kids' interests and activities, were probably hereditary.

(Nick was disassembling a toaster. Enough said. After Maria had asked a whole series of questions as to why different people's cookies and cookies from different bakeries were so different, he had decided to do an experiment with her, baking many different batches of chocolate-chip cookies with different ingredients and ratios of ingredients to work out what they did.)

(They had a lot of cookies. One hundred and forty-four cookies to be exact.)

(The whole family was coming over for a barbecue tonight, so Mac figured that today was the best day to do the cookie experiment, since then they probably wouldn't be wasted.)

(Their family had gotten pretty big.)

Mac, too, grinned, sitting down on a stool at the kitchen's peninsula, picking Maria up and setting her down on one too, as Nick put down Mac's Swiss Army knife and took a seat as well, both kids very keen for story-time, Maria clapping her hands together happily.

'How about I tell you the story of how I met your mom?' He paused and his grin grew more wry, and he leaned down and stage-whispered to his kids conspiratorially. 'It's also the story of how Auntie Riley and Uncle Bozer fell in love, and the story of how Grandpa Jack and Grandma Diane found each other again.'

Nick made a face of disgust.

'It's a love story? Eww!'

Mac chuckled, then smiled reassuringly.

'Well, it is a love story, but not just the icky kissing kind, I promise.' Nick looked mollified, mostly. He knew his dad never broke his promises, after all, and he'd promised that he wouldn't either. Mac's smile grew more wry and a bit more reminiscent as he continued. 'And it's also the story of a whole string of really improbable coincidences…'

AN: Have some dad!Mac and hereditary MacGyver-ness! (Though, if you're familiar with my stories, you'll know that not all of the mad-scientist-ness comes from Mac's side…)

And yes, the kids are named after various scientists. Nick is named after Tesla (his full name is Nicholas Harry MacGyver, my oft-repeated headcanon name for Mac's son), Maria is named after Marie Curie, and Hedy is named after Hedy Lamarr, who both invented frequency jumping (a precursor of Wi-Fi) and was a famous actress (appropriate for Bozer and Riley's daughter, no?).