AN: Thanks to everyone who's been reading along. :D I've just got one more chapter/epilogue left and then this puppy is finished! Hope you all enjoy my Sadusky Birthday Headcanons.

In the end, Sadusky doesn't really go home at all.

Or maybe he does, and that's something his brain is still figuring out how to put a stamp on. This is mostly due to the obvious fact that he can't stand or lift any kind of weight for very long and this makes it easier to just…just stay at the Gates house. His doctors made it crystal clear that he's not allowed to live on his own while taking these painkillers, let alone drive or operate a stove. The one time he'd tried to use a microwave, he forgot to take the tinfoil off and his soup narrowly missed an explosion of epic proportions, thanks to Abigail's quick intervention.

(He's banned from the microwave until further notice.)

Peter learns an enormous amount about the Gates family over those first few days: Ben has a nice singing voice, if you can catch him doing so for Eleanor. Riley likes to cut the crusts off his sandwiches or he refuses to eat them. Abigail prefers doing yoga to Aretha Franklin records. Riley occasionally has trouble sleeping and so he draws little chapbooks for Ellie and Ben, or Ben will sit up with him while working on a paper. Ellie is trying furiously to learn to wink, since Riley does it to her so much. Success pending.

Sometimes Penny visits and brings over stew for them all, hugging her father for long minutes of self-reassurance. She offers to let Peter stay with them, but their house is still somewhat a mess from the move and they both agree he's better where he is for now. Penny and Abigail have started doing yoga together and it's a strange, buzzing thing in Sadusky's throat, watching them all interact. Other times she sits at the table with a cup of tea and patiently listens while Abigail explains her frustrations over the latest drama at work or the fact that the president has their phone number now, apparently, and has taken to calling her if they ever need help authenticating a document.

But his favourite sight by far is the Gates family first thing in the morning.

Thanks to the painkillers, Sadusky is normally still asleep when they're up and at 'em for the day, but a week in and he wanders into the kitchen right when they do, just in time to witness their fluid choreography—

Riley, true to form, is a mess in the mornings, all bleary-eyed with bedhead that looks more like a hat than hair. Peter suspects that the only reason he's up at all is the influence of Ben and Abigail, living with morning people. Riley slumps at the island, grabbing a muffin. Abigail is the most awake out of all of them, already dressed and texting on her phone while pouring pancake batter into the frying pan. Ben is halfway there, wearing jeans and a rumpled sleep sweater.

In his semi-conscious state, Riley has dug out a sharp meat knife to butter his muffin. Ben fluidly plucks it from his fingers in his quest for the coffee machine. Riley grumbles until Ben passes by again and replaces it with a butter knife. Abigail holds out a mug for Ben to pour his coffee into, still without looking away from her phone. He kisses her cheek.

Rolling his eyes, Riley rescues Abigail's burning pancakes in his self-proclaimed take over of cooking duties. She leaves to get the baby's highchair ready and Riley stretches out an arm without looking, flipping pancakes with the spatula in the other. Ben places a plate in his proffered hand, for Riley to dish out breakfast for them all.

Sadusky, now sitting on a stool at the island, huffs around a smile. He shakes his head. The dance is all done without a single word, barely glancing at each other, so fine tuned that they have its timing down to the second.

"You're something else," he says.

All three of them pause what they're doing, staring at Peter. He laughs.

About two weeks into this peaceful stay, Sadusky wakes in the middle of the night from rolling too far over on his ribs and a subsequent flash of acidic pain. He lays there, breathing through it, with the knowledge that he's going to have to get up and take some medication. Some days he can settle right back to sleep, but tonight is not one of them.

The quiet of this house still amazes him, the property far from civilization and surrounding highways. This effect is especially prominent in the guest bedroom, where his window looks out onto the ancestral apple orchard and beyond that, a dark forest. He finally wrangles his eyes open—

Only to see a post-it note stuck to the lamp.

Peter blinks at it, and then a pool of heat percolates into his stomach. If he squints, he can just make out bold, Sharpie lines by moonlight: the doodle depicts Hugh with that ever elusive butterfly finally perched on his nose, eye bugged, tongue out in a delighted smile. Four small brackets frame the tip of Hugh's tail to indicate a fierce wag.

The dog is happy and, Peter realizes, so is he.

Soft pad, pad, pad steps brush past his door in the hallway, solving the mystery of how he went to bed three hours ago, his room drawing free, and woke up with this little gift. He's learned each of their step patterns too—that Ben has a clopping, deliberate sort of gate, which announces his presence almost instantly. Abigail's feet are usually in heels so she has a dainty but extremely even walk; you could almost use it as a metronome once she picks a particular speed. There's a swirl in it too sometimes, as if she used to be a dancer.

Riley, by contrast, is a ghost. If his feet are in socks and he's not talking or otherwise making noise, forget it. You'll never hear him coming. The only reason Sadusky catches him now is because he's probably wearing those giant Chewbacca feet slippers with the gel grip bubbles on the bottom.

By the time Peter makes it to standing, Riley is long gone. Still, he throws on his bathrobe and leans on the wall while hobbling his way towards the kitchen. He passes Ellie's nursery, smiling at her sleepy form, sprawled out on her back. They graciously gave him one of the spare main floor rooms, since stairs are out of the question for now. So it's just the three of them occupying the first floor.

Sure enough, Peter finds Riley in the kitchen. Riley's feet are swaddled in massive amounts of fake fur, propped up on the base of the island stool. He's eating Reese Puffs. Not in a bowl with milk, mind you. But downing handfuls of the dry cereal between swigs of apple juice. Demur, artisanal bulbs keep the kitchen lit with a cozy feel.

Sadusky grabs a mug off the drying board. "Most people eat cheese or peanut butter as a midnight snack."

"There's peanut butter in these," Riley argues around bulging chipmunk cheeks.

Peter quirks a brow. He fills his mug with whatever is left in the kettle on the stove, some kind of fruity herbal tea Ben likes. "I'm not sure anything in that is real. But don't let me steal your fun."

Riley swallows and it reveals a grin not unlike Hugh's. "Tech specialists gotta eat."

And Riley is always eating. Peter learned this long before he came to live with them, how much Riley can put away and still be hungry. Amelia certainly found a kindred spirit.

"Are you okay? Need your meds?"

Peter glances up to see Riley half out of his seat, eyes concerned. He doesn't miss a thing, including lines of pain around Peter's forehead. That warmth returns in an unexpected rush.

He touches Riley's shoulder while climbing onto the spare island stool. "I think so, yes. Thanks."

Riley digs an orange bottle out of the cupboard and pops out two tablets. Sadusky washes them down with the tea—cranberry lemon—and they work deceptively fast. The quick-dissolve ones, then. Riley really doesn't miss anything.

He also doesn't say anything, keenly watching Sadusky until he relaxes into his seat a little.

"You shouldn't take those on an empty stomach, though," says Riley. "Want some Puffs?"

Peter almost makes a joke about children's cereal…but then the smell hits his nose and he peers inside the box. "Actually, sure. Why not?"

There's a funny snap off of laughter while Riley pours some into a bowl for him, topped with chocolate milk. "I can't believe I'm serving Reese cereal to an injured FBI agent at one-thirty in the morning."

"I can't believe I'm eating what is basically just pure sugar."

Riley smirks and presents it to him with jazz hands. "Voila. Enjoy, Grandmother Willow."

So they crunch away in easy, companionable silence for a while. And what do you know—it doesn't taste half bad. Chocolate and powdered peanut roll around in competition with the sharp cranberry and acidic lemon flavours. It hits the spot in Sadusky's roiling stomach, the hot, cramping abdominal muscles. At least the perpetual ache in his skull has diminished these last few days.

With the hand not shovelling dry cereal into his mouth, Riley flips through the album Peter gave him. It's half full of photos now, not just of Ellie. Ben and Abigail's faces constitute a good portion of the sleeves, along with a few of Emily and Patrick. Some of Peter's snapshots have been added too. Candid moments seem to be Riley's favourite: Patrick asleep with Ellie on his knee. Abigail scratching through Ben's article with a red pen while he gawks over her shoulder. Sadusky himself just reading a book.

They're simple and real, raw in a way that's a vice around Peter's chest. He thinks of the night Riley came to his doorstep, holding a giant polar bear and spilling hot chocolate everywhere. What a herald of the days to come it turned out to be.

Peter is observant too, however. The shaky twitch of Riley's fingers and pale skin coalesce into a full picture.

"Trouble sleeping?"

Riley's flipping stops. He looks up, but not at Sadusky.

"I get nightmares too," says Peter in a silky murmur, "Or sometimes memories play on a loop inside my head."

Shrugging, Riley pulls his sweater cuffs down over his hands. He conjures up a smile from somewhere, and that's twitchy too. "I'm fine. Just…can't shut my mind off, you know?"

"Yes. Yes, I certainly do."

The silence lulls again, a coin swirling down a funnel with only one place to go and mesmerizing in its inevitability. They're riding the loop. One minute, one heartbeat at a time, heading to where they belong.

"I'm sorry I almost got you shot," Peter whispers. He's been meaning to say it, unsure of how Riley would take it. "You had to relive that memory all over again."

Riley starts, eyes wide. "That wasn't your fault."

"Oh yes, it was." Sadusky grits his teeth.

"Peter—I'm the one who ran into the line of fire, on purpose. I did it to distract Cole's attempts to kill you, because that's the part of this my brain is hiccupping over."

Blinking, Sadusky sets down his spoon. It clatters into the bowl, a soggy mess of chocolate and crumbling things. The house is quiet enough to hear the fridge humming, a grandfather clock ticking away in the living room, a nightingale singing out the bay window. He mulls again over Ben pretending to be Riley's father, just to get him out safely, the inaugural cornerstone of a family built on the concept of sacrifice to save each other.

"Sometimes I dream…dream about falling." Riley says it out of the blue, very quiet. "It's stupid, but every once in a while my brain flashes to that moment when Shaw died."

It takes a solid two minutes for Peter both to remember the details of the body forensics found at the bottom of that subterranean shaft under the church and to realize this isn't out of the blue at all. To connect this memory to Riley's life as it functions now means decoding why his subconscious would insist on this being important. Then Riley rolls a piece of dry cereal along the counter and Peter understands.

"Good things feel hard to keep a hold of at times, don't they?"

Riley nods, still not looking at Sadusky.

The rest of that statement, the truth, lingers in the air—and this good thing has lasted far longer than anything else in Riley's life. Meaning it's uncharted territory. Meaning there are no guarantees, not for any of them.

Peter's voice sinks down into a whisper. "You're allowed to be happy, Riley. No one's going to take it away."

"Someone took you away."

Sadusky's pulse misses exactly three beats and somewhere in the liminal pause, his pride dies a gory death. He has to thumb at his eyes. "But that was because I wouldn't accept help and those days…well, those days are gone."

Riley twiddles the spoon around in his fingers. Across the back of his knuckles, serpentine through the underside of his fingers, like he's weaving on an invisible loom and his spoon is the shuttle. The action leaves splotchy chocolate milk dashes along his skin in Dalmatian patterns.

"That goes both ways, you know," Riley points out. "You're allowed to be happy."

The pool of warmth steams with love, thawing leftover icy patches. Peter rests a hand overtop of Riley's free one. "Thank you for the drawing of Hugh. He finally got what he wanted, huh?"

Riley glances up and when at last he makes eye contact, it hits Peter at the exact same moment. They both let out a shaky sort of sound, almost a laugh.

Riley's gaze does a circuit around the kitchen, Ellie's Duplo block toys on the floor, the endless myriad of historical books scattered on tables and chairs, Patrick's umbrella still leaning on the foyer wall, yet more books from Emily for them all to read, academic articles pinned down by gutted hard drives and tiny robot parts…

"Yeah." Riley releases his shoulders, wonder shining in his eyes. "Yeah, I guess he did."

Peter Sadusky has lived through a lot in his sixty-four years. Throughout his colourful, steadfast career he has chased thieves to dark places, looked a gun down its barrel many times, seen the scorching light of pain turn to hard flint in a hurting criminal's eye, watched them lie—Ben included—while across the table from his interrogation, survived car wrecks and near hit-and-runs, to name just a few highlights…

But for some reason none of that prepares him for moments like this. None of it stops the breath from being snatched out of his lungs.

He's sitting at the coffee table with Riley and Abigail, setting up a game of Cranium while nibbling on one of Riley's confetti squares. This is the first night the ritual has been restored, mostly because the last two Thursdays he's been here, both he and Ben were too exhausted or medicated to have enough brain power for games, though they did watch Jeopardy while Riley complained about 'jank historical facts.' Ben had simply smiled the whole time and added another tally to his side of the score.

"At least there's drawing in this game," says Riley, shaking Peter from his thoughts. "That means I stand a chance against these brainiacs."

It is then, suddenly, that the doorbell rings.

Sadusky halts his straightening of the game board, marvelling at it. This shouldn't be a novelty, but it is. He's inside their space for the very first time, not standing out on the stoop while waiting to be let in. And the privilege of it all hits him afresh, that they've let him live in their house and eat their food and saved his life, in more ways than one.

Since Ben is the only one standing, drying dishes, he sets the cloth down and hops to the door. He swings it open only for fifty pounds of eight year old girl to hurtle through.

"Papa, Papa!"

Sadusky makes it to his feet just in time to catch Amelia when she flings herself into his arms. Gingerly, he tests his own strength and finds there's no pain when he picks her up, setting the little girl on his hip. His left arm isn't strong enough to manage on its own, but with his right under her legs, it works.

She's at the age where dressing herself is of supreme importance and so she's wearing an orange tie-dyed shirt and green denim pants, complete with a fuzzy ladybug headband that tickles his cheek.

"You were gone for forever," Amelia laments, once she's had her reunion kisses.

"I'm so very sorry," says Peter. He plants another kiss on her nose. "I promise I won't do it again."

Ben passes by with a rueful snort. "You'd better not."

Penny eyes her father with something knowing where she follows at a more sedate pace. They haven't let Amelia see him until now, both because Peter wasn't too coherent, on these heavy-duty meds, and he didn't want her traumatized by the sight of bandages and leaking, cherry red stitches. Not to mention that he wouldn't have been able to hold her on his lap, let alone pick her up like he can now, three weeks later. They'd had to settle for more phone calls.

They decided that when Mel is older she can know what really happened. For now, she firmly believes her Papa had a bad fall by the river while out on a case and Ben helped him up. It's not that far from the truth, really.

Abigail hugs Penelope. "Can you stay for our games night?"

"Oh I would, but I have a symposium that I'm helping moderate until nine." Penny winks at Amelia. "Are you good here until then, ladybug?"

"Sure, Mom."

Riley too comes in and looks between Penelope, with her auburn tresses and chocolate eyes that match Peter's, and Amelia's copper ringlets. His forehead cinches.

Peter catches the confused look, laughing. "Amelia didn't inherit too much of my Polish ancestry."

Penny gives Amelia a goodbye kiss on her forehead. "The red hair and green eyes are my husband Josh's UK ancestry, methinks."

Amelia misses this moment, though she does zero in on Ben once she clues in to the world outside of her beloved grandpapa. "You're the treasure man!"

Ben has come a long way since the early days of befuddlement with children, his heart softer than it was when Sadusky first met him. He smiles at Amelia while holding out the confetti squares. "And you're Amelia. It's nice to finally meet you."

"Papa says it's not treasure you found—it's artefacts."

Ben leans back. "Well, he's correct. Nicely done."

Amelia positively beams. Ben has apparently passed some esoteric test because Mel nods and takes one of the squares. She gobbles it in three messy bites, forcing the adults to hide their snickers as Penelope takes her leave and they drift back to the living room.

When Sadusky sets Mel down on her feet—dinosaur socks and all, of course—she immediately takes Ben's hand. He looks surprised but doesn't comment or pull away. Sadusky suspects she's still enamored after the story they told her about Ben diving into the water to save Papa Peter.

Ben just studies her for a moment, then swings their arms. It's a tentative motion and he looks ready to stop if she reacts badly. Amelia, however, doesn't hesitate for a second, deepening the motion so their arms are a pendulum.

"You're named after one of the coolest women in history, you know," Ben informs her.

Amelia's eyes widen and she stops dead. "I am?"

Riley moans. "Here we go."

"Amelia Earhart," Ben explains. His eyes spark, warming to his subject. "She was one of the most famous pilots who ever lived."

"Pilot, like flying a plane?"

"You got it."

"Then I want to be a pilot."

Sadusky smiles. "Have you finally given up your dream of being a T-rex trainer?"

Riley stops too, when the full mental picture of that hits him. His lips curve up. "Did I just hear that right—a T-rex trainer?"

"Don't tell her. She hasn't caught on to the concept of extinction yet."

They end up seated on the floor around the coffee table, in the usual fashion for games night. Amelia licks at her chocolatey fingers while climbing into Riley's lap. He tugs her into the hollow of his crossed legs.

"Make yourself at home, why don't you." Betraying Riley's words is the gentle hand that strokes back her wild hair and offers another square. "Comfy enough, Dr. Grant?"

Amelia is oblivious to the sarcasm and movie reference, nodding so hard Riley has to hold her around the waist or she'll fall off. They divide into teams, Riley, Amelia, and Sadusky versus Ben and Abigail. The board is ready to go but then suddenly they all just…stop.

Peter glances around at their faces in alarm, settling on Amelia. Her eyes dance and she has one hand over her mouth.

"What's going on, ladybug?"

Riley pulls out two wrapped packages from under the couch skirt. "She spilled the beans, Peter. That day at the exhibit."

"Happy Birthday, Papa!" Amelia blurts.

"You've got to be kidding me." But Sadusky knows he's not fooling any of them when a touched, bright little smile crosses his face. "You told Riley?"

"Yeah!" Amelia nods again. "We always celebrate on the first of October!"

Abigail reaches behind the recliner and out comes a whopper of a chocolate cake. Four layers of pure fudge. She peels off the plastic wrap to reveal a posy of candles and thunks it on the game board.

Peter is still too astonished to think straight. "When did you have time to do this? I've been here all day!"

"Riley baked it while you were at your doctor's appointment on Tuesday," says Ben, whipping out a matchbox where it was hidden under the Cranium cover. Unbelievable.

"We still know how to pull off a good heist, you know." Riley admires his handiwork proudly. There's even a 'Best Wishes, Wise Tree' piped on in blue icing. The neat calligraphy is a dead give away that it's probably Abigail's contribution, though how Riley convinced her to write that is a mystery. "Your birthdate isn't legally recorded because you don't know your own birthday. That's the secret, isn't it?"

Peter reaches down and tweaks Amelia's nose. "Very sneaky, ladybug."

"I may have bribed her with blueberry tarts," Riley admits.

Peter watches Ben light the candles, Abigail digging out paper plates and forks from behind the cushions. He fights a building pressure behind his eyes. They went to such lengths…

"I was given up for adoption as a toddler when my parents immigrated." Peter has only ever told Penny this, who must have told Amelia. "My birth certificate, which was left with me at the group home, only says the year. I don't know what day I was born. So…we always celebrate the day I got adopted, October first."

He expects their faces to fall or that pitying exchange of eye contact people sometimes do. But Ben simply winks and holds out the cake. "Now that the cat's out of the bag, you're never escaping birthday celebrations ever again."

"Oh great."

Riley just snickers. "Make a wish, Secret Agent Man."

Four attentive faces gaze back at Peter when his eyes make the rounds, from Amelia covered in chocolate, to Abigail holding up her phone to capture a photo of the moment, to Riley having some sort of silent conversation with Ben about the gifts they got him—

These people love him back, with the same kind of marrow-deep intensity he has for them all. He won't ever have to doubt that love again. It's a second kind of adoption, no matter what name he tried to call it by.

"I don't need to," Peter says, hoarse with emotion. "I already got it."

The adults tear up right along with him. They have knit his soul back together again, filled up the gaping cavern left by the loss of family, and shown him that sometimes a duty to one's heart is more important than any vocational responsibility. His compass is pulled by their magnetism, and he doesn't ever want to navigate life without it.

"Come on, Papa!" Amelia taps his arm. "Blow out your candles!"

Peter does so to the sweet backing track of them all laughing. In the end, he does make a wish:

Please…please give them even a fraction of what they've given me.