After waiting in line to get slices of pizza, Neal carried his plate and drink over to the end of the table where Henry sat with Diana. She was describing an experiment they were running on a cybercriminal whose code name Azathoth was inspired by his fascination with the works of horror writer H.P. Lovecraft. With coaching from Tricia, Diana was writing fan fiction based on the Cthulhu Mythos, with lead characters based on members of the White Collar team.

"No characters based on me?" Henry asked.

Diana shot a glance at Neal. "No. I promised not to bring Azathoth's attention to Neal's family. And honestly, I have plenty of characters already... Everyone seems to want a role, and they provide so many 'guidelines' about their characters." She shrugged. "Mozzie wanted to be at least six inches taller and suggested sexcapades for his character that... Well, let's just say I wanted to bleach my brain after that particular discussion."

Henry chuckled. "I can imagine. Don't worry about me, though. I won't petition to be included. I like the idea of being off Azathoth's radar."

"You'll be our secret weapon," Neal said, guessing where Henry was going.

"Yeah... and, umm... speaking of secrets..." He shrugged. "I'm sorry if I got carried away with the birthday thing." He finally provided the details of when and where they would have dinner that evening, and also listed who would join them. "And I'll call Fiona after lunch to invite her. I wasn't sure if I could trust her to keep the secret, but I know you'd like to have her there."

It was more people than Neal had expected. "You've got our relatives flying from D.C. and Baltimore in order to attend. They didn't have to do that."

"And you didn't want a big fuss this year. Angela told me."

"Then why arrange such an elaborate dinner?"

"Partly because June missed out on the big party last year, but mostly... guilt."

Neal blinked in surprise. "I don't follow."

"My last birthday party was massive," Henry explained. "Must have been more than a hundred people there, and the festivities went on for days. I know you wanted to keep things simple but... It didn't seem fair."

Diana listened intently, and she wasn't the only one paying attention. Conversations had come to a stop at their end of the table. Most members of the FBI team knew little about Neal's family, and the Win-Win contingent had been fixated on Henry all morning.

Neal suspected it wasn't just the size of Henry's last birthday party that was causing the guilt, but also the number of parties his family had thrown for him over the years. Only recently had Neal reconnected with most of his Caffrey relatives, and birthdays growing up with his mom hadn't amounted to much more than an excuse to play hooky. Pizza and a beer had been his mother's idea of a sufficient celebration when he turned eighteen.

No wonder he didn't love pizza the way Henry did. It was okay for gatherings of his college friends, but not today. He pushed away his plate, admitting to himself that he had no desire to keep eating what had become his default birthday food as a child.

"Your birthday falls in the summer," Neal pointed out, "when it was convenient to schedule the family reunion our grandmother was dreaming of. Those people would have gathered with or without the excuse of your birthday. And anyway, you weren't exactly having fun."

Henry nodded. He'd been a mess last summer.

"Any other surprises you should warn me about?" Neal asked.

"Well, Angela said she wanted to bring the cake."

"Odd, but okay. What else?"

"I've arranged a gift for June. I'd noticed she was feeling low, and often pets are helpful for someone who's grieving..." Henry paused as several people around him gasped. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not springing a pet on her without notice. We'd talked about it several times these last few weeks while planning the dinner party. She thought it over, did the research, and told me what she'd decided would be an ideal pet — in fact she's already met him. She picked him out herself, but he wasn't old enough to be adopted yet. We thought it would be fun to introduce him to everyone during the party."

Neal tried not to worry about what they'd selected. June would pick something sensible, right?

"So I guess this means I don't have to let you win at laser tag this afternoon?" Henry said.

"No one's letting me win because of my birthday," Neal agreed. He saw Henry glance across the table again and asked, "Are you going to let Sofia win?"

All conversation came to a stop.

"What?" asked Sofia.

"Listen," Neal said. "Everyone from Win-Win is tiptoeing around the two of you. If our goal is to act like a unified team, you've got to work through whatever the issue is." He faced Henry. "You said you had a confession to make, and I don't think it's the plans for my birthday party making you so tense. If the two of you need some privacy, fine, but deal with it."

Sofia stood up. "Go ahead. Tell them you don't want me here."

"That's..." Henry stood up, too. "I'm sorry, Sofia. I can imagine how you feel, and I feel like a jerk for not noticing and dealing with this sooner. There's an empty conference room down the hall. Why don't we —"

"No. No more hiding the truth. I want this out in the open." Sofia was nearly quivering with a mix of emotions. Neal read anger and pain and sadness. She clutched a napkin in one hand, perhaps thinking that she might need it to wipe away tears, but for now her eyes were dry.

Henry walked over to the wall of windows and leaned against them, trying to appear relaxed. "Why don't you tell them? You deserve to be heard."

"I shouldn't have agreed to come." Allen Winston took a step toward her and she held up a hand. "No, Dad. You're not going to fix this. I'm an adult. I have to deal with it on my own."

"I'm so sorry," he said, regret visible in his face.

Henry gazed at the attendees, seeking out the faces of the FBI agents. They looked merely confused, whereas his Baltimore colleagues looked embarrassed. "I've wanted to open a New York branch of Win-Win ever since I joined the company, and that's finally happening. Next month I'll find office space and move up here. Once the office is ready, I'll recruit new people to my team, but I'll also bring a few current employees from Baltimore. Radha and Anna are both interested in moving up here, have exceptional skills, and we work well together. Sofia, too, but everyone assumed..." He looked at Sofia again. "Are you sure you don't want to tell them your side?"

She crumpled the napkin in her hand and said, "Henry's dad was ambitious. He always talked about how he was going to be CEO someday, and then Henry was supposed to follow in his footsteps. My dad isn't like that. He didn't push us into Win-Win. In fact he encouraged us to explore our options. My older sisters found other careers, but being an investigator always called to me. I interned at the company in college and then started working full time. I was good at it... I am good at it," Sofia corrected. "One of the best. Like Henry. And people... when he was hired they said..."

"Ooooh," said Tricia.

Neal looked from Henry to Sofia to Tricia. He took in the expressions of Sofia's father and Henry's grandfather. His con artist's skill at reading people warned him where this was going.

"You're both the same age," said Diana, repeating what she'd learned in the morning meetings. "You said Henry was just a couple of months older than you."

"We went to high school together," Henry said.

"And the prom," Sofia added.

Neal nodded. "I'd guess that Graham, the tough-as-nails businessman who moonlights as the family's matchmaker, thought it would be perfect if the company's future CEO married the most talented Winston of the same generation."

Graham cleared his throat. "They were good friends growing up. I didn't know."

"It was just an idle wish. I had no idea so many employees had picked up on it," Allen said. "I should have handled things differently."

"We're a bunch of nosy investigators," Sofia said. "If they're any good at their jobs, of course they figured out what you had in mind."

"Earlier this year, when I came out," Henry added, "I didn't realize that a romance between us was such a wide-spread expectation. Pops had only hinted at it once, but looking back I realize we were paired up on a lot of cases. I had so much on my mind around telling my co-workers I'm gay, I only realized last week the way people were acting around Sofia."

"Now you want her on your team," Neal said, having put the pieces together, "but you don't want to make her even more uncomfortable. Only at this point, you're not sure if it's worse for her to work with you here in New York, or for her to feel excluded from a new opportunity."

"That about sums it up," Henry agreed. "Sofia, what do you want? You're welcome to join my new team, but I don't want to pressure you."

"I..." She glanced around the room, as if seeking advice.

"If you'd accept a suggestion?" Hughes said.

Sofia nodded.

"Don't jump into a decision. Realistically it's going to take months for Win-Win's New York office to be operational, and the team will likely be in a growth mode for quite some time. Take the opportunity to consider what you want. The offer to join the team will stay open, correct?"

Henry nodded. "I'm sure we'll always need a good investigator."

The room fell silent, and Neal knew they needed to move past this. "So, does this mean you'll let Sofia beat you at laser tag?"

Henry looked at Sofia.

Her chin rose and she insisted, "I'm not looking for pity. I'll do my best to win, based on my own skills and nothing else."

"That's the spirit," said Peter.

"I like her," said Diana in an aside to Neal. "I get why they were friends."

"Yeah, but I'm also starting to get why he was so nervous about coming out. I didn't realize how complicated it would be."

Diana grinned. "Are you going to let him win at laser tag?"

"No way."

Laser tag facility.

The laser tag teams had been intermixed, with FBI agents and Win-Win employees paired up. In the end, Neal and Henry were the last two players. They took a break as the staff made changes to the configuration of the room to make it even more challenging.

He checked his watch. They'd need to make this final round quick. They didn't have a lot of time if they were going to have dinner and birthday cake at June's mansion. Neal had to be at his Monday night class by 7:00.

He tugged at the vest he'd been wearing for the last couple of hours. The wires were loosely attached and now they popped off at the least effort. "Daphne," he said, calling out to the woman who was responsible for the equipment. He held out the wires for her to see.

"Looks like some of the wiring tore while you were playing. Let's get you a replacement. This way."

He followed her into an office where she took his old vest and handed him a new one. He was adjusting it to fit comfortably while she went to a terminal and entered a serial number.

"I'll get this one registered to you. Neal, right?"

"Henry," he corrected.

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"Don't worry about it. We're related. People confuse us all the time."

She finished typing and pressed a button. All the lights on his vest lit up. "That's what we want to see. You're ready to go."

"Thanks, Daphne. Wish me luck." He noticed one of his shoes was coming untied, and he sat down to retie the laces.

Daphne chuckled. "Those your lucky socks?"

"Yeah, it's my birthday," said Neal.

Ten minutes later Neal was declared the winner when the system indicated a direct hit on Henry's vest.

"I got you first," Henry insisted, until his grandfather told him to be quiet.

Jones trailed behind with Neal as they left the facility. "Everyone else was watching both of you from the viewing area, but I had my eye on the computer screen."

"Always the gamer," Neal said. "Did you wish you could control us with a joystick?"

"If I could do that, hanging out in the van during stakeouts would be much more interesting. I did see something unusual, though. The computer recorded two shots, seconds apart, from two different laser weapons, but both said they hit Henry's vest. I mean, it looked like you shot Henry, and he shot himself."

"You know that didn't happen. He's too competitive, and he said he wasn't going to let me win."

"Yeah, but how did you do it?" Jones asked. "If it were Travis or Vernon or Anna, I'd assume they hacked the system, but that's not your style. Unless you talked one of them into it?"

"Nope. None of them had anything to do with it."

"Did you smuggle in a mirror on your vest to reflect his shots back at him?"

Peter unlocked his car. They were both riding with him. "I remember telling Neal over the weekend that Henry overcomplicates things, and sometimes a simple solution is the best way to beat him."

"You were right," said Neal as he climbed into the back seat.

Diana had been saying goodbye to Sofia, but now followed Neal into the back seat. "How did you do it?" she asked.

It might have been a simple solution, but Neal spent at least fifteen minutes bragging about how he'd pulled off the win. "And Fiona said she didn't see how people could confuse us," he concluded.

"I'm guessing you're on your best behavior around your girlfriend," Diana retorted. "Whereas we get to see that you're easily capable of being as annoying as Henry."

Ellington Mansion, Manhattan.

The seafood fettuccine was exquisite. And it's not pizza, Neal thought happily. There was a larger crowd than he'd originally wanted, but now that they were here, he enjoyed talking with them. When he tired of being the focus of their attention, he turned the conversation to his cousin Angela and her boyfriend. The same people who felt protective of Neal also felt a need to vet Michael.

Neal already knew Michael from their classes together at Columbia and thought the couple were great together. He raised a glass in a silent toast when Michael turned to him and mouthed, "Help."

Angela grinned and whispered something to her boyfriend. He stood up, holding her hand. "It's been a pleasure getting to know Angela's family this evening," Michael said. "Even though it's only been a few months since we met, we have an announcement to make."

"Oh, my," said Irene Caffrey, leaning forward to look at her granddaughter. "I didn't see an engagement ring on her hand. Did you, Edmund?"

"He might plan to give it to her now," her husband replied. He was watching Michael intently, withholding approval of the boyfriend he'd met for the first time tonight.

Noelle smiled up at new husband Joe. "If this is a proposal, I hope they decide to get married in Hawaii. I want an excuse to go back."

"I know this is Neal's birthday, and I don't want to take the limelight away from him," Michael said. "But I'd be honored if you'd let me..." He smiled radiantly down at Angela. "Do you want to be the one to tell them?"

She stood up, returning his besotted smile before turning to face her family. "Last night, I asked Michael if he'd do me the honor of..." She looked up at him again and they burst out laughing. She leaned against him and said, "I asked Michael if he'd be willing not only to attend this party, but also to bake the cake!"

Fiona walked into the dining room carrying a cake. While everyone gathered around the buffet table to admire Michael's handiwork, Fiona explained to Neal that she hadn't been able to leave work early enough to join them for dinner but had arranged with June to slip in to the kitchen when she arrived, so she could be part of the birthday cake surprise.

Michael sliced and served while Angela extolled his baking skills. She described a cake he'd made for Valentine's and a sci-fi themed one he'd provided for a party at Columbia recently.

Irene picked up a piece. "Is this Hummingbird Cake?"

Michael nodded eagerly. "Angela told me you used to make it for birthdays, and I wanted to try it. I looked up the recipe online. I hope you like it, and I'd be thrilled if you'd share your own recipe with me."

They continued their conversation while Edmund listened, still making up his mind about Michael.

Henry slipped in to take a corner piece.

"Typical," Angela said to Neal. "Always the sweet tooth. Give him a chance and he'll claim the piece with the most frosting."

"You know it's only a year and a half until he turns thirty. I already have ideas for the party."

"I'm helping with that," Angela said. "It needs to be really obnoxious."

"That's a given," Neal agreed. Then he described the project he had in mind to help Henry learn a few French phrases that would be useful in his travels.

"I've been exploring international music for one of my classes. There's a French singer whose songs I'd love to use. If Henry's going to be humming, it might as well be a French tune, right?"

Henry brought them both pieces of cake, and heard Angela's comment. "We're not talking 'Au Clair de la Lune,' are we?"

"No. What I have in mind is a current pop artist," she promised.

His fears allayed, Henry returned to the buffet to snag a second piece of cake. He struck up a conversation with Michael, who laughed at something he said.

Angela smiled her pleasure. "I'm glad they're getting along," she told Neal.

"You know Henry ran a background check on him?"

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Did he do the same with Fiona?"

Neal glanced over to where Fiona was talking to Noelle, the aunt who was in many ways like a mother to him now. She was also a professor of psychology. And he'd been concerned about Henry questioning Fiona? Both women were smiling. That was a good sign, right? "Yeah. I told him it wasn't necessary, but he believes he has to watch out for us."

"I've been thinking it's time for us to return the favor. I mean, he just came out a few months ago. He probably hasn't had many serious relationships, not introduce-someone-to-your-mom relationships like what I have with Michael and you have with Fiona, right?"

Neal wondered what Fiona and Noelle were talking about, and didn't answer until Angela nudged him. Then he asked, "We need to make sure his next boyfriend isn't going to take advantage of him?"

"I don't want him to get hurt," Angela said. "And that almost makes me understand his obsession with vetting my boyfriends."

Neal nodded, but before he could say anything the doorbell rang.

Henry grabbed his arm, leading him toward the door. "C'mon, kiddo. Let's meet June's newest lodger."

In the entry hall, they opened a crate that contained a tiny, wriggling puppy.

"It's a pug," Henry said.

Neal, who had wanted a dog when he was a child, knew that he was going to volunteer to walk and care for this little guy whenever June wanted a break. And even when she didn't want a break.

He carried the puppy to June, who sat down to hold her new pet. "Welcome to the party, Bugsy," she said. Most of the guests gathered around to meet him.

Fiona put her arm through Neal's. She didn't appear to be flustered by her experience with Noelle. "June is such a lovely person. I do wish I could have met her husband."

"He was an inspiration to me," Neal said. "In the weeks before he died, he recorded a CD filled with advice for situations he thought I'd be likely to encounter. It was around this time last year that June gave it to me. You know, I have to admit I only listened to a couple of tracks. Losing him... it was still so fresh, hearing his voice was too painful."

"Do you think you could listen to it now?" Fiona asked.

"I'd like to give it a try."

They heard a series of clicks on the hardwood floor, followed by a tiny yip. They looked down to see Bugsy tugging on Neal's shoelace.

Peter scooped up the puppy. "You're a good boy. Just need a little training and some self-control, and you'll be fine."

"Are you talking to him or to me?" Neal asked.

Peter thought it over. "It's good advice, either way."

A/N: I'm not an expert at laser tag, so please excuse the things I made up for the purposes of entertainment.

See the Secrets and Lies post on the Penna and Silbrith Conversation blog for more about Neal's secrets and the lone wolf tendencies of both Neal and Henry.

See my upcoming story Henry Takes a Holiday for more about Henry and Sofia learning to work together.