Some dialogue taken from the Season 2 episode, Moonlighting.

CHAPTER 1

Frank looked around the dining room of the Reagan family home. It was an atypical Sunday dinner in the Reagan household. Everyone was being quieter than usual, the regular seating arrangement of the Danny Reagan family on one side and the Erin Reagan-Boyle family and Jamie on the other had been rearranged so Jamie was sandwiched between his siblings, and Erin was cutting food for her brother, something she hadn't done since he was four, while Jamie was resting his casted left wrist on the table. The two youngest Reagans, Jack and Sean, were staring intently at their Uncle Jamie's face.

Jack finally broke the silence. "How's the other guy look?"

Jamie looked up at his nephews, as much as he could through his swollen, bruised eyes, and tried to smile. "Other two guys."

"There were two?" Sean asked.

"Yep," Jamie confirmed. "They look even cooler than me."

Frank glanced at his son again. If Jamie looked any 'cooler', he'd be in the hospital, and if he hadn't kept his wits about him and gulped down that thumb drive – and kept it down – he'd probably be in the damn morgue. That accomplishment should be acknowledged, Frank thought. "And he didn't cough up the evidence."

Jamie snickered. "It's a gift." He hidden that thumb drive the best way he knew how, and kept it hidden. He supposed 'puking up the evidence at the hospital' didn't count as coughing it up, and also wasn't really dinnertime conversation.

Nicki looked around at the adults at the table in confusion. "I don't understand. Did he have to swallow something?"

Jamie glanced at his niece. "Yeah, it was the... secret code."

"I'll explain later," Erin leaned over and told her daughter. She didn't want to get into how close they'd come to losing Jamie, not at dinner and not in front of Danny's young boys.

This all sounded really super-spy movie cool to Jack and Sean. "Really?" Jack asked, flowed by a "You did?" from Sean.

"Yeah," Jamie responded.

"Apparently, Uncle Jamie's been famous for swallowing things since he was a kid," Linda added.

Danny, Erin and Frank all laughed at that statement. The stories they had about Jamie's propensity for swallowing things... Danny decided to go first. "Um-hm. Like the Liberty head dimes from my coin collection."

==BB==BB==

Danny's Dimes

"Danny?" Jamie pounded on the door to his brother's bedroom. The three-year old had become bored playing alone with his toys during the hour his mother has designated as "homework hour" for the three older Reagans, and was looking for someone to play with him. "Danny? Are you there?" The door drifted open slightly as he knocked on it again. Jamie pushed the door further open. "Danny?"

No answer. Jamie walked into his brother's room and immediately spotted Danny's coin collection spread out on his desk. Danny had told him not to touch them; that they were his and nobody messed with his stuff. Jamie climbed into his brother's desk chair and looked down at the coins spread out in front of him. They were so shiny, and so many different sizes and colors. Disregarding his brother's warning, he picked up one of the small, orangey colored ones, and stared intently at the little man pictured on the front before flipping it over and staring at the image on the back. Some kind of building? He touched it to his tongue. It had an interesting flavor that wasn't like any of the food Mommy and Grandma cooked for him.

He put the orangey coin down next to a bigger silver one and stared at both coins. The person on the front was different than the person on the orangey one. He leaned over and stuck his tongue on the silver one. It tasted slightly different, also. More like the orangey coin than like food, but not the same as it.

His attention was next drawn to a row of three small silver coins. They were about the same size as the orangey one, but the picture was different again. He picked up the three coins. Like the bigger silver coins and unlike the orangey coins, these ones had rough edges. He scooped up the small silver coins and put them in his mouth. They tasted different, too.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Danny yelled from the doorway.

At Danny's shout, Jamie gasped and the three coins slipped to the back of his throat and were quickly swallowed. "N…n…nothing," he stammered.

"Get away from my coins, you little brat!"

Jamie pushed himself out of Danny's chair, scattering coins across the desk. He ran for the door, barely eluding Danny's grasp, and down the hall to the safest place he could think of – Joey's room. He slammed the door shut behind him and ducked under Joe's desk. He was in so much trouble…

Joe put his pencil down – he hadn't been making any progress on that dumb math problem anyway – and leaned over to look at his little brother. "Hiya, Jamie. What're you doing?"

Jamie looked up his brother. "Joey, I did something really bad."

Joe slid out of his chair to sit on the floor. "What can you do that's really bad, kiddo? You're only three."

"I was looking at Danny's coins, and I was holding a few of them, and I wanted to see if they tasted like the other ones, and Danny scared me," Jamie started to explain. He was interrupted a loud pounding on the door, and Danny yelling.

"Joe, get that brat out here, and get him to give me back my Liberty Head dimes!" Danny demanded. He banged on the door again. "Jamie, give me my coins back right now!"

Joe looked at his little brother, who had curled up in a tight ball with his head on his knees. "Jamie, where are Danny's coins?" Joe asked. He had a feeling he knew the answer.

"I didn't mean to do it." Jamie's muffled voice was barely audible.

"Jame, where are they?"

Jamie turned his head sideways to look at Joe. "In my tummy," he mumbled. "But I didn't mean to do it! Danny scared me!"

"Oh, Jamie." Joe tried not to laugh. Danny was going to be soooo pissed, and Mom was going to get all worried. "That's not good. We should go talk to Mom."

==BB==BB==

Danny reached over to squeeze his brother's shoulder. "Guess where we found those?"

Jack and Sean shared a look. They both had a pretty good idea where those coins went. "Ugh. Uncle Jamie?" Jack guessed.

"Um-hm," Danny confirmed. "It's okay, though. Once I boiled them, they were shiny and new."

The entire family started laughing.

Jamie clutched his injured ribs. "Come on, cut it out. It hurts when I laugh."

As the family tried to stop laughing, Henry decided to apologize for them. "Of course. We're sorry."

Erin tried not to laugh, but couldn't stop. "My confirmation locket..."

TBC tomorrow!