Hi, so here is the last update before Christmas and I hope you enjoy! I wish you and all of your family a very happy holiday season and I will be back in the New Year!

Disclaimer-Nothing is mine.

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See you soon!

Happy Christmas and a Happy 2024!

There's A Place Where Lost Things Go

Chapter 7-Brotherly Love

Henry come to the hospital, Frank is struggling, Linda has some good news for Jamie.

His Pops arrived in record time. Frank was not entirely sure what Baker had told him but Baker had a tendency to not mince her words. Plus she had this apple tart thing his father had been trying to find out for months that including ringing her at random times only to be disappointed when she said nutmeg wasn't one of the ingredients. If he was in a better mood he might have said something about the bizzarro way that his father had arrived but he was too tried to care.

They had taken Harrison for a final bout of tests to see if he was safe enough to come home and Jamie had been sat with Danny parked on one side of him and Joe on the other. Joe was reading the sports on his phone and scoffing every few seconds and Danny was reading a pamphlet. Jamie was still staring at his knees.

"Does she want him back?" he asked suddenly into the silence of the room.

"Who?"

"You know who"

"If you mean Harrison's mother then no" Frank said quietly. "She didn't stick around long after you came back—" here he shot Danny a look because he knew why she hadn't stuck around long and that was because Danny had never been one to take no for an answer.

"So she won't take him from me?"

"Jamie" he said and he felt very tired saying this. "Nobody is going to take him away from you. I don't know…I really don't know why you seem to think that someone will. Nobody is going to take your son from you, nobody was ever going to take your son from you. Please believe that"

Jamie stared at him for a second and then the door opened just as he was about to speak.

And in came his father.

Jamie stared at his grandfather for a long second and for an even longer time his father stared at his grandson. Out of everyone in the house his father had guarded his opinion on Jamie for a long time. Even now…even after asking him Frank was not a hundred percent sure where the man lay with it all.

"You going to sit there all day or are you going to hug me?"

Okay so there was that.

"Pops"

But Jamie was already scrambling upwards and hugging his grandfather. His Dad hugged him and then winced and Frank knew it was because he had seen and felt how skinny Jamie was.

"Thank God" his Dad said pulling back and looking Jamie in the eye. "Thank God your safe. Now…Baker filled me in on most of it but not all of it so one of you start talking now"

And so that was how they filled in his father on what had happened. Danny did most of the talking, Joe chimed in and Jamie said very little but his father kept his eyes on his grandsons and only Frank watching him from the corner of his eye was able to pick up in the hybrid nightmare of emotions.

"Well" his Dad said quietly. "At least you and the boy are safe. And your going to stay in New York—"

"With Danny"

"I see" his Pops said with an eyebrow raise and nothing else.

"Well…I am going to feed you until you put back all the weight you've lost and I don't want to hear anything about it okay?"

Jamie gave a flicker of a smile.

"Yes sir"

His Pops nodded and then.

"Francis can I have a word?"

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong" his Pops said with a smile. "Erin is on her way too she's in court and I want to speak to your Dad about Sunday dinner. We might have to move it"

There was a long pause as Jamie stared at him and then wordlessly he nodded dropping his gaze down to his knees. Weather or not he believed it or not Frank wasn't sure.

The kid had just gotten so hard to read. The baby that he had been, the baby that he had once been and the chubby cheeked child and the lanky teenager that had blushed whenever he'd been teased about girls had changed in the year and a half he'd been missing. Frank didn't know how to get him back. He didn't know if he would ever be able to get that child back.

He stepped outside with his father and Baker seeing his face muttered something about calling to make sure the office wasn't on fire and then disappeared down the end of the hallway heels rapping smartly on the floor and proving no doubt that she had all the power.

"Well?"

"He looks right through me"

"Well…that's to be expected Francis the poor boy has been through the emotional ringer—"

"It's more than that, he looks at me like I am going to reach into that bed and snatch his son off him if he so much as takes his eyes off him. He looks at me as If I am the enemy—and we haven't even gotten close to talking about Mary yet so God only knows what he thinks about her."

His Pops was silent and then.

"I don't begrudge Mary how she reacted" he said finally. "And the Lord knows she paid the price for it in the end…but it was so avoidable…if I'd have been home that night…this whole thing could have been avoidable."

"Please Pops I was too minutes away from walking in on it. I saw him run down the street and I didn't think much off it. I could have stopped the car and told him to wait up and then…well…it doesn't matter now does it?"

"No." his Pops said softly. "What matters it that he is alive and well and safe. It's the only thing that matters. There are no needle marks up his arms, there isn't a pimp out there waiting for him, he's not in a gang or anything…he's kept his head down and done what he had to do to survive and that's a good thing because it brought him back to us and now we can take care of him"

"Danny can take care of him you mean. Danny's parked himself out there like the fucking—" he stopped talking suddenly.

"Don't blame Danny. He didn't see it the way you did. He saw it differently. Besides…he's always been overprotective of Jamie. And what matters is that Danny can get through to him. Him living in Staten Island is a hell of a lot better than him being in a shelter in Florida"

Frank nodded. He knew that his Pops was right.

But still.

It grated.

"I don't know what I am doing" he confessed. "I don t know what I am doing, I feel like every step forwards I take a step backwards. I think that I am constantly feeling like I am making a fuck up when I speak to him."

His Pa nodded. " Oh Francis" he said finally and then he couldn't help himself. He dropped his head to his hands and he burred his face there and his Pa placed a hand on top of his head and rested it there as if it was the only thing that kept him grounded and it was.

There was a long pause and then that was the end of that.

"Francis"

"Pa"

"Come on. He needs you. He needs you to walk back in that room and be his Dad. He doesn't have time for you to be anything else. Let's get him home. Let's get him home and get some food in his belly and then that will be the end of that. We can sort out Mary and the rest of it and the rest of that later on"

He dragged his head out his hands and rubbed his face

He was tired.

Oh how he was tired.

"Okay" he said finally.

And then he went back in the room.

Harrison was wheeled back in the second that they were there. The boy was small, small and half awake and Jamie once it was okayed that he could do it took him up under his chin as he was half sleeping and rocked him back and forth. It was a move that he had done many a time before, a move that he'd had done when he was in the shelter trying to get his son to sleep against the hybrid, myriad of noise.

And then there was this, his son back in his arms head under his chin and Jamie smiling as he could still smell that warm baby smell of his skin.

Danny was there watching him and it was only Danny that was able to pull him close, to tuck him under his jacket and his arm and press a kiss to his head as If he was the baby and not Harrison.

"Jamie"

He looked at her steadily.

"Linda"

"Your son is fine, he passed his last tests with flying colours. He's fine. I wanted to tell you. He's fine. He's ready to go home. But…a lot of people want him to know where home is Jamie"

"Home is with us Linda"

Linda shot Danny a long look that to Frank told his son what he could do with himself.

"Yeah no kidding. You good sunshine to come out here and sign some paperwork?"

Danny nodded blushing and then he was gone and Frank once again had to marvel Linda because she was the only woman that he knew what could tell his son what to do with himself and in so many ways.

And Danny needed that.

Jamie looked at Frank then and then at his Grandpa and then.

"His name is Harrison Grandpa"

"And Harrison is a good name"

"You wanna hold him?"

Frank took a moment as Baker staggered in with more coffees (and he was gonna have to give that girl a raise—that or buy her the Lacombe giftset that was his entire Christmas bonus that he'd only known by shamelessly paying a rookie to interrogate her tech history) to come back with some coffee.

His Pops took Harrison in his arms and then smiled. Harrison had nestled in his arms a smug little sleeping boy and his Pops was a very smug old man.

He watched as Joe came to sit by him and Jamie was watching his Pa and his son and he suddenly he felt more than emotional. He felt very emotional.

This was not a thing that he could do easily. But this was a thing and this was real and this was here and now.

Jamie was home.

His grandson was well.

And Frank was going to make sure that all was well after this.

And woe betide anything that got in his way.

And so there you go, I hope you enjoy and see you next time.

Next Chapter-Danny is living with Jamie. Yeah, let's see how that goes. Also Erin has a few things that she wants to say...but Danny as per usual is not in the mood.