And another belated Christmas giftfic, this time or Benjjj, an awesome new Bread fan and fellow huge fan of Joey from what I can gather. I give you a little bit of Joey for Christmas. This is only short and not particularly full of plot, just a bit of reflection and sadness on Joey's part. Not particularly deep and meaningful, but I hope you like.

A passing car screeched its way down Kelsall Street, the noise slapping Joey awake. He started, crying out in fear as he sat up, before remembering where he was, gathering himself and settling himself down again, hoping none of his brothers had heard him.

It had been like this ever since…the theft. Joey hadn't slept in days- not properly, anyway. Every time his eyes started to close, his head jerked back up like a jack-in-the-box, and he began scanning the room, convinced someone or something was in there, and about to harm his family. He'd never worried like this before. He'd never needed to. He'd always been secure that, should anything happen, Edgar would alert him immediately.

Edgar, who growled if they came within several miles of someone suspicious. Edgar, who'd always led him to whatever disaster might have befallen, whether it be Grandad unable to get out of his armchair or something far more sinister. Edgar, who had not only been a fantastic guard dog in his way, but had been his best friend, a constant source of comfort, who he could curl up next to and sleep contentedly.

Edgar, who was missing.

And, though Joey knew he could take care of himself, that he didn't need to depend on a dog to make sure everyone was all right, it didn't stop him from fretting. He had to look after everyone on his own now, with no help whatsoever. He had to do it all, without a friend to help him through- and what was worse, he had to do it all with a broken heart.

A good night, it had been. A good night indeed. Why would anyone ever think of working, of spending their lives trapped in a nine-to-five, rat-race, stuck-behind-a-desk sort of job when they could live like this? He'd only been out two hours, and Joey had come back with fifty for the pot, twenty to put towards a new dog basket for Edgar (at his mother's insistence- Joey would much prefer to just let the dog stay on his bed, hence why he was taking so long to 'save up' for one) and a great wad for his back pocket. Now that was work, that was. Joey was whistling as he locked up the Jag, tossing his keys into the air and catching them. With a night like he'd had, he'd have had every right to dance about, leap in the air and sing at the top of his lungs, and had it not been three in the morning, and every other member of his family been asleep upstairs, he may well have gone through with it.

Joey let himself in, pulling off his bow tie and moving all the money to his wallet, all the more to impress when he took it out tomorrow morning at breakfast. He hummed quietly to himself as he went, thinking of his Mam's pride-filled face tomorrow when he contributed to the family kitty, of his brothers all snoring comfortingly in their bedroom, of Edgar sitting on the bottom of his bed, tongue hanging out, waiting for his return and his pats and caresses. He sighed happily at the image, heading toward the stairs and letting out a contented yawn as he mentally wound down and prepared himself for bed.

Wait a minute.

Joey paused at the foot of the stairs. The kitchen light was on. He'd barely registered it when he'd walked through the door, thinking only of his money and his success and the good things still to come, not giving a second thought to the fact that everyone was asleep, and hence the lights should all be off. Nobody left them for him- never had, they never knew where he went, let alone when he'd be getting back on a given night, and so nobody bothered. It was probably Billy, he reflected, wandering in to turn it off again. The lad remembered every single instance of bumping into that Julie Jefferson, even if the encounter just happened to be a quick glimpse of her picking up milk bottles, but when it came to remembering simple but important things such as to turn the immersion heater off, to turn the telly off, to close the door or switch off the lights at night, his youngest brother was surprisingly forgetful.

Shaking his head, Joey reached for the light, but something out the corner of his eye made him freeze. The lid of the pot had been pushed off. Joey was across the room in one stride, and the briefest of glances confirmed his worst fears. All the money was gone.

Trying to keep his breathing steady, Joey looked more carefully around the kitchen, noticing this time around that all the pans were gone from their hooks on the wall, that the radio was missing, leaving a conspicuous space among the rest of the clutter on the worktop, that the little portable telly was gone and the back door was ajar. Joey's heart began to pound. He ran back into the living room, noticing now that the television had been moved by someone, shifted a few inches on its stand and turned at an odd angle, as if someone had tried to make off with it but had either run out of time or found it too difficult to carry and thought better of it. There was definitely something going on here- either Billy had tried to do a bit of furniture rearranging, they had a poltergeist, or they had been burgled- and Joey would bet his Jaguar on the last of those options.

The obvious thing to do in this situation would be to act, but to spring into action required having a plan, and Joey's mind had blanked in an instant. Oh, he knew there were options- calling the police being the most sensible one of them, but Joey was a Boswell, and Boswells never went for the predictable. He began to think, slowly dragging his mind out of its blankness in order to formulate something worth doing. Whoever had been here, he thought, could not have been gone long- Joey himself had only been out two hours, and in that time it wouldn't have been possible to take all that lot and go very far…

A sharp bark interrupted his tangled thoughts.

Joey turned towards the kitchen once more.

'Edgar!'

The Alsatian barked again and ran off, Joey in hot pursuit. Edgar skittered across the kitchen floor, leading Joey out the back door and through the yard, where he parked himself in front of the fence and growled ferociously at it.

'Shh, son,' Joey whispered, coming up behind him, 'Went that way, did 'e?'

Edgar growled again, and Joey took a step forward, squinting through a crack in the fence posts. There was definitely something out there- a shadow moving around the back alley. Of course, it could have been anything, but another bark from Edgar resulted in a snarl of 'shuddup, dog!' and Joey's suspicions were confirmed.

'Come on, son,' he murmured to the dog, wrapping his hand around Edgar's collar and leading back toward the house. 'We've got work to do.'

Once back inside the house, he flew upstairs, trying to keep as quiet as possible. His Mam and Aveline didn't need to know about this- if he could just keep the girls asleep, they could sort this out.

His brothers were slumbering and snoring the way he'd imagined them, but Joey didn't have time to stop and smile. The instant his foot crossed the threshold of their bedroom, he'd dived on Jack, shaking him for all he was worth.

'Jack! Wake up!'

'Wha'?' Jack slurred, several decibels louder than the eldest Boswell would have liked.

'Shh,' he hissed. 'Emergency. Come with me. Mam hears nothin', okay?'

'Wha'?' said Jack again, but he was already dragging himself out of bed.

'What's going on?' Adrian was rising now, running his hands through his hair.

'Shhhhh,' Joey hissed again. 'We're bein' burgled, but if we move now, we can cut the bastard off before he gets away with it- he's down the backstreet, and if we go right this minute…'

'BURGLED?!' Billy said loudly, and Joey felt it was a good thing he couldn't actually see the lad very well right now, or he might have throttled him.

'Yes, son,' he said, 'now look, you go back to sleep. We'll sort this out.'

'Aw, hey, I-'

'Bil-ly!' Joey warned. 'You're too young for all this. You can't even drive, so there'd be nothin' for you to do- and I'm not puttin' you at risk, okay? Now come on,' he jerked his head at the others, 'we've got somethin' to attend to.'

Their burglar, as it turned out, had been an idiot with a flat tyre, and it had been a piece of cake for Joey's Jag and Jack's van to cruise down the alley, blocking his escape from both ends, and for Joey to stride out, demanding for their goods back in a menacing tone. Edgar had been the perfect sidekick, standing by his side and making deep, gurgling noises in his throat every time there had been a lull in the conversation. They'd ended up not only with the things that were rightfully theirs, but with an extra fifty quid inconvenience money, which Joey had deposited in the pot in the morning, to Nellie's delight and Billy's gaping but silenced-by-threats gob. And when Joey had left the kitchen, he'd grabbed his dog in a hug, all but danced him about in celebration, and given him more treats than the mutt knew what to do with.

Those were the days. Wonderful days they were.

Now Joey was at a complete loss. He'd never been afraid of being robbed before. He'd risen up against it, winning back what might have been taken with persuasion, skill and a backup band of brothers. And with his faithful pet by his side, ready to help him through whatever happened, he'd felt invincible.

It had never occurred to him that someone might rob him of Edgar. It had never occurred to him, even with the amount of times people had gone blatantly up and tried to take wheels off his Jag, with the amount of times people had tried to snatch his money and his phone out of his hand, that someone could be as cruel and heartless as to take his dog- to rob him of his friend. All the companionship, the time they'd shared, those memories of being so fantastic, so successful together, such a team, had all been spoiled by one single incident, and now he could never get them back again. Every night he got into an empty bed, leaving the large dent that took up two thirds of his mattress that had once housed a snuffling dog. Every morning he woke up, not to yaps and those huge, doleful eyes, but to feelings of grief and loss. He had to get up each day and help out his family, knowing that now there wasn't a little package of fur and fun and happiness to help him get through it, but that he had to face it alone.

And now, every time he went to sleep, every dream was of Edgar in a cage somewhere, everything that went bump in the night was a robber, one he'd missed for not being warned of, who'd come back either to harm the others or to gloat that he'd gotten Joey's dog.

And now, when Joey Boswell lay his head on the pillow, instead of sighing contentedly, he cried.