She hasn't had sex in years. The last time she can remember fucking, it produced a child. That child is now seven, and if she's being honest with herself, she doesn't actually remember the sex.
With James, it had never been memorable to begin with, but mid way through their insipid marriage it ceased almost entirely, replaced by a hollow resentment and a vibrator ordered over the internet. She hid it in a plastic container at the back of her make-up drawer, and was only brave enough to pull it out after the shittest of the shit days. After her forced resignation, she had locked herself in the en suite and gone to town on herself for a good hour and a half.
But that was months ago, and now she's against a wall in the tiny flat she rents for a ridiculous sum, hands gripping short grey hair, while a filthy mouth tugs on her lower lip and freezing cold hands are sliding beneath the hem of her purple dress.
The chain of events between choosing the dress and humping her political assassin's leg up against the wall of her shitty apartment weren't anything to write home about. Like any typical day in the life of a recently separated, vaguely depressed low level MP really. She puts the dress on in the morning at seven-thirty. It's exactly the kind of thing he would have made her change for a frumpy grey piece in half a size too large and three decades out of date.
She eats a slice of toast and has a cup of tea, then she goes to work. It's an uneventful day, which is like every day on the back bench. Constituency dullards to appease, shit to stir... lunch to eat.
Then takes the tube to the stop nearest her building, and walks to her flat. She stops in the middle of crossing the street when she spots him, standing on the front steps tapping away at his phone. A car honks and she takes half a step forward before jerking back as the car passes. He doesn't look up. She continues across the road as her heart hammers in her chest.
She decides to ignore him, and she has the key half in the lock before his hand is on her back and his voice in her ear. "Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Saviour?"
And even though she'd said I'm Catholic, and shrugged his hand away, he'd followed her through the door anyway, and up the stairs to the entrance of her flat where she turns and crosses her arms over her chest.
"I thought vampires couldn't cross the threshold without an invitation."
"Nicola, that fucking dress is an invitation."
She pauses, and presses her lips together. She doesn't know why she hasn't pushed him down the stairs, but she opens the door anyway and leaves it for him to enter.
"So when are they locking you up?" She drops her bag next to a pile of unpacked boxes, and moves to the kitchen. She keeps one eye on him as she goes.
"Tomorrow. I am to surrender myself at nine o'clock for processing... whatever the fuck that means." His hands are in his pockets and he's rocking back and forth a little on his feet.
"And you decided to what? Tick off step nine of your twelve step program to stop being a conniving cunt?"
Malcolm's face screws up a little, like he's smelled something bad. "I am not here to fucking apologise, you daft bint."
"Gloat, then? Hate to break it to you, Malcolm, but you're the one who's completely screwed here. At least I'm still pulling an MP salary and don't have to piss in front of another human for the next two years."
"Do you realise how much of this is your fault?" He takes a few long strides across the room until he's in her personal space, looming over her in a way that's a lot less menacing than he thinks. "This is one hundred percent, entirely, in every conceivable fucking way, your fault."
"Cup of tea?"
She remembers the few moments that follow, but only in the most basic of ways. A hand snatching at hers as she reaches for the jug, that same hand joining the other in gripping her shoulders and pushing her towards the wall... lips on hers that are cool and a little thin.
It's that cliché of she should push him away but it's been so long and if she's being completely honest, hatesex with Malcolm Tucker is something she's fantasised about at least once while locked in the bathroom. Vivid, visceral fantasises she didn't need the contents of the plastic box in her make-up drawer to help with.
She goes with it up to that point with the had up the dress, and the lip tugging. She goes with it past that, where the hand moves from her leg to her back, and slides down the zip until the fabric can slide freely across her body.
She goes with it past the point of just going with it and kisses him back with more ferocity than she ever kissed James, until both their lips are bruised and her tongue is tender after he bites it while she starts tugging his shirt from his trousers.
And if she just thinks fuck it and keeps going with it right up until they're tangled up in a cheap polycotton sheets, his head between her legs and her hands back in his hair pressing him harder against him until he moves his fingers in just the right way... well.
Even in the morning when she wake up an the bastard is still next to her, asleep and mussed in the dim light, she she goes with it and closes her eyes for just five more minutes.