A/N: Not a very plotty chapter, but methinks we needed some breathing space and fluff.
Twenty-One
"Hurry up and finish getting ready—there's plenty to do in the kitchen yet."
Kate pressed a kiss to the corner of Malcolm's mouth and left the shower, grabbing her towel to dry off in her room. Malcolm was left to clean himself up and continue prepping for the day; fuck, this was easily topping the list of best domestic days he ever had, and that list had only been growing since he began dating Kate.
Fuck… Kate. He tried to ignore the hopeful twitch of his cock as it requested more attention. If this was a glimpse into married life, Malcolm was more than ready to pop the question again, yet something in his gut told him that it still wasn't the right time. He turned the water to cold in order to force himself out quicker instead, making record time with the soap and shampoo. Within five minutes he finished showering, was dressed, and had made it down the stairs to the kitchen, where he was immediately put to work on arranging a tray of cold cuts.
"What, was the store too occupied to do this for us?" he frowned.
"I went in yesterday and they wanted a week's window," Kate replied dully. "Good thing that nothing was stopping me from ordering everything we needed right then and there, clogging up the queue because there was only one person behind the counter."
"There's the woman I know and love," Malcolm smirked. He pecked lips with Kate and kept on working, rolling meat and arranging it with cheeses.
"I'd say that's gross, but I don't want any retaliation once I start dating," Fiona teased, walking into the kitchen. She plucked a grape from the fruit bowl on the counter and idly munched on it.
"There was never any question as to if there would be retaliation," Kate said, her voice dripping with idle sarcasm. She smiled sweetly at her daughter, the act undercut by her tone—of course there would be teasing once she began dating, always and forever.
"Malc, can I share Lex's room at the flat?" the teen asked.
"Wait until we won't have Signore Pizzoccheri slapping us with court orders and claims of kidnapping, and we'll see," he replied. Fiona shrugged, not able to argue that, and glanced around.
"Anything need doing?"
"Make a sweep of the house and see that nothing's out of place," Kate requested. "It's not many people, but we're still having guests over and I don't want the first time they see the house to be it in disarray."
"Right-o," the teen replied. She left the kitchen without fuss, which allowed a very deliberate goosing of her mother to go on in private.
A few hours went by as Malcolm and Kate prepped the food for that afternoon's party. Well, they referred to it as a party, yet it was simply having a few people over from Malcolm's Whitehall days, just to let them know he was still alive and far from shunning them. He had originally wanted to have it at his flat—making curry and chips like he used to back in his bachelor days—though Kate insisted, saying that she was the one with the most room to work with. As her argument was solid, he had to update his group-message and receive some interesting responses after there had been enough time to look up the new address.
Yes, his new lady lived in a fairly nice house in a Home County and none of the old crowd was prepped and ready to fuck him over once again, despite the fact they last saw him bracing to potentially live out the rest of his life in prison. Fate was a fucking amazing thing sometimes.
There was not much left to do when the doorbell rang, pulling Kate and Malcolm's attention away from their prepwork. A quick glance at the clock confirmed that whomever it was at the door was precisely on time.
"I've got it," he said. "It's probably Sam—she's good for this sort of thing."
"I should hope so."
Malcolm took the apron off his waist and put it back on the peg before heading over towards the front door. He opened it to see his former assistant standing there, just as he predicted, a smile spread across her face.
"Hey Malcolm," she said. He knew she didn't think she'd say those words to him for a long time and the relief in her voice all but proved it. "I have someone I want you to meet, remember?" She motioned with her head down, bringing his attention to a small child that was standing next her. The boy was looking around in awe, only to duck behind her soon as he noticed that a stranger was looking at him.
"Ah, and who might this young lad be?" Malcolm smirked. He sat on his haunches and grinned at the boy hiding behind his former PA. "Don't believe we've met."
"David, this is Mister Tucker," Sam explained gently. She attempted to coax the boy into the open, something he was not having any of. "I used to work for him at Whitehall. He's very important to me and I want you to behave while we're here."
"Why didn't we see him before if he's that important?" the boy asked skeptically.
"It's my fault; I apologize," Malcolm said. "When I left government, I didn't leave my job in the best way, so in order to not hurt your new mam here, I had to not talk to her for a while. Now I work at a new place, with a new assistant, and while she's amazing, she still isn't My Sammy."
The boy considered this and nodded in agreement. "I just got her last year—I can't have my new mum hurt."
"There's a good lad; there's a Wii in the living room if you want to play one of those race game things. If you can't get it to work, ask Miss Fiona—she's the teenager in yellow. Give her Hell."
"Thank you, Mister Tucker," David said, a look of relief sweeping across his face. He bolted inside the house and out of sight, which only made Malcolm chuckle.
"Look at that," he marveled, "Mammy fucking Sammy… that's a change." He hugged his former PA and patted her on the back before leading her further into the house. "I remember you talking about adopting back before the Inquiry, but I thought you'd be shoved further down the list thanks to all that shit."
"If anything, my composure during that time pushed me up on the list," she said. "Once I was able to land my current job I looked like a model citizen, scraping together what was left of her life after a stint in government went wrong through no fault of her own. I can't even tell you how many times I was offered an interview about working for you, the reporter in complete awe."
"…as they should have been." By then they had reached the kitchen, where Kate was chopping some veg for the spreads—the last thing that needed doing. "Kate, love, this is Sam Cassidy, or Rajit Version One-Point-Oh. Sam, this is my new lady and boss, Kate."
"It's an honor," Sam said. She reached over the table and shook Kate's hand, the older woman's relaxed demeanor putting her at-ease. "Thanks for taking care of him—he can be pretty lousy by himself."
"No kidding; we're going to have to get together so you can tell me all about the shit he got up to before I came into his life," Kate replied.
"Let's just say I left once for two weeks and came back to the office in shambles and the cleaning crew having been told to not enter." Malcolm scowled as the two snickered and he wondered if bringing the two of them under the same roof was a good idea.
"You hadn't even been working for me for a month at that point and there was an international crisis going on, if you recall correctly." The tips of his ears turned red, his only saving grace being that the doorbell rang. "I'll be back. Again."
"Take your time, dear," Kate smirked. She and Sam shared a laugh before he left the kitchen—it was his worst nightmare, and he hadn't even known it until fifteen fucking seconds ago.
After quietly poking his head in the family room to check on Fiona and David —the latter having climbed on the former's shoulders as they attempted to play a tennis game as such—Malcolm went to the door and opened it to see the two faces he wanted to visit with the most.
"Jamie! Cal! You wee shits! Get the fuck in here!" He stepped aside and let his two friends into the house. While Jamie was rumpled and scruffy as ever, Cal seemed to be doing better than ever. "Where's the gals? I thought Jeanette and Veronica were coming too."
"Naw; the Younger Twins had a bit too much fucking schoolwork to be left alone this weekend, because of course it's bad enough that they're not doing any shitting learning anymore, but they have to spend all their time doing too much bloody useless shite," Jamie scowled. "I'd like to take that headmaster of theirs and stuff him full of those fucking essays they have to write and see how well he digests tha—"
"Meanwhile," Cal interrupted, clearly having heard the rant on the way over, "Veronica is headed over to her parents' with Emily for a visit, as they're getting a bit batty in their old age and need near-daily reminding that they have to do things like shower and not try to kill the neighbor's Devil-spawn of a cat."
"…a bit batty?!" Jamie scoffed. "Your in-laws are fucking mental!"
"I'm married to their daughter; you don't think I don't fucking know that?" Cal replied. "Anyhow—where's this lass I hear has turned you loose on civil society again? I thought that the next time we'd be able to see one another, we'd be shriveled and soft and gone back to shitting out own pants."
"Kate's in the kitchen with Sam, which is where we are not going because it's not safe," Malcolm said. He led his friends out to the back patio, where there were chairs and a cooler with some bottles of beer. Once both his friends had a drink and he had a bottle of water, he continued. "It's better to let them talk themselves out; they've got plenty to discuss before they are going to be ready to join us."
"Fuck… you wanked yourself to a higher plane of existence, or what?" Cal laughed. "I don't remember you ever being this at-ease about anything."
"I was shagged there, my friend," Malcolm said, raising his bottle in a toast. "Let's face it: we thought the last time the three of us were together like this was the last fucking hurrah. Now look at us; Jamie's got his own firm, you're still surviving with enough time in to get a gilt pension once they're done with you, and I'm not only out of prison without so much as a pap resplattering me name, but I'm working for the United Fucking Nations of all things while my lady has her way with me on a near-nightly basis—it's just about made me a believer."
"Christ—I thought you gave all that up after Kelly…" Jamie marveled. "Well, not like you were ever solid on the stuff before…"
"Still can't take a fucking joke, can you, yeh pint-sized failed priest?" Malcolm snarked. Jamie shoved him with his fist, making the other two chuckle.
"When lost souls find their way, it's nothing to fucking joke about," he scowled. "I'm telling Kate you wanted to keep her and Sammy in the kitchen."
"Yeah, and she'll punish me appropriately later," Malcolm grinned. Jamie choked on his beer, spitting it out on the pavestones. "What? Suddenly have virgin ears?"
"Fuck you."
"Kate plans on it."
"Hey, Malc, can you get me one of these?" shouted Fiona from inside the house. She then appeared into view, holding David's ankles tight against her shoulders, letting the boy dangle upside down while giggling up a storm. Upon seeing the other two men, she waved, not letting go of her captive. "Hi, I'm Fiona—you Malc's mates, I take it?"
"This wee fucker's Jamie and the other wee fucker's Cal; three of us shared a flat back in Glasgow," Malcolm explained, pointing out his friends with his water bottle. "Now, what'd you want me to get?"
"One of these," she repeated, holding David forward. She let the boy slowly sink to the ground as her wrists tried to not give out, not used to needing the upper body strength necessary to hold a six-year-old aloft. He ran away, after which she gestured in his general direction. "A little brother, maybe? The way you are with Mum, I wouldn't be surprised you had one or two of them hiding around Greater London, ready for a custody battle."
"Watch over him for a few more hours and then tell us if a wee brother's such a great fucking idea," Jamie muttered into his drink. "I got two sets of twins, lass; take it from an expert on kiddie hijinks. Love me kids, don't get me wrong, but they're a handful for even the best of us."
Fiona shrugged an "okay" at that and then left the men alone again, heading into the house. Cal narrowed his eyes, looking through the family room window with little effort, where he could see Fiona and Michael prepping a racing game.
"I've seen her before…" he frowned. "I don't like this feeling… not about her, but something attached to her…"
"Her da's a fucking hotshot banking tit, and she resembles him slightly," Malcolm said sourly. "You've probably had to give him a dressing-down at some point. I know I probably have, the fucking waste of cum. If I had met Kate ten—fuck, fifteen—years earlier, then I would've been able to help raise her properly, been a decent da for her."
"It would've given you something to do after the Fucking Fleming Fiasco, that's for sure," Jamie mused. "Then me best mates wouldn't've had to have a showdown on the national fucking stage."
"…a paid showdown, mind," Cal reminded him, "and shit Malc, you could have even retired after the election and not have wasted all that time. You talk like this girl's cut from the same cloth as you."
"She's us, Cal… us if we had every resource out there available back then and more," Malcolm explained. "Kate's sperm-donor of an ex isn't just any fucking hotshot banking tit—he's a fucking minted hotshot banking tit with fingers in cookie jars we can't even think of touching anymore. He's got her going to some haughty public school, speaking Latin, French, and Italian, rubbing elbows with the kids and grandkids of the shits I used to put in place on a daily basis." He then leaned back in his chair, taking a large gulp of water. "She's better than that though."
"Not to be an ungrateful pisspot of a guest, but how are you sure?" Jamie asked. "That sort of thinking has a funny way of rearing its head in shitty ways. We had a classmate in uni who was amongst the best until we got into a row about fucking Thatcherism, of all things."
"She notices," Malcolm said, not missing a beat. "She noticed that Kate's son never got the chance to get out of his state school until graduation, that her other older brother fucking disappeared from their da's family once he was an adult, that none of the women she's around at his place seem to stay very long… and that doesn't even take into account their personalities…"
"Let me guess: none to fucking speak of?" Cal cut in.
"Yeah; she knows that a cunt with money is still a cunt, and that, unfortunately for her, her father's one of them. Fuck—the only reason they're in this house and not a flat back in London is Kate's da having worked for one of those poshness factories after retiring and wanting to make sure she and the kids were set up after he was gone." Malcolm turned his head and looked out over the garden, which caused him to frown slightly. "There's so much I wish I could have been here for, but I got fucked over daily instead."
"Don't beat yourself up over it, Malc," Jamie said. He patted his friend's shoulder and gave him a supportive smile. "I know it's not your bag, but I'm confident that the Lord put you here, at this time, for a very specific reason. You can think it's the cosmos or sheer luck or whateverthefuck, I don't care, it's up to you. The only thing, no matter what you think, is figuring out what the reason is and what we can do with it is why we were given such a fucking large amount of smarts and shit."
Malcolm took another drink of his water and shoved Jamie's hand off his shoulder, no malice in the action. "Still don't mean I don't fucking think about it."
"Hey, it's worth a shot."
"What's worth a shot?" Kate asked. The men glanced towards the door and saw her and Sam coming out to join them with wine glasses in-hand. While Sam took the fourth chair, Kate decided to sit on the arm of Malcolm's.
"Nothing much, love," he replied. "Rest of the party's here; this is Jamie and Cal. 'Gizmo and the Nuggets' is what they used to call us back in the day; stayed with them until they started getting hitched and I made the first move down to London."
"Well, it's good to meet some of Malcolm's old journalism friends," she said. "I don't have many friends left myself thanks to what work has done to my personal life; it makes me feel much better that at least one of us still has some of their old gang around."
"If you're marvelous as Malc says you are, then you're most certainly one of us now," Cal said, raising his beer. Everyone else raised their drink and they silently toasted, all taking a sip at once.
-KTHUNK-
The adults' attention all turned towards the house, out of which David scurried in a panic. Seeing cover, he took refuge under the nearby gazebo via a hole in the lattice along the bottom. Fiona appeared soon as David was out of sight, teenaged rage across her face.
"Where is he?!" she hissed. "He got into my room and knocked over my bookcase!"
"In his defense, you've needed to bolt that thing to the wall for ages because of how wobbly it is," Kate frowned. "He's a child—I'm sure he didn't mean it."
"Yeah sure," Fiona then turned to Malcolm, "and I take it back: get me one of them and it'll be dead within the week. If anyone needs me, I'll be cleaning the mess David made." She then stomped away, the sound of slamming doors being heard as she stormed through the house. A quiet moment passed and David crawled out from underneath the gazebo, knees full of dirt and hair covered in spider webs.
"…am I in trouble…?" he asked timidly.
"Not this time; just be careful," Sam said. She put her wine down and took a handkerchief from her purse to wipe off his hair. "Miss Fiona's just being grumpy because she knows her mummy's right."
"Oh." The boy let himself get fussed over as Sam cleaned him up. He could see Fiona glaring at him from the upstairs, which made him back down slightly. "Can I have my juice box now? I'm gonna look at the garden."
"Go ahead," Sam nodded. She watched as her son took the drink from her bag and wandered off towards a flower bed. "I guess it's too late to ask if there's a babysitter in the house, isn't it?"
"Just a bit," Kate smirked. "Now tell me, boys, what is going on in your lives?"
A/N: For anyone confused by Cal's inclusion in here when The Fucker, as he is known in-universe, had been hired by the Opposition during the election shitshow, there is a bit in The Missing DoSAC Files tie-in book that shows a transcript of a voicemail that Malcolm left on Cal's cell phone. It's adorable and proves that Malcolm has… odd friends in the workplace, to say the least, though his full relationship to our favorite Caledonians is completely my invention.