Chapter 2
Careful fear and dead devotion
True to Ollie's prediction, Malcolm punches Nicola's number into his phone the moment he's rung off from their call.
"Please answer the phone." The Scot mutters in something akin to a prayer before pressing the call button. As Malcolm had feared, her personal phone goes straight to voicemail.
"Hi, this is Nicola's phone. Obviously I'm not answering so leave me a message. Or don't. But probably do. Especially if you have a private number. Now I'll stop wittering, but hey, at least you've had enough time to work out what you want to say. Bye!"
Her message drives him mad ordinarily. She's the leader of the fucking United Kingdom and she can't even be concise on her answerphone. Beyond that, he hates being made to wait, and the length of her message always means he is delayed. Today, on the other hand, the mere sound of her voice is the most welcome thing he could hope to hear. The fact that it isn't the usually hurried "Hello?" he is generally greeted by when he calls her personal phone is something he tries not to be totally disappointed by.
"Nic'la, hi. Look... Fuck. I don't know what to say but just fucking stay safe, alrigh'? Don't be a hero, don't save anyone else, I don't care if the rest of the fucking world implodes because there's no twat who people can fucking hashtag 'POTUS'. I promise I will be the best person imaginable if you stay in one piece. Just... make sure yeh come home to me, pet."
Even if he's disregarded his instructions and phoned her, he has resolved not to spend too long on the line so he doesn't call her back immediately, no matter how desperately he wants to.
Malcolm paces the length of their little holiday cottage in Cumbria and wishes he knew what the fuck he could do to make himself feel useful. His wife is missing; he has been waiting for her to finish an international summit so she can spend a long weekend with him. Their time is precious now that she's the PM, and somehow they still manage to carve out chunks of it to spend in their weekender. The events of the last few days pound through Malcolm's mind. Him deciding not to go with her to G8 because he can't remember how many fucking high level meetings he's been dragged to in the last two months, Nicola not objecting to this even though she hates flying without him, because at least this way he could make sure the house was warm when she arrived. The conversation they had before she went to bed last night; she'd complained about how long she'd been in her heels and he'd called her daft. They had joked about when, precisely, spending time wearing jeans and walking through mud in wellies had started to sound more luxurious than dinners with heads of state at Number 10, and Nicola had enquired after Sebastian, the Welsh Mountain pony in the paddock next door. Malcolm had expected these things to be tangible realities in his near future: his wife showing up at their door still wearing an outfit in which she could be photographed when she got off her plane, him bundling her inside and shagging her in front of the fire, him having a few days of her with her hair tied back in a imprecise ponytail and her worn blue jeans hugging the curves of her arse. Malcolm had a right to expect these things would happen, but now his expectations have been totally shot to pieces, and he finds himself trying to avoid thinking things like at least the last thing you said to her was that you love her.
Their relationship is, of course, one of the most inexplicable and bizarre things that's ever happened in political history - only slightly less inexplicable and bizarre than Nicola finally attaining the Premiership. After his near miss with gaol, Malcolm had disappeared off the political radar and done some soul searching. In an indirect sort of way, three years of introspection and a political hiatus had culminated in him marrying a backbencher named Nicola Murray. Neither had intended to remarry after their respective divorces; Malcolm blames his on being young and in love and possibly pissed when he asked her. Nicola simply blames hers on idiocy, and Malcolm has never objected to this assessment. For this marriage they mutually lay blame on their propensity to wind each other up, and their mutual unwillingness to let the other win. The ceremony, small and private as it had been, had been wrought with phrases like "What in fuck's name are we doing this for?" and "Fucked if I know."
It had been easier in the beginning when she was benched for all that time. As soon as she was back in Cabinet the tabloid rags had been all over them, and he hadn't begrudged them that from the perspective of a past Director of Communications. Marrying the person who affected your downfall when you're the first female leader of a prominent political party is certainly a notable angle for a tabloid. This hadn't stopped him verbally eviscerating any journalist who dared to ask him about it. It had become worse again when she'd become Prime Minister, a plethora of headlines amounting to 'Malcolm Tucker returns to Number 10, this time with an apron', but now the whole affair has become something intermittently mentioned rather than something with constant attention trained on it.
Wherever Malcolm casts his eyes in the little cottage causes an irrepressible pang of anxiety in him. He wants her huddled in the corner of the couch with her socked feet tucked beneath her. He wants her sitting on the kitchen bench. He wants to sit at the local pub with her, fish and chips sprawled across the table and intermittent 'why yes, I am the Prime Minister' conversations occurring on the off occasion when she is recognised by a voter. He watches news clips on his phone because they very deliberately don't have the aerial connected to their little television; it is generally only used for films which they invariably argue over. He could connect it, it's there in case of emergency, but part of him doesn't really want to know what's going on, what's being streamed across the nation's news media. Most of the time he can deal perfectly well with the fact that Nicola is a concept in the mind of the British citizenry while she is very much a reality to him. Today, with her life potentially in danger, he is very much not equipped for the clinical objectivity of rolling news. He wants to be at Number 10. He wants the stupid fucking helicopter to be here already regardless of how much he secretly despises helicopters. It's not confined spaces or even the inability to get out as it is for his partner, it's not even the height exactly, it's more the extent to which one is blown around at altitude. Malcolm likes planes. Solid, giant bastards that basically only bounce a bit. Malcolm can cope with that. He's less taken with being in a tiny floating ball.
His mind sails back to the first conversation he had with Nicola about it back when she'd been the Leader of the Opposition. He thinks it was probably the first vulnerability he ever revealed to her, bracing himself against the side of a helicopter with his left hand while amending the speech she was set to give and barking changes into the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear. He'd been on his way to meet her somewhere he can no longer recall. He'd sworn tersely when the little aircraft had swayed violently in the sky, and Nicola (irritatingly perceptive when she felt like being so) had observed idly "That sounds like stress-swearing rather than bollocking-swearing. Is everything okay in the realm of the all-swearing eye?"
"I'm as peachy as a whore in a fucking peach fact'ry, darlin'. Unless you don't like being tossed about like a fucking tomato in a can."
"Are you telling me that after years of tearing me to shreds for being claustrophobic, you're afraid of heights?"
"It's not the fucking heights, it's the fucking wind."
"Well, well. Doesn't that sounded suspiciously like Malcolm Tucker admitting he's fallible?"
"Next time you say something like that, Nic'la, I'll fucking quit. Then you can see how fucking fallible I am."
When he'd arrived at the conference centre Nicola had glanced up at him, losing the vague air of tension that usually played about her face for a moment, and she'd all but purred the words "How was the peach factory?"
"All pit and no juice. Can we move the fuck on?" A knowing smile had touched Nicola's lips. In spite of himself, one had pulled at Malcolm's own lips to match hers, and for once he hadn't minded being really known by her.
Malcolm shoves the memory aside; the idea of Nicola being in reach when she is so clearly not is almost too much for him to bear. He punches her number into his phone again.
"Hi, this is Nicola's phone. Obviously I'm not answering so leave me a message. Or don't. But probably do. Especially if you have a private number. Now I'll stop wittering, but hey, at least you've had enough time to work out what you want to say. Bye!"
"So, I'm not technically supposed to be calling b'cause of some BS technical bollocks but... Look, I just thought I should let you know that I'm taking a fucking helicopter fer you so I expect you to be nice to me when you get back to Number 10." He is careful of his use of 'when'. There is no 'if' that he will countenance in this situation. She will come home to him, and when she does, he will either scream himself senseless because how fucking dare she worry him like this? Or more likely he will be so grateful to have her back he will be an absolute kitten for the rest of the year.
In a moment of inspiration, Malcolm hits the speed dial for her official phone, thinking perhaps it might be more durable or more likely to be on hand than her personal mobile.
"You've reached the phone of Prime Minister Nicola Murray. For diary enquiries please press one. Alternatively, messages can be left be left after the tone."
Malcolm lets out an almighty growl of frustration and hangs up before leaving a message. There is something disconcerting about trying to speak to her when she is unaccounted for. Something eerily like trying to converse with the dead, although he will not acknowledge this.
A/N: I started writing this in 2014 and I fully expected Hillary to be the next US President. She will forever be the POTUS in this story.