When you were under the employ of Malcolm Fucking Tucker, you learned very quickly that the dominant form of communicate was spilled forth as raw, unadulterated and wildly inappropriate metaphor.
It could be a strange experience, especially when you were half a dozen layers deep in a perverted analogy with more dots per inch than a Peter Jackson tragedy. It was a fantasy your brain scrubbed off with stomach acid and doubled the leading cause of unsanctioned bi-partisan lobotomies (the remainder were self inflicted during recovery from a 'Tuckering').
It was not uncommon to see members of either party lingering in corners, heads against the soothing concrete like the un-dead. The chosen few were left strewn over the political battlefield, wrapping themselves in quick-bond and making damn fucking certain they kept track of every pet name and fictional location Tucker's maelstrom invented in case the topic of rage shifted to their ass and its imminent parting from the spine.
A very long time ago somewhere between latte's and carnage, Sam discovered that 99% of the trash Malcolm talked was a rouse.
He would kill her for thinking it but Malcolm was a small dog with the biggest ribcage, bark and ID tag that read, 'pure fuck' because that was what he was going to do to whomever tried to pet him. Still, Sam had seen his bluff called by people with real power and that vulnerable silence of desperation that followed unsettled her more than another tumbler finding its demise against the wall in a spray of death.
Without words, Malcolm was lost. Words were his armour – his bark and his soul. If he wasn't fighting, then the political universe was on the verge of a stall.
Knowledge was Tucker's sword.
He kept some very nasty secrets against a precious few people. His only protection in the world was the ability to fell the towers on which everyone else stood. There was no point controlling the masses – they were meaningless blobs of salt froth evaporating off the sand. He spent all of is time owning the hearts of the moon and sun so that he could halt the tide.
Strictly speaking, that wasn't in his job description. He was Director of Communications not 'Chief Angle of Darkness'.
"Sam... SAM!" Malcolm waited for Sam's patient face to peak around his door. "Could you send an ambulance over to DoSAC for Nicola Murray? Yeah – might need a second one for her head as it's coming separately. Later – after I'm through with the secret burial and demonic rites, I need to borrow your car."
He might as well just call it, 'his' car. These days he used it more than she did.
"Is it still parked at your house?" Sam hadn't seen it in weeks.
"Oh fuck..." he hissed. He'd entirely forgotten about the Audi sitting in his driveway collecting dew.
"I'll call you a cab. To your house. To get my car."
He was tempted to tear a few very small strips off Sam but she hadn't brought him any biscuits or tea in the last hour and she wasn't likely to if he went all Malciavellian on her. Malcolm really wanted biscuits, so he deflected his temper to Nicola Murray, whose irritating drivel was continuing to seep out the radio in his room like putrid swamp fog.
"Oh yeah – say it again... Let me get you a nice small box with no air holes so you'll feel more comfortable. Your coming across more closeted than Tom Cruise on a Spice Girl tour."
Sam lofted an eyebrow. It was a bit like listening to road rage.
"You're going to wish you were being airfreighted to Brazil on the back of an Albatross with a crooked wing and bad drinking problem doing circles over Ant-fucking-tarctica. Are you taking notes?" he looked up to Sam, who was scratching a few things in her diary while he ranted.
"Someone has to write your memoirs," she shrugged.
"Seriously?" There was a warning glint of venom in his eyes. Nobody quoted him unless they wanted their fingers plaited.
Sam tore the page out of her diary and handed it to him. His extremely Scottish eyebrows folded down for a moment before he broke into a deeply amused chuckle.
"Fair-a-fucking-nough..."
It was a petrol bill for her car.
"You may have been raised by wolves," Sam added, closing her diary, "but I was raised by vampires. We never say a word."
It would be an outright lie to say Tucker didn't watch his P.A. saunter away with a dark grin on his lips. She was broken in every way he liked and he had the distinct feeling that he was seeping into her cracks, splintering them further.
"They should get you to run the country..." he called after her.
She stopped, hand sliding down his door frame as though it were his blackened soul.
"You wouldn't like that," Sam insisted. "There'd be nothing for you to do."
"Where's Tucker? Hmm where's the chief rodent?" A bald man with a lot of repressed frustration parted the interns as he drew uncomfortably close to Sam's desk. "Has he evacuated the ship already – is there some serious listing that the government should be aware of?"
Sam didn't reply to Julius yet. She wanted to make absolutely certain that she knew which crisis he was referring to before she fed him any information he wasn't already privy to. Hell sometimes he just wandered down for a bit of a stroll.
"He better not be loitering in the bushes out front the PM's residence in Dover... is he? Sammy..."
Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't but she was absolutely positive Julius's body was about to go in four directions simultaneously if he called her fucking 'Sammy' again.
"Would you like me to find out where he is and have him call you?" she replied sweetly, as she imagined stapling post-it notes to his crown.
"Yes. You do that then. Mail him my heart and tell him it's bleeding all over the morning papers."
"I'll pass that on."
Malcolm didn't answer her call which meant he was bloody well down in Dover. Fuck, she hoped there were a few life vests on the Titanic.
Your favourite reindeer shat all over the carpet.
X S
She sighed and set her phone to one side. It barely introduced itself to the desk when Malcolm's reply buzzed in.
The one with the broken antler and half a tail? I thought I told you to leave a fuck-load of carrots out back and something about expressly never wanting to see it inside the house again?
X M
The side of Sam's lip curled up.
It misses Santa. It's going to share its heartbreak with the other reindeer shortly.
X S
There was a slightly longer pause this time.
brb – making venison for dinner.
X M
Sam turned off the TV and its hilarious interview with a particularly flustered Julius who kept rubbing his bald head as if he were some kind of lucky Buddha.
Congratulations, the venison was wonderful. Michelin star.
X S
Michelin stars are for French cunts.
X M
Sam grinned at her phone. She never confused his humour for insult.
P.S. Go the fuck home. It's Christmas for fuck's sake. You better not be there when I get there. I have a hot date with the evening news and I have a feeling she's really going to put out.
X M
She was doing several things that would have caused lesser mortals to have their skin flayed and bone fragments mixed with gunpowder and turned into the evening's entertainment.
Sam was in his chair, feet on his desk, smoking one of his cigars. Malcolm wasn't sure why the only intelligent thing that he could think to open with was, "Since when does your posh skirt smoke?"
Malcolm barely passed at pretending to smoke. He only kept a box on his desk so that the Oxford Club wouldn't kick him out of their sad sweaty soirees. He had to keep up the pretence that he could handle anything the others could, even if it was literally killing them. He certainly wasn't going to let her follow suit.
"Put that expensive fucking thing down," he insisted, stalking over to her. He took the cigar from her and put it out – but not before taking a deep whiff himself to prove a point.
Sam couldn't help shifting in her seat. Her lips had touched that moments before his and it shouldn't have felt intimate but it did.
She would have gone as far as to say it was 'seductive' until he nearly choked.
"These things are purely ornamental," he covered, smashing it into a saucer. "I told you to go home."
"I told you to be careful," she countered, shrugging. "They know Malcolm. Cool your blood hound scent and let me do the digging on this one. I'll call in sick for a few days. They won't so much as blink a precious false eyelash."
"I don't think-"
"Good." It was her job to protect him from everything, including his own stupid ideas. "Presents." Sam tapped a small pile of items neatly stacked on his desk. "It is, as you say, Christmas. At least it will be in an hour or so." It wasn't like he had a home to rush back to.
"Aw, you shouldn't have..." Malcolm found himself grinning. She'd even put a bow around one of the piles of paperwork. "Have you been digging up graves again for me?" he asked, untying one of the bundles.
"Well, it's been quiet lately. I have to find some way to kill time. I'll leave you with the spoils. Merry Christmas. I'll set your dark elves to work in the morning. They're all drunk as fuck right now."
Sam finally relinquished ownership of Tucker's chair, sliding past him. He took her place, sitting himself in front of he absolute treasure trove that she'd left. That was the thing with Sam, attention to detail. She picked up on things that not even his hawk-eyed-paranoia caught. Maybe she was telling the truth and she really was raised by vampires. Her teeth were quite sharp. Malcolm absently wondered what they would feel like biting into his neck.
He cleared his throat and shifted awkwardly. No. It was not a good idea to extend the metaphor that far – not unless he was prepared for it to mutate into a scene from Twilight.
Heaven-for-fucking-bid.
Considering her car was now ditched out front, Sam decided to take that home instead of slumming it through the snow and ice on some of London's finest buses. She'd swiped the keys from his jacket earlier, along with a Twix bar that she needed more than he did.
For a moment she glanced up to his window. There was a light creeping out from around the edges even with the curtain drawn. She wondered how long he'd stay there – probably all night considered the wealth of material she'd just gifted him. It was a project that Sam had been sinking her claws into all year. If there was one thing that she had learned working under the Great and Powerful Heart of Darkness, it was to listen. Always listen. People as a species were utterly shit at keeping secrets. They slipped out continuously all you had to do was have your ears open and your mouth shut. It was certainly true what people said of her, she never said a goddamn thing. She listened though. Listened to everything that went on inside the walls. People forgot she was there. People forgot that she was an extension of Tucker – an extra limb – another sense. Sam was his good eye and moral compass.
Tucker's sword was forged by Sam and her only request of the world was that she got to watch him wield it.
"Sam... SAM!"
Malcolm blinked. Frowned, checked his watch and looked up at the empty door. No Sam. No tea. No biscuits.
"SAM!" he shouted again.
Definitely no Sam.
The fuck are you?
X M
He un-muted the TV and threw his phone down unfairly hard. He snatched a mandarin and tore its insides apart.
Hunting reindeer.
X S
Tucker stopped and let his lips part in a large festive grin. That's his girl.
Bring some biscuits back, will ya?
X M