Sam back-handed him so hard that Tucker staggered backwards into his desk. His hand brushed against his cheek as blood pounded to the spot where his P.A. had smacked the living fuck out of him.

He'd fucking earned her ire too – really worked at it this morning. Malcolm knew how to press her buttons and he wore her down from first light to right now. He knew that he'd gone too far half a paragraph ago but he couldn't stop the filth and dark shit spilling out of his lips. It was toxic – he was toxic and he held his tongue now in disgrace of himself.

"Bastard," Sam whispered, cupping her sore hand. Her eyes were ringed by the gleam of unshed tears. "How dare you destroy everything that you have built. This building. This office – that offensive mockery of art on the wall. The man who read the news this morning and the frightened rats that call themselves politicians. All of it, Malcolm. They are coming for you, yes but they they better come prepared because we'll give them a blood bath like politics has never seen before. I will not stand here and watch you play dead because you're far from it. You feed off conflict. I've watched you in the midst of battle." There was nothing Sam liked more than unleashing a wound-up Malcolm into a flock of pigeons.

"This is not the kind of war you want to be a part of," he warned her. "There'll be bits all over the floor – martyrs strung up in the streets and blood on every door. You have no idea how far into hell we could go. You'll be fucking begging for the flames before I'm done with those motherfuckers on the committee. You do not want to see what happens if I try."

If looks could kill, Tucker, his desk – the chair and the portrait behind Sam's gaze would all be dead.

"Get your coat. We start with the Baroness."

"Come on Malcolm, that's really unfair..." Ollie complained. He had that annoying sulk that school boys often got when they were being made to run errands. Though a reasonable height, Ollie's shoulders were hunched and his curled hair flattening in complaint.

Malcolm on the other hand, looked as though he were about to take on a Great White shark and have fin-soup for tea.

"Are you or are you not an envoy of the British government?" he growled sharply at the inferior underling.

"Well..."

"Then bloody get out there and do as I say." Malcolm didn't even have the patience to make up an horrific insult to hasten Ollie's progress. Instead he levelled a glare that could destroy small cities and that seemed to do the trick.

"Dammit Malcolm!" Ollie gave in and turned tail.

Malcolm watched him like a fucking velociraptor. A moment later, his phone buzzed.

"I'm busy," he snarled at it.

"So... you're on your way to the committee hearing then?"

"Bollocks!" Malcolm hung up on Sam, turned and awkwardly ran out of DoSAC.

"I can tell you apart, you realise..." Sam eyed Jamie sternly. She hadn't worked out what the Scot was doing snooping around but it wasn't to her advantage – of that she was sure. "Is there any particular reason that you're trying to break into Malcolm's office today or should I put a note of 'general affray' next to your name for when he comes back?"

Jamie straightened up, tearing his attention away from the lock and attempted to give a charming look. It came out as something horrific. "Come on now lass, don' be like that."

Sam folded her arms crossly. "I haven't forgotten your past life as a journalist."

"And what are you in this new life of yours – part of the Night's fucking Watch? I thought that was for old bastards..."

Sam was well versed in all science fiction and fantasy references. You had to be if you wanted to translate Tucker on a daily basis. "I'm not the Watch – I'm the wall." She was standing like one too, inching closer to Jamie.

"They weren't wrong about you. You really are his little prairie dog."

"Wall of ice..." she corrected, calmly. "Do you have a message for Malcolm or are you just here for the biscuits?"

Jamie didn't look happy. "I'll take a biscuit. Not one of those shit ones either."

Irritatingly Jamie didn't leave after having his fill of biscuits. He'd taken up residence on the green couch in front of her desk, resting his shoes on it no less. There was nothing demure about an ex-hack and whatever training he'd received under Malcolm had sharpened his abrasive personality to something quite vile. Shame. Sam had always had rather a fancy for his kind.

"Are you going to be here all night?" she was tempted to staple him to the seat to pass the time.

"I'd be gone in a flash if you let me into the bastard's office." Silence. "That'd be a 'no'." More deafening silence. "Well then I'll just be here leaving crumbs on the upholstery."

"Could you just – tilt your head slightly to the left..." Sam requested rather ominously.

Despite himself Jamie did as she asked. "Why?"

Sam smiled. "It's more easy to fantasise about flaying your alive that way."

Jesus... thought Jamie quietly to himself.

"She's scary – honestly mate – I looked into her cold, dead eyes and I saw your ugly mug staring back." Jamie was well into Malcolm's stock of scotch, strutting about his office in the wee hours of the morning. "You could have told her I was here to help you know. It wasn't very nice fending for myself."

Tucker was oddly stoic, flicking through a file from Ollie. "I don't want her involved in this."

Jamie nearly choked on the drink. "Does she know that?"

"Don't be a prick."

Jamie raised his hands innocently, nearly choking out the apology as if the words were melting his throat. "This is serious shit though – real fucking dark fuck, Malcolm. I should sell your pathetic arse back to the paper for a tidy sum. I could retire – somewhere with green fucking hills and plenty of well groomed sheep."

Malcolm smirked. "Shame you're loyal as an intestinal parasite."

"Gotta live somehow," he shrugged. Jamie held up a paper. "See this? Such a tragedy... Another career in tiny shreds. Your fingerprints are mysteriously absent."

Tucker eyed the front page and its shaming story featuring the Baroness and a certain scandal. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean. Ollie's paw prints are right in the middle."

"Yeah well, dogs do what master says," Jamie folded it and set it to one side. "It won't be enough. The committee is meeting tomorrow as planned – though with the regrettable absence of the beloved Baroness who will be taking some wholly unplanned leave for the rest of her life. What are you going to do about the other fucks?"

Malcolm rubbed a throbbing vein that popped up between his eyes and branched out across his forehead like some great fucking roadmap.

"Sam – SAM!"

Silence. Malcolm frowned and stalked over to the door, opening it a crack to peer out. "She's not bloody there!"

"She probably got tired of all your shouting and went home," Jamie pointed out. His P.A. Was never around. Actually, now that he thought of it, Jamie wasn't entirely sure that he still had one. Maybe Tucker really had killed it as rumour suggested.

"Sam lives here," Malcolm replied. He shut the door and rested back against it, acutely aware that the vein pulsed harder. He extracted his Blackberry.

Where'd you fuckin get to? Biscuits.

M

No 'X' this time.

"I wouldn't worry," Jamie said, rather unwisely. "She's probably traded you in for an easier life of self harm and sexual slavery." Malcolm's eyes were fucking fire. Jamie was pretty certain that a silent Malcolm was more terrifying than any of the creative shit storms he'd flung at the world. Must be love then. Heaven fucking help the world.

With no biscuits on offer, Malcolm was forced to rat around his desk for a mandarin. Their ever-present existence on his desk was one of the universe's greatest mysteries. Jamie had seriously considered the possibility that they were growing straight out of the woodwork. Hell there were enough piles of shit on it for fertiliser.

"You're in really deep, silted fuck," Jamie pointed out needlessly. "The kind that gets into all your clothes and breathing orifices. It's going to take more than one blood ritualised Baroness to float you of out it."

"I know that. I'm not a blank-eyed intern trying to decipher a water cooler. I'm the fucking atoms of water bashing around the inside of the machine held in by a repressive capsule of PC twattery. Do you know what it's like listening to a panel of hermit-crab shells speak for hours on end only to be gifted with bound copies of their fucking diarrhoea? I'd rather be strung up outside Buckingham Palace with my entrails on show. There's more dignity at a – what?"

Jamie had his hands up in defence to Malcolm's bitter rambling. "It's late. I'm bored and there are no biscuits. Why am I here?"

"I need you to talk to Tom."

If there'd been a stake nearby, Jamie would have stabbed himself through the heart to save Malcolm the trouble. "The Prime Minister? I thought he was a flayed corpse you let wash up on a beach in April?"

"Yeah well, now I need him to sew his own limbs on and paddle back across the channel."

Sam opened her door to a fountain of Malcolm Tucker. He seemed to be entirely unaware that it was two in the morning and that he'd forgotten to put on a jacket despite the weather giving London a stiff bollocking.

"Do you mind continuing this inside?" Sam interrupted. There was no hint of annoyance in her tone despite the fact that he'd hauled her out of a perfectly good bed for a dressing down she didn't deserve. Honestly half the time she suspected it was his own form of therapy that he clung to as a coping mechanism to get him through every hell-locked hour of politics.

He didn't even draw breath as she led him into her house. Sam made him sit when he tried to vent in the corner like a vampire afraid of the fire. Then she appeared with a plate of biscuits and cup of tea, both of which she left inside his reach. It wasn't long before he was sipping tea and gnawing off biscuits. The effect was calming. He was essentially a junkie for British stereotypes.

"Hi," she finally said to him, when he stopped shouting and relaxed back against the cushions.