Malcolm was staring down a fucking nightmare.
Fear he could manage. He knew it on sight – smelled it in the air as it evaporated off his victims' skin. He understood precisely how to channel it for various nefarious purposes including but not limited to affray, blackmail, collusion, conspiracy, extortion, fuckery, heinous acts of implied violence, limb detachment, mental derailment and the occasional treason – except the treason was against his own sanity just before his frontal-lobe was thrown into the DoSAC shredder.
This was different.
The uninvited house guests were staring up at him with something unfamiliar. Tucker didn't get it. The late addition of Glen squeezing onto the sofa between Ollie and Julius only made his head spin faster. He eyed his tea suspiciously, wondering if Sam slipped something stronger than milk into it. The fuck were they all doing in his house? There went all his fantasies about a quiet night in wanking off to some festive rom-com and heaven forbid he have half a glass flat champagne to celebrate not murdering anyone in the last twenty-four hours.
Jamie brought out a bowl of snacks. A dozen hands swept through the chips until the awkward silence was replaced by crunching. Julius, the shining orb of political hypocrisy, inspected each chip before shoving it down his neck. The sight made Malcolm twitch.
"Sorry but – what – the – hell are you all doing here?" Malcolm stammered.
Jamie was the only creature brave enough to stand. He took a cautious step toward the confused scot. "To help you, daft cunt."
Malcolm's famous eyebrows tilted toward his nose. His head turned. "What?"
"Help. Malcolm. Remember that? It's on the list of human traits you despise."
Another silence. Malcolm surveyed Jamie's face. Well fuck him, he wasn't shitting around. "Christ fucking help me, if you lot are my best shot. It's like that film with the space incest and severed limbs." Blank looks. Ollie's glass hadn't quite made it to the coffee table. It was hovering about the expensive veneer, threatening to leave a water mark. "The murder star catches fire like a hack cunt at an exorcism -"
"...Star Wars..."
"Yeah. No Fucking Hope."
Jamie slapped him on the shoulder a little harder than friendly support.
"But," Malcolm protested, "I don't even fuckin' like any of you."
"Don' even worry 'bout it," Jamie half-whispered. "I'm sure their reasons are reassuringly self serving. I know mine are. If you're killed then I'll have to blood in another miserable cunt and fire bomb half the building."
"Okay but lets never ever fucking speak about it again."
It was all quite surreal but pizza and hard liquor mellowed the atmosphere. Hours later, the laptops and notepads were out. Malcolm dragged a whiteboard from fuck knows where (probably his pantry) and a plan was scrawled over it. Once, he felt Sam's hand press briefly against his lower back as she leaned across to refill everyone's glasses. He couldn't help thinking that she was rewarding him for not tearing off any bodily parts from his uninvited guests.
"We clear then?" Malcolm asked, when he realised that they were all nodding silently at the board with nothing further to add. "Get the fuck out of my house and piss off back to the silt where you were born." He shepherded them out the door and into the snow.
As much as he loved snow, he didn't love it inside his house so he slammed the door shut as soon as Glen waddled out and leaned against it, afraid one of them might try and claw their way back inside. He was left with Jamie and Sam. Jamie had his bollocking face on – arms folded firmly over his chest, loitering his undersized frame in the centre of the room. The effect was somewhat ruined by the drunken tilt he'd taken on.
"Where's your leash gone, by the way?" Malcolm asked, before Jamie could launch into whatever tsunami he had welling up in his throat.
"I chewed through it when you left me tied outside that fucking wank-fest at the circle of living shits. The round table of cock-ups so colossal the Romans couldn't find a slab of marble big enough for their balls." Just when you think he's going to walk away, the fantastically creative abuser in parliament turned back on his victim. "Yeah – one of them snapped off," he mimicked a giant stone nut being torn off in his hand, "and caused a small meteor strike on another planet."
Malcolm laughed gleefully at the nightmare he'd carefully nurtured. "I'll just go fetch it then. Need to lash you to the side of a nasty fuck-off ice-burg, if you know what I mean."
"Oh – fuck you," Jamie didn't want to clean up the mess at DoSAC.
"Later."
Sam chose this moment to wander in carrying a tray with two espressos. Jamie eyed her warily then pointed his coffee rather seriously at Malcolm. "You better do something about this. You've got a breaking news story wandering around your flat carrying refreshments."
"I thought you were leaving?"
"Yeah. I'm leavin'." Jamie put his empty cup down and wandered out the door – brushing his shoulder against the frame on the way out before launching drunkenly onwards.
"Is he going to be okay?" Sam asked, coming to stand beside Malcolm at the front door.
"He shares genetic material with a cockroach. He's indestructible. Last twat standing." Malcolm paused, then looked down at Sam and realised that they were standing in his doorway and fuck-knows if wasn't Jamie's voice he heard in his head telling him to draw the curtains and fuck off back inside. "Inside. Come on."
Sam set the tray of empty cups down and eyed the room. Malcolm's neat house was a train wreck.
"Did you do this?" he asked her, in a low whisper.
Sam really wished she'd never heard him use that tone. It went nicely with his damp hair from earlier. "Did I do what?" she replied, innocently.
He shook his head at her. He knew she did it. "Later on. When this is over. We're going to have a conversation about this."
Returning to work in the festive season was odd. With most of the public servants taking liberties with their annual leave, the remaining staff were outnumbered by photocopiers. The trial was briefly put on pause and the press weren't going to go forward with the 'story of the year' while everyone was away. They had a small window of breathing space and shit loads to do.
Actually, the silent efficiency of their plan was rather alarming.
"You need to go and shout for a bit," Sam had actually said to him, while setting out the tapes from last night's radio interviews.
"I beg your pardon?"
Sam lofted her eyebrow at her boss. "You haven't torn anyone's head off for a few days. This calm, polite facade you've put up is alarming people." Especially her.
"Let me get this straight, you're advising me to go and abuse a few emotionally damaged politicians in the holiday season who are already so depressed that they've opted to spend quality family time sitting in empty offices with savage paperwork as company?"
"Well – yes."
Jesus. Jamie was right about his P.A. "Can I have a skinny latte first?"
"If you like."
"Couple of biscuits?"
"Don't push it."
Fuck him if Malcolm didn't catch his P.A. wink as she wandered out of the room. He was starting to worry that maybe she got off on watching him rampage through the hallways with bits of dead minister stuck to his jacket.
...and he wasn't sure how that made him feel.
DoSAC was as good a place as any for a bit of festive shouting. Some cunt had strung tinsel over the doorways which hung far too low, nearly hanging him on his way in. If he found any mistletoe he'd chew the head off the closet person to the offending decoration.
"You know – Christmas has already happened. Shouldn't you be taking all this fuckery down?"
Terry was at her desk, sorting through Dan Miller's Christmas cards. No doubt she was trying to find the least offensive ones to put on his desk. Malcolm smirked. He'd sent a card in.
"It's tradition to leave it up until New Year," Terry replied. "Saves on the office budget. Are you here on official business or did you get bored skulking around the empty corridors?"
Malcolm narrowed his eyes. "I don't have emotions. I'm just a veneer of anger spread over a core of spite. Where's the droid?"
"Picking out photos of himself for the next electoral pamphlet."
Malcolm flinched which face muscles he didn't realise he had. "He really is the most vapid, soulless cockup to ever head up this department."
"No arguments there. No. That was quite a succinct summary of the Minister."
"Is – is that a fucking tennis ball pinned to the top of that tree?"
Terry leaned around her desk to view the sad looking Christmas tree. "Ah yes. It was better than the effigy of -" she nearly said, your head which is what was there before, "-Peter's head."
"Ha ha ha..." Malcolm offered a false laugh. "Last year it was my right ball sack so – improvement, yeah?"
"Malcolm Tucker..." Dan Miller was doing exactly what Terry said – pawing through pictures of his own face, scrutinising them and aligning them in columns of preference. "Is this double-up bollocking? Things must be slow at Number 10 for both you and Jamie to grace the offices of DoSAC."
This cunt was one breath away from leader of the party and every time Malcolm laid eyes on him he had a micro-panic attack. "Sorting out the crime stats one profile picture at a time?"
The delivery was flat, as was Miller's reaction. Malcolm frowned. He hated it when the object of his aggression acted like a deflated soccer ball. It took all the joy out of shouting. He may as well just find an empty room and stamp on a keyboard. Bland. That's what this place was. Christ, he missed Nicola's haze of madness.
"Is – is this it – is this all you've been doing?"
Dan shrugged, cutting out another picture of himself. "Government's away. There are no press. The halls are quiet. What am I supposed to do?"
"I don't know. Try and create a little energy. It's like walking into a crematorium for the politically insane. This office is fifty shades of who gives a fuck. The opposition is on screen every five minutes with Christmas lights wrapped around their heads talking up joy and hope."
"Do you want me to give a press conference wearing antlers later this afternoon?"
Malcolm narrowed his eyes. "It'd be a fucking start. Maybe you could slip in something useful while you're at it like a massive fucking egg of shit for the opposition to digest with their pudding and turkey."
"Book it in my diary." Dan didn't even look up from his kindergarten activity.
"Oh – O – Okay. I will. I will do that."
Malcolm's eyebrows did something akin to disappointment. It hadn't been quite the therapeutic shouting he'd been after.
Jamie's mouth was so close to his phone his fangs scratched the screen. The Editor of The Times was a true hack and if you ever wondered where the likes of Tucker got their vengeful vernacular from look no further than their fledgling days in press offices.
"Tucker?" Jamie hissed, holding his other hand over the phone to muffle his reply. "Have you seen him? The only thing that'd shag that ghostly corpse is a giant fucking spider and even then it'd be a huge misunderstanding which the arachnid would regret immensely. Yeah – you go ahead and print that, you tosser. See if your career survives five minutes of creative free-form verse. My punctuation is so tight it's giving Shakespeare a fucking hard on. You better pray that you can still type after I snap all of your knuckles because you're gonna need them to draft your own obituary. Yeah. Print it. Fucker. You're gonna what? You don' have that 'cause no one has that -" Jamie pulled back and looked at his phone. "Hung up on me? You mother -"
Jamie's phone beeped as a photo came through from the Editor. With trepidation, Jamie opened the attachment and felt his blood skip the boiling phase and evaporate through his skin. It was slightly blurry, clearly enhanced but indisputably a photo of him and Malcolm's P.A. tangled up at the Christmas party. The other recipient on the txt – Tucker.
He couldn't manage to say anything so he smashed his phone against the wall.
Malcolm's phone buzzed, sliding across the surface of his desk amongst the remnants of dismembered fruit. The hell did the Lord and Master of the press want with him this time? He already had Malcolm's soul on a gentle grill.
Ah...
Tucker put the phone back on his desk.
Julius heard the distinctive rumble of the approaching Jamie. More correctly he heard the front door slam followed by muffled swearing as the man made his way up the corridor. Julius got up from his desk, reaching his door just as Jamie was stalking by.
"Ah – I've been meaning to -"
Julius was cut dead off as Jamie pulled the door closed on him and proceeded on his stalk down the hallway toward Malcolm's office.
"Did you have an appointment today?" Sam asked, standing as Jamie stormed up.
"I'd have called ahead but my phone's on the blink."
She frowned. "What happened to it?"
Jamie deposited the ruined piece of technology on her desk. "It died," he said simply. "Is he in?"
Sam nodded.
Malcolm wasn't the least bit surprised when his door opened. They didn't say anything. Jamie stood at the closed door, waiting. Malcolm scrutinised Jamie for a long time, staring at him with clear, sharp eyes. No one really appreciated how close to the cuff Malcolm wore his thoughts until they found themselves directly in his path.
There were lines and fucking lines. Jamie knew this was the latter.
Sam glanced over to Malcolm's door. The silence was deafening.