Fic: Inconveniences
18/9/11 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchThe Thick of It fic! And it only took me about a year to finish!
Inconveniences
The Thick of It
Rating: teen
(lots of swearing and gendered swearing, sexual situations.)
Characters: Jamie/Malcolm, Sam, Julius Nicholson
Wordcount: 3,400ish
Summary: The adventure of how Jamie and Malcolm got a day off at the same time for once in their lives.
A/N: Set sometime before the specials and the third series.
Malcolm hears Glenn and Ollie talking after he's thrown them out of his office. Not literally thrown, sad to say, which is why they're still conscious enough to chat about him.
And Jamie.
Malcolm sidles up to the door and cracks it open. He's not above eavesdropping. He is above being caught eavesdropping, which is why he's very careful about how he does it.
"They're obsessed," says Ollie. "They're evil and terrifying, and they're probably already in bed together, they like each other so much. They're like a power couple whose main interest besides fucking each other is fucking up my life."
"Don't be silly, Ollie," says Glenn. "I'm sure they couldn't care less about you as a person. You're like a bug under their scuffed oxfords."
"Not disputing the demonic couple thing, though, are you."
"No," hums Glenn. "They probably spend all day screaming at people, and then get so hot that they just fall into bed together. After the mating ritual with the cursing and the haggis, of course."
Oh god, Malcolm wishes.
---
The problem is, they're so busy. Really, really busy, and politics never sleeps, so neither does Malcolm. And it turns out sleep deprivation isn't very good for the libido. Sleep deprivation is only good for looking like a trembling skeleton, though on the plus side it does make Malcolm look more intimidating. Like he's going to snap at any moment.
Malcolm has taken Jamie home with him twice. Once they ate dinner, and then Malcolm fell asleep on the couch. The second time they just decided to skip to getting laid, but both of them had been so close to unconscious that they had just given up and collapsed on the bed in the sleeping way instead of in the sleeping together way. Jamie's taken Malcolm home once too, but one of the junior ministers had had a crisis, and in the end they'd both had to go back in to the office.
They don't fuck at work, because Malcolm has far too many photos of other political powers doing the same. He doesn't want to end up in someone else's blackmail drawer. And weekends and days off, well, Malcolm's had about five free days in his life, and three of them Jamie was covering for him. Maybe there will be time when they’re out of power but one, Malcolm plans to spend those days full of crippling depression and anger, and two, Malcolm plans to never fucking ever be out of power. Never.
Anyway. It's all right. Or it will be. Malcolm has a plan.
---
"Sam, you're pretty fucking smart," says Malcolm.
Sam just nods, taking it as her due.
"And you're already speaking for me, right? You relay messages and the like."
Sam's looking warier now, like she's expecting him to yell at her for doing her fucking job. Malcolm smiles reassuringly, trying to make it look less like he's desperate for a shag, a shave, and a sleep, in that fucking order.
"Could you," he says slowly, testing, "could you, you know, cover for me? For a day?"
"You're taking a day off," says Sam, brightly. She's figured it out, and this is a situation she knows how to handle. "Right, of course. Jamie and I will coordinate, and-"
"No-o," says Malcolm. "It's a secret that I'm gone. No one can know. And," he hates himself for dumping this on poor clever Sam, "I'm doing it on the third."
"That's Jamie's day off," says Sam, blankly. Then it hits her and her eyes narrow.
"You can cope, can't you?" asks Malcolm, and he grins because he knows Sam could never say no to that.
Sam looks like she wants to strangle him, because she knows the exact same thing.
---
They spend a few days writing out scripts. Sam can handle ministers and pressmen, but she tends to choke on the swearing. And she's not one of those secretaries who soften every little thing that the boss says. Malcolm had one of those once, and he'd had to tear the phone away from her and do his bollocking himself. It had completely defeated the point of having an assistant at all.
When Malcolm says "and tell that toad-fucking cunt-flap to get his head out of the opposition's urethra," Sam relays it faithfully. The problem is that she doesn't have quite the extent of creativity that people expect from Malcolm.
"I could just say 'fuck' a lot," says Sam. "People would think you're having an off day."
"I can't have off days," says Malcolm. "You know who has off days? Dead people and the soon-to-resign, and ninety percent of the time they're the same fucking people." He scribbles another set of colorful phrases onto his notepad.
"Right," sighs Sam. "So I just mix and match?"
"You use what's appropriate," says Malcolm. He has an explanatory diagram about what's usefully offensive and what just gets people's backs up.
Sam nods along in the right places, anyway.
---
The idea is that Malcolm is in his office all day, doing paperwork. He does that about once a month, trying to catch up on all the work he's missed while tearing around London, looking for ministers to fist to death. He'll be relaying his orders to Sam.
Supposedly. Actually, he's throwing her in the deep end, just because he wants to get his own end away. Malcolm tries not to think of it like that.
Jamie isn't helping.
"You want to do fucking what?"
Malcolm tries staring Jamie down. Sometimes that works with some of Malcolm’ worse ideas, just stare at Jamie until he remembers who’s in charge here. But this time Jamie just shakes it off, staring right back at Malcolm.
"She's just a kid, Malcolm. You can't throw her to the fucking sharks like that. Christ, you couldn't throw me to the sharks like that! Can you imagine what I'd do without support?"
"You mean supervision," bites off Malcolm. "Luckily for us, Sam isn't a fucking incompetent, and she's well and good enough to wipe the shit off the arses and twats of Her Majesty's government."
"Look, I'm not questioning Sam, but she's-" Malcolm feels ready to spring and gnaw Jamie's face off, so it's gratifying when Jamie holds up his hands and doesn't try to complete his sentence.
"I'm doing this for us," says Malcolm, quietly.
Jamie looks uncomfortable, and he holds out a hand to pat Malcolm on the shoulder. Malcolm shrugs him off and turns away, propping his back up against the wall.
"All right," says Jamie. "I'm sure they can get through one miserable day without us, can't they? The government can't fucking implode in twenty-four hours."
"Eighteen," says Malcolm. "I'll be coming for half the morning, just to get Sam started, and then I'll come in early the next day."
"Malcolm." Jamie's face lights up with a truly evil grin, and he leans in and sideways, pressing Malcolm to the wall. "If you expect to be mobile at four in the morning or whenever the fuck you think is an early start, you are seriously underestimating me."
"Really," breathes Malcolm. "Given my experience with you, I can't imagine you have the fucking stamina."
Jamie's face clouds over and it's about to get really fucking good, and then of course Malcolm and Jamie's phones go off simultaneously.
Malcolm eyes Jamie as he shouts at an idiot of an aide, and wonders if he could actually manage to turn his Blackberry off for the first time since he bought it four years ago.
It might give him a stress-induced heart attack, but it would probably be worth it.
---
Malcolm comes in at six in the morning, just like usual. At ten he walks out, shouting at someone. He doesn't come back.
Instead, he takes a cab, and then walks, and then gets on the tube, and finally, after throwing off any possible tails or favor-seekers, he's standing in the hallway outside Jamie's flat.
He breathes out, and in, and rubs at his face. Then he reaches out and hits the button.
The door is pulled open immediately, and Jamie grins out at him.
"Took you long enough, you fucker," says Jamie.
Malcolm starts to snap at him, but then he notices that Jamie is holding half a glass of whiskey. At half past ten.
"Give me that," he snarls, and knocks it back, standing in the hall. Jamie somehow sneers and grins at the same time, and then pulls him inside.
---
Sam gets through the first couple of hours without much trouble. Malcolm often is gone for short spaces of time, taking care of politicians and disasters and politicians who are disasters. When the third hour rolls along, Sam eats lunch at her desk and starts to field the first round of questions.
"You just missed him," she says. "He's reviewing some paperwork, doesn't want to be disturbed."
The junior minister gives her a look, but he writes down what he wants, and Sam promises that Malcolm will get back to him.
Julius is harder to get rid of.
"Come now," he wheedles. "Malcolm can't be in the office all day, can he? Anyway, this government does have an open door policy. I'd hate to send him another memo about it."
"He doesn't want to be disturbed," says Sam, firmly.
"I just need to talk to him about what he said to the Treasury," says Julius. "Specifically, what he did to the spokesman I was speaking with earlier - the man was white as a sheet."
When Julius leans in close, Sam can see that his eyes are as bloodshot as Malcolm's, though his rounder, healthier form means he hides the tiredness better. This is what politics does to people, thinks Sam, and for a moment she wonders if she really wants to deal with this, any of this.
"I don't know what Malcolm's trying now," says Julius, "but I will find out. And I'd rather find out what the game is from him."
"Let me call in," says Sam. She can use some of her swearing list.
"No need," says Julius, turning away. "I'll give him a ring myself."
Sam wastes half a second glaring at Julius' back, and then gets back to work.
---
The first two hours they spend sleeping, slightly tipsy and warm. Malcolm dozes longer than Jamie, and wakes up to see Jamie looking at him, considering.
"Wha?" Malcolm blinks and shakes his head, trying to pull himself into the land of the conscious. He always feels strange and muzzy when he naps during the day, where always is the five times he's done it in the last ten years. He tries to reach up a hand to rub his eyes, but Jamie has his wrists and he's not letting go.
"Settle down, settle down," says Jamie. "I like you like this."
Malcolm relaxes warily, looking at his thin wrists caught in one of Jamie's heavy hands. He thinks of struggling, but, if he's honest, he likes himself like this as well. He'd like Jamie like this a bit better, but they'll have time, won't they? A whole day to themselves. Malcolm lets himself relax even more, almost back into his doze.
Jamie grins and plucks the Blackberry from Malcolm's shirt pocket.
Malcolm does struggle then, because he might have thought of turning off his phone, but he would never bloody give it away. Jamie's eyes widen like he wasn't expecting it, and Malcolm manages to knock him over. The Blackberry is miraculously undamaged, and they end up rolling onto the floor together, somewhere between fighting and foreplay.
"Give that to me," snarls Malcolm. "Give it to me or I'll break every fucking bone you have in your body, even the squirrel bones in your stomach from your breakfast in the park, you idiot, you fucker, you-"
"Oh, shut up," says Jamie, and manages to shove the Blackberry under the bed.
Malcolm is pinning Jamie down, knees pressing hard into Jamie's stomach, and he could go for the phone, scramble under the bed, undignified and desperate for a connection to the job that he's taking a day off from.
He leans down and bites Jamie's lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood. Jamie growls and bites him back, and he does draw blood.
When the phone rings forty minutes later, neither of them even processes the sound.
---
"Hi, you've reached Malcolm Tucker's phone. I'm not available at the moment, probably because I'm dead, in a coma, or talking to someone so much more important than you that you are like a tiny fucking insect, comparatively speaking. Call back later or fuck off, whichever suits. Ta."
Julius takes the phone away from his ear and stares at it as the beep of the answering machine goes off. He doesn't think he's ever heard Malcolm's recorded message before. Malcolm always answers his phone.
Something's happened to him. Something's happened, and his PA is covering for it.
Julius tries to decide if he should do something about this. Call the hospitals, check all of the rehab centers, see if there's some mortuary with a new Scottish skeleton filling half of a cubby. For now, Julius hangs up on the blank recorded message he's been leaving.
Behind him, Sam answers a phone, and relays an expletive-laden message to whoever's on the other end. She seems to be handling herself in Tucker's absence. She's a capable woman, certainly.
Julius makes up his mind, and strides purposefully down the corridor. He'll send Malcolm an email and not say a word about what he knows. The government is ticking along well enough, and Sam apparently has her orders. Tucker is here in spirit.
But there's a lot Julius can get away with when Malcolm's not here in corpus.
---
By the time everyone with any sense is going home, Sam is fighting off incursions from the Treasury, the PM and, above all, Julius. The PM and the Treasury are easily dealt with, but memos from Julius are circulating throughout the government at a tremendous rate and Sam has the feeling that she's not even cc'd on half of them. She's not sure how Julius has worked out that Malcolm is gone, but threats and attacks won't work on him. They don't have any blackmail material or secret files; Julius Nicholson is as clean as any political operator could ever be. He's not afraid of what Malcolm can do to him later, and he's determined to start so many balls rolling in Malcolm's absence that they'll have to just let some of them go while stopping the rest.
Sam bites one of her knuckles and imagines Julius' head on a plate. Hers too, probably, when Malcolm gets back.
She picks up the phone, to call Malcolm or Jamie or perhaps even Julius himself. She can't do this alone, no one could. Malcolm certainly doesn't.
After a moment Sam gets up from her desk. She won't bother Malcolm, not now, and if she's going to ask Julius to step off she might as well do it in person.
Julius' office is a haven of light and order. The light is all electric, now that the sun is long gone, and the order is just as artificial. Sam knows that Julius' secretary goes in every morning to rescue heaps of paper from the rug and the bookshelves; Julius values neatness, but doesn't always excel at keeping it.
Julius looks up and smiles blandly when Sam enters.
"Ah. How are you, Sam? What did Malcolm have to say about my proposal for a greener computer server?"
Sam glares at him and slowly unfolds a piece of paper from her pocket. "He said 'tell that lily-livered budgie Julius Nicholson that he has the imagination of a drunk banker and the cranium of a cue-ball. Also that he should fuck off.'"
"Very nice," says Julius, mildly. "Did he write that one especially for me, or was it one of the 'fill-in-the-blanks' insults?"
"For you," says Sam, and tosses the paper over. "Look, you can't keep trying this."
"Really?" Julius is studying the paper, his faint smile still in place. "I'm simply going about the business of government."
"You're trying to get away with too much," says Sam. "If you ruin all of Malcolm's work today, he's going to notice. He won't be pleased."
"And your career will suffer, of course," says Julius. The smile vanishes. "I'll be sorry to see you go, Sam, but I'm afraid I can't afford to let that get in the way of a truly singular opportunity."
"But it won't be singular if you just hold off a bit," says Sam, trying to beat the idea into Julius' shiny skull. "Fine, push the little things through, Malcolm will be mad, but that will be it. If you rush everything, the big things that you know he'd want input on, Malcolm will never take another day off as long as you're in the Party."
Julius mulls it over. "If I moderate, you think he might chance it again?"
"If you help me," corrects Sam, "we might get him out of here as often as once every two months."
"What's he doing that's so important?" asks Julius. He's accepted, but he's not going to say anything to acknowledge it. Sam lets herself relax, just in the shoulders and the neck.
"I can't say. But I think it's a big enough incentive."
Julius studies her, and then his eyes drop back down to his papers. Sam takes that as her cue to leave.
She goes back to her desk. Only a few more hours before she can close up and go home.
---
Malcolm gasps for breath and tries to count the number of bites and scrapes and miscellaneous marks on his person. He keeps losing count, caught on a wave of pleased drowsiness.
"I found your stupid inhaler," says Jamie, coming back into the bedroom. "Pink and blue, I can see why you keep the fucking thing hidden in the bottom of your briefcase." He tosses it at Malcolm, who only just catches it before it bounces off the bed.
The salbutamol eases the gasping and the burn in Malcolm's chest, and he aims a kick at Jamie when he sits down next to his feet.
Jamie smiles, much more tolerant when he's had about eight hours worth of sex. "Do you want your phone too?" he asks.
Malcolm hesitates. Jamie's testing him, and Malcolm can't decide whether letting Jamie have the answer he wants will mean giving up.
But then Malcolm's eyes flick over the bruises he's given Jamie, and the way a muscle is twitching in Jamie's neck, and he decides all he wants is this night, and fuck those bastards in the government.
He says this aloud, and Jamie laughs and slides a hand through Malcolm's hair.
---
The next morning, Sam orders coffee and breakfast for herself and everyone who works in her immediate vicinity, and pays with Malcolm's credit card number. When Malcolm comes in an hour later than normal (but still thirty minutes before anyone else), there's fruit and some toast waiting for him in his office.
He's whistling. He's bad at whistling, so it's a little grating tuneless thing, but it's a thing, it's a thing that's happening.
Sam smiles, and thinks yesterday must have been worth it.
"Everything go all right?" asks Malcolm. Sam hands him the report on everything that happened in his absence.
"Julius pulled some fast ones, I see," says Malcolm, and Sam's heart stops for a second. But then Malcolm flips the page. "Don't worry, he does that. We'll have it sorted soon enough."
"Did you have a good day off?" Sam can ask that, now when there's no one else around.
Malcolm looks up at her, and his eyes aren't nearly as red and lines in his face aren't half as deep, and his grin isn't nearly as strained as it was.
"It was all the better because I knew you were taking care of things," he says, sincerely.
"Right," says Sam, pleased beyond getting good feedback from her boss. "So then you'll definitely be able to cover for me when I go to my cousin's wedding in Peru."
He does, too. It doesn’t go nearly as well.
Inconveniences
The Thick of It
Rating: teen
(lots of swearing and gendered swearing, sexual situations.)
Characters: Jamie/Malcolm, Sam, Julius Nicholson
Wordcount: 3,400ish
Summary: The adventure of how Jamie and Malcolm got a day off at the same time for once in their lives.
A/N: Set sometime before the specials and the third series.
Malcolm hears Glenn and Ollie talking after he's thrown them out of his office. Not literally thrown, sad to say, which is why they're still conscious enough to chat about him.
And Jamie.
Malcolm sidles up to the door and cracks it open. He's not above eavesdropping. He is above being caught eavesdropping, which is why he's very careful about how he does it.
"They're obsessed," says Ollie. "They're evil and terrifying, and they're probably already in bed together, they like each other so much. They're like a power couple whose main interest besides fucking each other is fucking up my life."
"Don't be silly, Ollie," says Glenn. "I'm sure they couldn't care less about you as a person. You're like a bug under their scuffed oxfords."
"Not disputing the demonic couple thing, though, are you."
"No," hums Glenn. "They probably spend all day screaming at people, and then get so hot that they just fall into bed together. After the mating ritual with the cursing and the haggis, of course."
Oh god, Malcolm wishes.
---
The problem is, they're so busy. Really, really busy, and politics never sleeps, so neither does Malcolm. And it turns out sleep deprivation isn't very good for the libido. Sleep deprivation is only good for looking like a trembling skeleton, though on the plus side it does make Malcolm look more intimidating. Like he's going to snap at any moment.
Malcolm has taken Jamie home with him twice. Once they ate dinner, and then Malcolm fell asleep on the couch. The second time they just decided to skip to getting laid, but both of them had been so close to unconscious that they had just given up and collapsed on the bed in the sleeping way instead of in the sleeping together way. Jamie's taken Malcolm home once too, but one of the junior ministers had had a crisis, and in the end they'd both had to go back in to the office.
They don't fuck at work, because Malcolm has far too many photos of other political powers doing the same. He doesn't want to end up in someone else's blackmail drawer. And weekends and days off, well, Malcolm's had about five free days in his life, and three of them Jamie was covering for him. Maybe there will be time when they’re out of power but one, Malcolm plans to spend those days full of crippling depression and anger, and two, Malcolm plans to never fucking ever be out of power. Never.
Anyway. It's all right. Or it will be. Malcolm has a plan.
---
"Sam, you're pretty fucking smart," says Malcolm.
Sam just nods, taking it as her due.
"And you're already speaking for me, right? You relay messages and the like."
Sam's looking warier now, like she's expecting him to yell at her for doing her fucking job. Malcolm smiles reassuringly, trying to make it look less like he's desperate for a shag, a shave, and a sleep, in that fucking order.
"Could you," he says slowly, testing, "could you, you know, cover for me? For a day?"
"You're taking a day off," says Sam, brightly. She's figured it out, and this is a situation she knows how to handle. "Right, of course. Jamie and I will coordinate, and-"
"No-o," says Malcolm. "It's a secret that I'm gone. No one can know. And," he hates himself for dumping this on poor clever Sam, "I'm doing it on the third."
"That's Jamie's day off," says Sam, blankly. Then it hits her and her eyes narrow.
"You can cope, can't you?" asks Malcolm, and he grins because he knows Sam could never say no to that.
Sam looks like she wants to strangle him, because she knows the exact same thing.
---
They spend a few days writing out scripts. Sam can handle ministers and pressmen, but she tends to choke on the swearing. And she's not one of those secretaries who soften every little thing that the boss says. Malcolm had one of those once, and he'd had to tear the phone away from her and do his bollocking himself. It had completely defeated the point of having an assistant at all.
When Malcolm says "and tell that toad-fucking cunt-flap to get his head out of the opposition's urethra," Sam relays it faithfully. The problem is that she doesn't have quite the extent of creativity that people expect from Malcolm.
"I could just say 'fuck' a lot," says Sam. "People would think you're having an off day."
"I can't have off days," says Malcolm. "You know who has off days? Dead people and the soon-to-resign, and ninety percent of the time they're the same fucking people." He scribbles another set of colorful phrases onto his notepad.
"Right," sighs Sam. "So I just mix and match?"
"You use what's appropriate," says Malcolm. He has an explanatory diagram about what's usefully offensive and what just gets people's backs up.
Sam nods along in the right places, anyway.
---
The idea is that Malcolm is in his office all day, doing paperwork. He does that about once a month, trying to catch up on all the work he's missed while tearing around London, looking for ministers to fist to death. He'll be relaying his orders to Sam.
Supposedly. Actually, he's throwing her in the deep end, just because he wants to get his own end away. Malcolm tries not to think of it like that.
Jamie isn't helping.
"You want to do fucking what?"
Malcolm tries staring Jamie down. Sometimes that works with some of Malcolm’ worse ideas, just stare at Jamie until he remembers who’s in charge here. But this time Jamie just shakes it off, staring right back at Malcolm.
"She's just a kid, Malcolm. You can't throw her to the fucking sharks like that. Christ, you couldn't throw me to the sharks like that! Can you imagine what I'd do without support?"
"You mean supervision," bites off Malcolm. "Luckily for us, Sam isn't a fucking incompetent, and she's well and good enough to wipe the shit off the arses and twats of Her Majesty's government."
"Look, I'm not questioning Sam, but she's-" Malcolm feels ready to spring and gnaw Jamie's face off, so it's gratifying when Jamie holds up his hands and doesn't try to complete his sentence.
"I'm doing this for us," says Malcolm, quietly.
Jamie looks uncomfortable, and he holds out a hand to pat Malcolm on the shoulder. Malcolm shrugs him off and turns away, propping his back up against the wall.
"All right," says Jamie. "I'm sure they can get through one miserable day without us, can't they? The government can't fucking implode in twenty-four hours."
"Eighteen," says Malcolm. "I'll be coming for half the morning, just to get Sam started, and then I'll come in early the next day."
"Malcolm." Jamie's face lights up with a truly evil grin, and he leans in and sideways, pressing Malcolm to the wall. "If you expect to be mobile at four in the morning or whenever the fuck you think is an early start, you are seriously underestimating me."
"Really," breathes Malcolm. "Given my experience with you, I can't imagine you have the fucking stamina."
Jamie's face clouds over and it's about to get really fucking good, and then of course Malcolm and Jamie's phones go off simultaneously.
Malcolm eyes Jamie as he shouts at an idiot of an aide, and wonders if he could actually manage to turn his Blackberry off for the first time since he bought it four years ago.
It might give him a stress-induced heart attack, but it would probably be worth it.
---
Malcolm comes in at six in the morning, just like usual. At ten he walks out, shouting at someone. He doesn't come back.
Instead, he takes a cab, and then walks, and then gets on the tube, and finally, after throwing off any possible tails or favor-seekers, he's standing in the hallway outside Jamie's flat.
He breathes out, and in, and rubs at his face. Then he reaches out and hits the button.
The door is pulled open immediately, and Jamie grins out at him.
"Took you long enough, you fucker," says Jamie.
Malcolm starts to snap at him, but then he notices that Jamie is holding half a glass of whiskey. At half past ten.
"Give me that," he snarls, and knocks it back, standing in the hall. Jamie somehow sneers and grins at the same time, and then pulls him inside.
---
Sam gets through the first couple of hours without much trouble. Malcolm often is gone for short spaces of time, taking care of politicians and disasters and politicians who are disasters. When the third hour rolls along, Sam eats lunch at her desk and starts to field the first round of questions.
"You just missed him," she says. "He's reviewing some paperwork, doesn't want to be disturbed."
The junior minister gives her a look, but he writes down what he wants, and Sam promises that Malcolm will get back to him.
Julius is harder to get rid of.
"Come now," he wheedles. "Malcolm can't be in the office all day, can he? Anyway, this government does have an open door policy. I'd hate to send him another memo about it."
"He doesn't want to be disturbed," says Sam, firmly.
"I just need to talk to him about what he said to the Treasury," says Julius. "Specifically, what he did to the spokesman I was speaking with earlier - the man was white as a sheet."
When Julius leans in close, Sam can see that his eyes are as bloodshot as Malcolm's, though his rounder, healthier form means he hides the tiredness better. This is what politics does to people, thinks Sam, and for a moment she wonders if she really wants to deal with this, any of this.
"I don't know what Malcolm's trying now," says Julius, "but I will find out. And I'd rather find out what the game is from him."
"Let me call in," says Sam. She can use some of her swearing list.
"No need," says Julius, turning away. "I'll give him a ring myself."
Sam wastes half a second glaring at Julius' back, and then gets back to work.
---
The first two hours they spend sleeping, slightly tipsy and warm. Malcolm dozes longer than Jamie, and wakes up to see Jamie looking at him, considering.
"Wha?" Malcolm blinks and shakes his head, trying to pull himself into the land of the conscious. He always feels strange and muzzy when he naps during the day, where always is the five times he's done it in the last ten years. He tries to reach up a hand to rub his eyes, but Jamie has his wrists and he's not letting go.
"Settle down, settle down," says Jamie. "I like you like this."
Malcolm relaxes warily, looking at his thin wrists caught in one of Jamie's heavy hands. He thinks of struggling, but, if he's honest, he likes himself like this as well. He'd like Jamie like this a bit better, but they'll have time, won't they? A whole day to themselves. Malcolm lets himself relax even more, almost back into his doze.
Jamie grins and plucks the Blackberry from Malcolm's shirt pocket.
Malcolm does struggle then, because he might have thought of turning off his phone, but he would never bloody give it away. Jamie's eyes widen like he wasn't expecting it, and Malcolm manages to knock him over. The Blackberry is miraculously undamaged, and they end up rolling onto the floor together, somewhere between fighting and foreplay.
"Give that to me," snarls Malcolm. "Give it to me or I'll break every fucking bone you have in your body, even the squirrel bones in your stomach from your breakfast in the park, you idiot, you fucker, you-"
"Oh, shut up," says Jamie, and manages to shove the Blackberry under the bed.
Malcolm is pinning Jamie down, knees pressing hard into Jamie's stomach, and he could go for the phone, scramble under the bed, undignified and desperate for a connection to the job that he's taking a day off from.
He leans down and bites Jamie's lower lip, not hard enough to draw blood. Jamie growls and bites him back, and he does draw blood.
When the phone rings forty minutes later, neither of them even processes the sound.
---
"Hi, you've reached Malcolm Tucker's phone. I'm not available at the moment, probably because I'm dead, in a coma, or talking to someone so much more important than you that you are like a tiny fucking insect, comparatively speaking. Call back later or fuck off, whichever suits. Ta."
Julius takes the phone away from his ear and stares at it as the beep of the answering machine goes off. He doesn't think he's ever heard Malcolm's recorded message before. Malcolm always answers his phone.
Something's happened to him. Something's happened, and his PA is covering for it.
Julius tries to decide if he should do something about this. Call the hospitals, check all of the rehab centers, see if there's some mortuary with a new Scottish skeleton filling half of a cubby. For now, Julius hangs up on the blank recorded message he's been leaving.
Behind him, Sam answers a phone, and relays an expletive-laden message to whoever's on the other end. She seems to be handling herself in Tucker's absence. She's a capable woman, certainly.
Julius makes up his mind, and strides purposefully down the corridor. He'll send Malcolm an email and not say a word about what he knows. The government is ticking along well enough, and Sam apparently has her orders. Tucker is here in spirit.
But there's a lot Julius can get away with when Malcolm's not here in corpus.
---
By the time everyone with any sense is going home, Sam is fighting off incursions from the Treasury, the PM and, above all, Julius. The PM and the Treasury are easily dealt with, but memos from Julius are circulating throughout the government at a tremendous rate and Sam has the feeling that she's not even cc'd on half of them. She's not sure how Julius has worked out that Malcolm is gone, but threats and attacks won't work on him. They don't have any blackmail material or secret files; Julius Nicholson is as clean as any political operator could ever be. He's not afraid of what Malcolm can do to him later, and he's determined to start so many balls rolling in Malcolm's absence that they'll have to just let some of them go while stopping the rest.
Sam bites one of her knuckles and imagines Julius' head on a plate. Hers too, probably, when Malcolm gets back.
She picks up the phone, to call Malcolm or Jamie or perhaps even Julius himself. She can't do this alone, no one could. Malcolm certainly doesn't.
After a moment Sam gets up from her desk. She won't bother Malcolm, not now, and if she's going to ask Julius to step off she might as well do it in person.
Julius' office is a haven of light and order. The light is all electric, now that the sun is long gone, and the order is just as artificial. Sam knows that Julius' secretary goes in every morning to rescue heaps of paper from the rug and the bookshelves; Julius values neatness, but doesn't always excel at keeping it.
Julius looks up and smiles blandly when Sam enters.
"Ah. How are you, Sam? What did Malcolm have to say about my proposal for a greener computer server?"
Sam glares at him and slowly unfolds a piece of paper from her pocket. "He said 'tell that lily-livered budgie Julius Nicholson that he has the imagination of a drunk banker and the cranium of a cue-ball. Also that he should fuck off.'"
"Very nice," says Julius, mildly. "Did he write that one especially for me, or was it one of the 'fill-in-the-blanks' insults?"
"For you," says Sam, and tosses the paper over. "Look, you can't keep trying this."
"Really?" Julius is studying the paper, his faint smile still in place. "I'm simply going about the business of government."
"You're trying to get away with too much," says Sam. "If you ruin all of Malcolm's work today, he's going to notice. He won't be pleased."
"And your career will suffer, of course," says Julius. The smile vanishes. "I'll be sorry to see you go, Sam, but I'm afraid I can't afford to let that get in the way of a truly singular opportunity."
"But it won't be singular if you just hold off a bit," says Sam, trying to beat the idea into Julius' shiny skull. "Fine, push the little things through, Malcolm will be mad, but that will be it. If you rush everything, the big things that you know he'd want input on, Malcolm will never take another day off as long as you're in the Party."
Julius mulls it over. "If I moderate, you think he might chance it again?"
"If you help me," corrects Sam, "we might get him out of here as often as once every two months."
"What's he doing that's so important?" asks Julius. He's accepted, but he's not going to say anything to acknowledge it. Sam lets herself relax, just in the shoulders and the neck.
"I can't say. But I think it's a big enough incentive."
Julius studies her, and then his eyes drop back down to his papers. Sam takes that as her cue to leave.
She goes back to her desk. Only a few more hours before she can close up and go home.
---
Malcolm gasps for breath and tries to count the number of bites and scrapes and miscellaneous marks on his person. He keeps losing count, caught on a wave of pleased drowsiness.
"I found your stupid inhaler," says Jamie, coming back into the bedroom. "Pink and blue, I can see why you keep the fucking thing hidden in the bottom of your briefcase." He tosses it at Malcolm, who only just catches it before it bounces off the bed.
The salbutamol eases the gasping and the burn in Malcolm's chest, and he aims a kick at Jamie when he sits down next to his feet.
Jamie smiles, much more tolerant when he's had about eight hours worth of sex. "Do you want your phone too?" he asks.
Malcolm hesitates. Jamie's testing him, and Malcolm can't decide whether letting Jamie have the answer he wants will mean giving up.
But then Malcolm's eyes flick over the bruises he's given Jamie, and the way a muscle is twitching in Jamie's neck, and he decides all he wants is this night, and fuck those bastards in the government.
He says this aloud, and Jamie laughs and slides a hand through Malcolm's hair.
---
The next morning, Sam orders coffee and breakfast for herself and everyone who works in her immediate vicinity, and pays with Malcolm's credit card number. When Malcolm comes in an hour later than normal (but still thirty minutes before anyone else), there's fruit and some toast waiting for him in his office.
He's whistling. He's bad at whistling, so it's a little grating tuneless thing, but it's a thing, it's a thing that's happening.
Sam smiles, and thinks yesterday must have been worth it.
"Everything go all right?" asks Malcolm. Sam hands him the report on everything that happened in his absence.
"Julius pulled some fast ones, I see," says Malcolm, and Sam's heart stops for a second. But then Malcolm flips the page. "Don't worry, he does that. We'll have it sorted soon enough."
"Did you have a good day off?" Sam can ask that, now when there's no one else around.
Malcolm looks up at her, and his eyes aren't nearly as red and lines in his face aren't half as deep, and his grin isn't nearly as strained as it was.
"It was all the better because I knew you were taking care of things," he says, sincerely.
"Right," says Sam, pleased beyond getting good feedback from her boss. "So then you'll definitely be able to cover for me when I go to my cousin's wedding in Peru."
He does, too. It doesn’t go nearly as well.
