Work Text:
item: one denim jacket, march 31
“Ye seein’ spots?” asks the man going through his cupboard. Malcolm, still dizzy and nauseous, holding a wad of denim to his bleeding nose, is unsure if he is being robbed, medically counseled, or both.
The man takes down a moth-nibbled box of rice and claps loudly. “Hey! You! Deaf fucker! Spots, yes or no?”
Malcolm shakes his head, because the overbright wobbly static in front of him isn’t spot-shaped, and nearly pukes on the linoleum.
“Right, right, right, alright…” the stranger mutters, and then the stove slopes sideways and something is squeezing his arms. Malcolm is arranged on the floor in a sort of S-shape on his side in efficient, confusing little pushes that end with the man going “Now pinch your nose. I put your hand right there for you, you limp-wristed London fuck, just press down,” and flopping Malcolm’s hand in his own face.
“I’m not fucking from fucking London,” he croaks, and somewhere above him the man barks a laugh.
“Well thank Christ for that. Ye been hit this hard before?”
Malcolm doesn’t try to nod again but manages to say yes. From this vantage point he can see all the little crumbs and bits of dust under the stove that his broom missed, as well as the man’s jeans, which seem to be entirely held together by the rivets and the zipper.
“It wasnae one of the horses did this, was it?”
“No.”
The man sighs and, in what looks to Malcolm like a series of stop-motion pictures, scoots down to lie next to him on the floor. He lifts Malcolm’s head slightly, which fucking hurts, and pushes the wad of cloth he’d been using as a handkerchief under his head. Then he pinches Malcolm’s nose shut for him and declares that he looks like four-day-old dog shite and that, if needed, he (the nose-pincher) is qualified to perform last rites.
“Well, practically,” he qualifies.
Malcolm stares at him. He’s in his shirtsleeves, although it’s gotten to be a cold night. Malcolm came to the march wearing two layers of thick shirts, which he ended up needing, as he knew he would. A dim memory of an alley swims up: the man talking about a hospital, trying to carry him somewhere, stopping trying after Malcolm kicks him in the kneecap. The man yelling “I’m not fucking mugging ye, mate!” when Malcolm fumbles in his pockets to give him the key to his apartment. The man struggling out of a denim jacket and covering his face with it when they walked past a shop front on fire, keeping it there once they’d outpaced the smoke.
When he starts to fall asleep, the man flicks his wrist hard enough to sting badly and starts rambling on about the fucking poll tax getting guinea-pigged on Scotland first, about watching the roads get smoother and cleaner every ten miles South he drove last night. The sun is starting to rise when he resorts to digging through Malcolm’s wallet and roundly ridiculing every written piece of evidence he finds there. “What’s this, baby’s first press pass? A-fuckin’-dorable. Tell me, when you’re taking out the trash, do they let ye chat to the real reporters, or is it a seen-and-not-heard situation?”
It keeps him awake until his eyes can track the man’s finger back and forth. He sleeps fitfully for four hours and wakes up to an excruciating headache; follows the sound of a man shouting at a radio to his bathroom. The man who dragged him home is naked in his tiny bathtub, the water pink-grey and steaming hot. He’s got a cigarette in one hand and a bowl of rice and chutney balanced on the rim of the tub. Malcolm’s wallet is open on the sink.
“Malcolm Tucker, if that is in fact your name!” calls the man. “Give is a pair of clean pants, if you’ve got any you can fit an actual arse into. I’ve got tae turn in a paper on theodicy by four in the afternoon. In Edinburgh.”
Of course, he doesn’t, because Malcolm Tucker, looking like Banquo’s ghost after a bad bender, sits on the edge of the sink, crosses his arms, and says, “God’s allowance of evil, eh? Let’s hear your argument.”
item: one tie, 3 july
The text goes to Malcolm’s phone first, of course (any news that doesn’t go through his Blackberry before heading to press is about fucking psychic dogs or local summer fetes) but Jamie reads it first. They and a terrified, sweating MP are all locked in a toilet cubicle, and every few minutes Malcolm’s steady, low-pitched monologue is punctuated by the sound of someone entering the toilets and then immediately thinking better of it.
“What’s going to happen, you hemophilic limp-dicked horse-faced fuck, is that you’re never going to touch that girl again. You’re not going to make fucking eye contact with her. You’re not going to fucking google her, although that’s a moot fucking point, considering your crippling double-wristed carpal tunnel from twenty-four-seven wanking.”
The man, looking on the verge of tears, draws a short breath as if about to speak, but Malcolm leans forward until his head presses against the tiled wall. “Give me your phone right the fuck now,” he whispers. “I’m deleting her number. And you had better pray that ye don’t have any pictures of her on this, you shite pathetic stalker cunt. If I see a fucking pixel that looks like it could resemble her fucking cousin, I am going to personally flush your head in this bog until you fucking drown on bacteria and cleaning fluid.”
Halfway through this speech, as he’s tapping furiously on the other man’s phone, his own buzzes. Jamie slips it out of Malcolm’s pocket, scans the message, and howls with laughter. Malcolm doesn’t so much as blink. Jamie keeps laughing, so hard that he grabs the MP’s shoulder for support, leaning heavily enough that knees almost buckle. Malcolm puts the MP’s phone back in his jacket, still keeping eye contact.
After another full minute of this, the man wipes about half an ocean of sweat off his face and snaps “Will you tell me what is so hilarious?” to Jamie.
Jamie’s hand on his shoulder is instantly a claw, pressing hard enough to bruise. “Did I fucking ask ye to fucking speak?” he screams into his ear. He gives him a shake when he doesn’t get an answer. He eventually shakes his head. Jamie shakes his back, teeth bared, a couple locks of hair long enough to flip wildly around his ears.
“Are you going to stand around all fuckin’ day? Chop chop! I need a piss!”
The MP blinks like a stunned faun until Malcolm starts unbuttoning his trousers, then worms his way past them and out the door at high speed, barely pausing to undo the lock. Malcolm sighs and rubs a hand over his face.
“Ye won’t believe the text you’ve just got,” Jamie says, eyes feral.
“I will once ye give is our fuckin’ phone back,” he says, but doesn’t reach for it, lets Jamie crowd him into the corner.
“Ye know the big fuckoff statue of Thatcher at the Guildhall? Cost a hundred and fifty thousand pounds tae make?”
Malcolm narrows his eyes warily. “Aye; get to the point, I’ve got a meeting.”
“Some fuck’s decapitated it. Wi’ a garrote and a cricket bat.” Jamie grins again, total unleashed happiness. Malcolm grins back.
“Jesus.”
“His hand at work in all things,” Jamie agrees, bouncing on the balls of his feet, hands reaching out to tug at the bottom of Malcolm’s jacket, hook a finger into one of his belt loops.
“Meeting,” Malcolm says, warning. Jamie shrugs.
“Anyone important?”
“No, I’m meeting with some cunt I met on the street this morning,” says Malcolm.
“A portent of great joy has been given untae is this day, Malc. Shame not to celebrate it.” Jamie says, leaning in until Malcolm snaps and ricochets him against the opposite wall, grabbing Jamie’s tie and winding around his fist.
“Ten minutes, alright? Malcolm Tucker is not late,” he hisses, his hand already slipping under the waistband of Jamie’s trousers. “And by the by, what the fuck are you going tae do about the new extradition act I hear’s in the pipeline?”
Jamie tells him, with frequent interruptions. Nine minutes later, he’s cooling his forehead for a moment against the wall, and the door’s swinging shut behind Malcolm, and the structural integrity of the red tie he’s had since 1995 has finally given up the ghost, battered at last past the breaking point. He doesn’t take it off for the rest of the day.
item: armani shirt, 15 november
There’s three or four stylists there, two racks of clothing, and some spray-tanned gladhanding twitter-king fuck with a camera dying to take control of the situation, but he’s brought Sam and she’s the only soul on this earth he’ll take style advice from.
“Armani,” she says, pointing out the relevant pieces. “That one. Won’t make your arms look too long.”
He’s steered to a little mirror-station in the fucking cavernous airplane hangar-type chic false-minimalist ball-shrivelingly cold warehouse where some woman with a Hampshire smile thinks she’s going to make up his face. He sits in her chair and takes possession of all the little trowels and brushes, says “Just give me the colors you want and fuck off, I know what to do.”
She laughs nervously; assures him that it is her job, after all, but he’s already dotting foundation under his eyes and along his forehead, dictating to Sam what should and should not be said in the latest press release in response to the latest corruption scandal.
“And no ‘regrettable’,” he says, leaning close to the mirror, eyeliner pencil sharp on his lower lid. “Overplayed. No sincerity in it. Peach too light?”
He holds out two slightly different lipsticks; she taps the darker one with the hand that isn’t taking furious shorthand. Sam doesn’t rely on words that don’t have a hard copy somewhere, and Malcolm will die before letting someone else decide what mask he’s wearing.
There’s a little screen to change behind which he ignores entirely. Fewer hangers-about than usual, for a cover photoshoot—not shocking, seeing as the only time he’d agree to be photographed was after eleven o’clock at night.
“Right,” he says, stalking up to the ludicrous array of props they had spread out by the dropsheet. “None of these huge rotary phones, this isn’t Blue fucking Peter. No fucking papers falling around me in a gentle fucking rain, understood? Plain background, me in a suit, take the picture of me looking dashing and competent, and go the fuck home. Sam, I’ll see you tomorrow, have a lovely evening.”
She looks a little surprised.
“Is it not your six month anniversary with that wee nurse fellow?”
“Dabir. Yes. I can stay, though—“
“Ah, go on, go,” he waves her off, and she disappears through the huge iron doors practically at a run. He steels himself.
At one-thirty in the morning, he has allowed a nervous young man from Birmingham—who has begun to act as a sort of go-between between Malcolm and the photographer—to attach binder clips to the back of his suit jacket to make it hang right in the front.
“Can ye not just fuckin’ photoshop it later?” he bellows in the direction of the glaring lights pointed at him. “Or better, just put a skull on top of two chicken legs and photograph it through gauze; save us all some fucking time.”
There is a loud scraping and the grating, worried sound of more than four posh people whispering at the other side of the room, cut through by the clear tones of Jamie MacDonald yelling “So have youse unwashed sister-chasing quims figured out how to take the lens cap off yet, or have ye all been too busy trying to market this rag to closeted homosexuals?”
“I tried to stop him!” comes the cry of an anguished P.A.—not the first or the last of that nature.
“Excuse me,” starts the photographer from an incredibly high horse. Malcolm knows he’s making an expression that looks like himself for the first time in two hours and is grateful that there are no shutters clicking.
“Sam texted me,” Jamie calls, stepping into the small area of floor that is actually visible to Malcolm. He raises his eyebrows, taking off the beat-to-shit leather gloves that are his second skin during the winter. “I’m putting you on a train to fuckin’ Wales at six in the morning tomorrow.” Then, turning to the photographer, “Wrap this little slumber party up now. I don’t give a shit if you were just about to play soggy biscuit, do your fuckin’ job.”
“And may I ask who the bloody hell you might be?” the photographer asks.
“I’m his highness’ dog at fucking Kew, love. Take the picture.”
It takes ten minutes, Jamie running a belligerent commentary the whole time.
“You’ve got him facing right? My apologies for runnin’ over your seein’ fuckin’ eye dog on the way here. Jesus, you’re making him look like the Cryptkeeper!”
“Can you call him off for five seconds, Malcolm? We’ll be done faster!” the photographer yells. The young Brummie looks horribly torn.
“Fucking call him Mr. Tucker, you pally bourgeoisie shite! Do you want me to write the definition of ‘chiaroscuro’ on your ugly fucking face?” Jamie barks.
“He took the picture?” Malcolm asks.
“Five clicks ago there’s one that’s good,” Jamie says.
Malcolm straightens up from the little perch where they had him half-leaning and walks to the exit, knowing Jamie’s behind him. They are pursued by four terrified, over-caffeinated interns mewling that he really does have to give the suit back, Mr. Tucker, it’s very expensive. They don’t turn to even look at them until they’re about halfway down a pretty narrow alley, and when they do it it’s fast, simultaneous. One of the interns actually screams. When they get to the car Jamie opens and closes the door for him and then strolls slowly to the driver’s side, all but pissing in a circle around it for the benefit of the remaining two interns.
He drives them to Jamie’s place, which is much closer, still-gloved hands tight on the steering wheel.
“I’m not really takin’ ye to Wales in the morning,” Jamie says.
“I know,” says Malcolm. “Like I’d let ye.”
Malcolm gets to the door first, has his key out already—like he’d put on any item of clothing that didn’t have his keys and papers in the pockets—but doesn’t flip the lights on. He knows his way around the piles of books on the floor, the little altar-like table with fifteen pictures of Mary on it, the mismatched chairs, veterans of five previous flats or rescued from various curbsides.
“Tell me there’s something besides three fuckin’ eggs and iodized salt for me to cook with in the morning,” Malcolm says. Jamie trips over one of his book piles and hisses, but doesn’t swear.
“Eh…there’s apples.”
Malcolm shucks off his jacket and takes one of Jamie’s sweaters off the hanger to hang it up.
“No lights; I’ve been havin’ my retinas burned out all fuckin’ night.” Malcolm says when Jamie reaches the doorway of the bedroom. He’s brought the smell of the cold in, deep in his clothes—must have been walking around a good bit this evening.
“Megan’s good?” Malcolm asks.
There’s the sound of Jamie kicking off his shoes and pants, the slide of his tie coming off. “Yeah, well enough. Back with me sister. She’s made another picture for ye. It’s of a dog flying a rocketship.”
Malcolm nods, and Jamie can’t see it; knows it’s happened anyway.
Jamie takes his gloves off and throws them in the corner, ruffles his hair, sighs.
“So are ye going to come the fuck over here and take this very expensive stolen suit off me or am I going to stand here like the plain girl at the village social?” Malcolm says, and barely gets to the end of the sentence before there’s the musical click of the shirt’s buttons hitting the wall and the mirror, before Jamie’s hands are on his ribcage like he’s trying to pluck out his heart.
They don’t actually do this very often, at Jamie’s place or at Malcolm’s. Not at night. When both of them are at one’s flat it’s usually to have extended, leakproof plotting sessions in ways they can’t in the kitchens and supply cabinets of Westminster, or to catch two or three hours of sleep during some balls-out multi-day crisis (because neither of them, left alone, will sleep during a balls-out multi-day crisis). They’ve never gotten used to privacy, or cared much for it. Malcolm wears the ring Jamie gave him and has never been asked about it. Jamie doesn’t want a ring: redundant. People take one look at him looking at Malcolm and don’t need to check his left hand.
Jamie, to Malcolm’s complete and ongoing unsurprise, is a bitey sononfabitch both in and out of the sack, never one to break the skin but always one to bruise.
(Malcolm was half-expecting a protracted hurricane of guilt at some point from the priest-in-training, when that was what he was, but all that came off him in waves was fiercer and fiercer delight, fastening his cassock and dogcollar over the constellation of hickeys and scratches on his shoulders.)
He’s always a little clumsier in the dark, very much a man of the visual element, but Malcolm likes the hands that search and drag a little before finding what they were looking for, that swarm up from unseen places, likes being able to surprise him with a hand on his wrist. Jamie, if nudged in the right direction, will talk at a hundred miles an hour about anything in the world, if his mouth’s free. Entire treatises on the erotic nature of religious ecstasy and the fuckin’ bullshit that is Man U’s entire existence, strategy, and lineup.
Most often, though, it’s a breathless narration of the world that’s coming, that they’re never going to live long enough to see: the city they’re quarrying one block at a time with their fucking nails. A government that doesn’t need them.
But sometimes it’s just Jamie’s hands in his hair, too tight, a rough laugh, him saying “God, how long did they try to make ye look posh for? Stupid bastards; lost cause, thank fuck.”