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The last time it happens, Malcolm is listening to a radio interview. He expects a backstabbing. He’s not sure why, exactly, he feels mild disappointment when Jamie defends him instead, but he clicks off the radio and goes out to his garden for a smoke.
*
The first time they decide they’re through, they’re in the middle of a newsroom—it’s bustling, there’s a scent of cigarettes and, if you pay close attention, booze and the stench of people who haven’t bathed in a couple days because there are deadlines to meet, there are careers to ruin, there is shit that needs to be scraped up off the ground like so much roadkill and splashed across the front page. The reasoning for the fight is completely inconsequential; it might have started with an editorial decision the wiry, explosive little bastard didn’t agree with, or it might have started with Malcolm’s insistence over the need to keep the coffee pot full at all times.
All he knows is that Jamie’s fucking quitting, right, he’s leaving this horse shit tabloid rag for something that actually matters, and Malcolm is glaring down at him in the middle of the newsroom, fluorescent lights exposing every flaw in Jamie’s skin and every spark of rage in his eyes and he’s lecturing him like some kind of kid. Like Malcolm isn’t only a few years older, with barely more experience. Telling him of course he’d quit, he’s too weak for this, he’d never go the distance and everybody knew it. That’s it, then, it’s over, this budding unholy partnership between two of the roughest, nastiest, most aggressively good reporters in town. Some people try to pretend they’re still working through the fight, but there’s no way they could be.
Away from the light, in a supply cupboard: the musty scent of old paper, printer ink and metal. Jamie’s teeth tugging at Malcolm’s lower lip, his hand down the front of Malcolm’s ill-fitting, baggy and wrinkled slacks as Malcolm crushes him against a wall and ruts against his palm. “Sorry,” Malcolm whispers between kisses. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
*
The second time, it’s a few years later. They’ve moved on from the tabloid, they’re electing someone now, making sure their candidate straddles that line of looking clean enough that scandals don’t stick and having dirty enough hands from being one with the common people. Making sure every word spoken is parsed exactly as it should be.
They’re losing.
It has fuck all to do with their guy, it’s the party itself—it’s the inability to make any gains with the public without taking ten steps backwards when the opposition pounces on them, it’s just enough voters who are perfectly fine with stealing milk from the mouths of other people’s children because their own taxes dropped by the price of a small order of chips and that’s fucking progress, isn’t it. It’s everything but their guy. They’re losing and they can’t do much about it.
The pressure builds up and they can’t direct it to anyone in particular. The rest of the staff doesn’t deserve it, their guy certainly doesn’t deserve it—one of the last good ones, and when the election’s over and the last speech is given he’s going to leave politics because what’s the point, why even bother, he has a family to feed and doesn’t have the energy for this anymore—nobody deserves it. So they turn it on each other, daily, and then twice a day, getting into screaming matches until Malcolm storms out. Quitter, Jamie calls after him. Weak, because that’s what Malcolm had called him years ago. The local paper covers it like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Their guy doesn’t blame Malcolm—one of the good ones, truly—but Jamie does.
A week later, it’s the sound of folding chairs being packed away that masks the sound of the school doors opening and swinging shut. Jamie’s seated at the skirt of the make-shift stage, blandly watching the workers in front of him remove the chairs from the lawn, his back facing the school. The pointless election night rally is long over. The handful of reporters who’d bothered to show up are gone. Malcolm sits next to him, the soles of his shoes barely brushing the brown, dry grass before them, holds out a crushed pack of cigarettes and waits for Jamie to take one.
He does, lights it with Malcolm’s, tip to smouldering tip. Malcolm’s seen him like this before, knows what’s going on in his head. He’s too angry to speak, words getting caught in his throat, too angry to look at anything even. Malcolm’s hand squeezes the back of his neck, and then rubs the knot between his shoulders; Jamie peers up into the sky, nostrils flared, willing the tears not to spill onto his cheeks this time. And Jamie wants to bloody his knuckles on something. He wants the feel of glass crunching against someone else’s face, cutting into his hands, he wants spit and blood and snot and the sting of new bruises and the ache of old ones.
Malcolm’s seen him like this before, right, and knows what’ll happen if he doesn’t stop the too-passionate little fucker before he starts. “Hey,” Malcolm says, his voice barely above a whisper. Jamie goes home with him instead. The feel of skin on skin is the only victory he gets that night but it’s a worthwhile one.
*
The third time, Malcolm knows he’s unrecognizable to Jamie. He knows that he’s too far gone now, but he’s a stubborn piece of shit and he’s not backing down. This level of power is what they’d wanted, isn’t it? So what if they’re backing the wrong people, the people don’t matter as much as the position does. At this level, it’s Malcolm pulling the strings.
That’s what he likes to argue, anyway. Jamie, being Jamie, being far more intelligent than most people give him credit for, knows it’s a load of shit. The transition went undetected. It’s a surprise to Jamie, for him to look up at Malcolm one day and not see Malcolm at all.
Still, the fact is Jamie doesn’t see Malcolm anymore, not the boy he met decades ago, or the man he grew up with, trying to make some kind of change to just help people, to care about people, to make things a little bit better for people who are like what they used to be. They were going to fuck the system from the inside, but Jamie’s standing there, telling him he is the system now, the system’s fucked him, in the calmest, most measured voice Malcolm’s ever heard Jamie use.
Yeah, well, fuck him, Malcolm thinks. He’s still got work to do, so he stays in his office, jacket thrown over the back of his chair, the glow of his computer screen making his eyes ache behind his glasses. Jamie leaves without much fanfare, because Jamie doesn’t see Malcolm anymore and Jamie doesn’t think there’s anyone left worth fighting against. Malcolm goes home, goes to an empty bed with a pillow beside him that still smells like Jamie, barely sleeps and gets up the next day and if he can’t recognize the thing staring back at him in the mirror—he’s stubborn. Jamie’s wrong. He’ll pull on his well tailored suit and walk into work just like any other day. It’s Malcolm pulling the strings. It’s Malcolm pulling the strings. One foot in front of the other.
*
The last time, he’s in his garden, deleting text after text from his phone. He doesn’t need to read them, or doesn’t want to at least, doesn’t need to know what Jamie thinks of the hearing or the mess with the police. The legal battle collapsed in on itself; nothing could actually stick to Malcolm, there were fishy questions about who did what regarding the leak, questions that threatened other members of both the opposition as well as the prime minister and his party, and, possibly most importantly, questions that threatened the press. The whole investigation dried up. It didn’t matter. Malcolm had taken the fall in public, and the ensuing destruction of his image was enough to make voters think that the situation had been handled, that the bad man was gone now, that anything would change.
The last time he decides that he and Jamie were through, he hasn’t spoken to Jamie in nearly three years. Only now Jamie wants to talk, and Malcolm’s decided there’s nothing to talk about, and some days he’s not even sure there’s anyone for Jamie to talk to.
There’s a noise like a feral animal rustling through the bins beyond the garden wall, then a pair of hands on top of the brick. A fluff of dark hair follows, and then Jamie’s pulling himself over the wall. Malcolm blinks, wondering if he’s entered some sort of alternate universe or fever dream; Jamie flips himself over the wall like a man who hasn’t done it in some decades, fingers barely holding onto the top while he dangles a foot and a half above the ground before sliding down in the least graceful way possible. He limps over to Malcolm with a grimace on his face.
“Did you just jump my fucking wall?” Malcolm asks.
“You didn’t want to answer your door,” Jamie says. He sits down on the bench next to him, swears and rubs his bad knee. “I’m too old for this.”
“Nobody asked you to do that, you degenerate freak.”
Jamie glares at him. “How else was I going to see you?” He makes a grab for Malcolm’s phone before Malcolm can try and stop him. “Oh, deleting my texts, are you? Yeah, well fuck off, you mangy-”
“Fuck off? This is my house,” Malcolm says, “and you’re breaking and entering.”
“Now you know the law? Now you’re a legal expert?”
He grabs his phone back. “You can leave by the front door. Or climb over the wall again, I don’t care.”
Jamie sighs, scratches a hand through his hair. “I didn’t come to fight.”
“We always fight.”
“Eventually, yeah, but—look, I’m sorry I didn’t stay. You didn’t have to be alone. I’ve been trying to, I’ve been speaking wherever they’ll have me-”
“Nobody asked you to do that,” Malcolm says slowly. He takes a long drag off his cigarette, leans forward onto his knees, and deletes the final—the first—text. “Certainly not me.”
Jamie leans down with him, seeking out his eyes. “Why didn’t you? It was a hack job, why not ask me to come in?”
He’s been good, the past few years, at acting like it didn’t matter that he barely felt himself anymore, like he had a greater purpose and so it was all right if he disappeared in the service of it. But he’d had to shift gears lately, and it only worked if he he didn’t see the people who remembered that there used to be a man named Malcolm Tucker, who cared about things and who only wanted the best for others, who was not simply a cog in a machine that had deluded himself into thinking he was something better. Jamie knew that man, and Jamie is too close now; the strategy’s failing, just like everything else in his life already had. “Who were you even defending? Thirty fucking years—there’s nothing left. There’s nothing—there’s nobody worth the fight, who do you think you were fighting for?”
Jamie’s leaning back with his hands draped over his thighs, he’s peering up at the sky, he’s trying desperately to act detached. He sniffs and squints at the clouds and says, “My Malcolm. He went missing for a few years, and I’m sorry I didn’t come looking earlier.”
He’s taking the cigarette out of Malcolm’s hand, stubbing it out, taking the phone and putting on the table before Malcolm even recognizes what’s happening. “Sorry,” Malcolm whispers against his neck. Strong hands are broad against his back and gentle carding through his hair, there’s embarrassment as his vision blurs and then clears with his cheeks turning wet, and he can’t help the apology spilling out of him for a thousand different sins. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Jamie’s pressing his forehead to Malcolm’s. He’s the strong one, Malcolm thinks, always has been. “Let me stay?” he asks; he’s the gracious one, too, making it so that Malcolm doesn’t have to beg him.
“Okay,” Malcolm says, and it’s fine if his voice manages to crack on that single word. If it helps Jamie see him, he's happy to be weak. Jamie’s whispering his name, kissing the curve of his ear, the corner of his eye, the hollow of his cheek as he tries to hold on to a toxic kind of strength he’s quickly realizing he doesn’t need anymore. He’s pulled inside the house, and lets himself be stripped of his armor.
Then Jamie's saying something about no surrender, smiling like a mad man, and there won't be another time Malcolm makes the same mistake. He grins back, sure of it; the last time he shut Jamie out was the last time he'd ever do it, and he leans down, cups his face, kisses him like it's their first.