Work Text:
December 2015
A gloomy Saturday two weeks before Christmas found Catherine Standish pacing the length of a wet street market. She was on a mission, one she still couldn’t quite believe she'd been ordered to participate in it.
The arrival of December had sent Slough House’s resident team spirit enthusiast Struan Loy into some sort of festive frenzy. Catherine had done her best to ignore it and carry on as usual. Everyone who ended up in the Aldersgate office handled their banishment differently, after all. Although, she had found herself reflecting sourly, he'd been there more than long enough to have got over the initial shock.
The thought was uncharitable of her, she knew, but it had only raised its head during one of his more irritating campaigns. The Christmas pub quiz wasn't even the first one of its kind he had suggested and he remained inexplicably oblivious as to the reason she wouldn't want to go. How he hadn't put two and two together from Lamb's incessant references to her alcoholism and everyone else's awkward glances in her direction — well, Louisa and Sid's, anyway — whenever he brought the pub quiz idea up, she didn't know.
He had presented cheap chocolate advent calendars to each of the denizens of Slough House for their desks. They were going begging as the result of a bulk purchase for something his children were involved in, or so he said. Lamb had inevitably stolen random days’ chocolates from everyone, carefully dismantling each advent calendar and then reassembling it and placing it back precisely where it had been to cover his tracks, the small perforated cardboard doors intact.
The petty theft hadn’t bothered Catherine, as she didn’t like the over-sweet, low-cocoa milk chocolate that came in such things and didn’t eat them. But at least half the Slow Horses got a disappointing surprise when they opened one only to find it empty. Say what you like about Jackson Lamb, she thought, he knew how to lower morale.
When Loy had suggested an office Secret Santa, she’d expected the idea to be roundly rejected, given Lamb’s consistently Scroogian attitude over the years. It had been a battle to get him to sign off on getting the artificial Christmas tree in one of the earliest years. But no, of course he’d seized on it as a new way to make them all miserable, mandating the scheme no one but Loy wanted to participate in. Ho had been tasked with arranging the random selection and getting the result sent to each person's inbox without finding out the matches himself on pain of unspecified misfortune. Which everyone else had agreed was more menacing, coming from Lamb, than a more detailed torture scenario. Everyone except Roddy, anyway.
The budget per gift was a generous and unpopular £15. Moody had already declared he "wouldn’t be spending more than five quid on it on point of principle". Gifts were to be labelled with the recipient’s name and left anonymously under the office’s somewhat spindly artificial Christmas tree, which that year occupied a bit of space on the second floor landing. They ought, Lamb had pronounced, to be able to manage that without being detected by anyone else, seeing as they technically worked for a secret service. Sid and Louisa had exchanged a look at that.
All gifts had to be there by 9am the Friday before Christmas, wrapped identically in sheets of newspaper, from a handful of copies of Metro he'd made Moody collect. This rule was apparently to prevent easy identification of the gift giver from the wrapping. Catherine hadn’t tried to argue with him about it, just shot him an irritated glare as the assembled crowd trooped out of his office.
There was enough work to do that she hadn’t given it much more thought for the rest of the day, other than to hope she wasn’t allocated Jed Moody. When the email arrived the next morning, she opened it with little more than resignation. Oh, for God’s sake, she thought as she read the message, it would be me who got Jackson bloody Lamb. What was she supposed to get him? She already took care of buying his socks, underwear and basic toiletries.
It took several days of sporadically considering the issue before she settled on heading to the market to see what was there. It always had a wide variety of stuff. She had already decided various gift cards were either pointless — he would likely prefer just to have the cash, not that he needed it — or passive aggressive. Who knew dry cleaners did gift vouchers nowadays?
She had little idea of his taste in books or music, and refused to encourage his drinking and smoking habits. He didn’t travel much, either — they were each as bad as the other about taking their full allocation of paid annual leave. If he had any other hobbies, she wasn’t aware of them.
Catherine wandered along the lines of stalls, casting her eyes over the fruit and veg, fresh fish, street food menus, gaudy Christmas decorations, electronics, bags and suitcases, racks of clothing and other wares she couldn’t easily identify. Stopping at a couple of stalls, she bought some vegetables, a bunch of white carnations and then a roll of Christmas wrapping paper, so the trip wasn’t a complete waste of time. But she still had no idea what to get for her assigned target.
A rack of brightly coloured Christmas novelty ties beneath a large handwritten sign declaring two for ten pounds caught her eye. They weren't what she wanted, but a tie was at least a reasonable idea. She couldn't imagine him wearing one of the gaudy festive designs on the rack, so she made her way into the shopping centre nearby to see whether there were any helpful looking shops.
It wasn't long before she found a small shop selling ties and socks and the like. Silk ones were all over the permitted budget, but they had a couple of racks of less expensive novelty ties. She looked through them, smiling a little to herself at the idea of Lamb confronted with the more vivid designs, a million miles away from his usual dull green choice.
He’d had that tie so long she could no longer remember whether it had always been so dull or whether lack of being cleaned made it look that way. He had other ties she remembered seeing occasionally, all dating from the 1980s and early 90s, but seemed to have a special affection for that green one. Probably because it was so unremarkable, she thought. The £11.99 price tag left enough change for a small something edible to accompany it. They were a very standard, middle of the road tie shape, like those he usually wore, wider with a shallow point at one end and narrow at the other, neither too broad nor too skinny on the headless mannequin torso modelling one over a shirt on the shelf above the rack.
Making her way through the selection, she found a couple of possible options for her Secret Santa gift, although she didn't feel particularly keen on them. She disregarded any designs that were too large or cartoon-ish, sticking instead to smaller, reasonably simple patterns. Loy had insisted that the budget was to give people room to choose, whether their preference was thoughtful or a gag gift, but she couldn’t bring herself to spend £15 on something completely useless. And even Jackson Lamb deserved considerate treatment at Christmas. Mostly, anyway.
She liked a purplish-brown one with small savannah trees, zebras and elephants on it, but decided it was more her taste than his. A blue tie with silver grey and blue frogs on it was nice, but again it was probably a little too much something she would pick. Although, she couldn't quite decide what it was he would choose for himself from the rack. Another with frogs in red blue and yellow was too eye catching. He wouldn't be keen even on socks with primary colours that bright. A navy background with a pattern of small whales on it wasn't quite right either, the pattern repeat too close, if she had to guess his preference. She wanted it to be eye catching enough to be noticed, different than his usual office wear, but not so conspicuous that he'd resent the attention it drew.
For a moment, she considered abandoning the idea and just going for a gaudy light-up Christmas tie, until, towards the back of the rack, she found one she thought might work. The dark background was decorated with green and yellow frogs, occasionally on lily pads, each large enough to be recognisable in their own right rather than a tiny subtle pattern. It wasn’t hideous, overall, and some of the frogs were sort of cute. It was quite fun, she supposed, if a tie could be fun, without being ridiculous.
She'd almost convinced herself when part of her began to second-guess her choice. She looked at another, a yellow one with small grey and pink elephants on. His wardrobe was largely blues, greens, when he bothered with colours other than grey, black and white. The shade of yellow on the tie wasn't one she could remember seeing him wear. Green frogs it is, she thought.
The plastic sleeve each tie was encased in was open at the bottom end, and she felt the fabric between her thumb and forefinger. It was a reasonable quality, not silk but not the cheapest polyester either. Not bad for the price, and she would be grateful to have the task of choosing a gift out of the way. Yes, she decided, frogs it is.
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The Friday before Christmas was even more overcast that the days that preceded it had been. The Slow Horses assembled in Lamb's office, each having managed to get their contribution wrapped and under the Christmas tree as instructed.
The man himself was smoking, feet up on his desk, wearing a threadbare and not particularly clean-looking red Santa hat.
"Right then, rejects, you are definitely on the Park's naughty list but it looks like secret service Santa's not left you high and dry — except Standish, for obvious reasons." He pulled the hat off his head and Catherine could guess what was probably coming. "Loy, this was your hare-brained scheme, so you're going to put this on and play Santa's little helper."
He threw the hat, crumpled into a ball, and the Scotsman fumbled it clumsily before it fell to the floor. He retrieved it hurriedly and, with a noticeable hesitation, put it on his own head.
"Well, get on with it, you lot have got a full fucking day of work to get through. You can't be dawdling up here."
Nobody spoke as the gifts were checked for a name and then passed to the recipient. When people hesitated to open them, Lamb barked at them again.
"What did I just fucking say? Get on with it. For fifteen quid, it's not going to be a lump of fucking coal, is it?"
A couple of people murmured in response and then the room was quiet except for the sound of tearing paper. Catherine glanced around surreptitiously as she opened her own gift, trying to sense the currents between the group.
"Nice. Thanks, Santa." Sid held up her gift, a tall mug and a pack of luxury hot chocolate. It could have been from a number of people, but Loy gave himself away immediately by being far too interested in what the younger woman thought of it.
When Louisa Guy removed the pages of Metro from around a much flatter rectangular box, it was revealed to contain Ferraro Rocher, which Catherine suspected had been from Jed Moody. Presumably, he had thought better of his insistence that he wouldn't spend more than a fiver on his contribution.
Roddy had been given a mouse mat with a retro game boy design on that, once he worked out it was making a pun and not just a mistake in the name of the device even Catherine knew about, he was particularly pleased with. If she had to guess, she thought Sid was probably behind that one, despite her attempt to avoid explaining the game boy-Gameboy pun.
River Cartwright, the most recent arrival to have been booted out of the Park, got a set of Lynx toiletries, which he seemed pleasantly surprised by. Like Loy, Min Harper gave himself away with frequent glances he probably thought were subtle.
Moody got a crate of beer, which Roddy announced was worth more than £15 but had been part-payment for services he'd rendered a private client, and he didn't like the brand. Jed seemed uncharacteristically content, despite the ill grace with which the gift was given and how much he disliked Roddy generally.
A positive exclamation Catherine didn't catch the words of but was undoubtedly Scottish announced Struan discovering his gift was a pack of family friendly card games. She couldn't tell from the neutral expression on Louisa's face but process of elimination suggested it was from her.
The obviously shaped package Harper unwrapped contained a bottle of red wine. His grin and "looks like Santa's something of sommelier" comment made Cartwright have to work to suppress a smile. Catherine caught Guy having to hide a smirk at the pair of them and their inability to hide who they had been drawn to buy for.
Her own gift turned out to be three books. Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, which Sid had been reading on a lunch break and they had chatted about briefly. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins, which Sid had asked Louisa and herself about in the kitchen one day.
The final book was The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, which had been very popular and she felt she ought to read, although what she knew of her parents' experience of World War 2 made reading anything set then potentially a mixed experience.
She was fairly certain no one had mentioned the last one in Slough House. She'd heard something on the radio at home, but not got around to thinking about it more than that.
"What did you get, boss man?" Loy's Scottish voice interrupted her thoughts.
Jackson held up the tie and a Freddo, two wrappers already empty on his desk.
"Multi-use bondage gear and chocolate frogs."
"Aw, cute," Sid said, leaning to look at the tie.
“I can respect an amphibian," he announced around a mouthful of chocolate. "Hedge their bets, don’t they, between land and water? You can freeze some of the little fuckers and they’re fine when they defrost and all. Fucking genius.”
"Haven't seen Freddos in ages," Cartwright said, looking nostalgically at the chocolates and suddenly seeming much younger than he did when he was perpetually simmering with resentment, Catherine thought.
"And you won't be seeing these again either," Lamb pointed out, peeling another out of its wrapper. "Now, fuck off, the lot of you. I didn't think you could fail at office Secret Santa, but there's not a single shitting reindeer toy or Father Christmas with his trousers down between you." He put the entire chocolate frog in his mouth and spoke his last observation around it. "Political correctness really has killed all the good office traditions."
They traipsed out and Catherine returned to her office carrying her books. The phone on her desk immediately rang and it wasn't until later that she worked out she had accounted for everyone else was and they must have been from Jackson.
He’d said no more about the tie and gave no indication if he wondered what she thought of the books, or whether she might have guessed they were from him. Then, a few weeks later, everything had happened with Taverner’s false flag op and she didn’t think about it again after that.
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May 2018
Catherine walked in without knocking because with the glass missing there was so little left of the walls and doors there was no point. She had heard Shirley stomping downstairs from the fourth floor and known from the sound of his parting "fuck off" there must have been trouble.
She left River setting out party food in the office he shared with Louisa, who had disappeared to the ladies' rather than watch that unfold, and headed back upstairs. Jackson sat slouched on his office's new sofa wearing a weary expression. He'd been attempting to nap on it earlier, but she'd heard him tossing and turning from her office and could tell it was too hard compared to the old one. He's probably going to need a couple of cushions to use as a pillow to make it bearable, she thought.
"Everything alright?"
He grunted in a way that she knew from long experience discouraged further questions on the subject and prodding him in spite of the warning would lead nowhere.
"I just need to get Louisa's card and then I'll put the kettle on."
When she returned from collecting the envelope on her desk, he was standing and fiddling with something on his phone, a frown of mild irritation on his face.
"River's putting out the party food, so if you could pop down in about ten minutes' time— You're not wearing that, are you?" A shrill note had crept into her voice, even to her own ears and she wanted to wince. It had been doing that, recently, surprising without warning.
Jackson made a show of considering the clothes he wore.
"I think I fucking am."
"But we— we talked about this," she lowered her voice, "it's Louisa's last day."
"What's wrong with this? I washed this shirt specially."
Catherine realised her hand was on her hip and she used opening the glass-less door and entering his office as an excuse to remove it.
"You've spilled something all down that tie. Probably egg, from your breakfast, if I had to guess. You can't wear it like that."
He frowned at her but loosened it enough to get it off over his head. Tossing it onto the sofa, he went to his desk.
"Hardly proper to turn up to a work party without a tie," he complained, "I feel naked."
Catherine raised her eyebrows at the unlikely complaint but didn't say anything because she had nagged him about turning up dressed reasonably and he had agreed with only minimal complaining. Perhaps he could tell she was more upset about Louisa needing to leave — and she knew it would be permanent, not temporary — than she wanted him to know.
He pushed things around, searching noisily through the contents of the second drawer of his desk.
"What are you looking for?" She asked, wondering if she would know where whatever it was could be found as she moved to stand by his desk. There was a rustle of plastic and he pulled something from the depths of the drawer triumphantly.
“Ha! Fucking knew it was in there.” A crinkling sound followed and he discarded some transparent plastic film, which missed the desk and fluttered to the floor. He ignored it so she bent to pick it up and threw it in the waste paper bin.
When she stood again he had a tie under his collar and was hastily tying a Windsor knot. To her surprise, it was the one with frogs on from several years ago. She hadn't seen it again, after that awkward Secret Santa present opening, and had forgotten it entirely.
Perhaps it was because it was effectively new, the fabric unsoftened by wear compared to what he was used to, but the knot ended up askew, and his attempt to straighten it didn’t help, making him swear under his breath as he wrenched at it.
“Oh, for goodness' sake, let me,” Catherine sighed, putting the envelope down and loosening it for him, smoothing a wrinkle in the knot with the pad of her thumb and adjusting it to sit centrally between the two sides of his collar, his topmost button undone, as ever. Satisfied with its placement, she tucked the thinner length of the tie behind the wider one at the front. “There."
"Right, jacket or no jacket?" He gestured at the old chair near the sofa he had left it on.
"I think you look fine in just a tie," she replied, still gazing at the frogs. He didn't say anything and when she looked up at him, he had raised an eyebrow, a crooked smile playing about his mouth. She realised the double meaning in what she said and froze, breath caught in her throat. He was suddenly too close, her body too aware of him and not aware enough of herself, pushing everything else out of her mind.
"Fancy frock that," he observed casually, ignoring the fact she couldn't seem to react. "Not as good as my tie though."
"Oh?" The sound of her voice was thin but the word had made it out, releasing whatever tension had held her momentarily frozen. He'd been doing this, she remembered, diffusing things when he thought her panicky or anxious, distracting her with the mildest annoyance. Barely recognisable from his usual needling. It made her feel odd.
"No frogs. Just fucking fruit and veg and flowers. Foliage."
"Careful, you might run out of F words."
"I ran out of fucks to give years ago, you know that."
Catherine rolled her eyes.
"You scatter them so liberally on a daily basis. No wonder you ran out."
He snorted and turned to shut the desk drawer he left open, breaking the moment. Picking up the envelope, she headed for the door.
"Thank you. For dressing for the occasion," she murmured.
He grunted, noncommittal, and then seemed about to say something when there was a noise from one of the floors below. For a moment she was torn between going down to investigate and staying where she was, but he sat in the chair at his desk and waved her off.
"Go on. I'll put in a fucking appearance in a bit."
She turned to leave but found herself glancing back at him, hovering uncertainly.
"Cinderella will go to the ball once they've laid on the fucking buffet. Party tie-m, isn't it?" He leaned into the bad pun, patting it for emphasis. "Didn't you say something about putting the kettle on?"
She could hardly decide how she felt, the bad pun, the disconcerting way he played for time to let her unpredictable rushes of anxiety burn out, the return to a poor approximation of normality in the ruins of his office. It was difficult to swallow against the urge to laugh hysterically.
"Tea. Yes." The words were breathy and abrupt and she hated that he could hear any of what was going on inside her.
"Fucking un-frog-getable, this tie."
That startled a small huff from her. He was still watching her with a smug expression on his face that warned he was readying his next pun when there was another noise from downstairs. They both held still, listening.
A sound that might have been Roddy squawking in protest had them exchanging a weary look.
"Fuck's sake. Should just let them eat each other. Like tadpoles."
Catherine glared at him reprovingly and decided to head downstairs in case World War 3 needed averting. Again. She still needed to ask him what they were going to do about Shirley, when they clearly disagreed on how to handle her, and there wasn’t time just then.
At the top of the stairs, she glanced back and saw he was checking his phone sat at his desk. The computer monitor still sat in its unopened box, as it had for months. At least today he was alright enough to be thinking up puns. The weeks when he hadn't said much at all had been so much worse.
One day at a time, she repeated to herself as she started downward. One day at a time.
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