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He gets a call at four fucking AM and of course it’s Sam, who the whole of horrible Whitehall wakes the fuck up at ungodly hours to ring the beast with them trembling behind her pencil skirt. Sam at four AM means the worst news. Malcolm, who is in bed awake and restless, nearly spits and slams his thumb on the key.
‘Who’s snuffed it, then?’
‘We’ve got a problem-’
‘Nuclear war, is it? Did Sean Connery push the wrong fucking button on the Red fucking October?’
‘Jamie’s been arrested.’
Malcolm slams his head back against the pillow and stares up into the dark, mouth slightly agape, feeling his tongue recede with his own furious breath. Jamie – he has been gone since Malcolm screamed him out of the flat at eight o’clock and this raging dumb silence is nothing novel for him, but now Malcolm’s got fucking headline flashes – Press Officer Goes Tits-Up, Scottish Shambles the Second London Fucking Blitz. Ten years ago, in Glasgow, maybe – he knows better now-
‘What do you want me to do?’ Sam is wary, as she always is when Jamie’s name comes up on a private line, or on these rare occasions that Malcolm is rendered speechless for more than three seconds.
He licks his lips and bares his teeth at the ceiling. ‘Where is he?'
The line crackles with Sam’s exhale, the only admission of exhaustion she’ll make. ‘White City police station. I can send a car-’
‘Has it leaked?’
No, she assures him. Ollie was up late and did a quick Twitter recon. Quick and Ollie, he rages – thorough, Sam insists. All quiet on the West-of-Charing-Cross fucking Front, then, and they are snug as bugs in a fucking rainforest for a good twenty minutes, Malcolm reckons, before some late-night desk clerk has a search for Jamie’s name between wanks and pops up something that’ll look good on the newsstands before the Daily Mail can have their morning shit.
‘Malcolm,’ Sam says, quiet.
‘I’m fucking going over myself.'
‘I can send-’
‘Fucking taxi,’ he snarls, irritated by the repetition – who does she think she is, Terri fucking Coverley – no excuse despite the hour – and launches himself out of bed like an irate nuclear missile blasted out Sean Connery’s Soviet arse.
One of the officers seems to recognise him when he bulldozes in seventeen minutes later between a handcuffed drunk and two Peckham chavs far from home being done for robbery or a fucking murder spree or the state of their nylon fucking trackies. Fucking Westminster, someone mutters behind the desk over the squawk of the station radio, all of this rattling his senses beneath the industrial-brights they’ve got burning away at this hour – this, of all fucking times, more inconvenient and heart-breaking than 9/11 or some tiny glaucoma-suffering Rwandan orphan weeping anguish-faced on a Southwest Trains poster, Jamie – and he’s got a long finger pointed accusingly at his accuser like this is a press conference and he’s fixing to introduce the Guardian reporter’s microphone to the insides of his large intestine via his leaking arsehole. Fucking Westminster, do not speak, says that finger, and the officer in question very wisely closes his mouth and goes to see about the chavs.
‘Right, you,’ he shouts at the desk sergeant, like this will crack open the gates of hell and get Jamie Macdonald spat back out dripping with demonspawn and shame. ‘I want the Glaswegian fuck you brought in half an hour ago.’
The desk sergeant, beneath a thousand-yard night-shift glaze, is no withering blossom. Bail has not been posted – something about assault – Malcolm stares and stares, veins in his forehead popping like wires, bruises under his bloodshot eyes radiating heat, and screams that he’s fucking Downing Street, a junior minister outburst that retrospectively embarrasses him deeply. The officers present look this raging well-dressed Scottish skeleton up and down and glance between them. He’s been on the telly, confirms a voice beside the Peckham gawkers and, Malcolm thinks, furious, Daily Mail’ll get it even if it’s shat down the sewer and digested by the rats.
Two sirs, a signed form, and a muttered apology later, Jamie is brought out with a policewoman’s firm hand on his shoulder, rolling gait and a savage dog grin at the sight of Malcolm. His shirtsleeves are rolled up; he’s been punched, fat lip and ragged Steri-strips holding his bloody eyebrow together. Malcolm smells whiskey as he and his escort step between the divider to the sound of a buzzer and resolves to drown him whether or not they make the morning news.
In the taxi, Malcolm’s fist stays balled in Jamie’s torn shirt. The Pakistani driver meets his eyes in the mirror once and focuses carefully on the southbound concrete beneath his headlights.
They don’t speak, or at least they don’t after Jamie tries, once, lazily – Didja have a nice kip – and Malcolm says low that he will cut out his appendix with a spoon and donate it on behalf of Hugh Abbot as a government-sponsored football for the next fucking Rangers charity match. Jamie huffs a little sigh and leans away, mussed head bowed against the door, curling up like a tired bairn. Malcolm keeps a firm hold on his shirt and grits his teeth for the duration of the ride.
Jamie is halfway to passing out when they spill onto the pavement and the taxi pulls hurriedly away, but even at five in the morning Malcolm has hunted eyes for the pap and fucking no, elicits a yelp with his vicious nails and drags him into the building. As soon as the door swings shut on the darkened stairwell, Jamie’s back cracks against the wall and Malcolm is on him narrow and cutting-lean and hot-breathed as auld fucking Lucifer.
‘I’m ready to knock a match down your pipe and see how long it takes your liver to burn up the rest of you,’ he hisses, and Jamie snaps awake at that tone, wiggles his hips to push himself upright like he’s coming to fucking attention or just fucking coming. Malcolm leans a forearm into his throat and rages.
‘You stupid fucking balls-out twat, make me look like Tricky Dicky fucking Nixon having a wank in a confessional walking in there for your scummy gutterfuck Motherwell arse just before some West London greased-up Mafioso poof roars up it with a razorblade, and watch me shed a single salt fucking tear if you bleed out before the papers get to you, you tragic Sirius Black gone fucking Expecto Patronumed-’
Jamie twitches and grabs his wrist. ‘You’re a right auld poof havin’ a go at me for walkin’ into a fucking police station on your own, could've let me had my fucking phone call and sort-’
‘-this is your fucking job, man,’ Malcolm roars, and Jamie lunges, shoving his arm away and butting belligerent heads like a fucking Celtic supporter turned down a bad alley. Malcolm staggers, but Jamie is there, suddenly solid, dragging him up the remaining few steps to the door of the flat he’s left fucking open.
They have a brief scuffle in the kitchen. To his disgust, Malcolm quickly finds himself on his back, head banged on the newly-waxed hardwood floor – ‘Fucking bufty-’
‘Haud yer fucking whist,’ Jamie snarls, flopping his dead weight against Malcolm’s narrow ribs. ‘I didnae mean to end up in the fucking lockup-’
‘Ach, bake me a cake wi’ tha’ shit, Martha fucking Stewart!’ Malcolm wheezes. ‘But now I’ve got a senior press officer skidmarking the newspapers with the Party name tomorrow, right, all ‘cause you decided to pull a Heathcliff-’
Jamie snorts angrily, because he’s gotten the reference (which is fucking unusual, and not so much a victory for Malcolm as a conceded defeat, a concept that Jamie hates more than anything else in the world). His fat lip gives him a permanent pout; in the darts of lamplight through the cracked blinds, Malcolm notices twin scratches just beneath the line of his stubbled jaw, neat and shallow.
‘Were you fighting with a woman?’ he asks, low, in his killing voice.
Jamie drops his head closer, breathing sour whiskey-breath against his cheek. ‘Fucking no.’
‘Over a woman?’
‘Malc.’
‘Tell me you pulled someone fucking useful, at least. Do me a fucking Ollie Reeder.’
Malcolm feels him hesitate, realises he honestly can’t remember, and bites him decisively on the earlobe. Not that it matters, but it matters – he measures it mattering in how accurately he anticipates Jamie’s reaction, snarling and butting heads again so Malcolm sees a whole fucking glorious planetary show between him and the floor. He’s fucking got him, and for a second he’s nothing but pleased.
He’d put on a tie before he left so he’d look like a civil fucking servant – that helped with police stations. Jamie uses it to haul Malcolm upright, cracking his narrow hip against the kitchen table and dragging him into a savage, awkward kiss. Malcolm twists, shoving him away, but Jamie is persistent – he shifts his weight, fucking easy on his feet like the big raging cunt of a midfielder he’d been before joining the fucking priestly orders, and crashes him onto the tabletop.
Malcolm is annoyed by this persistent winding. He fists a hand in Jamie’s tangled dark hair and yanks, using the ensuing howl to kick his shoes off and scramble back a few inches on the wooden surface. Jamie’s snatching fingers brush his hips – he suddenly stands there, swaying, brown eyes imploring like he’s let a fucking cat go up a tree, and Malcolm nods just slightly.
He lets Jamie pull him in and wrap his arms around his waist, one hand halfway down the back of his trousers, the other oddly hesitant on his bony hip. Jamie’s breathing is ragged; his head knocks Malcolm’s thin shoulder once, twice, and Malcolm understands this as a fucking sorry, alright. He tilts his head and opens his mouth against Jamie’s neck, tasting sweat and a tequila shot that missed. ‘Fucking Southern barbarian,’ he murmurs, and drags his tongue deliberate up to Jamie’s bloodied earlobe. ‘Jesus, what’ll I do wi’ your sorry arse…’
‘You’re the fucking political genius, innit. Sort it tha' fuck out.’ Jamie is downright amused, pressed warm against him, suddenly so stupidly fucking pathetic with relief it’s like he’s pissed himself. Malcolm sneers teeth against his damp skin and grabs him by the collar to drag him to bed.
They don’t really bother undressing, with Jamie still pissed five sheets and Malcolm twice out of bed now. Malcolm shoves Jamie away from his belt, does it himself, lies back and lets the bastard brush a clumsy hand across his stomach after he takes his cock in his mouth. ‘You fucking owe me,’ he informs the top of Jamie’s head, and lets his hips go once, twice – ‘That’s fucking nought, ya cunt’ – and then Jamie’s other hand finds the cleft of his arse cheeks, surprisingly deft given the state of him, and curls two fingers just the right way. There. There, shoving forward and Malcolm arches like a satisfied cat, closing his eyes on the ceiling.
He doesn’t let Jamie fuck him, or even vice versa; after Jamie carries out his allotted IOU blowjob, which is admittedly fucking spectacular, he shoves him unceremoniously away and turns his back on his swearing outrage to undo his tie and take off his shirt. This feels like the climax of some fucking summit meeting – but they have rules, the two of them, after six months, a learnt-by-gut set that dictates the circumstances of them making up. This is fucking gospel by now, even if truth be told Malcolm’s still not sorted out if he’s sleeping with his own attack dog or his fucking best mate who he happens to be fucking. Jamie knows, though, how it works, even when he’s drunk, and tactfully fades his complaining.
Once Malcolm’s under the duvet, Jamie goes to the loo and comes back a while later with his hair wild and dripping from the tap.
‘You’re not out the shitter by half a step, my son,’ Malcolm mumbles, drowsy despite himself. ‘Just so’s we’re absolutely fucking crystal on that.’
‘Aye,’ Jamie agrees, smug and sleepy, and quite suddenly and against most of the rules pushes close enough to slide an arm around Malcolm’s thin waist. He yawns, and adds, quiet, half an afterthought: ‘It’s not the first time I’ve been arrested. Y’know.’ As though this excuses it.
‘Fuck off,' Malcolm snorts. 'I know everything and all.’ He hesitates, uneasy so close, warm for the first time this evening: ‘It’s the first time you’ve had me to answer to, Jamie fucking Macdonald, and you’ll do well to fucking remember it.’
Jamie tucks his chin over Malcolm’s shoulder and breathes out whiskey in response. Complacent sentimental cunt, Malcolm thinks, and burrows back into the embrace as he falls asleep.