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“We are not having this argument.”
Jamie’s at the kitchen table flipping through his phone, but that makes him look up. “Oh, I think we fucking are. I think it’s a fucking dire necessity, considering how fucking wrong you are.”
Malcolm exerts considerable self-control and doesn’t slam the French press down with gusto; lowers it at measured speed instead and avoids spilling coffee all over the counter. “You realise you don’t get a say in this, right?”
“Oh, aye? Why the fuck not?”
He grabs a cup, pours the coffee that’ll tide him over the first few hours of the day until all food doesn’t smell like an emetic anymore. “It’s still my fucking house.”
He doesn’t wait for a reply, takes his coffee upstairs and gets ready for the day. As he said, he’s not going to have this argument.
------
The day is long and exhausting, as most days tend to be. It has its satisfactory moments, so Malcolm chalks it up as a success. He takes a taxi home (he should really just get a car, but years of being chauffeured around in government vehicles spoiled his habits), and enters to find a suitcase sitting next to the door. Jamie’s suitcase.
“What’s this?” He waves a hand at it as he enters the kitchen to see Jamie digging through the drawers.
“Fucking guess.”
He’s at a loss. There’s no conference coming up that Jamie would be likely to attend, and he’s high enough in the pecking order of the Metro’s editor ranks that he’s not going to be sent out to do field work. There’s no MacDonald family gathering coming up (that Malcolm knows of), and anyway, that suitcase looks like it’s been packed for a trip longer than a couple of days.
His silence does what his arrival did not, and Jamie finally looks up. “I’m fucking moving out, that’s what that is.” He grabs something from the drawer (his fucking London Dungeon novelty straw; he’s lucky Malcolm’s not thrown that out yet, it’s a disgrace to any kitchen), stalks towards the door and waves it at Malcolm. “I’m taking this, and I’m fucking moving out, and you and your house can go fuck yourselves.”
He and his house. Right. He’s getting it now; better late than never. “This is about this morning?”
Jamie doesn’t answer, stuffs the straw into the bag’s side pocket and grabs his coat.
Malcolm realises he’s actually fucking serious.
“Jamie.” No reply, so Malcolm reaches out for Jamie’s arm. “Jamie, fucking stop.”
He’s slapped away, hard. “Get your hands off of me!”
Malcolm pulls back. “What the fuck’s going on?”
He has no read on this situation. Whichever way Jamie’s moods spike, they usually come out as shouting. Over the years, Malcolm’s figured out how to tell if it’s anger, sadness, panic, or something else that has Jamie raising his voice. But Jamie’s not shouting right now. He’s not even fucking looking at Malcolm; he’s tying his shoes and showing Malcolm his back.
Malcolm clenches his fists. “Are you really doing this? Over that stupid fucking fight this morning? It wasn’t even a fight!”
“Twenty-three years.” Now Jamie stands up, turns around and glares. “Twenty-three fucking years I’ve put up with your shit, and you tell me it’s not my fucking house? All right!” He spreads his arms. “All right, Malc, it’s all fucking yours. I hope you fucking enjoy it.”
“Jamie—”
But Jamie’s grabbed the suitcase, shoulders open the door, and manages to hoist the bag up far enough to flip Malcolm off. There’s a taxi waiting outside. It wasn’t there earlier. Jamie must’ve called it before Malcolm came home.
Jamie was planning to leave without even telling Malcolm in person.
Fuck, that hurts.
Jamie climbs in without looking back. Watching the taxi pull away, Malcolm feels like a fucking avalanche fatality.
------
He makes tea. It’s tea time, he’s hungry, so he makes fucking tea.
He makes too much (he’s forgot how to cook for a single person), and he barely eats a bite, so most of it goes in the bin.
He locks himself in the office. Jamie’s never in here; being alone in here is normal. Except he’s got nothing to work on; they just wrapped, and they haven’t discussed any new angles yet.
He’d kind of been hoping to use this rare night off to spend some quality time with Jamie. But fuck that, he’s not thinking about that. He’s working. He’s researching possible angles for next month’s shows, and after an hour, he ends up on Buzzfeed, then the Onion.
Eventually it’s 9gag, which is full of old memes and badly edited pictures of Donald Trump, and he’s disgusted and bored enough to take notice of the nausea curling in his stomach, the tightness that sits in his chest.
He can never leave the office again. Every other room in the house is just a gaping, Jamie-shaped hole. Fuck.
They were supposed to be past this, weren’t they? Twenty-three fucking years, at some point you start to let your guard down. It’s not like they were twenty-three years of smooth sailing; there were fights and break-ups and shouting and even the occasional shove or punch. But it lasted, it’s always lasted, so he was starting to think it would continue to last.
He’s gone through life-changing upheavals before. He can deal with anything if he has to, including this. But not without a reason. He doesn’t understand how this could happen; he has to at least understand.
He grabs his phone off the desk, heads into the hallway as he places the call. The hallway’s big enough to allow for pacing, so he does, synchs his steps with the ringing of the phone. He’s done four lengths before he hits the button to disconnect, swallows to loosen the knot in his throat.
Jamie’s a fucking stubborn prick; he’s not going to make it as easy as a phone call.
The next number he rings picks up after half a hallway length. Jamie’s got more pals than Putin’s got offshore accounts, but only a handful that Malcolm thinks he’d ask for space on the sofa. He speaks to Aydi from the Mirror, Rick from the Guardian, Jamie’s Metro colleague Brianna, and even Kingsley, who bartends in Jamie’s favourite pub. All of them range from surprised to intimidated to be getting a call from him, and none of them have any clue where Jamie is.
Brianna tells him that Jamie seemed a bit off-kilter at the office today. He feels an urge as irrational as it is overwhelming to snap at her and ask why she didn’t call him immediately and tell him.
Then he’s got no more numbers left, and he stops in the middle of the hallway, the phone heavy in his hand. Jamie must’ve checked into a hotel. There’s only a rough ten thousand of those in central London. No fucking problem, just ring around. It’s what he used to do, right?
He does call the taxi company, tries to convince them to tell him where the taxi that left this address earlier tonight went, but they take their customers’ privacy really fucking seriously. It gives him a chance to blow off some steam, shout abuse down the line until he gets the click-beep of an interrupted connection.
Fucking wankers, hanging up on him during a fucking customer service call.
It’s late, so he takes a shower, puts on his pyjamas and sits on his side of the bed. Tries to ignore the glaring emptiness of the other side. He used to hate sharing a bed; he used to think he’d never get used to it. Now he wonders how he ever managed to sleep without the backdrop of Jamie’s tiny, breathy snores.
Fuck this. Fuck it. This is so stupid.
He grinds his teeth as he finds Jamie’s number in his recent calls list, hits redial. He’s ready to let it ring all night if he has to. He doesn’t pay any mind to the soft buzz that accompanies the ringing, too focused on willing Jamie to fucking pick up, to stop being such an utter fucking cunt about this.
Jamie’s phone vibrates itself right off the nightstand, and that does get his attention.
“You fucking—” Muttering curses, he leans over Jamie’s side of the bed, fishes for the phone that’s sunk into the thick floor carpeting.
Jamie left his fucking phone. There’s no way he did so by accident; these days, a phone is any media man’s lifeline. Jamie decided that the risk of missing work emails, phone calls, and breaking news about Trump finally getting stabbed in the neck by a pissed-off advisor was acceptable in order to avoid Malcolm trying to contact him.
What a fucking cunt.
Malcolm’s never thrown his phone. Cloud or no, there’s no way he would risk losing any of his data or contacts. This is Jamie’s phone, though, and Jamie’s only got himself to blame if he’s going to leave it behind. Throwing it against the wall is completely justified.
It bounces off with a crack, drops to the floor like a broken-necked bird.
Completely justified.
Fuck.
He doesn’t pick it up, and he doesn’t hit redial to see if it’ll buzz. He turns his own phone off instead (first time in what feels like a decade, and it’s a process; the number of times it asks him to confirm, you’d think he’s taking a relative off life-support), crawls under the blanket, and turns his back on the empty hole on the other side of the bed.
------
The click of the front door jerks him out of incoherent anxiety dreams that evaporate as soon as he blinks open his eyes. The room blurs and wavers, and it’s not until he’s sat up and rubbed his knuckles into his eyes that he manages a halfway clear picture.
It’s still dark; Islington at witching hour, dead silent and still. The only sound nearby is the creak of footsteps on the stairs.
He scrambles out of bed, pads into the hallway and winces at the cold floorboards. “Jamie?”
“Malc. Hey.” The suitcase precedes Jamie as he tosses it up on the landing, takes the last couple of steps in one and appears at the top in joggers and a hoodie.
In the dusty twilight of their four-a.m. hallway, Malcolm has an unbidden vision of Jamie as an old man. Not the late-working-age fuck that he is, but properly old. Joggers-and-knitted-jumpers-old, incontinence-and-heart-failure-old. One-of-us-will-die-first-old.
“You fucking bastard.” He almost doesn’t get it past the tightness in his throat, but the house is still so fucking quiet, and Jamie’s close as Malcolm crowds against him, puts his hands on his waist and his mouth against his lips.
They’re cold. They’re freezing. Did Jamie walk home? That makes no sense; even without a phone, any hotel reception would’ve called him a taxi. But Jamie’s properly frozen, cheeks and fingertips and any exposed skin cold as ice. He pushes closer, wraps his arms around his waist to warm him up.
“I couldn’t fucking sleep.” Quiet, muttered as Malcolm nuzzles his cheek. “Fucking hotels, I can never sleep in fucking hotels.”
“Don’t want you sleeping in fucking hotels.” Malcolm frowns, wraps his warm fingers around Jamie's cold ones as he tugs him towards the bedroom. “Feels more like you slept under Waterloo Bridge; what the fuck did you do?”
“Outside.” Jamie jerks his chin towards the stairs; lets go of Malcolm as he pulls his jumper off. “Thinking ‘bout coming in.”
“Jesus.” For how long? He cards his fingers through his hair, curses himself silently. Why’ve you got to be such a wanking cocksucker, Malcolm? He’s never been able to figure that one out. “Come on. Come here.”
He pulls Jamie down on the bed and tugs the blanket over them; adds the weight and the warmth of his own body to the duvet’s as he covers Jamie as good as he can. Jamie’s warming up, life returning to cold limbs. He wraps his legs around Malcolm’s, pushes still-cool fingers under Malcolm’s waistband and makes short work of Malcolm’s pyjama trousers.
“Wanna fuck,” he mutters, unnecessarily, as his lips seek out Malcolm’s while his fingers knead Malcolm’s arse and thighs. “Want you inside.”
Malcolm’s nerve ends prickle as a shiver runs through him, as he props himself up to rid himself of his shirt. It’s awkward; they’re trapped under the duvet with their limbs tangled and Jamie’s hipbone squashing Malcolm’s prick, but no way is Malcolm going to disentangle them. Distance is the last thing he wants.
Soon enough, all distracting layers of clothing are gone, bunched at the foot of the bed in an untidy tangle. Malcolm’s sucking kisses against the side of Jamie’s neck, raising the skin just enough, using his teeth just enough. He’s rocking his hips, slow and deliberate, rocking his thigh against Jamie’s cock as his thumb strokes a nipple, as Jamie pants and shudders underneath.
It’s not cold anymore now under the duvet.
There are supplies in both nightstands, but the fucking lube’s still always too far away. He delays, doesn’t want to pull back and break open the cocoon of warmth and intimacy they’ve built. Neither of them speaks, which is weird; neither he nor Jamie normally know how to shut up. His rutting’s just short of frantic, prick chafing against Jamie’s hip as Jamie squirms underneath.
“Fuck, Malc—” Jamie pushes at his shoulders, spreads his legs until Malcolm’s slip between his thighs. He pulls his knees up, hooks a hand behind Malcolm’s neck to pull him down. “Just fucking put it in, been nobody up there ‘sides you for long enough.”
It takes him a moment to get it; then his stomach twists. But it’s fucking irrational, this panic. Been nobody up there ‘sides him for years, and he’s not been up anywhere else for even longer. They’re clean, they’re tested, it’s fine.
It’s fucking fine.
“Jamie.” Husky, brittle, scraping against his vocal cords. He ducks down, kisses Jamie, licks Jamie’s lips and kisses him again. “Jesus, Jamie, you’re fucking killing me.”
“Aw, jeez,” and Jamie sounds chagrined, fingers sliding up into Malcolm’s hair. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Shut up.” He kisses him again, parts warm, swollen lips and sucks on Jamie’s tongue, presses his hips down to rub their bare cocks together. Jamie’s fingers dig into his back, and Malcolm’s breath catches. “You sure?” He finds Jamie’s eyes in the dimness of their bedroom. “Tell me you’re absolutely fucking sure.”
“I’m absolutely fucking sure.” The little shit’s smiling like the question doesn’t even need asking, and Malcolm fucking hates how much he loves that smile.
“You’re the stupidest cunt that’s ever lived.” He can’t help the corners of his mouth twitching as he clambers to his knees, leans forward, pulls up the duvet up to hook it over his shoulders. “Get your skinny arse up, then.”
No matter how creaky their joints get, Malcolm hopes there’ll never come a day they’re too old to do this: legs wrapped around the other, bodies joined and pressed as close as it gets. They’ve fucked every which way to Sunday, but this is the way that’ll always make Malcolm feel like it’s the first fucking time.
“You want slick, at least?” But Jamie’s shaking his head, squirms his butt and arches up like a wanton fucking animal. His cock is thick and hard and leaking onto his stomach, and Malcolm’s throat is suddenly too dry to speak.
He reaches out, puts two fingers in the sticky come, coats them thoroughly. His other hand helps hoist Jamie’s arse further up his thighs, and now his cock is nudging against Jamie’s crack, bare and open and so fucking sensitive.
He swallows dry, reaches out with sticky fingers. “Open your mouth.”
Free hand braced against the mattress, he lets Jamie suck and lick to his heart’s content, rocks his hips to still the ache as Jamie’s tongue wraps around his fingertips, Jamie’s teeth graze over his knuckles. Jamie’s arms are up, splayed out above his head, and he already looks like he’s been fucked into oblivion—eyes lidded, cheeks flushed, a blissed-out fucking smile on his face.
Jamie trusts him. Jamie trusts him, and he’ll beg to be allowed to show it. It’s fucking overwhelming, every single time, even after all these years.
“All right.” He pulls back eventually, soothes with his hand along Jamie’s side. “All right, good. Relax now.”
He doesn’t need to be told twice; he’s already like a supple rag doll in Malcolm’s lap. Malcolm reaches down and rubs sopping wet fingers around tight muscle, feels it give almost immediately.
Spit and pre-come, jeez. Two proper gay old fucks, that’s what they are.
The thought makes him smile, and Jamie catches his eye, smiles back as Malcolm lines up. It’s slow and tight, tighter than it’s been in years. Halfway in, Malcolm has to stop, gasp for air and laugh. “Fuck, Jamie.” He wants to make a quip, something about Jamie mysteriously regaining his arse-virginity, but he can’t speak around the laughter bubbling in his throat. Thrills of sensation prickle along his nerves, skin tingling all the way into his fingertips. “Fuck—”
“Come on.” Jamie’s legs tighten, make him topple over forward. He laughs, startled, braces himself with a hand next to Jamie’s head, their faces only inches apart.
Jamie’s pupils are blown, lips parted as he’s panting his arousal. A huge grin splits his face. “Fuck, Malc, you look like you’re on speed.”
“Pot fucking kettle.” He jerks his hips and pushes in more, enjoys the way Jamie’s eyes widen, glaze over. He ducks down, captures Jamie’s mouth in a possessive kiss as he does it again, pushes in as he sucks on Jamie’s tongue. Jamie squirms underneath, grunt-moans and pushes back, drives him deeper.
It turns into a frantic rut quickly enough, proper fucking with films of sweat turning into droplets, then into wet patches on the sheets. They keep chasing each other’s mouth, kisses turning into competition. Jamie clamps his lower lip between his teeth, and normally Malcolm doesn’t like it, but right now any sensation will do to amplify the pin-prick sparks of arousal.
“You—fucking—” He doesn’t know what he’s going for, panted words between bites and kisses. It doesn’t matter, because Jamie’s hands slip from where his fingernails were clawing into Malcolm’s back, grip Malcolm’s shoulders and push.
He’s trying to flip them.
“You fucking don’t—”
He topples over as he says it, loses his rhythm and slips out for a cold moment. Then he’s on his back, Jamie on top and grabbing his cock, pushing it back in place.
He arches his back, lets out a string of curses that sound suspiciously like a moan. It just feels so fucking good.
“Let it happen.” Jamie’s voice, far above him, reverberating through the palm that Jamie’s pressing to his chest. “You just fucking let it happen. Feel it, all right? Fucking close your eyes and feel it.”
“I’m feeling—ah, shit.” He does close his eyes, and immediately forgets which is up and which is down. He screws his lids shut more tightly, reaches out. “Jamie—”
“Right here.” Their fingers intertwine, slot the world back in its place with Jamie at the centre. Malcolm keeps his eyes closed, pulls one of Jamie’s hands up to kiss his wrist as Jamie starts rocking his hips.
“I’m sorry,” Malcolm says, quiet and breathless as he feels the tingling under his skin sink deeper, start to fill his entire body. “I’m fucking sorry, I shouldn’t’ve—”
“Shh. Later.”
Jamie sounds fucking wrecked, enough so that Malcolm opens his eyes after all. Jamie’s got his cock in one hand, pumps his fist in time with his hips, eyes fixed on Malcolm’s face. He looks fucking mesmerised.
“Let me.”
Malcolm wraps tight fingers around Jamie’s cock, rocks his hips in rhythm and uses literal decades of experience to coax Jamie into orgasm at the same exact moment as his own arousal crests.
Pulses of sensation wrack his body, Jamie’s come cooling quickly on his stomach and providing an extra layer of sensation as his nerves dance and tingle. His vision clears just in time to focus on Jamie listing forward, a bony shoulder narrowly missing Malcolm’s as Jamie topples into a smothering hug.
It’s a lot of bare skin on skin, so it almost eases the sensation of slipping out. He pulls the duvet up, captures their warmth underneath before it has a chance to escape. He turns his head, presses a kiss against Jamie’s jaw.
“You good?”
Jamie grunts something unintelligible. Malcolm takes it as a yes.
------
They wake up naked and entangled in a disgusting mess of sweat- and come-stained sheets. The sun’s come up outside, and some fucking idiot forgot to close the blinds last night.
It’s the best way to wake up that Malcolm knows.
They stumble into the bathroom, end up in the shower together. The warm spray invigorates, and before long Jamie’s up against the wall, Malcolm on his knees with his mouth full of cock.
Why the fuck not, right?
They get out and into some clothes, comfortable stuff that no-one who isn’t Jamie will ever see him in. He makes coffee, and when they sit on the sofa together, he doesn’t mind at all that Jamie sits really close and pulls a blanket over them.
Sometimes he wonders if the only reason he can have this with Jamie is because Jamie is some sort of fucking psychic fine-tuned to Malcolm’s needs and moods. It’s not like they ever talk about any of this.
Jamie starts telling a long and complicated story about the bellhop at the hotel last night. It segues from the cut of the man’s jacket over the tragedy of spending much of one’s time in a hotel lobby to something called a liminal space (whatever that is), and threatens to drift off into a Marxist-flavoured anti-capitalism rant when Malcolm nudges Jamie’s shoulder.
“How about now?”
“What?” Jamie frowns, clearly trying to decide whether or not to take offense at Malcolm’s interruption.
Malcolm narrows his eyes. “How about I apologize now for being an utter fucking prick yesterday?”
“Jeez, Malc.” Jamie waves him off. “It’s fine. You were an utter fucking prick, but I was an utter fucking cunt, so I think we’re even.”
“What were you being a cunt about?”
Jamie looks at him as if he’d suggested Flat Earthers might have a point. “Everything? Jeez, Malc. You don’t fucking move out over shit like that. Talk about fucking over-reacting.”
Malcolm purses his lips, weighs that suggestion. “I broke your phone.”
“You what?”
He shrugs. “I kept trying to ring you, and when I saw that you’d left it, it fucking annoyed me. So I threw it.”
“Guess I deserved that.”
Malcolm shakes his head, takes Jamie’s hand. “No, you didn’t.” He traces a thumb along the lines in Jamie’s palm. “I fucking hurt your feelings, Jamie. I don’t wanna do that.”
Silence follows. When Malcolm looks up, Jamie’s watching him through narrowed eyes.
“You don’t actually think that, right?”
“I don’t actually think what?”
“That it’s your house. That it’s not also my house. That I don’t get a say in what we put in it.”
Jesus. Put like that, it makes his words sound even worse. “No.” He squeezes Jamie’s hand, shakes his head. “I don’t think that, Jamie, I don’t—I don’t fucking want that.”
“All right.” Jamie grins, teeth flashing in self-satisfaction. “So we’re keeping the sofa?”
The sofa. Right. Malcolm had almost forgot at this point.
It was all about the fucking sofa.
He glances at the armrest peeking out from under his blanketed elbow. No amount of laundry detergent will ever make this sofa look like anything but what it is: a cheap stopgap purchased over fifteen years ago, with sagging pillows and fading colour failing to hide the washed-out stains and worn-through edges. When he’d suggested replacing it with something newer, something nicer, Jamie’s reaction had made him feel like he’d suggested poisoning his own mother with rat poison.
It startled him, so he lashed out. He should’ve understood. Jamie gets attached to things, the old sentimental fuck.
“Perhaps a new cover, hey? Get the pillows stuffed properly, swap out any broken springs. Fix it, don’t replace it. Isn’t that what the kids do these days?”
Jamie snorts. “We’re no fucking kids, Malc. Don’t kid yourself, I heard your joints creak last night.”
“Oh yeah? Well, fuck you. At least I don’t see the need to fucking dye my hair.”
“That’s because grey hair makes you look like some fucking warlock-type character. Me, I look like a fucking Gorbals hobo.”
“Isn’t that what you are?”
“Kiss my hobo balls.” Jamie scans the sofa with a frown. “I suppose it could use a bit of a make-over.”
“I’d say.”
“All right.” Jamie swings his legs up, stretches out with his head in Malcolm’s lap. He fishes around for Malcolm’s hand, puts it in his hair. “We can get a new cover, and do repairs ‘n all of that. But I want the same colour, yeah? Don’t want to have to get used to a new one.”
Malcolm obediently pets Jamie’s hair, not-so-surreptitiously chases down roots that need re-dying.
“Sure, same colour. Whatever you want.”