#I did enjoy writing Malcolm as a sweary shit regarding molemen again

[nehswritesstuffs]

The Thick of UNIT - Part XL

You know how it is when you laugh at your own jokes? I caught myself doing a lot while writing this one and hopefully it gets you to laugh as well, fair reader, as we’ve had a lot of heavy chapters as of late.

Chapter Index - FFN - AO3

When the Director’s away, even for a day, of course things plan on absolutely driving those left to find solace in coffee and bollockings. [Malcolm/Kate, a Malcolm Tucker working in UNIT AU] 

“I’m tellin’ yeh, Malc: come on up and we can head over to Jeanette’s brother’s in Ross and yeh can watch me get shitfaced and stare directly into the fucking sun. It’ll be a fucking laugh as any.”

Malcolm glanced over at his mobile, where he had Jamie on speaker so he could continue typing his scathing email review of Shaw, and raised an eyebrow. “I’d prefer to not be in the middle of arse-fuck nowhere with you and George—if that ain’t a disaster waiting to happen, I don’t know what the fuck is.”

“You can see it best up there! M’boys are coming too and you can bring Kate’s son along; Ken and Perce want to visit with their Uncle Malc and meet their new cousin at some point.”

“I’m still not going to Scotland—not for this,” Malcolm said. He took the call off speaker and put the mobile to his ear, turning away from the email so that he could look over the atrium. “It’s a fucking solar eclipse, Jamie. We’re getting it down here too.”

“Yeah, but totality will be higher up here.”

“You’re as subtle as a fucking balaclava.”

“What the fuck do you mean I’m as fucking subtle as a fucking balaclava?!”

“You just want to get me fucking back to all the old haunts and convince me to move back,” Malcolm frowned. He observed a couple molemen—they were flirting on the fucking job, as if he could fucking scold them for it—and shook his head despite the fact his friend could not see the action. “I can’t go back to Scotland… not now.”

“There’s UNIT up here, so is Kate’s mam, your mam, your sister, you can raise that nip you were telling me about in a sane place…”

“Glasburgh would be a demotion at this point, Kate’s mam hasn’t recognized her own daughter in years, my mam won’t take fucking help from no one, and if we leave with the nip then we’d have more to deal with than just some hurt feelings.”

Jamie grunted in frustration—he was found out and shut the fuck down. “You’re a fucking hard sell, you know that? Used to be all I needed to say was that if we got on a sleeper train we could watch George’s pub shinty team try to play while standing upright, but now trying to find an excuse to come up without being work-related is like finding a non-bent Etonian. I doubt you’d even come up this way for the nip’s sake at this point.”

“It won’t always be like this, I promise,” Malcolm said. He was beginning to regret telling Jamie about his and Kate’s pending adoption, though was increasingly glad that he had so far withheld the child’s origins, as he was flipping his shit at the prospect of a normal human child to turn into another version of them. Knowledge of potential for any extraterrestrial insanity might push things over the fucking edge. “Maybe once the kid’s a bit older and Kate and I are retiring we can move, but not now. Lexie’s here with a lad who wants to avoid his folks, Kanda and Gordon are getting hitched while they’re trying to get established in their careers, Fiona is already volunteering for babysitting duties between classes…”

“Alright, alright, I get it, I get it; fuck, Malc… you’re getting soft as an old, married cunt.”

“I’m not soft.”

“When was the last time you had a proper shout? Like, just find the nearest tit or bint and just rip into them like they’re a Christmas fucking turkey and you’re a half-starved dog?”

“Last month—one of my staff almost leaked some classified shit from the 60s that’s not available for public knowledge for another hundred years at least.”

“…and the time before that?”

“Before Christmas—molewoman almost fucked a member of a fringe group that wants to expose us as a general waste of taxpayers’ money.”

“See? You’re getting docile. All this domestic shite is making you lose your touch.”

“No, I’m just used to working with more fucking competence these days. How fucking often do you have to have a shout at your staff?”

“Yeah, but I at least got to hire the pieces of shit around here—you had no say in any of them there, or am I remembering this wrong?”

“You remember right; I’d get rid of the one, but he’s been here too long to touch so I have to deal with him being a limp fucking sack between bollockings and negative performance reviews.”

“Soft as a pot of overcooked pasta, a soggy bottom on an Empire biscuit, an over-warmed munchie box, a marzipan dildo…”

“You take that back! That’s my fucking line!”

“Make me, yeh useless fucking toothless shark.” Malcolm could hear the smirk in Jamie’s voice; it made him want to reach through the phone and smack him.

“Fuck off.”

“Gladly—chat you up later, mate. Jeanette says to cunt off.”

“Your words, not hers.”

They ended the phone call and Malcolm shut his mobile up in his desk drawer. Few things were like talking to Jamie—he was always reminded of good days and bad days, ones that could have been, those that he wished could have happened, and those that should have happened but didn’t because they were in such different times. There had been no playmates for him to give Jamie’s bairns—maybe just a couple years of babysitting at best—no shared milestones, no nothing of the sort, and he wasn’t going to go all the fucking way up to Scotland just to be reminded of that. His mobile rang inside the drawer; fuck it.

Malcolm signed back into his computer and, after tabling his evisceration of Shaw for when he wasn’t so frustrated, began typing away at a report he was due to hand over to someone at Transport regarding a rerouted train (they were owed at least an explanation from him after all the years they were nominally decent to work with) and ignored his mobile for a second time. He wasn’t in the fucking mood for Jamie’s shenanigans.

…except the third time, his attention was caught. He opened up the drawer and saw Fiona’s number on the caller ID.

Fuck.

“Yeah? What’s up, kiddo?” Yeah, try to sound natural, as though there had not just been five whole minutes of pointedly ignoring her. He heard her sniffle and something in the back of his mind went on alert. “Are you alright? Did you catch something?”

“I’m staying with you and Mum,” Fiona stated, sounding more cross than anything else. “Fuck this school and its inability to let me get anything done.”

“Fiona, lass, I thought you were saying that you were going to stick it out just until summer.”

“I was, but I can’t take it anymore, Malcolm. If I get asked about Ferrero Financial one more time I am going to bloody scream.”

“All talk of moving back into the house have to go through your mam,” Malcolm said. He leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes—he was too tired for this. “Why don’t you call her?”

“I tried, but she won’t answer. I think she’s in the Archive.”

“It’s still her house, not mine.”

“Can you make the case for me? Please?”

“I can’t promise anything, not on this.”

“I’ll hold you to it.” Malcolm could detect the sass in Fiona’s voice—she was going to be fine. “How late are you and Mum working tonight?”

“We both get out at five today, but it begins changing after that,” he explained. “What I’ll fully accept in slow news cycles I am paying for with bizarrely shitty shifts.”

“Oh shit, got to go; talk to you later, love you, bye!” Fiona said quickly before ending the call. Malcolm stared at his mobile, watching as the main screen popped back up again.

“It’s called a mobile telephone and it is used to make phone calls from anywhere without cranking a box,” Aparajita sniped as she came into the room. She placed some papers and a cuppa on Malcolm’s desk, taking delight in how ruffled he was getting.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he grunted. “Longest fucking errand run I’ve ever seen.”

“I took a whole fucking holiday, thank you very much,” she shot back. She watched as he kept staring at his mobile as he reached for his tea, the expression on his face extremely curious. “Alright, I’ll bite: who was that on the other end?”

“Fiona; the lass has had enough of her wee school mates and professors, I think.”

“How is that so surprising?”

“At first I didn’t even answer the call—thought it was Jamie calling me back to try to work on me a bit more—but just the way she was talking to me… she said she loved me before hanging up.”

“…and…? She was calling you for help or advice or whatever; it means she trusts you, and oftentimes you’ll find those two together.” Aparajita smirked as she watched Malcolm shift uncomfortably in his seat. “You better get used to it—Oswald’s spawn is going to be telling you that before you realize it and I need you to still be able to function afterwards. Did she have to hang up quick?”

“Yeah…?”

“Then maybe it wasn’t even voluntary; could be it just slipped out. Relax, Malcolm, or you’re going to be a wreck before you even have the right to be.”

“You don’t know what I have the right to be or not.”

“I’ve been working with you for five years now—I think I have some idea.”

He flipped her a V as he took a sip of his tea. There was little refuting that, but he was not going to let her have the final say.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It took plenty of consoling over the following few nights, but after a gallon and a half of ice cream and a promise to help no matter what happened, Kate and Malcolm were able to get Fiona into a state that was sensible enough to finish off the semester. It did mean that, however, Kate had to march her daughter down to her school, where her father was waiting along with a dean of faculty so that all four of them could have a conversation about personal privacy and how people were going to need to increase their observation of it, especially if they did not want a scandal dropped on the school orchestrated by a former government spin-master who happened to be the young woman’s threateningly unseen stepfather.

In the meantime, while Kate was dealing with what were serious negotiations regarding her daughter’s ability to get work done in peace, Malcolm was in charge over at Mainframe UK. He wasn’t particularly worried or nervous or irritable or anything else of the like when it came to work that morning—things were nearly enjoyable, even—and was enjoying getting updates on the drama whenever Fiona would be able to slyly whip out her mobile. The one fucking day he would have enjoyed being in a Poxbridge college and he had to miss it, though this was honestly not only the safest, but the next best thing. It had been such a decent morning that he thought it fucking criminal when Aparajita finally knocked on his door.

“What?” he glowered.

“Are you going to be on your mobile all day like a child or are you going to pay attention to what’s going on around you?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The eclipse is going to start in five minutes; all you’ve done this morning is giggle at play-by-play of some Oxbridge cunt getting eviscerated by your wife.”

“…your point being…?”

“You might as well watch it with the rest of us,” she offered. “It’ll be on the screens, but at least we won’t burn our eyeballs out.”

“Fine, I’ll come,” he whined. “I don’t know why I can’t simply monitor the situation from my office.”

“Eclipses come with disruptions to day-to-day life,” Aparajita shrugged. “We can’t allow it to mess with our sensors and let it go unnoticed. You know that.”

“Not that I want to,” Malcolm grumbled. He followed his PA to the lift and out into the atrium. Everything looked as though it was going smoothly, if a bit hurried for all the checking and double-checking that was going on. There were some who even were saluting as Malcolm and Aparajita passed, making both slightly uneasy with the formality.

“A little while and we’ll be back to normal,” Aparajita said aloud. Malcolm glanced at her, attempting to see if she said it for his sake or her own—he couldn’t tell.

“Fuck, and to think I could be in Scotland right now.”

“Is that what MacDonald was calling you about the other day?”

“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t,” he said, his eyes flitting from screen to screen. The eclipse had begun, with the moon beginning to creep over the sun’s domain. “All we can know for certain is that I could be in Ross, watching one of my best mates get absolutely shite-faced, and I wouldn’t even be able to join in because I’d technically be on-call.”

“You’re a spin master, not a doctor.”

“Yeah, but if this fucking thing goes and disrupts sensors, how the fuck are we going to explain the Trion Cultural Center in Clapton? The Tripartite presence in the National Trust? Lizard people in Wales?”

“You worry too much; we’ve got Hart and Husak. They can keep Shaw in line.”

“Shaw needs to suck a couple cocks before I can wholly trust him with a press release.” A flashing red light over in a corner caught his attention and his stomach dropped. “Report!”

“It looks worse than it is,” the molewoman at the station explained. “Plainview Zygon sighting over in Leeds—looks like it’s… a robbery…?”

“Robbing what? Whom?”

“An Asda.”

Malcolm blinked. “They’re robbing a fucking Asda?”

“It… erm… seems so…”

Inhaling deeply, Malcolm held his breath for five seconds before allowing himself to exhale. He pinched the bridge of his nose, already fucking annoyed. “Fucking… alright, dispatch a small section to the scene; make sure they have just enough firepower to back themselves up. Don’t want to make EVEN MORE OF A GODDAMNED FUCKING SCENE THAN WE ALREADY ARE.” He turned to a mole-intern and did his best to soften up.

“I need coffee—large, black, seven sugars, and a fucking candy bar. Whatever the fuck you can manage; ask my staff where I keep some in case of emergencies. I don’t even care if it’s a basic bitch Mars Bar.”

Okay, so only like a shark with one row of teeth instead of three.

“Never did I think I’d hear you say ‘basic bitch’ in my entire life,” Aparajita smirked as the intern skittered away.

“It’s amazing the things you pick up when there’s a nineteen-year-old in your house on the weekends,” he shrugged. He then saw yellow flash across a nearby screen, causing him to snap his fingers and point. “You. Why the fuck is your monitor pissing itself?”

The moleman recoiled in anticipation. “A pair of Zygons is taking an MP hostage in Cornwall.”

“For fuck’s sake—SOMEONE GET ME BLYTHE ON THE PHONE, NOW.”

“Sir…?”

“What?” he snapped. Another moleman was looking at him warily.

“Suffolk has a Zygon causing a commotion at the seaside amongst some elderly sunbathers.”

“The fucking…” He saw Aparajita hold out a mobile towards him. “Is that Blythe?”

“Her PA.”

“Close e-fucking-nough.” He put the mobile to his ear. “Yeah?”

“Captain Blythe is currently indisposed for a moment—what is your message?”

“Do you have the authority to scramble troops while she’s in the bog or whateverthefuck she’s doing?

“To a degree.”

“We got a Zygon-related hostage situation out your way if your sensors haven’t picked up on it already. Also need to know if you can quickly get some sea squaddies to Suffolk or if I need to kick some of mine over.”

“Suffolk sounds like it would step on certain toes if we were the first to respond. Where is the situation?”

“It’s… hold on,” Malcolm put the mobile to his shoulder, “where the fuck’s the hostage situation?!”

“The Lizard, sir,” the appropriate moleman replied.

“I got a fucking Sea Devil on the other end and you want me to tell him that it’s where?!”

“The Lizard Peninsula, sir.”

“Fucking…” he put the mobile to his ear again, “the Lizard Peninsula. Please tell me that’s a real fucking place and this wee cumstain isn’t just shitting me.”

“It is a real place—looks like we’re getting info now. I’ll get a cell right on it.” Malcolm ended the call and passed the mobile back to Aparajita, only for someone to tap him on the shoulder.

“Sir?”

“What?!” He glared in the direction of the voice, only to find it was the intern, returned with a black coffee and a pair of Curly Wurlys. Taking a breath, he forcibly calmed down before reaching out to take the offerings. “Thank you. Honestly. Don’t mean to take this fuckery out on you.”

“Uh… you’re welcome…?” The mole-intern gave a nervous smile and ran off. Malcolm took a preliminary sip of coffee and nodded—perfect.

“You better be careful, Rajit, or that kid’ll put you out of a job,” he joked.

“You wouldn’t dare,” she said, taking the candy so that he could hold the coffee in one hand and whip out his own mobile with the other. “You wouldn’t survive without me, and I’m not talking about coffee or candy or just forwarding your mail. The better question is: who are you going to terrorize now?”

“Someone who knows better than to cross me,” he said. He sipped the coffee and watched as a couple more screens went towards much brighter colors than he was comfortable with. The mobile on the other end picked up, the woman on the other end not entirely certain she was taking the call.

“Don’t you have an eclipse to watch like the rest of us?” Nicola asked.

“You wanna look a bit off your nut but overall fucking brilliant?” he asked. He waited for a moment, the other side silent.

“…what do you possibly need my help to spin?”

“We got a Sharp Sharon over here if I’ve ever fucking known one,” Malcolm grinned. “You know that woman we brought to your house who turned into a rubbery-looking magenta alien?”

“It’s difficult to forget.”

“Bunch ‘o fucks that look like her are being petty tits and I need am going to need a fucking out once the eclipse is done and normal fucking people glance around and look at the damage.”

“What do you suggest?”

“First you have to apologize to a Cornish MP for being taken hostage…”

“What the fuck, Malcolm; a hostage crisis?! How is that being petty?!”

“It’s more than just that, but it’ll make you look like a bloody fucking genius ready to dish up some fucking security protocol reforms. You in?”

Nicola made a sound in thought before groaning, “Fine. Do you have the script?”

“I’ll send it to you after everything’s contained and people are wondering what the fuck happened,” he replied. “Gotta make sure nothing actually bad has happened first. I wouldn’t put you in a position to take the blame for injuries or significant damage to public property. Ta.” He ended the call and pocketed the mobile again, accepting a halfway opened Curly Wurly from Aparajita. “Well, that’s a branch of Shit Creek we can float down.”

“I’ve got Bell coming down, as well as Arwell,” Aparajita said. “They can get back from Whitehall fairly quickly.”

“Glad it was them on the field trip and not me this time,” Malcolm replied. He gnawed off a chunk of candy and gnashed on it openly as he turned his attention back towards the molemen. “Alright! Who the fuck needs some Zy-B-Gone? If you don’t facilitate the cleaning of this shit up, I’m going to need to call Lieutenant-Colonel Bismuth back from her cunting holiday to help do the mopping, and I’m going to let her use you lot as the fucking brush.”

It was a good thing, Malcolm thought, that the threat of physical violence in his day and age was still a viable option to get underlings to cooperate… to an extent, of fucking course. He wasn’t cruel… simply tired of the day’s shit before it was even close to noon.

-_-_-_-_-_-_-

Kate sank down onto the sitting room couch at her house, completely spent emotionally and mentally. It had been a long day of negotiations, with the irritating double-combination of her ex-husband and the dean of faculty going nowhere in discussion for hours on-end, effectively trapping her all day as they didn’t even reach a resolution on what to do regarding Fiona and her inability to work without being pestered. It wasn’t even like Loris’s business ventures were grand compared to the parents of other students sitting lectures with their daughter; he was positively small-fry. After a day of doing absolutely nothing but listen to two men figuratively wank over their own self-importance, she had done the right thing and went down to Fiona’s dorm to help her pack—she allowed her daughter to drop out… albeit temporarily.

“Do you think I should wait until the Fall term to transfer or get in during Summer yet?” Fiona asked. She flopped down into an armchair while scrolling through her mobile. “I think I can secure a spot at Lex’s school without even so much as a sneeze now that I look at it…”

“Give it a month, then start looking around at where you want to apply over Summer so that you’re in for the Fall,” Kate replied. “Remember: you’re going to have to claim a culture and values clash and not any of the bullshit we just sat through. We’re better than running away from our problems.”

“We’re Lethbridge-Stewarts; we simply know when to back the fuck away.”

“What time is it? I’m famished.”

“Nearly eight.”

“Fuck.” Kate allowed herself to fall over, groaning into the cushions. “Curry it is then.”

“I’ll see what we still got left in the kitchen,” Fiona offered. She abandoned her mobile and went into the kitchen, leaving her mother lay with her eyes closed. A few moments passed and she shouted, “Oh, hey, Malcolm’s home!”

“About damn time,” Kate said. She remained in her spot as she heard the door open and shut, her husband shuffling into the house, and the distinct sound of a tie coming undone and a suit jacket being discarded right next to her. “Where’ve you been?”

“Work,” he replied, voice rougher than normal. “Fiona said you just got home; where were you?”

“Giving my daughter permission to drop out of university.”

“Those fucking cunts were that useless? Even after you threw my name around?”

“They aren’t ‘fucking cunts’ for nothing, you know,” she grumbled. “How was work?”

“MP Nicola Murray has given a press conference on how she commissioned an orchestrated set of stunts done by hired actors in rubber alien suits that presents a clear example of the potential holes in our national security and varying protocols,” he said almost mechanically. He waited until she rolled onto her back and laid down on top of her, settling his face right in her chest. “It was done during the eclipse because most people were being distracted and the rubber suits were to help give a sense of silliness to the whole thing. She’s already publicly apologized, though if you turn on any news station, her ‘genius’ is the talk of anyone with half a brain cell and the word ‘Zygon’ has yet to be uttered.”

“I thought you hated Nicola.”

“I’m severely annoyed by Nicola; couldn’t hate her if I tried.”

“All splinter Zygons in custody then?”

“Given to their respective leadership for punishment,” he affirmed. “Do I smell our new housekeeper making curry? I’ve survived off coffee and varying other vehicles for sugar all day.”

“That she is.” Kate scratched her husband’s back with one hand and his scalp with the other. “Who’s monitoring everything?”

“Arwell.”

“Then some food and a kip and I’ll head in early to relieve him.”

“No; stay; I want to wake up to you.”

“Maybe you still will,” she teased. She leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his hair. “Thank you for holding down the mainframe.”

He squeezed her just a bit tighter; he had gone through much worse for her and would likely go through shit still. It was only just the beginning, after all.