It’s half past midnight and Jamie’s up to his ears in five different interviews he hopes to mix into one decent article, and the last thing he expects is a sharp doorbell ring. Jamie jumps up a little in the chair and scowls. Who the fuck needs him in the middle of the night? Barry the junkie from upstairs or Beth the madwoman next door? He knows the ringing won’t stop unless he speaks to either of them, so he groans and stomps out of the room, annoyance rising up quickly in him.

“The fuck is it now?” he growls while opening the door and stops dead at the sight of Malcolm.

It’s been a whole fucking year since they’ve spoken last. By that time Malcolm’s hair gone grey, any vanishing layer of fat disappeared entirely from his body leaving a fucking skeleton and some skin, and his fleece part of the wardrobe acquired another specimen.

The silence stretches. Malcolm keeps looking everywhere but straight at Jamie and it seems like he won’t speak first.

Jamie sighs. He doesn’t have to ask stuff like ‘what are you doing here?’ and ‘are you off your sleeping pills again?’. He knows about the sacking. He fucking phoned the cunt a week ago, and then Sam when Malcolm didn’t pick up, he knows the whole story in detail. He also knows Malcolm has no idea what to do with himself now when he was flushed down the drain, so it occurred to him, likely an hour ago, that he should go and visit his sometime best mate Jamie. Sleep deprivation and anxiety made Malcolm do stupider things, after all, nothing new here.

Jamie steps aside finally, letting Malcolm in.

“I have pizza and to your luck some left-over chamomile tea,” he says on the way, while Malcolm takes off his shoes and the jacket. “I have to finish the article tonight but you’re welcome to sit quietly on the fucking sofa.”

“Very fucking kind of you,” Malcolm snarls in reply, his voice completely flat and just as grey as the rest of him.

Jamie refuses to feel sorry for the bastard. He doesn’t turn the volume down knowing Malcolm can’t stand Jolson, and he doesn’t pay much attention to him once the tea and pizza are served. If the auld twat feels awkward and unwelcome then he fucking gets it right.

Half an hour later the article is nowhere near done because Jamie can’t concentrate for shit. For a person who occupies so little space, being barely fucking three-dimensional, Malcolm sure can create a lot of tension around himself. It gets on Jamie’s nerves.

He turns around angrily, wanting to rant for a while about the choices Malcolm had made and how there’s inevitable consequences for every one of them, but to his embarrassment discovers Malcolm asleep.

“Och, fuck you,” he whispers, exasperated.

He kills the music off, fetches a blanket to throw it on Malcolm in passing, very pointedly not pausing to hover, and goes to finish his bloody article.




Malcolm awakes with an incoming message. The buzzing rips him from sleep with a startle, a fucking knee-jerk reaction, and for a second he thinks he’s being summoned to handle another fucking crisis, but no such fucking luck.

The phone is Jamie’s, not his, vibrating loudly on the desk. Jamie’s on the desk as well, dead to the world next to his laptop. It’s almost 6 a.m.

Malcolm gets up, neck aching and joints creaking. He checks his own phone on the way to the bathroom, but there’s nothing there, predictably enough. Malcolm’s spoiled goods now. No one will have him. Definitely not Jamie, which is obvious in the morning but was somehow murky at night. Malcolm cringes at himself in the mirror. Fucking idiot.

He wants to slip out quietly, but still stops by the desk, too fucking sentimental in his old age for his own fucking good. The phone buzzes with a message again, showing a familiar name – Diana, Jamie’s editor. Malcolm picks up the phone on autopilot.

Where’s your fucking article??? The message reads. You have half an hour!

Malcolm licks his lips.

He takes the laptop carefully – maybe he’ll only have to hit the send button. No need to wake up Jamie for that.

He goes to the kitchen for the task and discovers the article in a state of disarray. Well, it’s exactly why he dragged Jamie out of the journalism as soon as possible, after all. The wee psycho fuck could write a decent thing but only half-drunk and in a fit of inspiration. Being sober and disgruntled got him precisely nowhere.

He makes coffee while trying to decipher Jamie’s attempts at intelligent writing. Thankfully, Malcolm knows exactly how his brain works, so in twenty minutes he manages to distillate the main point and comes up with a missing argument, sending the article to Diana just in time.

He’s done frying the eggs when the reply comes.

Not bad. Who wrote it for you, you half-wit neanderthal?

Malcolm grins smugly. Maybe he should get back into journalism, after all.

“Are you still here?”

Malcolm turns around. “You’ve a massage.”

Jamie scowls, taking the phone, glaring between Malcolm and the laptop. “She’s about to rip my junk off,” he mutters, hair sticking out wildly and red sleeve imprints creasing his face. Malcolm turns away and waits for the events to catch up with his half-functioning brain.

“Have you messed with my fucking article?!”

Malcolm shrugs. “And made you a fucking breakfast. You’re welcome.”

There is a pause.

“Oh fuck you, you sorry fucking bastard! You don’t get to appear on my doorstep after a fucking year of complete radio-silence, all casual and shit, getting your fucking grabby paws into my fucking life and expecting me to be fucking grateful about it!”

Malcolm turns around to the bright furious eyes, having zero idea how to make it better but feeling more alive than he’s been in months. In the whole fucking year, more likely.
“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Yer sorry?!” Jamie makes an indignant noise. “That does make me feel immensely fucking better! He’s fucking sorry! Say it one more fucking time with a tad more sincerity in you voice, you senile fucking psychopath!”

Malcolm sniffs. “Yeah, I am fucking sorry. I’m sorry you've left, I’m sorry I was avoiding you for a year – what fucking else do you want me to say? Please come back, Jamie, you’re the fucking love of my life and I can’t live without you?”

He means to sound mocking but suspects it came out more desperate than sarcastic. Jamie, being Jamie, catches up on it right away. He tilts his head, a tiny smile tugging on his lips.

“Yeah, that’s more like it. Hope the eggs are still hot.”

Malcolm watches him eat with grumpy amusement, bitterness dissipating in his chest slowly under the weak sunlight, and he can taste coffee he’s drinking for the first time in weeks, which is also pretty great.

“Oh, and good morning, Malc,” Jamie says after a pause, and Malcolm smiles sneakily behinds his mug.

Fuck yes, it finally is.