Title: Fob Watches and VHS
Author:
ladygray99Rating: PG13 (for cussing)
Fandom: Doctor Who, The Thick of It
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Malcolm Tucker, Ollie Reeder
Word count: 1,316
Warnings/Spoilers: MAJOR DOCTOR WHO SPOILERS FOR RECENT ANNOUNCEMENT
Summary: Ollie has to give Malcolm something.
Notes: Well someone had to do it.
Beta: Written in half an hour so, no.
Fob Watches and VHS
Ollie stood across the street in the rain, watching as Malcolm stormed around inside his house. The press had finally cleared off his front steps and Malcolm must have felt safe enough, or claustrophobic enough to open the curtains. The judge declared house detention until sentencing. The bets around Number 10 was that Malcolm would get 5,000 hours of picking up rubbish by the motorway and be back slumming around by the next party political.
Ollie didn't have that much faith. The mob/respected voting public wanted a whipping boy, someone they could burn in effigy, and Malcolm had decided to take one last hit for the party.
The watch was heavy in Ollie's hand as he braced himself to knock on Malcolm's door. He'd stopped thinking of Malcolm as The Doctor the first time Malcolm had shoved him against the wall of the tea room and called him a cunt. That had been years ago. The Doctor was going to be pissed. It was only supposed to be a few weeks. A couple of months, tops. But every few months River would pop in to tell them the threat was not yet gone. In truth things had cleared up a few months earlier but it was in the middle of the whole Mr. Tickle nightmare and Nicola stepping down, plus Ollie was in hospital for that week.
They were excuses, Ollie knew that. The Doctor had sworn his human self would be normal but something went wrong, so very wrong. What if something went wrong the other way? Malcolm's personality with a sonic screwdriver. The first time he told a Judoon to go fuck itself on its own horn things would get very unpleasant. Probably for Ollie.
He took one more deep breath and scurried across the street before knocking on the door. There was long silence before Malcolm could be heard screaming behind the door.
"I told you little piss for brains, cunts that…" The door was flung open. "Fuck."
"Hello Malcolm."
"What the fuck do you want you little gob shite?"
Ollie winced a little inside. He always did. The words gob shite should never come from the Doctor's face. Not his Doctor who had given him a kindly smirk while he lay in rubble, took his hand, and told him to run. "Just needed to talk to you, Malcolm."
"No. Whatever the fuck you or that bag of traitorous cunts at the party want the answer is no." Ollie pulled out a VHS tape from a shoulder bag and held it out to Malcolm. He had no idea why The Doctor had insisted on VHS "This isn't real prison, and even if it was I'll take the fucking serial killer three cells down up the arse before I watch you homemade wank movie."
"I was told to give this to you by someone important and I don't mean the PM, I mean someone actually important." Malcolm just glared at him. Ollie shook the tape. "Just watch it and I'll wait out here."
Malcolm looked around and the rain before dragging Ollie inside muttering about dick for brain cunts getting fucking phenomena. He grabbed the tape. "I see a single bollox on this…"
"Not even a hint of one. I'll just go make tea." Ollie scurried to the kitchen.
"Just because I can't make your life directly hell doesn't mean you get to piss in it!" Malcolm shouted after him.
Ollie hadn't considered it but there was now definitely an urge to lick the inside of Malcolm's cup first. He'd wanted to do it for years but was afraid Malcolm would be able to taste it somehow. He heard the clunk of the tape going in just as he turned on the kettle. He was impressed. Malcolm's kitchen was far better kitted out than he ever expected. Of course a lot of the cooking implements hanging off of hooks could probably double nicely as tools for 'enhanced interrogation.'
He could just make out the rhythm of the Doctor's voice in the other room, so different from Malcolm's. Ollie had watched the tape a dozen times, even converting it to DVD so he wouldn't damage it with too many viewings. It had been fun at first but it became a form of masochism after a while, wondering if the man in the tape would ever come back. The tape stopped too soon. Ollie looked for tea bags but only found tins of expensive loose leaf varieties and a couple of proper tea pots.
He heard Malcolm's footsteps and tensed but they went past the kitchen and upstairs. He pulled down a Brown Betty tea pot (his mother always said they poured the best), and a tin of loose Earl Gray. He heard Malcolm's steps again seconds before he was flung across the room, the tea pot shattering to the floor.
A slap across the face knocked him to the ground. He looked up at Malcolm thundering over him. He knew that expression, it was one of the Doctor's, last seen directed at a Dalek.
"I don't know how the fuck you did it, you and your fucking, gay lego friends, in fucking green gimp suits or something, but I am going to take the jagged shards of that fucking tea pot, my fucking favourite one by the way, and I am going to shove each piece slowly up your little cunt of an arse until you tell me how the fuck you found out about this." A spiral notebook dropped in front of Ollie's face. "And once you have confessed every ill dead you have ever done I will put serious thought into if I should kill you and go to prison for a real fucking crime."
Ollie reached out and flipped open the notebook. He didn't dare try to get up. There was a picture of the TARDIS. Circles in circles which Ollie knew was the language of the Doctor's people. He flipped pages. There was a Dalak, Madame Vastra, and the sonic screwdriver.
Ollie took the watch from his pocket, thankfully not the one he landed on and held it out. Malcolm knocked it away before slapping Ollie hard across the face, again. Ollie took out the sonic screwdriver, half convinced it would get him a sold kick in the bollocks.
"Just open the watch Malcolm." Ollie could feel his lip bleeding. "I can't handle this much more. I just want things the way they were. You know, with us running from monsters and River teasing me for screaming like a little girl.
"River."
"River Song."
Malcolm was silent for a long time. "I never wrote her name down." his voice was soft and low. "Even if you saw every page of that book somehow, I never wrote down that name. Who is she?"
"Your wife."
Malcolm gave a half smile looking more like the Doctor than he had in years. "Oh fuck me."
He picked up the watch from the shards of the tea pot and flipped it open. Gold light poured from it and swirled around Malcolm. The light almost seemed to caress him, getting brighter, until Ollie had to close his eyes and turn away. He stayed like that until a hand gently touched his. He looked up into the face of the Doctor.
"I am so sorry." He helped Ollie to his feet. "We were in such a rush I must have miscalibrated the personality matrix."
"Really. I would never have guessed." He held out the sonic screwdriver.
"Thank you." The doctor twirled around scanning the area. Ollie couldn't believe how much he'd missed that little hum. "Area looks clear."
"It took a while but River said the solar system is clean."
"Knew she'd come through." He slung his arm around Ollie's shoulders. "Come on Mister Reeder, I do believe I still owe you a vacation."
"Doctor, you have no fucking idea."