Indeed, Sir

Drabble: Jeeves and the precious Warmth (PG rated)

"Something about this bally weather makes one really appreciate having a cozy flat to hole up in, eh, Jeeves?"

"Indeed, sir. To be out in this weather seems exceedingly unfortunate."

Bertie hummed thoughtfully. "I suppose that's why homeless spend what they have on Dutch Courage. Warms you up right quick."

Jeeves agreed. "Perhaps it is less dreadful that way."

The brunette sighed, forehead against the freezing window, eyes closed. "More's needed. Could we...?"

Unsurprised, the valet hid a smile. To him, Bertie's kind heart seemed a warmth of its own.

Maybe that was why he felt at home with him.

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Is Bertram actually depicted a brunette in the books? I seem to remember someone mentioning him a blond... Argh... I don't know, so I just pictured Laurie-Wooster.
And actually... there's something I've been wondering. When writing something like "there's", does that count as one word or two? *sighs* I feel like an idiot now...
Also: First drabble I ever did, yay! *coughs*

Edited Date: 2013-05-03 07:35 pm (UTC)

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Aw!!!! 'maybe that was why he felt at home...." so sweet!!! Thanks for making my evening!

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You're welcome. :) Thanks for reviewing!

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D'awwww! Sweet. First drabble? Huzzah! \o/ Well done, you!

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Why thank you. :) ♥

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The ending there is lovely. That doesn't stop Jeeves from shamelessly manipulating Bertie, though! ;)

Contractions count as one word, at least in my book.

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Well, he's Jeeves. We might be able to forgive him, somehow. ;)

Thanks!

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Sorry. I am evidently incapable of the drabble form. Forgive my verbosity. *bows*

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“Filthy weather.” She squinted at the wall of snow that rendered blackout curtain redundant. Nature had provided a thicker drapery that the thin moon did nothing to enliven. “Even the bombers are frozen out.”

“Small blessings.” Bertram Wooster twitched the cloth out of her chilled fingers. “Go to bed, Angela. You’ll be warm there.”

Or as warm as one could be, these January days. Even with Angie and her family moved in (their own house being sans-front-wall - a sort of remodel via Kraut rocket] the now-double coal ration was still on the scant side, need being judged against a normal winter and not the bone-chiller blowing though tonight.

“Me?” Angela pulled away. “Question is why you’re still up. I’ve got a husband out there – her nod took in the blacked-out London streets - but you…”

“Jeeves is due in.” The words came rushing out ahead of Bertie’s brain’s lethargic plod. If he hadn’t been the idiot his Aunt Agatha had inevitably declared – back in the days when she had been around to make that announcement? Well, a decade of domestic content had done what a childhood of matronly terror could not achieve.

Angie, however, just rolled her eyes. “Really, Bertie. You’d think he was your employer, the way you hang on the man. If he’s on the night train you should have told him stay at the station until a decent time of morning.”

“He said his sister gave him eggs.”

His cousin was still grousing. Best up the ante.

“Also butter and jam.”

“Oh!” Her smile said – sans words – that *that* made things quite *quite* different. She glanced from Bertie, to the kitchen, to the thin pulp mystery Bertie had been reading. “Do you think you might take that down to the lobby? Just in case, you know, we might miss the bell?” Bustling around, she snatched up Bertie’s sweater and a lap robe from the sofa. “It would be dreadful to leave the dear man waiting outside in this weather.”

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Verbosity forgiven due to heart-aching closeted gayness.

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Thank you. *smile*
Don't know where this came from but ... thinking that the world imposes without even knowing it has done so.

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Dead fucking on.

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Also, it's 333 words, which is a pleasing number.

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Angela, Angela, how blind can you be?

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Oh, I agree - non-drabbly thingummy approved due to being quite a pluck on the heart-strings.
Nicely done.

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Drabble: Fickle
Rating: G
Warnings & Pairing: None

________

The Wooster disposish was much chirpier after I'd had my tea and eggs and b., but alas, the weather is a fickle mistress. It's blue skies when there's a cloud on a chap's soul, but the minute you start brimming with good cheer the birds cease to twitter and the sun goes AWOL.

"I have a telegram from Aunt Agatha, sir. It appears she was unable to visit us today due to inclement weather," said Jeeves, shimmering into view. Well, I'll be dashed if the rough winds shaking the darling somethings of the metrop. didn't seem a b. in disguise.

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Oh yes - less Aunt Agatha - more staying in with Jeeves. Good all around.

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Definitely! ;) Thanks for commentng!

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A lovely turn of events, avoiding the dreaded Nephew Crusher!
Well done, you!

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Thank you! :)

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I hide my face in shame. Seriously. More verbosity, now with the added disadvantage of purple prose that R. M. Banks would not allow. But hey... porn. So that makes up for it. Right? (ducks)

%%%%%%%

“Jeeves!” Bertie struggled to push the door against the bitter wind.

Jeeves helped – or tried to. He was hampered by the layers of cloth wrapped shawl-like over his greatcoat, extra (if insufficient) protection contra the midnight chill. The unshoveled snow – now turned to filthy ice underfoot – meant that what pull he could provide – burdened as Jeeves was with a double armful of basketry – tended more to set him moving than to affect the door. Working in blackout darkness wasn’t any joy either.

Still, after some extended panting and gasping Bertie managed to get Jeeves – encumbrances included – securely inside the domestic portal and the outer door secured against the world.

“Home!” Jeeves whispered the word as a benediction. His body was shaking, his face white under his black bowler.

“Home.” And Bertram’s answer, murmured into the other man’s dark curls, named his being and not their mutual location.

Their hands locked, fingers twined and palm pressed to palm, burning and singular, the only heat as their breaths rose, twin ghosts of white fog in the barren lobby.

Bertram pulled his man into the alcove.

The doorman used to keep packages there. Morning mail delivery, mostly, when the parcel post came in before the late-rising residents came down. Sometimes bright hatboxes or shirt boxes from the better stores. It was empty now. No early post. No fashion at any time, what with the fierce rationing. No doorman, for that matter. Watching a portal was the opposite of a reserved occupation.

“The gifts…” Dark eyes flicked to the stack, but rested no more than a second before emotion drew them back to Bertie’s burning blue gaze.

“Can wait.”

The words were iron command.

“Yes.” Jeeves shed the top wraps, the damp wool to puddling ignored around their feet. His knit gloves followed, stiff with pressed snow and only a degree more cold than the icy hands that struggled to move the weather-sodden Chesterfield.

Bertie lent a pair of nimble hands, warmer fingers making quick work of the rows of buttons. Snow-drenched overcoat first, as reason would dictate, but after that clear duty the fingers persisted, seeking out deeper fastening. Jacket, then vest, and finally the delicate passage between shirt studs, until only a thin undershirt stood between desire and a delicate nipple.

Jeeves shivered.

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Bertram shivered also, from passion and from chill as his man’s clever fingers returned the gift of unbuttoning, finding the long-familiar pathway from fly to undershorts to brush that most tender spot between shaft and scrotum, the one where the long vein teased the nerves. Bertie had always been sensitive there, and his lover had always been the most observant and clever of chaps. It had taken… not long at all… for Reginald Jeeves to learn the trick of transforming Wooster into wobble with a single precise stroke.

It was a skill that only improved with practice. Much practice.

He might not be as clever, but as a Magdalene grad He could swot when a topic demanded. Anatomy – the anatomy of one R. J. in particular – was a topic worthy of a king’s scholar, and Bertram had applied himself to the laboratory of the bedroom with a master’s devotion.

Their lips locked, muffling the passionate pledges that could not be withheld.

Bertie wrapped his fingers over the round thickness, pulling stroke after stroke in the pace taught in those college days. His man’s rapid breaths served as the boatswain’s chant, encouraging Bertie’s grip on the oar of love.

In answer, the broad fingers moved back. Ghosting between rear cheeks to circle and plunge. Lightning sparked from that beloved finger, racing up Bertie’s spine, setting off joy after joy in a twist of sensation and memory.

Bertie shattered.

His body dropped limp against his man’s broad chest. His palm twisted one last time, gripping their treasure of shaft and balls together in loving heat.

Jeeves groaned, surrendering all even as he claimed all, arm wrapped around the arms wrapped around him.

Bertie breathed deeply of his one true oxygen. Of that mix of wool and hair oil and Reginald – Reginald Jeeves – his Jeeves.

The niche was cold, slick stone and worn wood, and even in these dead hours no true privacy. They would have to move soon. Life would demand that they pull their outer trapping back to propriety. Wash in the chill dribble of the janitor’s sink. Comb their hair and straighten their masks. Double-lock the entry door and double-lock their hearts.

Tomorrow would be one more day of holding on to the need to just hold on, of hoping to perhaps find a reason to hope. Of doing one’s duties. Of doing without. Of doing what must be done in denial of what one would and perhaps even what one should. Another day at war within a world at war.

In this tsunami of history carrying them all a minute of mortal flesh, of kisses and tears, was nothing. But for the moment – for this single moment – it was almost enough.

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[And the words just keep on coming. BAD mussy!]

“Too long,” Jeeves gasped into Bertram’s collar.

“Too long,” Bertram agreed ferverently.

Not just the week past, spent less on ‘holiday’ then on domestic overtime as Jeeves had helped his sister rearrange the Jeeves ancestral cottage to accommodate Mabel Biffen and the of Biffen children – her husband being off to serve. [Bertie wasn’t quite sure what the Navy could make of Biffy – but so long as it wasn’t a navigator? Bertie trusted the Lord’s Admiral knew what they were about.] No, the last two months had been a sort of localized separation, since Cousin Angela had been driven to house-guesting via German high explosives. Bertie loved his relation – he truly did – but even excluding the illicit pash re yearning yet masculine hearts – well, the raw scrape of characters and habits re: Bertram and Travers kindred was a sort of high explosive on it’s own. Nitroglycerine, perhaps.

“We could…”

Bertie had no idea what the rest of those words should be. In better times the sentence would have finished with Jeeves packing while Bertie called for tickets. Rail tickets for a Scottish holiday – days split between salmon fishing and golf (their respective hobbies) and nights split not at all. Ferry tickets for a jaunt over the Channel, café society divided between jazz in cellar clubs and concerts in soaring boxes, and again no division between man and man. Cruise tickets for New York, back when the circle of the bright and beautiful glowed like a halo of pleasure from Manhattan society affairs to the bohemian artistry of the Village.

“If only…” Jeeves answered. All the response required.

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New York was a universe away, and even if he could manipulate the needed tickets from some friend of a friend of a Bureaucrat, the bright young men of his youth were now over here. Or rather ‘over there’. Corky had joined the Marines, and at last (highly censored) letter was somewhere far too close to Japan. Rocky had come though a few months back on the way to France with the Army Air Corp. Even Cyril had left the city, going out to California to make movies for the troops. He had sent one with Rocky – a clever little ditty about darning ones socks. (Bertie had tried. He had slept on the sofa that night.

Paris was tragedy, the memory more pain than pleasure, since every newsreel image was another pleasure lost.

The highlands? Might be possible. Although in this time of ‘is that trip necessary’ tickets would cost high – favors as well as cash – and finding a croft that wasn’t full of orphans would take some doing. Still?

Something – some escape - was feeling supremely necessary.

Some words must have made it past his exhaustion, because Jeeves was moving back.

Bertie lurched forward, but found himself held in place.

Brown eyes search his own, his man’s face not so much severe as… solid.

“The current… situation… is…”

“Worse on you, old chum. I can hold up if you can.” Or rather he could hold up as long as Jeeves *did*. He had no delusion that he would last a moment longer. Losing his Jeeves – to the war, to the lure of brighter prospects (for which he rebuked his unthankful heart), to the calculation that the risk of discovery was higher than Jeeves found him worth… to any and all of these. That – more than bombs or invasion or death – were his real wartime fears.

Jeeves nodded, slowly.

“Still, it might be… better for all concerned… were it possible to separate the two households.”

“No argument there.” No hope, either. Every night brought the bombs, and every morning the count of how many less flats and houses remained in London. Less people, too, but thank heaven usually there were survivors among those. Survivors, however, who needed house space in whatever corner they could find of whatever intact combination of roof and walls remained.

“I noted a small but rather pleasant building near my sisters cottage. Three stories. Local stone. Undesirably far from the train, in these days of petrol rations, and in need of some maintenance, but solid architecture. “ Jeeves' eyebrow twitched, the sign of cleverly uncovered gossip. “The current owner is elderly, and has suggested she would prefer to join her sister in Ireland if she could find a buyer.”

Hard to do these days. Not that there weren’t plenty of folks interested in country homes, but few of them had ready cash, and banks weren’t always eager to put a loan when their collateral could become rubble at the whim of one stray bomb.

Bertie, thanks entirely to one man’s wise management (said man being R. Jeeves, be it understood) had a full pouch of the oof. Much of it invested overseas, where said Jeeves had moved to separate the Wooster fortune from the fortunes of war, but quite enough left to satisfy one Irish biddy re retirement income – that clearly being his man's (implied) directive.

“I’m not sure Angela will agree to move out of the Metrop.”

It was the only objection. Jeeves could buy any house he pleased, or as many as he pleased, so long as the common purse could bear the load. That fact was a given, like gravity or the pitiful performance of the Cambridge blues, and like those facts accepted without discussion. Indeed, it was probable (and again – irrelevant to any discussion) that said Jeeves had already negotiated the sale, called the solicitors to draw up the deed, and put payment in escrow.

“My dear Wooster.” Jeeves leaned forward, resting his forehead on the tangle of blond curls. “If she won’t? I will.”

“Reg.” The name passed into air, proof of Bertie’s shock. “You love London.”

Bertie could feel, rather than see, the nod of agreement slide forehead to forehead. Jeeves' words, however, carried the other message. “London is not the only thing I love.”

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Oh, it's so much like one of those war-time romance films! Wordier than drabbles, sure, but a nice read and that ending... right in the heart! <3

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Drabble: Winter Tea

Any real amount of snow is rare in the old metrop, which means that winter tends to be grey and slushy instead of white and crisp and that there isn't even the excuse of drifts at one's door when one looks out at the grey sky and doesn't want to go anywhere.

As is usual, I woke to Jeeves with the morning Darjeeling, everything looking washed out in the cloudy light.

"Well, Jeeves?" I asked him, sitting up and sampling the tea, which as perfect as always.

"The day is most unwelcoming, sir," he said, and climbed in beside me.

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Very VERY nice!

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♥ :)

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but Bertie is welcoming, one hopes : )

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Delish, old thing. Positively.
^5

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DRABBLE: Making The Best Of A Bad Sitch

Bertie shivered, naked, under a horse-blanket as Jeeves wrung their soaked clothing before draping everything over the empty horse stalls. Jeeves wore the white tablecloth from their picnic hamper in the fashion of a toga; Bertie was quite enjoying the view.

Bertie had to raise his voice over the roar of heavy rain hitting the barn’s roof. “Looks like we’ll be staying here a while.”

Jeeves’ expression was subtly heated as he joined Bertie after hanging the last soggy sock. “I’ve an idea or two about keeping warm, Bertram.”

“Thought you might, Reg,” Bertie replied with a slow, knowing grin.

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