indeedsir_backup | Bertie and the American Love Bird Part One

What-ho everyone! I have a new Jeeves fanfiction here, based around the pairing Rocky/Bertie and hints of Bertie/Jeeves. I have to apologise, as this is probably the worst and most difficult Jeeves fic I've written, so it may come across as rather strained. However, thanks very much to my Beta Derien for helping me!

Title: Bertie and the American Love Bird
Pairing: Rocky/Bertie and Jeeves/Bertie
Summary: The Pink Gentleman's League is a place where the closeted inverts of New York can meet, drink and dance. What happens when Bertie Wooster meets Rocky Todd one evening?
Rating: PG-15 (there are some non-graphic mentions of sex)
Words: 4,977
Disclaimer: The wonderful world of Jeeves does not belong to me - if it did, I'd be a millionaire living in a castle, but sadly not. Characters belong to P.G. Wodehouse.

Some of you may be wondering how on earth I came to meet Rockmetteller “Rocky” Todd, the eccentric American poet of Long Island. Bertram Wooster being a notorious city dweller and socialite, and dear old Rocky being an all-American, country hermit kind of cove doesn’t help clear the mystery much either… He and I are complete opposites, like black and white, day and night, Marmite and marmalade. Yet both of us being writers with two big, awful looming secrets made our sympathies align and the love light come into Rocky Todd’s eyes.

You see, I could never tell Jeeves such a thing — and he is my friend, confidant, and dare I say it… soul mate — but Rocky and I met during the summer at a fairy club in New York, where all the other closeted inverts meet, drink, and dance.

At that point in my life the last of the Woosters was feeling particularly lonely, away from all the dashing Drones and blasted beazels that Blighty held; I even missed my aunts, believe it or not. I was a long way from London and life was particularly grey and gloomy. All was not right with the world, if you get my meaning.

The Pumpkin club was a hoot of course, but never quite on par with the fun and frivolity of the Drones — no bread rolls were thrown, no tender goddesses cropped up in conversation, and nobody ordered me drinks for cheering them up — it seemed that in the States everybody was all hot and bothered over some bally depression, and their moods were equally as miserable. Even the most oofy of the lot had to keep a close eye and clenched fist on their green stuff, and that sort of atmosphere was nowhere near my level of ooja-cum-spiff.

Jeeves was particularly frosty over a pair of silver spats that I had picked up in Manhattan to brighten my day, and it seemed that inside this heart of mine there was a bally great, gaping hole where love and companionship was concerned. The dear old fruit just didn’t seem to want to occupy the gap in my heart, so both mind and soul were left downtrodden. For once I had met somebody that didn’t leap at the chance of getting engaged to me, and although usually that would be the greatest relief, it had broken my bally heart.

I’d always left signs about me to indicate that a kiss and a cuddle from my faithful manservant would not be unwelcome, and he overlooked each and every one — even the one time he bent over me to hand over the b. and s. and I grabbed him by the tie around his neck, stroking the black silk suggestively, and pulling him gently to my lips as I had seen in the talking pictures; he had simply disentangled himself from my grip and took away my drink, suggesting I had had one too many martinis. The dashed nerve!

It would be untruthful to say that I hadn’t been rather pipped by that experience, and had started wanting more than a warm glance once in a while, and a half-smile from my stuffed frog of a valet. So off to the underground clubs I went, discovering the world wasn’t as bright and sunshiny as I anticipated.

Sex oozed from every corner, and there was darkness — incredible darkness — from each alleyway leading to the Pink Gentleman’s League. Drunkards and the homeless tittered as I passed by to be allowed entrance to the club, perhaps knowing the club’s secret inverts-only code and watching me with loathing. It was nothing like the Drones, nothing like the Pumpkin Club, and nothing like I had ever seen before, except perhaps during my younger days at Eton, where everybody liked to experiment once in a while.

At the Pink Gentleman’s League I felt perhaps lonelier than ever, my sunny disposish vanquished. Until I met Rocky Todd, writer and closet invert, like myself…

His smile was the biggest and brightest of the whole club, and standing in the corner with hunched shoulders and shy demeanour — as though he wanted to dance, he wanted to join in on the jokes and fun, but wasn’t quite sure if the invitation was extended to him — I found my heart going out to him. There he was, hunched in a corner and not enjoying himself, yet still watching the silly antics of those love birds with interest, and here was I, not exactly having a whale of a time and watching him with interest. It was rather silly, really, but I didn’t know how to approach him. Would a “good evening” be too formal and give him the wrong impression that I was a waiter in my white mess jacket? Or does an amiable “what-ho” make me appear like an uncouth British toff?

I extended a hand upwards in a pathetic excuse of a wave, and the cove’s smile widened.

Striding towards him, I tripped over a rather amorous pair of coves and took a dive in his direction; you couldn’t throw a brick in this particular club without hitting two love birds in a horizontal position, if you catch my drift.

Unsavoury acts always seemed to go unpunished, and nobody batted an eyelid at two birds getting familiar with one another’s tongues right in public view, nor was a cove dancing the tango in full women’s dress frowned upon — instead, they were applauded and smirked at, as though it was everyday that homosexuals wore their hearts on their sleeves for all to see.

‘What-ho!,’ I chirruped, rather embarrassedly.

‘Hey there, friend,’ came his chummy reply as he extended a big, warm hand for me to shake. It was incredibly soft, unlike Jeeves’s.

‘Bertie Wooster,’ I offered, hardly wanting to let go of his hand.

We carried on shaking for another whole minute, but in the meantime he told me his name was Rocky Todd.

‘Charmed to meet you, Rocky. If you don’t mind me asking so, what are you doing here?’

His evening wear was rather scruffy and musty, as though he hadn’t donned the soup and fish for a goodish long time. In fact, now that I mention it, the pink carnation that he was wearing in his buttonhole (the discreet signal to be let in to the club, don’t you know) was dead and wilted. It was a wonder he was let in.

He looked at me although I were a raving loony, or perhaps hopelessly lost. It wasn’t the first time I had seen that look. ‘Don’t you know?’

‘Know what?’ I asked, confused.

‘This club is for homosexuals, like myself.’ Suddenly he looked doubtful and a little ill. ‘You are one of us, aren’t you?’

‘Me? Of course, old fruit!’ I laughed a gay, debonair laugh — or at least I hoped it sounded gay and debonair. ‘You simply looked like you were standing on the outside, afraid to come in.’

‘I was people watching and collecting materials for my new poem anthology — private, of course. Can’t publish that kind of stuff, can we? And you look as tight as an owl,’ he laughed. It was true that I had drank more than my daily allowance of cocktails.

I joined in, hooting again with laughter. ‘Oh, rather! You have to stay sozzled to stay sane here.’ I eyed the exclusive couples with guarded hurt. ‘You say you’re writing poems. I’m a writer too, you see. Maybe you’ve seen my books in the shops?’

‘Bertie Wooster…’ he rolled my name on his tongue like it was a particularly delicious morsel, and I shivered slightly with excitement and butterflies. ‘Nope, I don’t think I have. I live at Long Island and don’t exactly get out much, especially not to the big city, unless it’s to see my publisher. The last newspaper I bought was from April 1924.’

It was now 1929 and I gaped at him in amazement. ‘Five years?’ I said incredulously.

‘I prefer the comforts of the countryside that I call home,’ he said confidently, and I had to admire him; after all, living in the countryside must have more than its fair share of aunts! ‘You must come and visit sometime.’

These words set my heart a flutter… Jeeves is my world, no doubt, but there was something about this friendly American chap that thrilled me. I wondered if falling suddenly in love was as easy as beetling down to the Pumpkin Club or gulping down a few martinis; and apparently it was. Like a naive young girl I was smitten.

‘Not until you come down and see our apartment, Rocky,’ I grinned, feeling rather tipsy.

‘”Our apartment”?’ he asked, looking rather perplexed.

I hope he didn’t think I was one of those coves that take a girl as his wife as a shield to protect him from being accused of deviancy.

‘Oh, I mean my man, Jeeves, and I. He’s my valet, you see,’ I informed him, heart warming at the thought of Jeeves.

After three Moet champagnes, two cocktails, and two martinis, things started to get very conflicted inside my ribcage; due to the poison I wasn’t sure whether I was in love with Jeeves, in lust with this handsome stranger, or completely head over spats for both of them. All I knew was that all of a sudden the world seemed much sunnier, the birds were singing, and the cherubs had started blowing their little trumpets. Perhaps I had finally met my specific dream rabbit?

The thought of Madeleine Basset and her fluffy bunnies made me shudder.

‘Oh, are you cold, Bertie? Here, take my jacket. It is rather chilly in here.’

Rocky gave me the top half of his soup and fish, which I wrapped around my shoulders. Either because of my drunkard ways or mental negligence, as Jeeves would say, my white mess jacket had vanished somewhere in the surrounding environment. I thanked him and blushed a dashed humiliating shade of vermilion, which no doubt would have matched a tie I had back in the apartment — a bally shame my current neck-ware was a rather debonair but clashing peony.

‘No problem,’ he replied in that dashed amiable accent of his. It was as if we had been friends since our golden ringlets and sailor suit days. I felt full of joie de vivre once again.

We stood in comfortable silence, watching love birds doing the tango for a while, and then he reintroduced the valet motif.

‘Your man Jeeves, does he know about you?’

I felt my heart stir a little. Or perhaps it was my stomach. ‘No,’ I sighed. ‘I’ve dropped hints about the place like bally breadcrumbs, and he refuses to acknowledge me. Usually he’s dashed competent, but when it comes to me loving him it seems he’s blind, deaf and dumb.’

‘Sounds like he’s not interested,’ he said bluntly, in that typical straight-forward American manner of his. From what I’ve experienced, New Yorkers don’t beat about the bush.

‘Well, who would be interested in this Wooster,’ I pointed out, laughing at myself quite liberally.

I was cut to the quick at this bluntness of Rocky’s; it had never crossed my mind that Jeeves wouldn’t be interested, as before I have always thought of him as, well, a gentleman’s personal gentleman.

‘Oh, I know a whole bunch of people that would be interested,’ he grinned widely. ‘Me, for example.’

‘I say!’ I I say-ed. ‘Is that true?’

‘Sure is, pal. Why don’t I give you my address? It’s out of the way, sure, but if you need a little break from the big city my door is always open.’

What an evening! I left the Pink Gentleman’s League with Rocky Todd’s Long Island address, a fluttering heart, a hangover the size of Manhattan, and somehow, two pink carnations rather than one.