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You know, I really don't know what's got into me recently. Aside from a complete lack of sleep and rather a lot of pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, anyway. *thinks* And food, I think I forgot to eat again. Anyway, I was just about to go and make a cup of tea, when suddenly, I found myself writing this. Presumably it's a reaction to the really quite excessively nasty piece that's going up on my own journal. I really do apologize for the way I've been spamming the place lately.

Do we have a bertie/other tag?

Jeeves and the Ordering Mishap

“What in blazes...”

Now, you'll understand my confusion, I'm sure, if I tell you that I'd just wandered in from the Drones, perhaps a little less acquainted than usual with sobriety, to find Jeeves on the sofa.

Now, far be it from me to deny the man the chance of a sit down once in a while, it's his own feudal spirit which prevents his making use of the more forgiving furniture. No, what was giving me the pip was that he was lounging back, legs crossed, smoking in a manner which one can only possibly describe as effete. It really doesn't become the man. Not to mention the fact that he'd foregone the usual brilliantine and his hair was falling from a centre parting in lush waves.

The fact that he was wearing a silvery-grey suit - the jacket of which came almost to his knees - with a lilac waistcoat and a green carnation of all things in his lapel really did take the biscuit. I was forced to conclude that he'd lost his senses. Where would one even get such a thing as a green carnation anyway?

“Ah, Mr Wooster,” he said, raising the hand which wasn't inhabited by a gasper. Without the intervention of my brain, I reached out to shake it, even though it was the wrong one, and was absolutely scandalised when he delicately grasped my fingers and leaned forward to annoint them with a kiss.

“Now I say!” I said. “Steady on, what?”

He chuckled. Jeeves actually chuckled. My usual equilibrium could not have been more disturbed had I suddenly found myself standing on the ceiling of an ocean liner in a force eight gale.

“Why, you really are as charming as I'd been led to believe,” he told me. I goggled at him, I don't mind saying. The man was quite blatantly making come-hither eyes at me. Worse, I was finding the look he was giving me to be giving me shivers of the sort I'm quite unaccustomed to feeling in the presence of other chaps.

“Ah, Mr Wooster,” he said, somehow both in front of me and beside me. “I see you have met Mr Wilde.”

I looked between the pair of them, my head swiveling as though I were watching the fastest match ever to grace the center court of Wimbledon, my mouth hanging open like that of a stunned goldfish. The Jeeves to my side was simply oozing disapproval. The one on the sofa was smirking in a slightly amused fashion, with a sparkle to his eyes that I am quite sure is not fit for polite society.

“But you're... your faces. They're identical.”

“What can I say,” our lounging guest purred. “The man clearly has excellent taste. I couldn't have chosen a better face myself.”

Suddenly, the words sank in. “Mr Wilde? What, not Oscar Wilde?”

“For my sins, of which I am told, there are many.”

I looked at Jeeves. “I thought he was dead?”

“So I had been led to believe, Sir. Nevertheless, he is here.”

“Death is so commonplace,” the Jeeves-who-was-apparently-Wilde assured us. “Simply everyone does it sooner or later.”

The doorbell began to ring constantly, as though someone were leaning on it.

“If you'll excuse me, Sir.” Jeeves-who-was-Jeeves said, and biffed off to answer it. Not feeling quite up to dealing with being given any more of the glad eye by this Wilde chappy, I decided to turn towards the door. The wisdom – or rather, the lack thereof – of turning my back on the chap did not occur to me until much later.

The reason, I soon discovered, for the doorbell's sounding as though someone were leaning on it was that, well, someone was leaning on it. He was a middle-aged man and while I was dashed certain I'd never seen him before in my life, there was something worryingly familiar about him. Rather handsome, in a rugged sort of way, I thought. Not that I was appreciating him in the same fashion that Wilde likely was. Even if I were inclined towards that sort of thing, I'm quite sure the stubble would have taken the shine off matters somewhat.

After giving me a stare the likes of which even Aunt Agatha would be proud to call her own, he lurched into the room supporting himself on a stick in a manner which implied that he had been personally affronted by the furniture, walls, carpet and possibly also the air.

“Did someone mention death?” he barked, in a rather unpleasant American accent.

“Jeeves?” I said, starting to feel more than a little put out.

“Yes, Sir?”

“Do you have any idea what's going on?”

“If I might hazard a guess, Sir,” he said smoothly. “I believe these may be the crossovers you ordered.”

“What? No, crossovers are fiction, Jeeves. Stories. You know, where Sherlock Holmes turns out to have been friends with a younger Miss Marple, that sort of thing.”

“Indeed, Sir. Far be it from me to say, Sir, but as it has been the 1920s for roughly 90 years, now, I thought you might have realised that we are ourselves fictional.”

“What both of us?”

“Indeed, Sir.”

“And Barmy and Stinker and Stiffy?”

“All of your acquaintances, Sir.”

“Even Aunt Agatha?”

“The alternative does not bear thinking about, Sir.”

“Well blow me!”

“My dear boy!” Wilde exclaimed, rising elegantly and making his way towards the Wooster person with eyes full of intent. “I thought you would never ask.”

As I made my way as swiftly as I could to the other side of the table, I saw the irritable American lean towards Jeeves.

“Which one of these is my patient again?”