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mercyrobotWHEE. This way to the rollercoaster, kids. There's also a special present within, and I'm not talking about the porn.
Previous efforts || Table of doom
12. NC-17, 669 words
Wherein things are not entirely as they seem (and you will think I am kind of mean).
Stroke
13. G, 627 words
In which 6A acquires a difficult guest.
( Ragamuffin )
14. PG, 1507 words
Which earns its title, but also its past tense:
( Despaired )
Stroke
I would come to your side at the piano and kiss the insipid song from your lips. They would be cold and sweet with brandy and part beneath mine with a surprised gasp. Your fingers would fall from the keys with a discordant clash before rising trembling and tentative to my shoulders, my face. Perhaps now you might retreat, look up at me starry and dazed and question why. Or perhaps you might simply sigh and give yourself over, cling with ardent joy and pull me down next to you.
I would kiss you until your breath raced, until the soapy taste of cologne on your neck gave way to clean skin, until you moaned, until I could feel the rigid heat of your arousal against my leg.
I've seen you in the bath, when you've said you'd 'soak for a bit' and think I am gone, one hand under the water and the other pinching and rubbing at your rosy nipples. Heedless for once of the condition of your shirt, I would tear it open and drag up your undershirt to tease the pebbled flesh with teeth and tongue.
You would stop me before I finished unfastening your trousers-- the dark green ones whose colour I despise, but which I have never said a word against because of the way the fabric melds to the perfect swell of your arse. You would stop me, suddenly shy despite your debauched clothing and breathless need, and stammer out amid babble of 'well' and 'I mean to say' that you would like to be taken to bed.
I would half-carry you in a blind stumble to the nearest one, the spare bedroom that holds no implication of who is master and will not remind us that this should be discussed, or more wisely not done at all. My plan to slowly tease and savour you would shatter, and I would strip us both quickly. I would stand bare before you, and you would look up at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, dewy and flushed.
Your expression would be familiar; it would be the same I saw on the ferry to France when the waters lurched and threw us together against the wall. In my elation of having mistaken desire for surprise, my dismay at all the time wasted, my awe at your lithe beauty and the sight of you spread and turgid and waiting for me, I would lose all semblance of self-possession and lunge upon you.
Our kisses would turn rough and frantic as we grasped and rutted shamelessly against each other, your teeth drawing blood from my lips, moans and gasps and unformed words muffled and swallowed. You would reach between us to grip both our cocks in your fine long hand, and though you would feel like heaven itself against me, I would jealously wonder where it was you learned to perform the motion so surely: some Eton boy in a darkened dormitory? Some drunken friend in your Oxford rooms? A secret tryst in this very flat?
No. I would drive all thoughts of any of them from your mind once and for all, slide down between your legs and mouth at your thighs, the hollows of your hips, everywhere but where you wanted me until you forgot that you never swear and begged me to suck you. The word said, I would swallow your prick to the hilt, bury my nose in the sweet musky curls above it. You would claw at my scalp and cry out, call my name and release down my throat within seconds. One look up at you, profanely angelic with eyes squeezed shut, would be enough for the slightest incidental touch of your calf on my cock to spend me in a sudden explosive jolt. I would--
I would, if it were only possible. I open my eyes to my empty quarters and clean my hand on the damp towel I placed at the bedside. The clock is fixed in a sideways frown: nearly half-past nine. I dress myself in my discarded clothes and go to prepare Mr Wooster's breakfast.
And wow, that seemed a lot longer when I wrote it. Maybe it's that whole second-person conditional thing. *flees while ducking vegetables*
13. G, 627 words
In which 6A acquires a difficult guest.
Ragamuffin
When life hands out lemons, have Jeeves make lemon squash, or so I think the saying goes. When life-- or Honoria Glossop, in this case-- deposits fluffy grey cats of questionable parentage in one's flat and washes its suspiciously scratched hands of the thing? Well, I'd yet to come up with much of an answer for it.
The moggy in q. was unfortunately but aptly named Ragamuffin, and belonged to some aunt or other of Honoria's who'd had to jaunt off out of the country. I rather suspected the beast of being the whole cause of Sir Roderick's horror of all things that say 'mew.' It (or she, as I was helpfully informed by Jeeves after he subjected the animal to a rather personal examination and got a bite on the hand for his trouble) was a good stone or so of shaggy ash-coloured fluff, with a chewed ear, the sort of eyes that seem to be constantly glaring daggers, and a personality that made Aunt Agatha look like Madeline Bassett at her mooniest.
Actually, there was a thought. "Do you think Madeline would look after the cat, Jeeves?" I asked while being growled at for daring to want to recline upon my own chesterfield. "She loves fluffy fauna of all persuasions, doesn't she? What would you say to a nice week in the country, hmm, Raggy?" The hand I extended was snapped at, which I took for a 'not just now, thanks.'
"While that is true, sir," Jeeves said, bravely sallying forth to remove the feline menace and whisk off the cushions with the brush he'd taken to carrying everywhere with him, "Miss Bassett is violently allergic. I recall hearing her mention it to Mr Fink-Nottle with tearful regret."
"Blast." I accepted my afternoon restorative and kicked up my feet into their rightful cat-free spot while trying to ignore the yellow eyes that seemed to say, 'hang by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!' "Do they really say 'dead' three times, Jeeves? When they sentence you to hang, I mean."
"Perhaps in popular literature, sir."
"Well, as I doubt old Raggy can read, she probably only thought it once."
"Sir?"
"The cat, Jeeves. The cat. She is sentencing me to death with her eyes."
"Doubtful, sir." Jeeves bent to apply the brush to de-fur my trouser legs.
"Oh, leave it," I grumbled with an irritable swat at the impliment. "It'll just be all over me again in another four seconds." I might not be entirely mistaken in saying that the cat looked rather like she'd got the cream when she heard that. "I don't understand it, Jeeves. Feline types normally like me quite a lot. 'What ho, Bertram,' they seem to say, 'let's be pals, what?' But all this peevish puss seems to say is 'I will claw out your liver repeatedly.'"
"In the myth of Prometheus, sir, it was an eagle that--"
"Jeeves?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Forget the myth of Prometheus."
"It is already forgotten, sir."
"All things mythical entirely aside, my point is that our furry guest here was out of school the day they explained what the word 'pet' means. To wit, a companionable creature that lounges in laps and perhaps purrs when scratched behind the ears. And I think Claude and Eustace would do less damage to the furniture. This is not a cat, Jeeves, but an angry ball of fluff with delusions of grandeur."
"Perhaps the animal will become accustomed to you in time, sir."
"As a scratching-post, maybe."
"Or as something more, possibly quite despite herself," he said with a rum sort of look and shimmered out of the room. It wasn't just the mocking moggy eyes that left me with the distinct sense I'd rather missed something.
14. PG, 1507 words
Which earns its title, but also its past tense:
Despaired
It may not pay to be a gloomy pill, but even the sunniest disposish is bound to crack under such ponderous ponderings as I was pondering. Why I was lighting yet another desolate cigarette and beginning yet another spot of agitated pacing round the sitting room may be summed up thusly:
No, that doesn't quite shed enough light, does it? The full import of the thing cannot be grasped unless I detail how the sorry circs came about.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" he said at last, a thickish strangled cast to his voice, and who could blame him for choking in shock?
Two roads diverged and all that: I could repeat the thing as stated, or I could pretend not to have said it and hope he would go along with it. I chose. "I said have a nice trip."
The longed-for lips thinned into a tight line. "Very good, sir," he said, and floated out the door without another word.
I don't think I overstate when I say that the following two weeks were decidedly fraught. The disastrous sendoff played itself over and over in my mind. It varied a bit occasionally-- sometimes I repeated myself in full and was swept up into a passionate embrace. Equally as often, it ended with a stage-direction along the lines of Jeeves gives Bertram a good biff in the eye. But by and large, the mental reprise, if that's the word I want, went off as here writ in all its nightmarish glory.
Alongside the n. g. of the recent past came a plague of visions of the looming future. What would happen when Jeeves returned? Would he return? Would I rush to the door hoping it was him and all was forgiven, to find nothing but a telegram saying 'I QUIT?' Or would he not even think it worth the bother and simply send someone for his things?
I cancelled my visit to Brinkley Court with the excuse of illness, for I more or less was ill. I trudged about the flat, a shadow of my former self, ignoring the telephone and the post and only venturing out when I had smoked and drunk everything in the place that could be smoked or drunk. If I did not answer the 'phone, I reasoned (faultily, I admit) in my unshaven and rumpled stupor, if I did not inspect the post, Jeeves would have to deliver his scathing reproval in person, and perhaps I could have a chance to reason with him.
But the more I stewed it over, the more I began to think there would be no reasoning to be done, and what little stiffness remained in the Wooster upper lip was decidely droopy. When the day of reckoning (being the 24th) arrived, I forced the neglected corpus into a bath and fresh clothes and spent the whole of the day stationed at the window hoping against all hope that these dark days I'd spent were only the prelude to the dawn. With every cab that stopped without issuing forth anyone in a massive bowler hat, these last drops of h. dribbled down the proverbial drain. The dark came, and the next dawn poked her rosy fingers in, and there was still no sign of Jeeves.
This was how I came to be pacing and knocking back gin at six in the ack emma, far beyond mere fraughtness now and utterly, utterly lost. Jeeves was not coming back, I was sure of it. I now allowed myself a dejected trudge to the door I had forbidden myself to open: the entrance to Jeeves's lair. What did it matter now? He wouldn't be coming back in here himself to know I'd intruded. So intrude I did.
It was a cheery little set of rooms, cosy if a bit small-- not that I noticed at the moment, but I had seen them before-- and packed to the rafters with books. There was also one on the bedside table, and I had to swallow round a boulder-sized lump in the throat when I saw what it was.
The most recent Christmas past, I'd been caught by a mischievous sort of yule-tide spirit and played a bit of a joke by way of wrapping up an autographed edition of The Waitress and the Wastrel by Rosie M. Banks. I'd been so overcome with mirth at Jeeves's attempt to thank me politely that I'd only just been able to tell him to read the inscription, which said, 'I have got some sense, you know. Look under the blue hat you hate for your real present. B.' He'd found the book he'd actually requested (by some philosophical chappie whose name now escapes me) and laughed along with me, properly laughed, which was the best Christmas present I could have hoped for.
I didn't bother to wonder what the book was doing there, because the wistful bit of a smile that had crossed my face at the memory dropped right off when it hit me that I would never hear that laugh again. I choked out a sobbing sort of noise and fell to bury my face in the pillow. It smelt of him, a singular combination of citrus, laundry starch, and generally-masculine-something that wove together into Jeeves. I breathed it in deeply and let out a few more sobbing sorts of noises, dispensing with the practised quietness I'd learnt as a boy, for who would hear me? And what, dash it, was I to do?
"Sir?"
I think I shot up about a foot in the air. "Jeeves!" It all flooded me at once: joy, terror, and an ache so sharp I was sick with it.
"My apologies for the delay, sir," he said as though there was nothing at all out of the ordinary about finding me in hysterics on his bed. "The ferry was delayed by storms in the Channel and I was obliged to spend the night in Dover to await the first train." He passed me a handkerchief. "I attempted to telephone, but there was no answer. Did Mr Jarvis not deliver the message?"
"No, I wasn't answering the door either," I said in wet bewilderment. I searched his map for any sign of anything at all, but he was perfectly inscrutable as always. Perhaps he was only here to collect his things and leave me again. "Are you-- are you staying?" My voice sounded very small indeed.
There was a slight but decidedly scrutable softening around his eyes. "Have you had very much gin, sir?" he asked instead of answering, eyeing the bot. I'd brought in with me.
My clouded brow clouded further. "Not today," I said. "Why?"
He stepped forward and took the unused handkerchief that hung from my fingers to gently dab at my cheeks. "Because I believe you omitted a word from the statement you repeated on my departure, sir, and I thought best to assure myself that you were in full possession of your faculties before asking you to tell me what it was."
My heart leapt. It pounded and pranced and twisted itself in knots. He knew full well what it was; the man has ears like a bat. So if he was asking me again, and standing this close while doing it, then it could only mean one thing. "I--" I swallowed and took what looked as though it might be a slightly safer road. "Why did you keep that book? The joke one?"
"Because you gave it to me." It might have been a trick of the light, but I thought a vaguely pink tinge rose to his cheeks. He came about half a step nearer, putting us nearly nose to statuesque nose.
I reminded myself to breathe. "Love. I called you love."
"And why would you address me thus?"
"I didn't mean to say it, but I--" If I hadn't seen the upward quirk of the corners of his mouth, I would have at least noticed the previously-imagined embrace becoming decidedly non-figmentary. He was teasing me, the cheeky blighter. "Because 'darling' didn't seem to really fit you," I said, for I can serve it up with the best of them when the need arises.
"No, but I believe it fits you very well," said Jeeves-- Jeeves? Reginald? Reggie? Reg? Time enough for that later, and 'my love' was more than good enough for starters-- and closed the last inch between us with a kiss that surely left all others in history stumbling in the dust.
Previous efforts || Table of doom
12. NC-17, 669 words
Wherein things are not entirely as they seem (and you will think I am kind of mean).
Stroke
13. G, 627 words
In which 6A acquires a difficult guest.
( Ragamuffin )
14. PG, 1507 words
Which earns its title, but also its past tense:
( Despaired )
Stroke
I would come to your side at the piano and kiss the insipid song from your lips. They would be cold and sweet with brandy and part beneath mine with a surprised gasp. Your fingers would fall from the keys with a discordant clash before rising trembling and tentative to my shoulders, my face. Perhaps now you might retreat, look up at me starry and dazed and question why. Or perhaps you might simply sigh and give yourself over, cling with ardent joy and pull me down next to you.
I would kiss you until your breath raced, until the soapy taste of cologne on your neck gave way to clean skin, until you moaned, until I could feel the rigid heat of your arousal against my leg.
I've seen you in the bath, when you've said you'd 'soak for a bit' and think I am gone, one hand under the water and the other pinching and rubbing at your rosy nipples. Heedless for once of the condition of your shirt, I would tear it open and drag up your undershirt to tease the pebbled flesh with teeth and tongue.
You would stop me before I finished unfastening your trousers-- the dark green ones whose colour I despise, but which I have never said a word against because of the way the fabric melds to the perfect swell of your arse. You would stop me, suddenly shy despite your debauched clothing and breathless need, and stammer out amid babble of 'well' and 'I mean to say' that you would like to be taken to bed.
I would half-carry you in a blind stumble to the nearest one, the spare bedroom that holds no implication of who is master and will not remind us that this should be discussed, or more wisely not done at all. My plan to slowly tease and savour you would shatter, and I would strip us both quickly. I would stand bare before you, and you would look up at me, wide-eyed and open-mouthed, dewy and flushed.
Your expression would be familiar; it would be the same I saw on the ferry to France when the waters lurched and threw us together against the wall. In my elation of having mistaken desire for surprise, my dismay at all the time wasted, my awe at your lithe beauty and the sight of you spread and turgid and waiting for me, I would lose all semblance of self-possession and lunge upon you.
Our kisses would turn rough and frantic as we grasped and rutted shamelessly against each other, your teeth drawing blood from my lips, moans and gasps and unformed words muffled and swallowed. You would reach between us to grip both our cocks in your fine long hand, and though you would feel like heaven itself against me, I would jealously wonder where it was you learned to perform the motion so surely: some Eton boy in a darkened dormitory? Some drunken friend in your Oxford rooms? A secret tryst in this very flat?
No. I would drive all thoughts of any of them from your mind once and for all, slide down between your legs and mouth at your thighs, the hollows of your hips, everywhere but where you wanted me until you forgot that you never swear and begged me to suck you. The word said, I would swallow your prick to the hilt, bury my nose in the sweet musky curls above it. You would claw at my scalp and cry out, call my name and release down my throat within seconds. One look up at you, profanely angelic with eyes squeezed shut, would be enough for the slightest incidental touch of your calf on my cock to spend me in a sudden explosive jolt. I would--
I would, if it were only possible. I open my eyes to my empty quarters and clean my hand on the damp towel I placed at the bedside. The clock is fixed in a sideways frown: nearly half-past nine. I dress myself in my discarded clothes and go to prepare Mr Wooster's breakfast.
As a palliative, I have prepared a mini-mix of Insipid Songs. Period (and therefore a bit crackly), of course, and by no means Jeeves-approved. Please, Mr Music, will you play?
1. Vaughn De Leath - Banana Oil
2. Cliff Edwards - I'm a Bear in a Lady's Boudoir
3. Clyde Doerr And His Orchestra - Dew-Dew-Dewy Day
4. Billy Jones and Ernest Hare - Pastafasoola
5. Al Jolson - There's a Rainbow Round My Shoulder
You can download individually or all in a .rar here. All are apparently public domain and came from archive.org. And are awesomely ridiculous.
And wow, that seemed a lot longer when I wrote it. Maybe it's that whole second-person conditional thing. *flees while ducking vegetables*
13. G, 627 words
In which 6A acquires a difficult guest.
Ragamuffin
When life hands out lemons, have Jeeves make lemon squash, or so I think the saying goes. When life-- or Honoria Glossop, in this case-- deposits fluffy grey cats of questionable parentage in one's flat and washes its suspiciously scratched hands of the thing? Well, I'd yet to come up with much of an answer for it.
The moggy in q. was unfortunately but aptly named Ragamuffin, and belonged to some aunt or other of Honoria's who'd had to jaunt off out of the country. I rather suspected the beast of being the whole cause of Sir Roderick's horror of all things that say 'mew.' It (or she, as I was helpfully informed by Jeeves after he subjected the animal to a rather personal examination and got a bite on the hand for his trouble) was a good stone or so of shaggy ash-coloured fluff, with a chewed ear, the sort of eyes that seem to be constantly glaring daggers, and a personality that made Aunt Agatha look like Madeline Bassett at her mooniest.
Actually, there was a thought. "Do you think Madeline would look after the cat, Jeeves?" I asked while being growled at for daring to want to recline upon my own chesterfield. "She loves fluffy fauna of all persuasions, doesn't she? What would you say to a nice week in the country, hmm, Raggy?" The hand I extended was snapped at, which I took for a 'not just now, thanks.'
"While that is true, sir," Jeeves said, bravely sallying forth to remove the feline menace and whisk off the cushions with the brush he'd taken to carrying everywhere with him, "Miss Bassett is violently allergic. I recall hearing her mention it to Mr Fink-Nottle with tearful regret."
"Blast." I accepted my afternoon restorative and kicked up my feet into their rightful cat-free spot while trying to ignore the yellow eyes that seemed to say, 'hang by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!' "Do they really say 'dead' three times, Jeeves? When they sentence you to hang, I mean."
"Perhaps in popular literature, sir."
"Well, as I doubt old Raggy can read, she probably only thought it once."
"Sir?"
"The cat, Jeeves. The cat. She is sentencing me to death with her eyes."
"Doubtful, sir." Jeeves bent to apply the brush to de-fur my trouser legs.
"Oh, leave it," I grumbled with an irritable swat at the impliment. "It'll just be all over me again in another four seconds." I might not be entirely mistaken in saying that the cat looked rather like she'd got the cream when she heard that. "I don't understand it, Jeeves. Feline types normally like me quite a lot. 'What ho, Bertram,' they seem to say, 'let's be pals, what?' But all this peevish puss seems to say is 'I will claw out your liver repeatedly.'"
"In the myth of Prometheus, sir, it was an eagle that--"
"Jeeves?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Forget the myth of Prometheus."
"It is already forgotten, sir."
"All things mythical entirely aside, my point is that our furry guest here was out of school the day they explained what the word 'pet' means. To wit, a companionable creature that lounges in laps and perhaps purrs when scratched behind the ears. And I think Claude and Eustace would do less damage to the furniture. This is not a cat, Jeeves, but an angry ball of fluff with delusions of grandeur."
"Perhaps the animal will become accustomed to you in time, sir."
"As a scratching-post, maybe."
"Or as something more, possibly quite despite herself," he said with a rum sort of look and shimmered out of the room. It wasn't just the mocking moggy eyes that left me with the distinct sense I'd rather missed something.
14. PG, 1507 words
Which earns its title, but also its past tense:
Despaired
It may not pay to be a gloomy pill, but even the sunniest disposish is bound to crack under such ponderous ponderings as I was pondering. Why I was lighting yet another desolate cigarette and beginning yet another spot of agitated pacing round the sitting room may be summed up thusly:
1. I was in love.
2. I was in love with Jeeves.
3. The declaration of said l. had sort of slipped out.
4. Jeeves had left.
2. I was in love with Jeeves.
3. The declaration of said l. had sort of slipped out.
4. Jeeves had left.
No, that doesn't quite shed enough light, does it? The full import of the thing cannot be grasped unless I detail how the sorry circs came about.
Dramatis personae: Jeeves and self, of course.
Scene: Wooster G.H.Q.
JEEVES, at door with suitcase: Goodbye, sir. I shall return on the twenty-fourth.
BERTRAM, taking leave of his senses: Have a nice trip, love.
Pregnant pause.
A hole in the floor did not oblige me by opening up and swallowing me. Jeeves's eyes widened, then narrowed. I got an idea how those stuffed oddities in the British Museum must feel as he studied me.Scene: Wooster G.H.Q.
JEEVES, at door with suitcase: Goodbye, sir. I shall return on the twenty-fourth.
BERTRAM, taking leave of his senses: Have a nice trip, love.
Pregnant pause.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" he said at last, a thickish strangled cast to his voice, and who could blame him for choking in shock?
Two roads diverged and all that: I could repeat the thing as stated, or I could pretend not to have said it and hope he would go along with it. I chose. "I said have a nice trip."
The longed-for lips thinned into a tight line. "Very good, sir," he said, and floated out the door without another word.
I don't think I overstate when I say that the following two weeks were decidedly fraught. The disastrous sendoff played itself over and over in my mind. It varied a bit occasionally-- sometimes I repeated myself in full and was swept up into a passionate embrace. Equally as often, it ended with a stage-direction along the lines of Jeeves gives Bertram a good biff in the eye. But by and large, the mental reprise, if that's the word I want, went off as here writ in all its nightmarish glory.
Alongside the n. g. of the recent past came a plague of visions of the looming future. What would happen when Jeeves returned? Would he return? Would I rush to the door hoping it was him and all was forgiven, to find nothing but a telegram saying 'I QUIT?' Or would he not even think it worth the bother and simply send someone for his things?
I cancelled my visit to Brinkley Court with the excuse of illness, for I more or less was ill. I trudged about the flat, a shadow of my former self, ignoring the telephone and the post and only venturing out when I had smoked and drunk everything in the place that could be smoked or drunk. If I did not answer the 'phone, I reasoned (faultily, I admit) in my unshaven and rumpled stupor, if I did not inspect the post, Jeeves would have to deliver his scathing reproval in person, and perhaps I could have a chance to reason with him.
But the more I stewed it over, the more I began to think there would be no reasoning to be done, and what little stiffness remained in the Wooster upper lip was decidely droopy. When the day of reckoning (being the 24th) arrived, I forced the neglected corpus into a bath and fresh clothes and spent the whole of the day stationed at the window hoping against all hope that these dark days I'd spent were only the prelude to the dawn. With every cab that stopped without issuing forth anyone in a massive bowler hat, these last drops of h. dribbled down the proverbial drain. The dark came, and the next dawn poked her rosy fingers in, and there was still no sign of Jeeves.
This was how I came to be pacing and knocking back gin at six in the ack emma, far beyond mere fraughtness now and utterly, utterly lost. Jeeves was not coming back, I was sure of it. I now allowed myself a dejected trudge to the door I had forbidden myself to open: the entrance to Jeeves's lair. What did it matter now? He wouldn't be coming back in here himself to know I'd intruded. So intrude I did.
It was a cheery little set of rooms, cosy if a bit small-- not that I noticed at the moment, but I had seen them before-- and packed to the rafters with books. There was also one on the bedside table, and I had to swallow round a boulder-sized lump in the throat when I saw what it was.
The most recent Christmas past, I'd been caught by a mischievous sort of yule-tide spirit and played a bit of a joke by way of wrapping up an autographed edition of The Waitress and the Wastrel by Rosie M. Banks. I'd been so overcome with mirth at Jeeves's attempt to thank me politely that I'd only just been able to tell him to read the inscription, which said, 'I have got some sense, you know. Look under the blue hat you hate for your real present. B.' He'd found the book he'd actually requested (by some philosophical chappie whose name now escapes me) and laughed along with me, properly laughed, which was the best Christmas present I could have hoped for.
I didn't bother to wonder what the book was doing there, because the wistful bit of a smile that had crossed my face at the memory dropped right off when it hit me that I would never hear that laugh again. I choked out a sobbing sort of noise and fell to bury my face in the pillow. It smelt of him, a singular combination of citrus, laundry starch, and generally-masculine-something that wove together into Jeeves. I breathed it in deeply and let out a few more sobbing sorts of noises, dispensing with the practised quietness I'd learnt as a boy, for who would hear me? And what, dash it, was I to do?
"Sir?"
I think I shot up about a foot in the air. "Jeeves!" It all flooded me at once: joy, terror, and an ache so sharp I was sick with it.
"My apologies for the delay, sir," he said as though there was nothing at all out of the ordinary about finding me in hysterics on his bed. "The ferry was delayed by storms in the Channel and I was obliged to spend the night in Dover to await the first train." He passed me a handkerchief. "I attempted to telephone, but there was no answer. Did Mr Jarvis not deliver the message?"
"No, I wasn't answering the door either," I said in wet bewilderment. I searched his map for any sign of anything at all, but he was perfectly inscrutable as always. Perhaps he was only here to collect his things and leave me again. "Are you-- are you staying?" My voice sounded very small indeed.
There was a slight but decidedly scrutable softening around his eyes. "Have you had very much gin, sir?" he asked instead of answering, eyeing the bot. I'd brought in with me.
My clouded brow clouded further. "Not today," I said. "Why?"
He stepped forward and took the unused handkerchief that hung from my fingers to gently dab at my cheeks. "Because I believe you omitted a word from the statement you repeated on my departure, sir, and I thought best to assure myself that you were in full possession of your faculties before asking you to tell me what it was."
My heart leapt. It pounded and pranced and twisted itself in knots. He knew full well what it was; the man has ears like a bat. So if he was asking me again, and standing this close while doing it, then it could only mean one thing. "I--" I swallowed and took what looked as though it might be a slightly safer road. "Why did you keep that book? The joke one?"
"Because you gave it to me." It might have been a trick of the light, but I thought a vaguely pink tinge rose to his cheeks. He came about half a step nearer, putting us nearly nose to statuesque nose.
I reminded myself to breathe. "Love. I called you love."
"And why would you address me thus?"
"I didn't mean to say it, but I--" If I hadn't seen the upward quirk of the corners of his mouth, I would have at least noticed the previously-imagined embrace becoming decidedly non-figmentary. He was teasing me, the cheeky blighter. "Because 'darling' didn't seem to really fit you," I said, for I can serve it up with the best of them when the need arises.
"No, but I believe it fits you very well," said Jeeves-- Jeeves? Reginald? Reggie? Reg? Time enough for that later, and 'my love' was more than good enough for starters-- and closed the last inch between us with a kiss that surely left all others in history stumbling in the dust.
