Jeeves/Wooster Dictionary Fraglets 10-11/20
Delays! Life! Sorry! And lawks, I've gone all out of order with the table. But here, look. There's actually one more done-ish, but I wanted to get something up before Bones. (I thought it was a Fry night tonight, but apparently that's tomorrow. Still, yay Bones.)
I won't be insulted if you don't read the crossovers. I don't know what got into me. Also 'scuse my messy coding, and my shameful lack of comment replies, but I figured you'd rather have fic. And THANK YOU ALL if I haven't done so personally. ♥ ♥ ♥
Previous efforts || Table of doom
10. Gen-ish, kid!Jeeves, implied Bertie/Jeeves, 670 words.
In which Jeeves's first love is a book:
Erode
"Never let them see that you have feelings, young Reggie."
This was the first lesson of many imparted by an unlikely ally. Mr Robinson was the headmaster's valet and, according to the other boys with whom Reggie shared quarters and duties, the enemy. But when the he'd happened upon the tearful and hunched form of the newest hall-boy, fresh from a scolding at the hands of the newly-minted Mrs Headmaster, Mr Robinson had shown compassion.
Perhaps it was that the formidable and well-read man understood why Reggie would endanger his position for the sake of a Latin dictionary, that he saw a kindred seeker of knowledge. Perhaps he believed, as many of the boys did, that the rules were too stringent and denied too much. Or perhaps he simply did not like to see a child cry.
The possibilities could be pondered in later years, but for now Reggie was simply grateful for a listening ear, someone to nod and frown in sympathy as he explained through slowly ebbing tears about the give-away box that made the rounds on Sundays, from which a battered volume of Catullus had been his prize. He hadn't snuck into the library to steal the dictionary, only to spend hours each night hastily copying out definitions and declensions for the words on his list.
Rather than remind him of the rules-- that any library but the kitchen one was forbidden territory-- and scold him further, Mr Robinson said, "Never let them see that you have feelings, young Reggie. The best of them would rather not know, and the worst of them will take delight in breaking you down."
He meant the masters and betters, of course, but Reggie used everyone else for practise. Three days later, when a well-thumbed Lewis & Short lexicon mysteriously appeared in the cache of books underneath his small bed, he waited until the lights were out and the other boys were asleep to allow a smile to creep across his face.
He wondered how Mr Robinson had known he'd like to be a valet himself one day; when questioned, his self-appointed mentor merely quirked an eyebrow and said, "You have that air about you."
Reggie learned many lessons from Mr Robinson over the next few months: how to clean mud from wool, how to press trousers and brush a hat. He no longer flinched when one of the senior girls addressed him as 'you, there, boy' and clicked her fingers, or shivered when made to stand in the rain holding a door.
It was the final lesson, though, that went down the most bitterly. The strange exercise Mr Robinson set him of properly packing a gentleman's cases for travel ended not with removing it all and putting it away again, but with Mr Robinson putting on his hat and turning his sad grey eyes upon Reggie.
"The last lesson, my lad, is that you must never believe a situation will be permanent. Never become attached, or allow yourself to believe that you are, at the end of the day, anything more than a transitory force in a gentleman's life. Go without encumbrance to where you are needed next, for you will always be needed somewhere." With that, he took up his case and left.
As Reggie, as Reginald, and then at last as Jeeves, he kept these early lessons close and lived by them, and they stood him in good stead for years.
The day after Mr Robinson's funeral, perhaps fittingly, was the day Jeeves pressed the bell of 6A Berkely Mansions. From the first cup borne to his new employer, the armour of lessons and rules he'd built around himself was steadily chipped away by a man who was one part lost child, one part fool, and one part angel. His mind changed 'gormless' for 'naive,' and then for 'adorable.'
The rules became riddled with loopholes until Bertram Wooster had obliterated them entirely, and when he said, "Then heaven bless it, and may it continue to bind indefinitely," Jeeves allowed himself to smile and to believe.
11. PG, 1170 words in three sub-fraglets
Varying degrees of unrequited and/or established Bertie/Jeeves, with a splash of House/Wilson for funsies.
Crossovers with Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and House MD.
(And no, there are no spoilers for 'Planet of the Dead,' though seeing it over the weekend is entirely to blame. References are made to 'Utopia,' 'Family of Blood,' 'Human Nature,' and 'The Unicorn and the Wasp.')
In which three impossible things happen:
Strangely
or
Three Crossovers I Will Never Write
I. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
Now I'm not always the first to notice when some new objet d'art has entered the abode, but I think even I would have noticed a great bally police 'phone box in the middle of the sitting room. More to the point, I did just that when I nearly smashed into the thing.
"...cutting it fine. I nearly ran into myself," some unfamiliar chappie-voice said before starting to natter something about wasps and mystery writers.
I peered round the edge of the thing to see Jeeves placidly sitting and drinking tea with said chappie, despite the fact that s.c. was wearing an ill-fitted suit and the sort of shoes the Americans use for some sport or other, possibly baseball, and had hair that stood nearly straight on end.
"Good afternoon, sir," said Jeeves, who popped up when he saw me.
"I don't recall ordering one of these," I said, patting the side of the interloping contraption. "Have I ordered one of these, Jeeves?"
"All my fault, I'm afraid," said the ill-suited bird-- and he was a bit bird-like, come to that, the upstanding hair giving the impression of a cockatiel or some such creature. "Parking in London's murder any year you go to."
"I apologise for the imposition, sir," Jeeves added. "The Doctor expressed an interest in my watch." As though that might go any way at all to explaining why this so-called Doctor was now peering into the flower arrangement like he'd just found the Lost Colony at the bottom of a yellow tulip.
"Oh," I said, for what else could I say? "Carry on, Jeeves. I think I'll go and lie down." I waved him weakly back down and staggered off in search of rooms free of curious boxes and curiouser chappies before I needed a doctor myself.
"I refuse to forget," I heard Jeeves say rather sharply as I shut the bedchamber door behind me.
Confused? Here might help (does contain recent-ish spoilers).
II. Dead clever an' useful.
I'd seen the creatures a time or two when I was a lad-- horrific things that none but the Four Horsemen could be expected to ride, with great black wings, heads that didn't seem to belong to them, and not nearly enough skin to cover it all over. But when asking Aunt Agatha what they were had nearly got me a cosy padded room, I'd kept my jaw firmly clamped about this and any other oddities from then on.
The trouble was, a whole flock or herd of the things lived on the Brinkley Court grounds, just sort of roaming wild. I always gave them a wide berth, but there was no way to tell Jeeves why I didn't want to walk through this particular patch of land without sounding a few short of a full set. I tried to keep the gaze studiously upon the chap I was supposed to be gazing soppily at, having come to the far end of the property to be able to do so, but the beasties draw the eye like a blasted railway accident.
Perhaps I was indeed a few s. of a full s., but it seemed to me as though my eye wasn't the only one being drawn. If Jeeves of all people told me once and for all that the things did not exist, I would believe him. Perhaps I'd stop seeing them. He wouldn't chuck me in a looney bin, would he? Not just for seeing some nonexistent species of horsey-bird. He'd find a way to fix it himself. At least I hoped so.
And what if they really were there? I am well aware, thank you, that Aunt Agatha was telling me the truth when she informed me that Father Christmas does not exist, but I have never seen Father Christmas drinking out of a babbling Brinkley brook. I screwed my courage to the sticking place and gripped Jeeves's hand. "Do you see them?"
I was half-expecting a 'see what?' but instead Jeeves stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me like he'd never seen me before. "Look over that field, Bertram, and tell me what you see," he said softly, wrapping an arm round me and turning me towards the parliament or murder of h-b creatures in q.
He must see something, I thought, if he was asking like this, so I spilled the beans. "If the hounds of Hell were horses, those blighters would be it."
To my surprise, Jeeves broke into a wide and wondrous smile and clasped me tightly to him.
"I'm not mad?" I asked in between having my face covered in kisses.
"No." It was my lips covered this time, and something the like of which I'd never felt-- not even in the bevy of vastly corking kisses from Jeeves in the past-- shivered through me. When I pulled back and looked at him with breathless marvel he said, "You, my love, are a wizard."
"I'm a what?" Possibly Father Christmas existed as well.
Confused? Try here (again, spoilers, if you've miraculously managed both not to read and not to be told).
III. Everybody lies.
They couldn't be more night and day if they'd tried, Wilson thought, despite the physical resemblance. He wished he could say House had ever looked that young, even ten years ago with two good legs, and Bertie was the sunny sort of soul House normally ate for breakfast.
But right now, side by side at the piano (and rips in the space-time continuum were nothing to the fact that House had even let him touch it), with twin glasses of whiskey and playing a four-handed tune they must've been making up on the fly, they might well have been the same person.
He caught Jeeves looking on fondly at the same moment Jeeves caught him. Wilson crossed the room under the pretext of offering a drink refill. "Does he know?" he asked softly.
The flicker of surprise and maybe fear was gone as soon as it appeared. "Does Dr House know?" Jeeves countered.
"There's no way he doesn't. I think we both know it would end in tears, though. I probably tore that hole in the fabric of reality just by thinking about it too much. But I asked you first."
"I found I preferred to content myself with Mr Wooster's companionship rather than risk rejection and separation."
Bertie turned his head and shot Jeeves a more or less adoring smile over his shoulder. Wilson nearly laughed. "Tell him," he said. "There's hope for you two." And sometimes, like right now when House was eyeing him with a smirk that wasn't not fond, Wilson let himself think for just a moment that there was hope here too. Or-- he drained his drink with a grimace-- it would destroy them both.
I think we all know who House and Wilson are.
I won't be insulted if you don't read the crossovers. I don't know what got into me. Also 'scuse my messy coding, and my shameful lack of comment replies, but I figured you'd rather have fic. And THANK YOU ALL if I haven't done so personally. ♥ ♥ ♥
Previous efforts || Table of doom
10. Gen-ish, kid!Jeeves, implied Bertie/Jeeves, 670 words.
In which Jeeves's first love is a book:
Erode
"Never let them see that you have feelings, young Reggie."
This was the first lesson of many imparted by an unlikely ally. Mr Robinson was the headmaster's valet and, according to the other boys with whom Reggie shared quarters and duties, the enemy. But when the he'd happened upon the tearful and hunched form of the newest hall-boy, fresh from a scolding at the hands of the newly-minted Mrs Headmaster, Mr Robinson had shown compassion.
Perhaps it was that the formidable and well-read man understood why Reggie would endanger his position for the sake of a Latin dictionary, that he saw a kindred seeker of knowledge. Perhaps he believed, as many of the boys did, that the rules were too stringent and denied too much. Or perhaps he simply did not like to see a child cry.
The possibilities could be pondered in later years, but for now Reggie was simply grateful for a listening ear, someone to nod and frown in sympathy as he explained through slowly ebbing tears about the give-away box that made the rounds on Sundays, from which a battered volume of Catullus had been his prize. He hadn't snuck into the library to steal the dictionary, only to spend hours each night hastily copying out definitions and declensions for the words on his list.
Rather than remind him of the rules-- that any library but the kitchen one was forbidden territory-- and scold him further, Mr Robinson said, "Never let them see that you have feelings, young Reggie. The best of them would rather not know, and the worst of them will take delight in breaking you down."
He meant the masters and betters, of course, but Reggie used everyone else for practise. Three days later, when a well-thumbed Lewis & Short lexicon mysteriously appeared in the cache of books underneath his small bed, he waited until the lights were out and the other boys were asleep to allow a smile to creep across his face.
He wondered how Mr Robinson had known he'd like to be a valet himself one day; when questioned, his self-appointed mentor merely quirked an eyebrow and said, "You have that air about you."
Reggie learned many lessons from Mr Robinson over the next few months: how to clean mud from wool, how to press trousers and brush a hat. He no longer flinched when one of the senior girls addressed him as 'you, there, boy' and clicked her fingers, or shivered when made to stand in the rain holding a door.
It was the final lesson, though, that went down the most bitterly. The strange exercise Mr Robinson set him of properly packing a gentleman's cases for travel ended not with removing it all and putting it away again, but with Mr Robinson putting on his hat and turning his sad grey eyes upon Reggie.
"The last lesson, my lad, is that you must never believe a situation will be permanent. Never become attached, or allow yourself to believe that you are, at the end of the day, anything more than a transitory force in a gentleman's life. Go without encumbrance to where you are needed next, for you will always be needed somewhere." With that, he took up his case and left.
As Reggie, as Reginald, and then at last as Jeeves, he kept these early lessons close and lived by them, and they stood him in good stead for years.
The day after Mr Robinson's funeral, perhaps fittingly, was the day Jeeves pressed the bell of 6A Berkely Mansions. From the first cup borne to his new employer, the armour of lessons and rules he'd built around himself was steadily chipped away by a man who was one part lost child, one part fool, and one part angel. His mind changed 'gormless' for 'naive,' and then for 'adorable.'
The rules became riddled with loopholes until Bertram Wooster had obliterated them entirely, and when he said, "Then heaven bless it, and may it continue to bind indefinitely," Jeeves allowed himself to smile and to believe.
11. PG, 1170 words in three sub-fraglets
Varying degrees of unrequited and/or established Bertie/Jeeves, with a splash of House/Wilson for funsies.
Crossovers with Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and House MD.
(And no, there are no spoilers for 'Planet of the Dead,' though seeing it over the weekend is entirely to blame. References are made to 'Utopia,' 'Family of Blood,' 'Human Nature,' and 'The Unicorn and the Wasp.')
In which three impossible things happen:
Strangely
or
Three Crossovers I Will Never Write
I. I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
Now I'm not always the first to notice when some new objet d'art has entered the abode, but I think even I would have noticed a great bally police 'phone box in the middle of the sitting room. More to the point, I did just that when I nearly smashed into the thing.
"...cutting it fine. I nearly ran into myself," some unfamiliar chappie-voice said before starting to natter something about wasps and mystery writers.
I peered round the edge of the thing to see Jeeves placidly sitting and drinking tea with said chappie, despite the fact that s.c. was wearing an ill-fitted suit and the sort of shoes the Americans use for some sport or other, possibly baseball, and had hair that stood nearly straight on end.
"Good afternoon, sir," said Jeeves, who popped up when he saw me.
"I don't recall ordering one of these," I said, patting the side of the interloping contraption. "Have I ordered one of these, Jeeves?"
"All my fault, I'm afraid," said the ill-suited bird-- and he was a bit bird-like, come to that, the upstanding hair giving the impression of a cockatiel or some such creature. "Parking in London's murder any year you go to."
"I apologise for the imposition, sir," Jeeves added. "The Doctor expressed an interest in my watch." As though that might go any way at all to explaining why this so-called Doctor was now peering into the flower arrangement like he'd just found the Lost Colony at the bottom of a yellow tulip.
"Oh," I said, for what else could I say? "Carry on, Jeeves. I think I'll go and lie down." I waved him weakly back down and staggered off in search of rooms free of curious boxes and curiouser chappies before I needed a doctor myself.
"I refuse to forget," I heard Jeeves say rather sharply as I shut the bedchamber door behind me.
Confused? Here might help (does contain recent-ish spoilers).
II. Dead clever an' useful.
I'd seen the creatures a time or two when I was a lad-- horrific things that none but the Four Horsemen could be expected to ride, with great black wings, heads that didn't seem to belong to them, and not nearly enough skin to cover it all over. But when asking Aunt Agatha what they were had nearly got me a cosy padded room, I'd kept my jaw firmly clamped about this and any other oddities from then on.
The trouble was, a whole flock or herd of the things lived on the Brinkley Court grounds, just sort of roaming wild. I always gave them a wide berth, but there was no way to tell Jeeves why I didn't want to walk through this particular patch of land without sounding a few short of a full set. I tried to keep the gaze studiously upon the chap I was supposed to be gazing soppily at, having come to the far end of the property to be able to do so, but the beasties draw the eye like a blasted railway accident.
Perhaps I was indeed a few s. of a full s., but it seemed to me as though my eye wasn't the only one being drawn. If Jeeves of all people told me once and for all that the things did not exist, I would believe him. Perhaps I'd stop seeing them. He wouldn't chuck me in a looney bin, would he? Not just for seeing some nonexistent species of horsey-bird. He'd find a way to fix it himself. At least I hoped so.
And what if they really were there? I am well aware, thank you, that Aunt Agatha was telling me the truth when she informed me that Father Christmas does not exist, but I have never seen Father Christmas drinking out of a babbling Brinkley brook. I screwed my courage to the sticking place and gripped Jeeves's hand. "Do you see them?"
I was half-expecting a 'see what?' but instead Jeeves stopped dead in his tracks and looked at me like he'd never seen me before. "Look over that field, Bertram, and tell me what you see," he said softly, wrapping an arm round me and turning me towards the parliament or murder of h-b creatures in q.
He must see something, I thought, if he was asking like this, so I spilled the beans. "If the hounds of Hell were horses, those blighters would be it."
To my surprise, Jeeves broke into a wide and wondrous smile and clasped me tightly to him.
"I'm not mad?" I asked in between having my face covered in kisses.
"No." It was my lips covered this time, and something the like of which I'd never felt-- not even in the bevy of vastly corking kisses from Jeeves in the past-- shivered through me. When I pulled back and looked at him with breathless marvel he said, "You, my love, are a wizard."
"I'm a what?" Possibly Father Christmas existed as well.
Confused? Try here (again, spoilers, if you've miraculously managed both not to read and not to be told).
III. Everybody lies.
They couldn't be more night and day if they'd tried, Wilson thought, despite the physical resemblance. He wished he could say House had ever looked that young, even ten years ago with two good legs, and Bertie was the sunny sort of soul House normally ate for breakfast.
But right now, side by side at the piano (and rips in the space-time continuum were nothing to the fact that House had even let him touch it), with twin glasses of whiskey and playing a four-handed tune they must've been making up on the fly, they might well have been the same person.
He caught Jeeves looking on fondly at the same moment Jeeves caught him. Wilson crossed the room under the pretext of offering a drink refill. "Does he know?" he asked softly.
The flicker of surprise and maybe fear was gone as soon as it appeared. "Does Dr House know?" Jeeves countered.
"There's no way he doesn't. I think we both know it would end in tears, though. I probably tore that hole in the fabric of reality just by thinking about it too much. But I asked you first."
"I found I preferred to content myself with Mr Wooster's companionship rather than risk rejection and separation."
Bertie turned his head and shot Jeeves a more or less adoring smile over his shoulder. Wilson nearly laughed. "Tell him," he said. "There's hope for you two." And sometimes, like right now when House was eyeing him with a smirk that wasn't not fond, Wilson let himself think for just a moment that there was hope here too. Or-- he drained his drink with a grimace-- it would destroy them both.
I think we all know who House and Wilson are.