[Jeeves & Wooster] Ficlet: Many Happy Returns (birthday prezzie for Random!)
Happy Birthday, random_nexus!! You are the bee's patellae and the cat's very nightwear! ♥♥ This is not cake, but it's probably that fluffy and sugary!
Title: Many Happy Returns
Pairing: Bertie/Jeeves
Words: ~2300
Rating: PG
Summary: Five birthdays in the life.
Note: I must thank storyfan for tidying this up and chaoticchaos13 for the kick in the trousers that got it going. Disclaimer/apologies to Wodehouse and the Beatles.
Many Happy Returns
25
I wasn't expecting anything. Not that I thought Jeeves would forget--I knew from him reminding me to send a card or some token to the most minor of acquaintances that he'd sooner forget to hate paisley ties. At best I was hoping he could be prevailed upon to let me wear my latest frowned-upon hat with a minimum of protest.
I rather thought that the 'many happy returns, sir,' that arrived along with the breakfast tray containing some exceptionally succulent morning fare was the end of it, and was honestly pleased enough that he made free to take the liberty. It's not as though valets can exactly give presents to their employers, nor would any employer worth his salt think they ought to.
There weren't precisely crowds of well-wishers to fend off, but the usual telegrams and visits and luncheons kept me busy enough not to wonder about the errand Jeeves had to biff off on more or less the moment the new hat was (indeed, with a minimum of protest) perched upon the onion, or why he didn't resurface until the appointed hour of shoving me into evening costume for a minor binge at the club.
It was only in the course of this binge, and then only because of something Tuppy let slip, that I realized what Jeeves had been up to. Once all the toasts had been toasted, the wrappings pulled off a dazzling array of gags, wheezes, ardent spirits, and one set of postcards that made me turn pink and shove them under the tablecloth, the candles were blown out on a towering and handsome chocolate gateau.
I was about to ask, as I dug into a healthy slice, what bakery had rallied round with the goods, as said goods tasted dashed familiar for some reason. Something about the way the chocolate mixed just so with a sort of nutty something and a hint of raspberry took me straight back to a breezy April afternoon when I was still in short trousers and flanked by two smiling parents presenting me with my very own proper horse. I'd christened him Raffles, to much amusement.
My reminiscence went not much further, as right about the time I (in the memory, you understand) sprang up with a cry of joy, forkful of cake still in hand, on seeing my present walked into the garden, Tuppy sighed dreamily and said, "Jeeves has really outdone himself."
34
I was not surprised to receive an envelope addressed in Mr Wooster's writing, as I had sent a postcard on my arrival with the details of where I could be reached. I thought the missive might contain some excoriation of his temporary man's abilities, or a request for advice in one matter or another.
A festive greeting card chosen in questionable taste was altogether unexpected. A few amongst my former employers had acknowledged the occasion of my birthday in some way, customarily either with an additional day or evening of leisure or some small remuneration, but as many had never done so, to no great disappointment on my part.
I was not altogether certain how Mr Wooster had known of the date at all. As the writing on the card and envelope was more than usually untidy, as might happen atop a post office counter with a pen of inferior quality, I guessed that he had discovered it by accident, perhaps from my substitute or Mr Jarvis.
Beneath a banner held aloft by what I believe was intended to be a pair of doves was written:
Jeeves,
Well, happy birthday! If I'd known before you left, I could have given the thing its proper due, but as it is, your innkeeper's been advised to hand over a bottle of something nice at your request. I hope you're living it up and not doing too much improving reading. Many happy returns and all that!
B. Wooster
Despite the obvious haste with which the card had been chosen and filled out, it was not an afterthought, and I realized, on my third bemused reading, that never before had one of these remembrances settled such a feeling of warmth upon me.
28
"No, I'm afraid not, Mr Little," Jeeves said into the telephone. "Mr Wooster is barely able to speak, let alone attend any sort of festivities, and the doctor intimated that he could remain contagious well into next week."
I could hear a little squawk on the other end, but couldn't make out any words that came after.
"I most certainly will, Mr Little. Thank you, sir." Jeeves replaced the machine in its cradle and dusted off his hands, not that the telephone had a speck of dust on it. "Mr Little wishes me to convey the entire party's wishes for a speedy recovery, sir." One corner of his mouth twitched upward just a fraction as he refilled my glass. "Are you quite certain you would not rather--"
"It's my bally birthday, Jeeves," I said, the very picture of health--and youth, thank you very much, "and I'll spend it with who I want."
"Very good, s--"
"And as it's my bally birthday, I'll thank you to dispense with the feudal spirit and come embrace me fondly."
Jeeves put down the tray he'd been tidying and quirked an eyebrow edge at my rather boldly-stated request.
"Er, that is, if you--"
But then I was being embraced very fondly indeed and had no need to babble out the rest of it. This thing between us, this fond embracing, was all still so very new that I wasn't quite sure how it all went, or how best to situate all the knees and elbows without jabbing anyone in the eye, but the entanglement of lips that silenced me wasn't any very great feat of engineering. Well, unless you counted whoever had engineered Jeeves's lips. They left me breathless every time, though so did most things he did these days.
In between these wonders of the modern world and shivering pleasantly at a capable hand dancing across my spine, I said, "You know, Jeeves, if you'd done this confession business just a bit sooner, you wouldn't have had to invent my tragic case of galloping dropsy or whatever it was you told Bingo."
"I might point out, sir, that you would have been at liberty to make a similar confession at any point."
"This time next year," I declared with a determined pause to nibble at a bit of neck I'd yet to entirely learn the taste of, "we will be doing this on a nice bit of secluded seafront property."
"Perhaps sooner," said Jeeves with a very satisfactory hitch in his breathing. "You may require a warmer climate to make a full recovery from your illness."
I'd been about to enquire after a cake I'd heard rumours about, but the fact that he forgot the 'sir' caused me to decide it would keep.
37
I woke out of habit at five, the past six months of mornings that began trapped in warm tangle of long thin limbs not yet sufficient to curtail the instinct to rise from where a sleepily mumbled mandate would keep me for at least another hour.
I blinked in confusion: I was alone. The door to the bath stood open, and the overly-ornamented dressing gown was gone from where I had allowed it to be flung over a chair the night before.
A loud crash sounded at the other end of the flat, followed by a string of colourful invectives that managed to just skirt the edge of decency. Had it been any other day, I would have bolted from the bed prepared to dispense with an intruder. As it was, I merely steeled myself for a scene of disorder as I rose, unregretful of the twinge of overworked muscles.
The kitchen, as I expected, was reminiscent of a minor natural disaster, the crash that woke me apparently due to an inexplicably large pot of water that was still dripping its contents onto the floor.
"Well, dash all potatoes anyway," muttered the man at the centre of it all, his back still to me.
I cleared my throat.
Mr Wooster spun round to face me, nearly startled into dropping two surprisingly recognisable plates of eggs and bacon. I surged forward and took them from his hands and placed them out of harm's way on the unoccupied fraction of the table.
"Happy birthday," he said sheepishly. The dressing gown was nowhere in sight, nor was anything but the trouser portion of the pyjamas that he had not worn to bed, but thankfully for his safety had put on before beginning this project. His face was streaked with the remnants of something charred and his hair was wild. "I didn't mean to wake you. No potatoes after all, but I think the toast will more or less pass muster."
I flinched as he reached into the oven bare-handed and slid out four slices of largely unburnt toast onto a plate before I could prevent it, but he did not burn himself.
"Jeeves...Reginald? I don't suppose you could get back in bed so I can do it properly, could you? And just sort of forget you've seen all this? I'd meant to have it all cleared up by the time you put a toe out of bed."
I could not help smiling, and I was only too glad to put the state of the kitchen as far from my mind as possible.
Some minutes later, I was presented with an artfully arranged breakfast, which I made my best effort at eating.
"This is really terrible, isn't it?"
I would not have said it myself for anything in the world, but the nearly astonished disgust on Bertram's face fell somewhere between heartbreaking and hilarious.
"The toast," I said, putting the tray aside and pulling him into my arms, "was indeed passable. And I love you."
64
"Hah!" I exclaimed as I tore my prize free from its wrappings. "Look what the girls sent!" I brandished the shiningly cellophaned record album whose cover was as bright as the wrapping paper. The 'girls' are not so much girls as women these days, but nieces have the peculiar problem of being perpetually ten years old and in pigtails in one's mind.
"Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," read the light of my life, peering over the top of a newspaper and a rather fetching pair of spectacles as though looking on...well, the sort of thing the chaps on the cover were wearing, in point of fact. "Presumably this is a witticism aimed at your abstinence from matrimony?"
"It's the Beatles, my dear Reginald." I flung the thing onto the hi-fi and in turn flung--well, eased--self onto my appointed bit of sofa where Jeeves seamlessly turned a page and tucked an arm round my shoulders in time to keep the paper from flopping over.
"I could not but be aware of the group's existence, Bertram," he said over an oddly twanging assortment of instruments. It didn't really sound the way I would have expected the title song to go.
"Is this the right record?" I asked with a frown at the back cover.
"I believe you will find this is the second side of the record."
"Ah. Sort of the entr'acte, then."
"Perhaps."
Well, I was disinclined to get up and start the thing from the beginning, so I spent the next five minutes wondering when someone might be turning up to read my palm or serve me curry, but after that things began to look up a bit. When the jaunty little clarinet bit tootled in, I could well have been back in the Drones Club, God rest it, winding up the Victrola.
But then it all went a bit...I suppose an old man's allowed to be a bit maudlin if he wants to, isn't he? What did we fight for, if not this? I mean to say, it was one of those songs that comes along once in a while that seems it's speaking right to you. Possibly not so much the bit about knitting, and I was most certainly not losing my hair, and I'll have to allow that I was turning sixty-four tomorrow rather than many years off and the last time I stayed out till a quarter to three was when Mabel and Biffy's granddaughter was coming into the world, but I digress.
All I could do was stare soppily into the same pair of blue eyes I'd been staring into soppily for the last thirty-odd years, and find (to no surprise whatsoever) that they had not lost one inkling of that sharp discerning je-ne-sais-quoi, and that if anything they were improved by the habitual shining of love-light and the little crinkles from honest-to-goodness smiling more than I ever would have dared imagine back in the dark ages.
In other circs I might have had myself a good giggle over the song about a meter-maid that came next, but it rather faded into the street noise through the open windows.
"And if you say the word," I sang softly.
"I will stay with you," Jeeves did not sing, not a note, but it didn't matter because that was the way it had always been, and so was the kiss that came after. As far back as I care to remember, anyway.
Title: Many Happy Returns
Pairing: Bertie/Jeeves
Words: ~2300
Rating: PG
Summary: Five birthdays in the life.
Note: I must thank storyfan for tidying this up and chaoticchaos13 for the kick in the trousers that got it going. Disclaimer/apologies to Wodehouse and the Beatles.
Many Happy Returns
25
I wasn't expecting anything. Not that I thought Jeeves would forget--I knew from him reminding me to send a card or some token to the most minor of acquaintances that he'd sooner forget to hate paisley ties. At best I was hoping he could be prevailed upon to let me wear my latest frowned-upon hat with a minimum of protest.
I rather thought that the 'many happy returns, sir,' that arrived along with the breakfast tray containing some exceptionally succulent morning fare was the end of it, and was honestly pleased enough that he made free to take the liberty. It's not as though valets can exactly give presents to their employers, nor would any employer worth his salt think they ought to.
There weren't precisely crowds of well-wishers to fend off, but the usual telegrams and visits and luncheons kept me busy enough not to wonder about the errand Jeeves had to biff off on more or less the moment the new hat was (indeed, with a minimum of protest) perched upon the onion, or why he didn't resurface until the appointed hour of shoving me into evening costume for a minor binge at the club.
It was only in the course of this binge, and then only because of something Tuppy let slip, that I realized what Jeeves had been up to. Once all the toasts had been toasted, the wrappings pulled off a dazzling array of gags, wheezes, ardent spirits, and one set of postcards that made me turn pink and shove them under the tablecloth, the candles were blown out on a towering and handsome chocolate gateau.
I was about to ask, as I dug into a healthy slice, what bakery had rallied round with the goods, as said goods tasted dashed familiar for some reason. Something about the way the chocolate mixed just so with a sort of nutty something and a hint of raspberry took me straight back to a breezy April afternoon when I was still in short trousers and flanked by two smiling parents presenting me with my very own proper horse. I'd christened him Raffles, to much amusement.
My reminiscence went not much further, as right about the time I (in the memory, you understand) sprang up with a cry of joy, forkful of cake still in hand, on seeing my present walked into the garden, Tuppy sighed dreamily and said, "Jeeves has really outdone himself."
34
I was not surprised to receive an envelope addressed in Mr Wooster's writing, as I had sent a postcard on my arrival with the details of where I could be reached. I thought the missive might contain some excoriation of his temporary man's abilities, or a request for advice in one matter or another.
A festive greeting card chosen in questionable taste was altogether unexpected. A few amongst my former employers had acknowledged the occasion of my birthday in some way, customarily either with an additional day or evening of leisure or some small remuneration, but as many had never done so, to no great disappointment on my part.
I was not altogether certain how Mr Wooster had known of the date at all. As the writing on the card and envelope was more than usually untidy, as might happen atop a post office counter with a pen of inferior quality, I guessed that he had discovered it by accident, perhaps from my substitute or Mr Jarvis.
Beneath a banner held aloft by what I believe was intended to be a pair of doves was written:
Jeeves,
Well, happy birthday! If I'd known before you left, I could have given the thing its proper due, but as it is, your innkeeper's been advised to hand over a bottle of something nice at your request. I hope you're living it up and not doing too much improving reading. Many happy returns and all that!
B. Wooster
Despite the obvious haste with which the card had been chosen and filled out, it was not an afterthought, and I realized, on my third bemused reading, that never before had one of these remembrances settled such a feeling of warmth upon me.
28
"No, I'm afraid not, Mr Little," Jeeves said into the telephone. "Mr Wooster is barely able to speak, let alone attend any sort of festivities, and the doctor intimated that he could remain contagious well into next week."
I could hear a little squawk on the other end, but couldn't make out any words that came after.
"I most certainly will, Mr Little. Thank you, sir." Jeeves replaced the machine in its cradle and dusted off his hands, not that the telephone had a speck of dust on it. "Mr Little wishes me to convey the entire party's wishes for a speedy recovery, sir." One corner of his mouth twitched upward just a fraction as he refilled my glass. "Are you quite certain you would not rather--"
"It's my bally birthday, Jeeves," I said, the very picture of health--and youth, thank you very much, "and I'll spend it with who I want."
"Very good, s--"
"And as it's my bally birthday, I'll thank you to dispense with the feudal spirit and come embrace me fondly."
Jeeves put down the tray he'd been tidying and quirked an eyebrow edge at my rather boldly-stated request.
"Er, that is, if you--"
But then I was being embraced very fondly indeed and had no need to babble out the rest of it. This thing between us, this fond embracing, was all still so very new that I wasn't quite sure how it all went, or how best to situate all the knees and elbows without jabbing anyone in the eye, but the entanglement of lips that silenced me wasn't any very great feat of engineering. Well, unless you counted whoever had engineered Jeeves's lips. They left me breathless every time, though so did most things he did these days.
In between these wonders of the modern world and shivering pleasantly at a capable hand dancing across my spine, I said, "You know, Jeeves, if you'd done this confession business just a bit sooner, you wouldn't have had to invent my tragic case of galloping dropsy or whatever it was you told Bingo."
"I might point out, sir, that you would have been at liberty to make a similar confession at any point."
"This time next year," I declared with a determined pause to nibble at a bit of neck I'd yet to entirely learn the taste of, "we will be doing this on a nice bit of secluded seafront property."
"Perhaps sooner," said Jeeves with a very satisfactory hitch in his breathing. "You may require a warmer climate to make a full recovery from your illness."
I'd been about to enquire after a cake I'd heard rumours about, but the fact that he forgot the 'sir' caused me to decide it would keep.
37
I woke out of habit at five, the past six months of mornings that began trapped in warm tangle of long thin limbs not yet sufficient to curtail the instinct to rise from where a sleepily mumbled mandate would keep me for at least another hour.
I blinked in confusion: I was alone. The door to the bath stood open, and the overly-ornamented dressing gown was gone from where I had allowed it to be flung over a chair the night before.
A loud crash sounded at the other end of the flat, followed by a string of colourful invectives that managed to just skirt the edge of decency. Had it been any other day, I would have bolted from the bed prepared to dispense with an intruder. As it was, I merely steeled myself for a scene of disorder as I rose, unregretful of the twinge of overworked muscles.
The kitchen, as I expected, was reminiscent of a minor natural disaster, the crash that woke me apparently due to an inexplicably large pot of water that was still dripping its contents onto the floor.
"Well, dash all potatoes anyway," muttered the man at the centre of it all, his back still to me.
I cleared my throat.
Mr Wooster spun round to face me, nearly startled into dropping two surprisingly recognisable plates of eggs and bacon. I surged forward and took them from his hands and placed them out of harm's way on the unoccupied fraction of the table.
"Happy birthday," he said sheepishly. The dressing gown was nowhere in sight, nor was anything but the trouser portion of the pyjamas that he had not worn to bed, but thankfully for his safety had put on before beginning this project. His face was streaked with the remnants of something charred and his hair was wild. "I didn't mean to wake you. No potatoes after all, but I think the toast will more or less pass muster."
I flinched as he reached into the oven bare-handed and slid out four slices of largely unburnt toast onto a plate before I could prevent it, but he did not burn himself.
"Jeeves...Reginald? I don't suppose you could get back in bed so I can do it properly, could you? And just sort of forget you've seen all this? I'd meant to have it all cleared up by the time you put a toe out of bed."
I could not help smiling, and I was only too glad to put the state of the kitchen as far from my mind as possible.
Some minutes later, I was presented with an artfully arranged breakfast, which I made my best effort at eating.
"This is really terrible, isn't it?"
I would not have said it myself for anything in the world, but the nearly astonished disgust on Bertram's face fell somewhere between heartbreaking and hilarious.
"The toast," I said, putting the tray aside and pulling him into my arms, "was indeed passable. And I love you."
64
"Hah!" I exclaimed as I tore my prize free from its wrappings. "Look what the girls sent!" I brandished the shiningly cellophaned record album whose cover was as bright as the wrapping paper. The 'girls' are not so much girls as women these days, but nieces have the peculiar problem of being perpetually ten years old and in pigtails in one's mind.
"Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," read the light of my life, peering over the top of a newspaper and a rather fetching pair of spectacles as though looking on...well, the sort of thing the chaps on the cover were wearing, in point of fact. "Presumably this is a witticism aimed at your abstinence from matrimony?"
"It's the Beatles, my dear Reginald." I flung the thing onto the hi-fi and in turn flung--well, eased--self onto my appointed bit of sofa where Jeeves seamlessly turned a page and tucked an arm round my shoulders in time to keep the paper from flopping over.
"I could not but be aware of the group's existence, Bertram," he said over an oddly twanging assortment of instruments. It didn't really sound the way I would have expected the title song to go.
"Is this the right record?" I asked with a frown at the back cover.
"I believe you will find this is the second side of the record."
"Ah. Sort of the entr'acte, then."
"Perhaps."
Well, I was disinclined to get up and start the thing from the beginning, so I spent the next five minutes wondering when someone might be turning up to read my palm or serve me curry, but after that things began to look up a bit. When the jaunty little clarinet bit tootled in, I could well have been back in the Drones Club, God rest it, winding up the Victrola.
But then it all went a bit...I suppose an old man's allowed to be a bit maudlin if he wants to, isn't he? What did we fight for, if not this? I mean to say, it was one of those songs that comes along once in a while that seems it's speaking right to you. Possibly not so much the bit about knitting, and I was most certainly not losing my hair, and I'll have to allow that I was turning sixty-four tomorrow rather than many years off and the last time I stayed out till a quarter to three was when Mabel and Biffy's granddaughter was coming into the world, but I digress.
All I could do was stare soppily into the same pair of blue eyes I'd been staring into soppily for the last thirty-odd years, and find (to no surprise whatsoever) that they had not lost one inkling of that sharp discerning je-ne-sais-quoi, and that if anything they were improved by the habitual shining of love-light and the little crinkles from honest-to-goodness smiling more than I ever would have dared imagine back in the dark ages.
In other circs I might have had myself a good giggle over the song about a meter-maid that came next, but it rather faded into the street noise through the open windows.
"And if you say the word," I sang softly.
"I will stay with you," Jeeves did not sing, not a note, but it didn't matter because that was the way it had always been, and so was the kiss that came after. As far back as I care to remember, anyway.