InsaneJournal

Jeeves's Particular Touch - Jeeves/Wooster story
Title: Jeeves's Particular Touch
Fandom: P. G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster
Summary: I reckoned that a good stimulation of the material fibers might produce some good effect, or at least that Jeeves would have an inkling of its positive nature.
Rating: Adult
Pairing: Reginald Jeeves/Bertram Wooster
Notes: I convinced Te to watch Jeeves and Wooster, which made her both eager to read the novels and greatly desirous of something resembling the following story. Jack, Carla, and Karen encouraged me and Jamjar was kind enough to give it a right good beta-reading.


I felt awfully low after Sipsey Reston-Smith turned out to be engaged to an American chap, and while the Code of the Woosters is not one that permits an overlong melancholy, I was in danger of wallowing a bit too much. After a week or three, it grew to the point where even a threat from Aunt Agatha of a luncheon or some such thing would have been a welcome distraction, but she was abroad at the time.

I spent a good few nights at the Drones, but even the roll fights had lost something of their usual savor. Some of the young ladies of my acquaintance swear by the acquisition of a new frock when they're dogged by a brown study, but a n. f. would look positively rotten on yours truly. I mentioned one of Barmy Phipps's splendid plaid jackets to Jeeves, and he gave me one of those rummy looks. "As you like, sir," he said, with just that tone that let me know he'd countenance no such innovation.

There are some chaps who take no guff from their valets, but I've found that Jeeves has the best brain of anyone I know, and that it's often best to humor him in these matters. He eats a great deal of fish and feeds the mental processes carefully with Spinoza and that sort of rot. Exactly what Spinoza has to say about new suits, I'm sure I couldn't say, but Jeeves could, and he quoted it for me with one raise of his arched brow: that would be inadvisable, sir. Besides, even the plaids seemed rather drab this season.

I might have invited Bingo or Gussie or someone for dinner, I suppose, but I hardly felt up to their company. Bingo's romantic turn of mind would have had him parroting on about some young thing he'd met in the street three seconds before, while Fink-Nottle's newts weren't the sort of thing I could stomach without a good solid dinner beforehand. All in all, I was quite at loose ends, and if I had been a lesser man, I might have drowned my woes in demon rum. Under the circs, my routine, by which I mean Jeeves's, prevented me from tipping too many snifters. He didn't so much refuse to serve me as do it quite slowly and with the sort of precision that kept my nose from coming over all red.

I never quite worked up the mustard to ask him if he'd been pouring short measures as evenings wore on, that not being the sort of thing one wants to accuse one's gentleman's gentleman of being capable of doing to the young master in cold blood. In any case, being Jeeves, he worked out that I was feeling less than entirely chipper without my having to say anything so obvious as "Willow, willow, willow." He offered me a good rubdown one morning -- or perhaps early afternoon, as I hadn't been rising with the lark so often as I might have done in other times.

Jeeves's massages were far too pleasant to turn down, though I'd hardly been doing anything to merit one; without aunts calling on me noon and night, I hadn't jumped out of a window or scaled an ivy-clad trellis in ages, let alone thrown myself into a pond. Still, I reckoned that a good stimulation of the material fibers might produce some good effect, or at least that Jeeves would have an inkling of its positive nature. "That's dashed kind of you, Jeeves," I said, and disrobed accordingly.

"Not at all, sir," he said, and warmed up his hands so as not to chill me unduly. I spent a bit of time -- the first bit in a while -- thinking about how bally good life was, even with the spots that hurt rather.

I wrangled the thought into something of a metaphor and shared it with Jeeves. His response, much cooler than his hands, led me to understand that he would not be placing my praise of his massages into his capacious recall for bon mots and poetic turns of phrase. I might have reproached him for this slight on another occasion, but he dug his thumbs into my lower back with a precision that left me no comment whatsoever but a yelp, muffled to preserve the pride of the Woosters.

"I say," I said, when I could master my voice, but those were the only words that had answered muster.

"Yes, sir?" Jeeves asked, and again he performed one of those moves that so clearly mimicked the mixed pain and pleasure of life. I neglected to inform him of this, knowing his disdain for the terminology.

"I'm feeling quite a bit better," I said, and if I sounded a trifle weak, Jeeves was the last man who would have wondered why.

"Well-begun is half done," Jeeves said, "but it would be remiss of me to pretend that my task here is entirely completed when it is not."

I turned onto my side and fixed him with the rummiest look I could manage while lying prone and somewhat clothingless. "How's that, then?"

"If you would lie on your back, sir," Jeeves said, and I rolled accordingly. I would rather have liked to keep the towel on general principles, but there is little point in preserving a girlish sort of modesty in front of the fellow who draws one's bath.

"I can't picture you leaving a job half-done," I said, and he nodded gravely and went on with what he was doing. I was glad I'd got the sentence out when he took a firm grip on my thigh.

"We live to serve, sir."

"Ah," I said, less coherently than I might have liked. He let go of my thigh and touched me rather intimately. "Jeeves," I said.

"Sir?"

"Where did you learn this splendid massage technique? If you -- ah -- keep on like this, I'll have to write you a different metaphor."

"That would be most kind of you, sir."

"Golly," I said, when he had quite finished, and I was quite in need of the towel I'd discarded. I sat up and clapped my hands, feeling rather as though I'd been broken down into the dust from which we all come and touched anew with a life-giving hand, or something along those lines. "Thank you, Jeeves. That was invigorating, to say the least."

"Don't mention it, sir."

I popped off into a nice bath, enjoyed a good scrub and a little song, then dressed in the outfit that Jeeves had laid out for me. It was a sunnier day than any I had noticed since some girl or other had thrown me over for a Yank, and it seemed as though all the birds had remembered how to sing. It seemed only just, then, to whistle along as I trotted along to the Drones for lunch and several rounds of billiards. The day continued fair, and the light supper Jeeves had for me on my return was as savory as any dish ever laid before a king.

As I finished my fine repast, I pushed my chair back from the table. "My word, Jeeves, but I feel fitter today than I have in at least a week of Sundays. Or perhaps Tuesdays, as it's not Sunday. I strode forth in the land with the vim and drive of Achilles and whatsit -- Patronym isn't in it, Jeeves, I forget. But I feel splendid."

"I am most pleased to hear that, sir." Jeeves did not entirely smile, as he so rarely did such a thing, but he had the same general air of satisfaction that he normally wore when he had pulled me out of one scrape or other.

I slept most delightfully that evening, dropping off into the misty depths of slumber as one would most hope to do under any circs. In the morning, Jeeves was as perspicacious as ever, careful not to rouse me too early. Before I took my ritual bath, he gave me one of those feudal half-bows with a towel over his shoulder and said, "Given how many benefits you seem to have derived from the massage I gave you yesterday, sir, perhaps you would enjoy a similar treatment today?"

I had not expected him to offer, and though Jeeves had great reservations about denying me anything but sartorial freedom, it had not occurred to me to request such a thing. Now that he had, though, I was more than pleased to accept. "That would be most kind of you, Jeeves."

This massage was as pleasant as the one the day before, particularly the flourish with which Jeeves finished the whole business. After a warm bath, there was Jeeves waiting with a cup of tea like an Olympian cup-bearer, and I complimented him on the ambrosial nature of his brew with a verve quite like my old self. There was enough of a change in my outward disposition that Stingy Stibbons mentioned it over lunch, and we all had a good chuckle over how such funks can overtake one and clear just as quickly as anything.

Jeeves, for all his feudal spirit, was not the sort of fellow to stint at adding an innovation to daily routine if it gave positive results. So it was that he carried on with the massage regime, and I carried on benefiting from it until I was quite in top form. What had begun as a remedy for discomfort became rather a pleasant addition to the day, and I started entertaining again. But even the joy of breaking bread and sharing the juice of the grape with one's comrades at one's hearth must pall in time, and it was not many nights before I went out and about with some of the lads from the Drones.

It was rather a long night, starting in the club with several cocktails, then going out to a lovely little spot Warty happened to know of, where we had several pints of this and glasses of that. There were some wagers placed on who would go home first, and who would need whom to drag him to a cab, and far too many of them laid odds against me for my pride to survive intact. We Woosters must hold our chins and our glasses high, though not both at the same time, as that might cause them to collide in a messy fashion.

In any case, after Warty's spot, there was one that Chuckles knew of, and after that I hardly knew where we were headed, and wandered the streets like a band of Maenads, if those are the ones I'm thinking of. We fetched up in some side street that I barely recognized, even considering that I'd had rather a lot to drink, and a dark little pub that ought to have been closed by that hour, by all rights. Instead of closing, the owner -- if that was the identity of the short, lean fellow by the door -- welcomed us in and served us all another round, then another.

I was working through perhaps my second pint in the place, or it may have been the third, when I saw a couple of chaps in the corner. Normally, I would have given them a worldly nod, man to man, and moved right on with my drinking unless they cared to have a go at some game or other. They arrested my wandering eye in a most singular way, however, not least because one of them leaned toward his companion and gave him a peculiar kiss.

I had seen gentlemen buss one another, as I am not entirely untraveled on the Continent, but this was not that style of kiss in the least. No cheeks were involved in the transaction, and neither was it brief. It lingered in a manner that would have embarrassed any woman who had ever courted me, not that I would have presumed to kiss her so in a public place, but if I had she would certainly not have stood for it, let alone sat down, as these gentlemen, if they may be called that, were doing.

For all of that, the most arresting and peculiar aspect of their odd behavior was not in the kiss, but in the way one fellow ran his hand up the other's thigh and, perhaps, beyond. I could not help but goggle when I first saw the gesture, for it evoked nothing whatever so much as certain massages I had of late received from my otherwise unblemished valet.

When I collected myself sufficiently to close my mouth, I stood, if a bit shakily, and abandoned my drink and the respect of my peers, whose odds were wholly justified by my departure. It was not a highly traveled area, but I found a cab and gave my address before any of the gents from the club found me.

Jeeves greeted me at the door, as he always did, and presented me with the perfect opportunity to confront him regarding matters of interpersonal conduct. "Good evening, sir," he said, though two-o'clock had rung through the city while I traveled homeward.

"It was," I concurred amiably enough, hoping to catch him off his guard, "until I happened to witness a certain thingummy in a place that was rememberinscent of your massages." I meant to grow sharp at the end there and grind my point home, but I fear the various libations of the evening had dampened my ire more than might be hoped.

"Did you, sir?" Jeeves asked as if he were truly the soul of innocence.

"Rather!" I said, and stepped o'er my own threshold under my own power, if only just. The doorway caught half my weight when my knees turned to water. Jeeves caught the other half. "Were you going to compound the matter by kissing me?"

"I had not planned any such action, sir," Jeeves said, though he was close enough to kiss me ten times over had the thought entered his mind.

I tried getting my feet under myself and staggered again, but with Jeeves's assistance, I reached the bed almost as easily as if I'd only drunk water all night. "Good," I said as I lay down upon it, but simply saying it then seemed insufficient. Jeeves might have thought I'd said it simply due to achieving the bed, so I said it again and clarified. "I'm glad you weren't going to kiss me. It would be beyond the pale, simply odd."

"Quite so, sir," Jeeves said, and untied my shoes one after the other.

I frowned at him as sternly as ever I might. "Did you learn that outré massage technique in the sort of place where gentlemen kiss each other? In the way that they most often kiss ladies, I mean?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say, sir," said Jeeves, and though the dithyrambs of Bacchus were ringing loudly in my ears, I could hear that he would say nothing further on the subject, whatever pleas I put to his contrastingly deaf ears.

"Well," I said, and, lacking other terminology, "well," I added, and I elaborated, "well." I essayed a further, "Well," before I appended, "that's good." I laughed at my own repetition, and at the thought that anyone could have spotted Jeeves in such an establishment as the one I mistakenly visited. "That's all right, then."

Jeeves nodded and took my jacket. "I had rather thought so, sir."

"Good night, then," I said, and he backed toward the door.

"Good night, sir."

Dawn was more hatchet-faced than rosy-fingered when she burst in upon me in the guise of eleven-o'clock the following morning, and I was in no state to contemplate anything at all until Jeeves entered with his very own hangover cure. It burned its way through my system and revived the vital tissues that had been so close to death moments previously. "Good morning, sir," Jeeves said.

I could not begin to return the sentiment in kind. "Thank you." I wiped my eyes against the tears that the medication had produced. "I was thinking," I prevaricated slightly, for I thought as I spoke rather than previous to the moment, "that perhaps it is slightly inappropriate to continue with the sorts of massages you have been practicing recently."

Jeeves's only response to this was a nod, less foreboding than he might have been if I had threatened to wear a green feathered cap to the opera. "If you feel so, sir, nothing could be simpler than to discontinue the practice immediately."

It was a weight off of the part of my mind that could not help replaying the image of the kissing men like some sort of demented phonograph. "Excellent, Jeeves." The effort of approving of his decision was enough to bring back a headache, even despite the soothing draft he had given me beforehand. "Or it will be excellent when I can bear to look at sunshine again."

He nodded and said, his voice as quiet as the proverbial m., "I shall draw your bath, sir."

The first day after the change of routine was as miserable as I had made it through overindulgence, carousing, and the more liquid sorts of revelry. I was peevish, snappish, and thoroughly unpleasant, but it would have been unfair to attribute the mood to anything other than my own foolishness. The fact that my ill spirits lingered like the smell of cabbage in a school cafeteria, however, was nothing to be sneezed at, and by the fourth day I was quite inclined to seek some form of remedy for the malaise that gripped me.

The most obvious medication that suggested itself to my tormented mind was the one I had renounced so precipitously. I reconsidered this choice in something of a fever of irritation, displeased beyond measure with myself, and by extension, with Jeeves. It was unlike him to allow me to make that sort of ill-judged statement without at least a disapproving "Indeed, sir?" to let me know how greatly I had erred from what he considered to be the right and true path. While I might have resented such a nudge from a lesser man, and I had occasionally balked at Jeeves's imperious remarks, I had grown used to his wisdom and, though I sometimes resented his manner, I relied upon him in some senses to keep me on the straight and narrow.

I addressed him regarding this failure of his normal efficacy while he poured my tea. "I say, Jeeves," I said, "it was dashed crude of you to leave off with those massages."

"Was it, sir?" he asked, and I accepted the tea from him. His demeanor had not changed a whit, nor did his hands shake at this most vicious remonstrance.

"I rather enjoyed them," I admitted, as evidence to the court, "and they improved my mood no end."

"I had noted just such a mollification, at that," said Jeeves, and he unfolded my napkin and handed it to me.

I placed the napkin in my lap and sipped my tea. "Perhaps you were a mite over hasty in discontinuing the practice."

"Ah," he said, in the sort of phrase that Plato might have employed before engaging in one of his deathlessly dull dialogues. "Perhaps I was, at that, sir. Should I be given to understand that you would care to renew the practice?"

Jeeves had kindly foregone the opportunity to blame the young master for swearing off simple pleasures. Apart from that, he had hit upon the very crux of the matter, discounting the potentially disagreeable associations of the issue, which might possibly have had something in common with those Greek athletes old P. was so fond of watching in their gymnasiums. "Quite," I said. "After breakfast would be favorite."

"Very good, sir," said Jeeves, and as he turned away, I was nearly certain that I caught him smiling.