Title: Jeeves and the Greek Ethics
Author: godsdaisiechain
Fandom: Jeeves and Wooster
Type: Fic
Characters/Pairing: Jeeves and Wooster
Word Count: ~1200
Rating: PG
Summary:  Jeeves learns about Greek ethics.


“Oh, dash it all, Jeeves!”

“Most distressing, indeed, sir.”

The reader has probably noted that this page from the chronicles of Jeeves and Wooster is starting in medias whatsit.  Not always the most opportune opening gambit, if that is the word I want, even if it worked out for old Homer.

*-*-*-*-*-*

It all started when Jeeves’s birthday rolled around and Bertram ankled round the booksellers and got him a new volume of some Greek ethics bird he wanted, recently released.  It was all about the pederasts, if that is the word I want.  Sort of thing we had at Eton, but with rather more, or less, drapery and legally all right.  I never thought the slightest bit about it, but life around the homestead got a bit scaly after that.

Jeeves had been privately educated and the whole wheeze seemed to have clipped him about the head like a mashie niblick.  He started levitating about the place as if he had no feet, spouting the most appalling nonsense about love being like one person in two bodies  and la poesie de les senses and all that. The stream of lovelorn friends of the young master flowed in like the Nile drowning the Egyptians, newts or waitresses or Marxists in tow.

Now Bertram is all for the sine qua non of the affections deeper than those of ordinary friendship and whatnot, but encouraging Gussie Fink-Nottle to once again view La Bassett as the second half of his ame immortelle seemed a bit ripe after the latest scaliness at Brinkley Court.  After a fortnight of hoofing it out to the Drones to escape this revolting drivel, the young master was ready for a return to the usual domestic tranquility of the old Spinoza-reading Jeeves.

But such was not to be.  On the morning in question, Bertram stirred to life sporting the worst sort of morning head.  Jeeves oiled in with the usual pekoe and the dark hangover cure looking a veritable god of pinstripes and cocktail shakers.

“Mr. Little and Miss Carmichael to see you, sir,” he intoned as the bean caught flame and spun around.

“Oh dash it all, Jeeves….”

“Bertie!”

Bingo charged in with glad and fulsome cries, slapping the friend Bertram and helping himself to the bedside Turkish fags (cigarettes, that is).  “Don’t you think Berniece is the loveliest name you’ve ever heard?”

“Not really,” quoth Bertram.  Jeeves made a noise like a dove choking on an olive branch.

“Miss Berniece Carmichael,” he said as said beazel, a solid specimen if ever I saw one, galloped in Bingo’s wake.  She took a gasper at his insistence before begging Bertram to help her get married immediately.

Now, Bingo had already married Rosie M. Banks at this juncture, and Bertram had nearly said something along these lines when Jeeves came in to collect the glassware.  Bingo started, cascading tea all over the heliotrope silk pyjamas and scalded the friend of his youth.

“If you will excuse us, Mr. Little,” Jeeves said, ushering the pair from the room and whisking the steaming pyjamas from the slender frame.  “I do apologize, sir.”

“I blame that new improving book, Jeeves,” I said in no mean amount of dudgeon.  “Hand it over.”

“Sir?” His expression took on the set look of an over-gelatined jelly.

“Je suis et je reste, Jeeves.”

“Very good, sir.”  He shimmered out and by the time Bertram had poured the limbs into the second best dressing gown, Bingo and Berniece were fulsomely thanking Jeeves and leaving a trail of teacups and crusts scattered about the domain.  Bertram locked the offending volume in a desk drawer. Jeeves appeared to deflate and only then did Bertram realize that the chap had been rather more, er “up” than formerly.

*-*-*-*-*-*

Weeks passed and Jeeves drooped and pined. Not that his work suffered, but a certain je ne sais quois lurked under the surface. Once it took him four minutes to come when I rang, and Bertram had worn a rather fruity pair of aubergine-colored socks for some days without so much as the lift of a Jeevesian eyebrow to gainsay him.

Bingo’s wife returned just in time to ensure that Berniece wandered down the aisle with a waiter from the eating establishment where she worked.   Bingo called to apologize for the mess and take Bertram for lunch at the Ritz.  I reeled in to find Jeeves staring at the desk in a rather forlorn manner, as indicated by the slightest bend of his broad, manly shoulders.

“A brandy and soda, sir?” he asked, straightening up as if nothing were amiss.  “Mrs. Gregson phoned earlier seeking to communicate with you about Miss Honoria Glossop’s single state. I informed her that you were at a business meeting and then took the liberty of taking tickets on the night train to Antibes.” The heart softened a bit at the edges.

“Yes, Jeeves,” I said, patting the pockets in a vain search for the key to the desk drawer.  “Not too much soda.”  A tray materialized and Bertram quaffed of the healing mixture and tipped gracefully into a heap. Jeeves caught the snifter before it bedewed the surroundings and gave a pained glance at the master’s ankles.

“Are you looking for this, sir?” asked Jeeves, proffering the key.

“Thank you, Jeeves,” I said, unfolding the corpus from the carpet.  “If you will be so good?”

“Of course, sir.”  He opened the drawer and took out the offending volume. “It is a most enlightening work.”

Bertram snorted, but passed it off as the effects of the soda.  “When will the cab be here, Jeeves?”

“Momentarily, sir,” said Jeeves.  He whisked the young master into travelling trim and we boarded the train in good time.

He was supervising the putting up of bunks in the Pullman when the volume fell from his coat pocket.  I palmed the thing and was just stowing it away when the air gave a sort of gentle heave and there he was, looking pained.

“Sir?”

The thing revolved in the mitts like a ferris wheel. “It made a dive for it during the last swerve.”

“Thank you, sir.  Shall I lay out our coral pyjamas?”

“It’s all rather ripe, this, Jeeves.”

“Sir?”

“This feeling warmer than whatit that daren’t whoosit and all that.”

“Indeed, sir,” said Jeeves, and made for the pyjamas again. “The author extols the virtues of the Uranians at some length, and takes up the topic again in his famous epic…”

“Ah,” said I, holding up the volume.

Jeeves gave the young master a look of thingness as he reached out.  The fingers barely touched and a sort of electric current blazed through the willowy corpus.  Jeeves staggered, the train swerved, and we were collapsed in a heap, noses in a tangle.  The e’s met and the universe went a bit swimmy.  The feeling warmer than w. rose up.

The air flickered and somehow, Bertram found himself installed in the sleeping car, coral pyjamas at the ready. “If that will be all, sir…”

Rummy.  Usually he helped peel the togs from the narrow frame and apply the p’s. “You won’t take the upper bunk?”  Jeeves once again gave an l. of t.

“Sir?”

“You normally do, Jeeves.”  His hand went to the pocket.

Words tumbled from the ruby lips. “You’re trembling.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The feeling warmer than whatsit?”

“Yes, sir.”  His orbs flicked over the y.m.  “If I may be so bold.  It appears that some physiological manifestations of attraction are evident in your….”

Somehow Bertram had closed the gap and kissed him.  We broke apart like gasping goldfish, and I half expected him to say “very good, sir,” but he didn’t.

“Much warmer than that of ordinary whatsit, sir,” he said and leaned in for another round.