Work Text:
Title: Jeeves and the Biffen Brood
Rating: PG
Length: 4500 words
Warnings: some angst, some fluff, kid!fic LOL
Summary: Jeeves and Bertie are pressed into babysitting for Biffy and Mabel's children one fine summer's day. But it's not just any day.
<><><><>
If you have cause to doubt my abilities as a valet, you need only ask my master of eight years, Mr Bertram W. Wooster, and he will inform you that chief among my skills is my ability to deal with unusual situations. I have managed Mr Wooster’s affairs involving everything from thirty-three stray cats locked in his bedroom to an enraged, possibly rabid swan, and all the unsuitable engagements with females in between. If you require further assurance, merely inquire at the Junior Ganymede, where I have been a member some twelve years, and the most esteemed officers will tell you that Reginald Jeeves is a valet’s valet.
So it will be immediately clear why I was so disappointed in myself when my resourcefulness deserted me one summer day, when the doorbell chimed and I answered it without suspecting the trouble waiting there.
“Jeeves!” cried Mr Charles “Biffy” Biffen from the hallway. “May I ask a favour of you?”
It was abundantly clear to me what this favour would be. You see, Mr Biffen, an old friend of Mr Wooster’s, was married to my niece, Mabel. They had three children, the twins Alfred and Frannie and the baby James. This brood was now clustered about Mr Biffen in our hallway, the twins clutching at his trouser legs and the baby slumbering in his arms. Of Mabel there was no sign, which indicated to me that Mr Biffen was in something of a dilemma and needed urgent assistance.
“A favour, Mr Biffen?” I said with growing dread.
Ours was a child-free home. Mr Wooster was, and declared he would always remain, a bachelor. Being the youngest of three children myself, I had had little experience caring for young ones in my time. The thought of being responsible for three very small people who did not yet understand the proper way to dress, sit, speak, eat, read, walk, sleep, drink, or handle breakable objects made my skin prickle with discomfort. I love my niece and her family, but my duties as an uncle had heretofore extended only to a walk in the park or lunch at a tea shop, always with Mabel present to shepherd the children.
“Awfully sorry, old top, but Mabel is visiting her friend in Eggesford and our nanny became beastly ill today. She couldn’t even stand, the poor thing. I cabled Mabel and she said--” Mr Biffen paused to think, the tip of his tongue poking out the corner of his mouth and his eyes trained on the pressed tin ceiling. He was in the habit of forgetting even the most important things. For example, his own address. “Oh dash it, I can’t remember what she said exactly! All I remember is I must meet her in Eggesford and you are supposed to...to....”
Little Frannie could apparently stand in silence no longer; she tugged at Mr Biffen’s trouser leg and said in her small, high voice, “Daddy, I’m hungry.”
“Not now, darling. Daddy’s trying desperately to remember what mummy told him.” Mr Biffen shifted the swaddled bundle of baby James in his arms, then gazed at him as if suddenly remembering he was there. “Ah! Mabel wanted you to watch the children until we returned, Jeeves! I’m sure of it.”
“But Mr Biffen,” I protested even as Mr Biffen began transferring the baby into my unsure arms, “why must you go to Eggesford? Why won’t Mabel return to London on her own?”
“I’m sure there was a good reason, Jeeves, I just can’t bally remember! Now, Alfred won’t eat peas. Frannie likes her milk with ice in it. Or is it the other way round? Oh, they’ll let you know, I’m sure.” He ushered the twins past me and into the flat.
I was frozen in abject terror at the proceedings. “Surely there is a better candidate for this, Mr Biffen! Mr Wooster may not be able to accommodate the children in his flat these next few days. I would need his permission before--”
“Who would Mabel trust more than you, Jeeves? And I’m sure Bertie won’t mind; we went to school together. Now I must get to the station before the last train leaves! Golly, I don’t even remember when the last train--”
“The 4.50 from King’s Cross,” I said automatically.
“Right! Thank you, Jeeves, you really are a marvel.” And with that he was gone, leaving me holding the baby James and staring down at the two little ones.
Alfred, who had inherited his mother’s glossy black hair and dark eyes, looked up at me with something very like real fear. Frannie was the more outgoing child, and already her mop of curly gold hair bounced round her shoulders as she skipped about the foyer, examining the heads of Mr Wooster’s walking sticks in their stand. I cleared my throat, and she returned her attention to me, albeit with an air of uncertainly as to how long that would last.
“Have you not eaten luncheon?” I asked them. Alfred made no answer except to drop his mouth open a little more. Frannie spoke for him.
“Father said he’d make us sandwiches but he didn’t; he forgets everything, Uncle Reg. He forgot Alfred’s name once.”
This galvanised the young master Alfred into speech. “Did not! It was my nickname.”
“Stephen isn’t a nickname!” Frannie howled.
“Children, please.” I did not raise my voice, but my tone was hard enough to silence them. “You may sit on the chesterfield. I will prepare lunch.”
The twins took their seats, and I watched them compose themselves with their hands in their laps. I nodded, pleased, and carried baby James with me into the kitchen.
Mr Biffen had not provided me with any of the accoutrement needed for the care of a small child, so I was pressed into using my creativity to craft a suitable bassinet. My wicker marketing basket, when lined with clean, soft tea towels, was serviceable enough for my purposes. I laid down my still-sleeping burden and began assembling a simple lunch, remembering that Frannie and Alfred had balked at anything more complex than cheese on bread during our last tea shop outing. I could not recall ever being such a fussy eater as a child; I had grown up under the strict eye of my parents, who made sure I ate what was put in front of me whether I liked it or not.
I was just finishing toasting the cheese sandwiches when the children’s muffled voices in the sitting room rose to shrill shouts. A loud crash told me Mr Wooster’s silver cigarette box had been upset from the side table. (I was very attuned to the sound of this box crashing; my master had inadvertently upset it himself many times after late nights of revelry.)
I swept into the sitting room to find Frannie and Alfred tussling on the carpet amid the scattered Turkish golds. Frannie was tugging mercilessly at her brother’s hair, and he cried in pain even as he attempted to rip the ruffled sleeve from his sister’s frock in retaliation.
“What on earth are you two doing?” I demanded, plucking them up by their ears (a tactic I remembered my father employing when my sisters and I became too rambunctious). They released each other long enough to scream at my intervention.
“Frannie was trying to steal Uncle Bertie’s silver box!” Alfred said, rubbing his ear and sniffling wetly.
“That’s not true! I only wanted to see what was inside! Alfred made me knock it over, and he pinched my fingers in the lid.” She held up three bright pink fingers as evidence. I sighed.
“Children, you are guests here. You must comport yourselves in a manner becoming a lady and gentleman.” I pinched the bridge of my nose; I felt a dull ache in the back of my head that signaled the start of something worse. “And Alfred, please remember: you must not refer to Mr Wooster as ‘uncle.’ It is unseemly.”
“But Uncle Bert--I mean, Mr Wooster,” he struggled with the unfamiliar syllables, “said we could.”
This was true. As Mr Wooster was an old friend of Mr Biffen, he was often invited to their house for dinner parties and the like. The children adored him, as his kind and gentle nature set him apart from the other adults of their acquaintance, and he allowed them to think of him as an uncle. I had touched on the subject with my master before, asking him to please rescind that invitation, and he had outright refused. It would sound stilted and silly, he said, to make Mr Biffen’s children say “Mr Wooster” since they were practically family. I had countered that such a precedent would only confuse the children; they needed to understand that their Uncle Reg was employed by a man called Mr Wooster, not their Uncle Bertie.
In answer to this, Mr Wooster ducked his head and murmured something about never hearing a little boy or girl call him uncle before. I might be inured to it, he said (in his more colloquial fashion), but he had never had the pleasure, being so far away from his remaining sister and her children. He didn’t see the harm, and asked me to overlook this one breach of decorum as a special favour to him. And I did. To a point.
“You may use such familiar terms when Mr Wooster is a guest at your house,” I said, “but when you are visiting here, you must be polite and show respect.”
I could tell from the way the children scrunched their noses at me that they did not understand my edict. But at that moment, the baby started wailing in the kitchen.
With a quick prayer muttered under my breath, I raced to the makeshift bassinet to comfort little James. I picked him up and held him to my shoulder as I had seen Mabel do countless times, but his tiny weight and fragile limbs felt awkward in my arms. Bits of flyaway knowledge on the topic of babies came to mind: Should I support his head or neck? Should I rock him or bounce him? Should I stroke his hair or pat his back? I knew nothing for certain, so I made a half-hearted attempt at all of them.
The acrid smell of burning toast registered in my senses, and I hoisted the child in one arm and flipped the cheese sandwiches out of the pan with my free hand. They were burned black, and they went straight from the plate to the rubbish bin. Baby James cried ever louder.
Frannie and Alfred poked their heads past the swinging kitchen door. The boy said with an air of shame, “We’re sorry, Uncle Reg. Can we eat now?”
“What’s burning?” Frannie asked in an accusatory tone. They crept into the room, sniffing the air.
“Waaa! Waaaa! Waaaa!” went James.
I was at my wit’s end. And then I heard the front door open.
“What ho, Jeeves!” my master called from the foyer. “Topping day out there, what? You should have seen the--” His voice became louder as he walked towards the kitchen, then he swung through the door. It was a sight indeed that greeted him. His lively blue eyes danced from me to the baby in my arms (still crying) to the two twins to the smouldering remains of lunch in the rubbish bin and then back to me.
“Well,” he said. “Hullo Biffen brood!”
He crouched down on the floor and flung his arms wide. Alfred and Frannie ran to him with delighted cries of “Uncle Bertie!” and shared his embrace. I would have corrected their lapse in decorum, but I was too preoccupied with explaining as rapidly as I could to my master how the children had come to us, and how apologetic I was that I could not have obtained his leave to care for the children before Mr Biffen’s departure.
“Nonsense, Jeeves,” Mr Wooster said, ruffling Alfred’s hair and standing. “Biffy and I were at school together, and one doesn’t turn one’s back on an old school chum. Oh, may I?” He took the baby from me, and James immediately ceased his plaintive cries. He looked up into Mr Wooster’s face with wide, patient eyes, and Mr Wooster cooed to him expertly. “There we are, old Jimmy! You’re a good egg, what?”
I felt both ashamed at my failure in what was a simple task of minding the children for a few minutes, and envious of Mr Wooster’s ability to charm what was really my own flesh and blood. I stood by, quite useless, as Mr Wooster surveyed the rest of the damage.
“I don’t suppose those burnt sandwiches have anything to do with the box of cigarettes I saw overturned in the sitting room, do they?” he asked.
“There is a slight correlation, sir,” I said.
“Tell you what, Jeeves. Why don’t you whip up another batch of foodstuffs and I will regale the young Biffens with some music. What do you think, Freddie? Would you like to hear ‘They Start the Victrola’?” Alfred nodded shyly. Mr Wooster was the only gentleman I knew who could speak to small children without changing his voice to a syrupy whine. He spoke to them as he did his friends, with all the excitement he normally showed. “To the piano, then, you two! Find my sheet music and set it up for me.”
The twins ran from the room to follow Mr Wooster’s orders, and my master watched them go with a faint smile on his face. Then he turned to me, and the smile fell.
“I am sorry, old thing. I know this wasn’t how you planned to spend today.” He approached me and, still rocking the baby in his arms, pressed a delicate kiss to my cheek. “We can celebrate tomorrow.”
I allowed myself a moment of self-pity. Yes, I answered, we could certainly wait until tomorrow to celebrate.
Until now, I have refrained from outlining the details of my bond with Mr Wooster in this tale. Even in the privacy of these pages it is difficult to commit to written words, and I suppose I delayed it as long as I could out of sheer instinct for self-preservation. But now I must: Mr Wooster and I had enjoyed a long and fulfilling understanding, the likes of which sometimes exist between two men who feel no need for the intimate company of women.
We loved each other, and had for years. On the day in question, in fact, it had been five years exactly. Five years to the day the words had left our lips, and our hearts had suddenly been free of our heavy burdens. I privately considered the date to be an anniversary, the kind a husband could share with his wife. When Mr Biffen had rung the doorbell, I actually had been in the process of deciding which elaborate recipe I should attempt for that night’s dinner, the traditional annual celebration of our non-nuptials.
I glanced forlornly at the tome still sitting on the kitchen table, open to a complex recipe for boeuf bourguignon. My hopes for a romantic evening for just the two of us (a rare and treasured event, given Mr Wooster’s busy social schedule) had been dashed.
Mr Wooster followed my gaze and sighed. “I’ll make it up to you, Jeeves,” he promised. Baby James gurgled at us.
“The situation is no fault of yours, sir,” I whispered., “though I cannot mask my disappointment. I was so looking forward to you and I--”
“Uncle Bertie!” Frannie shouted as she stuck her head through the doorway. Subtly, inevitably, Mr Wooster and I put enough space between us to appear blameless. “We’re ready for you to play for us now!”
“I’ll be right there, Goldilocks,” Mr Wooster said with a wide grin. I felt a stab somewhere in my gut as I realised the grin was not a false one. Mr Wooster left me in the kitchen, and as I reconstructed the luncheon, the strains of his light tenor joined his lively piano-playing along with the giggles of the twins.
The afternoon was an extremely arduous one for me, not only because of the constant messes I was obliged to tidy. My dreary thoughts dogged me, namely that if the children had to remain at the flat overnight, I would be exiled to my lair to sleep alone. Perhaps it was childish to attach such import to the thing; after all, for the first three years under Mr Wooster’s employ I had slept in my lonely bed. One more night would surely be no hardship. Except this night was supposed to be ours, and I found it difficult to withhold my resentment. The children were not to blame, I knew, though it was hard to convince my bruised ego.
Mr Wooster tried to comfort me when he could with a touch to my arm as I poured his lemon squash at luncheon, or a tender look over the heads of the children as they sat on his lap in his armchair and folded paper gliders.
Finally, while scrubbing the dishes that had borne the teatime repast, I noticed an eerie silence. All day the flat had played host to children whooping, crying, shouting, whining, and singing. While I had heard the faint cadence of Mr Wooster reading a story to the children in the sitting room, now even those sounds were gone. Anxious about what might have happened to inspire such quiet in our little guests (and inwardly praying for our decorative vases), I dried the last plate and went out of the kitchen.
I found a tableau waiting for me on the chesterfield. Mr Wooster was sitting with a picture book still in his slack grip, his head tipped back against the cushions, snoring lightly. Baby James was nestled in the crook of one arm, also asleep. Frannie and Alfred had positioned themselves on either side of their Uncle Bertie, and now that they too had succumbed to slumber, their heads were pillowed one on each of his thighs. Frannie had her little thumb stuck between her lips, and Alfred drooled slightly. I watched them sleep for some minutes.
Then, for reasons I did not fully understand at the moment, I turned from the scene and clutched at the banquet table with tears stinging my eyes. I could not remember weeping since my mother’s death when I was still a boy, and even that grief was expressed in solitude. Therefore the sensation was foreign and most unpleasant. My frame juttered with the stress of containing the pitiful sounds welling up in my throat. My lungs beat against my rib cage in an altogether wrong rhythm. I shut my eyes tight and willed it away, willed all these horrible feelings to be gone.
“Reginald?” He hardly ever used that name for me. His voice was soft and slow, still tinged with sleep. I did not look up, but felt the presence of my longtime lover at my side. In sudden fear for the children, I glanced back at the chesterfield to see them all still sleeping in a tangle from which Mr Wooster must have extricated himself like Houdini. His warm hand closed over my shoulder. “Oh, love. Please don’t cry.”
“I will be better directly, sir, I--”
He draped himself over my bent back, clasping his hands over my hammering heart. “What’s happened?” he asked. We spoke in low whispers.
“Nothing, sir.”
“I know what nothing looks like on you, Jeeves, and this is most certainly something.”
“I meant only that nothing has happened, sir.” I dashed the back of my hand across my face, smearing hot tears down my neck. “This, this attack came upon me suddenly and without warning.”
“For no reason?” Mr Wooster pressed. His hand paid gentle comfort to my overheated face, stroking my cheek, outlining my jaw.
I stood there for a long time without speaking, merely allowing him to lean his weight against my back and hold me from behind. I was glad I didn’t have to face him at that moment; sometimes Mr Wooster’s gaze makes my thoughts trickle from my head, and I was trying my best to marshal them.
“If you never have children of your own,” I finally said, “it will be because of me.”
“Oh, Jeeves.” His voice was fond yet exasperated. I remained very still. “I will never have children of my own, not because of you, but because I would make a dashed horrid father.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but he squeezed his arms round me to silence my tongue. “I’m good for an afternoon’s playtime or an hour’s worth of silly songs, but--” He sighed against the back of my neck. “Jeeves, I don’t need anything you can’t give me.”
I clutched his hands in mine and bowed my head. “But you are so at ease with Frannie and Alfred, and little James is not a puzzle to you as he is to me. I watched you with them today; you were happy.”
Mr Wooster placed his hands on my shoulders and slowly turned me round to face him. His cheeks were pink, and at first he couldn’t meet my eyes. “I love Freddie and Frannie and Jimmy, of course, but not because I want them as my own. It’s just that, well, that is to say--” He looked up at me. “They’re your family, Jeeves. And they treat me as if I’m family too. I know it’s useless to think-- But the thing is-- Though I can’t ever put a ring on your finger--” I watched tears appear in his eyes.
Now it was my turn to plead for him not to weep, to fold him in my arms and kiss his brow, to stroke his soft hair and murmur into his ear that I understood, it was all right, I understood now. I rested my chin on my love’s shaking shoulder and closed my eyes, content to hold him as long as I could.
Then, as my eyes drifted open, I saw movement on the chesterfield. Alfred was sitting up, blinking those wide, dark eyes at me. As swiftly as I could, I moved to disengage myself from Mr Wooster, but Alfred screwed his eyes shut with almost comical force and flung himself back onto the cushions with a loud, theatrical snore.
“What’s wrong?” Mr Wooster asked quietly.
I hesitated only a moment. “I just realised we’d better wake the children soon, or they’ll never sleep through the night,” I said.
“Oh! Right-o, Jeeves.” And Mr Wooster moved to do so. While he was busy with Frannie and the baby, I took Alfred for myself.
I touched his thin shoulder and said, “Alfred, would you please come help me in the kitchen?”
The boy, to his credit, pantomimed a yawn before padding along behind me. When the door was shut behind us I folded my arms over my chest and asked, “Do you know what you saw just now?”
Alfred had always been a quiet boy, unassuming and mild especially compared to his boisterous twin. He had the ability (rare in small children and grown-ups both) to simply watch. I had an inkling that he would grow into a thoughtful young man, and I was gambling on the fact that his default action was to say nothing when confronted with an unusual situation.
I was not disappointed. Alfred lifted his chin and told me, “I saw you and Uncle Bertie talking.”
“And that is all?”
“What else could I have seen, Uncle Reg?” he asked. His eyes betrayed no guile, but that tiny quirk of his lips, that trademark Jeeves gesture that said “I know something but I won’t tell” proved otherwise. Never had I been more proud of my niece’s child.
I knelt on one knee and faced him properly. “Someday, Freddie,” I said, “you might make an excellent manservant, if you choose that path.”
He smiled his shy smile. “Do you really think so, Uncle Reg?”
“I doubt your mother would allow you to remain idle.” And he laughed. Together, we arranged a simple dinner meal, which I served with a light heart.
Night fell and it became clear that the Biffens were not returning for their children until perhaps tomorrow. (We would later discover that Mr Biffen had, in fact, not been asked to travel to Eggesford, but to Mumsford, and that Mabel hadn’t told him to leave the children with me, but with her Aunt Gertrude in Chelsea. Such are the quirks of Mr Biffen’s memory.) I was preparing the guest room for the twins when a commotion in the sitting room diverted my attention.
“Oh please, Uncle Bertie? Won’t you please let us?” Frannie was begging.
“It would be ever so wonderful,” Alfred said, lobbying just as hard.
Mr Wooster, rocking James in his wicker basket on the floor, shot me a glance. “Jeeves, the children think it would be a splendid idea to bunk out here in front of a fire tonight. Would you please explain to them that one, it’s much too warm for a fire, two, there’s a perfectly good bed in the guest room, three, they would need constant supervision out here--”
Alfred, who was standing behind Mr Wooster’s legs, poked his head round and nodded enthusiastically in my direction. When his intent became clear to me, my heart nearly burst in my chest.
“I think the idea is a fine one, sir,” I said, cutting him off. “Allow me to procure the necessary blankets and pillows.”
“Hurrah!” cried the children, dancing about a perplexed Mr Wooster.
Within a few minutes (the bulk of which was spent dressing the children in some of Mr Wooster’s old pajama shirts, which were much too large and made the twins look like ragamuffins, to my dismay) we were all of us ensconced in the sitting room before a roaring fire. Frannie, always one to demand everyone’s attention, insisted on situating herself between myself and Mr Wooster. She laid her head in Mr Wooster’s lap and curled her stockinged feet against my leg.
Alfred arranged a pillow against the curved arm of the chesterfield and snuggled there at my side, my hand resting in his hair. “Goodnight, Uncle Bertie, Uncle Reg,” he made a point of saying.
Baby James slept peacefully in his bassinet, and within a few minutes, the twins followed his example.
I watched the children, at last quiet and peaceful, dream in their little cocoons of blankets and pajamas. Deft fingers brushed the back of my neck, and I turned to look at Mr Wooster, sitting beside me with a lap full of my kin.
His mouth formed the words without sound: I love you.
I answered just as silently: I love you too.
Our hands met on the back of the chesterfield, our fingers linking tightly together, and we passed our fifth anniversary there in front of the crackling fire without saying a word.
fin.
GUYS, I know I'm supposed to be working on that AU idea but it just got really hard and I got really frustrated and whiny so I just wrote this instead. Better not to force something that doesn't wanna come out, right? WELP. So here's an established relationship fic, and a kid!fic to boot! I hope it wasn't too stupid. I don't know anything about kids! How old are Alfred and Frannie? I don't know, 3? 5? 12? 32? I am REALLY UNSURE.
To those of you who are wondering if Freddie grows up to be who you think he might grow up to be, YOU ARE CORRECT. Award yourself some points.
Anyhoo, I hope you had fun reading it. :3