“But, Tuppy! It was all Angela’s idea!” Down one hall. “I promise!” Around a corner. “And Madeline broke the engagement between us!” A shorter hall. “What was I to do?” “I ask you!” “What could I do?” Up the stairs, pausing occasionally to throw pleads to the wind, though all sailed over the receding hairline of his pursuer. They dashed, prey and predator, in and out of rooms, down passages and out and about the grounds.
It was those newts, Tuppy was sure of it. Too much time shut up with those blasted newts had changed Gussie completely. Oh he’d loved the slimy little creatures as long as Tuppy’d known him, but being shut up for years in that little cabin with the amphibi-whatsits had gone to his brain. No, this was not the same Fink-Nottle that helped him pass his Latin exams, nor that begged for his manhood the very first day back from summer holiday while they were at Eton. This was a Gussie altered, deformed, deranged; and he had to pay.
Back inside, up the stairs, and finally Gussie’s frantic thought-process kicked in from panic mode to survival mode. He made a beeline for his room, nearly knocking over several maids, two other houseguests (friends of Tom, he’d assumed, stopping by to speak to the man of the house about some dashed piece of silver or another), Seppings, and Jeeves, all individually. Tuppy was, as the phrase goes, in “hot pursuit”, however. Being slightly larger than Gussie, he really did knock over several maids, two other houseguests, and Seppings. He did not knock over Jeeves, partly because nobody could knock over Jeeves, but also because Jeeves was no longer in his way to knock over. Jeeves had guided Mr. Fink-Nottle discreetly into his own employer’s room.
“If you’ll just remain here, Mr. Fink-Nottle, I’m sure Mr. Wooster would not be averse to aiding your predicament.”
“Oh, thank you, Jeeves.”
Footsteps.
“Mr. Fink-Nottle perhaps you could...”
“Already there, Jeeves.” Gussie whispered from where he hid under the bed.
“Very good, sir.” Jeeves busied himself fidgeting with some knickknack or another as his master entered the bedroom.
“Jeeves...”
Oh, thank god, it was only Bertie. Still, Jeeves hadn’t signalled him to come up. Yes, yes, best to follow Jeeves’ lead. Bertie always spoke so highly of him and his fish-fed brain.
They talked for a time about seemingly inconsequential things. ‘Good lord! Did they just... what did he just say?’ Gussie thought he heard Bertie say... well, who’d have thought Jeeves was interested in men?
Who’d have thought Jeeves was interested in anybody?
The man in question silenced Bertie before he could expand upon the proposition.
“Jeeves, what... Oh very well. I just wanted to get my mind off of all this bally nonsense at Brinkley. Jeeves, do you know what’s happened? Gussie went and got himself engaged to my cousin Angela!”
“Gentlemen who are discarded by one young lady are apt to attach themselves without delay to another, sir. It is what is known as a ‘gesture’. My Uncle George...”
Gussie stopped listening, no more interested in Bertie’s whinging than he was Jeeves’ Uncle George.
“Mr. Fink-Nottle, sir?” Jeeves called for him to reappear, and stirred him from his reverie, where he was thinking of an alternative escape route. He peeped his horn-rimmed spectacles out from under the bed.
“Gussie?!”
“Is the door locked?”
“Yes, sir...
Gussie was about to heave the breath he just realized he’d been holding, when there was a knock at the door, followed by his pursuer’s voice harshly intimating a strong desire to enter the room.
Gussie slid out from under the bed like a newt from under his pond-rock, and popped back up to a standing position on the other side of the room, promptly squeaking and squawking for assistance from the gentleman and gentleman’s gentleman in the bedroom. He flailed about the room, desperate for an exit. Jeeves appeared behind him, opening a wardrobe door. Gussie slipped into his new hiding spot with another squeak of gratitude. Just then Bertie opened the door for Tuppy, who marched in like an angry, plump man marching into a room.
Hildebrand Glossop began his search in aggressive earnest. Perhaps, Gussie thought, he’d have a chance. After all, Bertie and Jeeves wouldn’t let Tuppy come too close to him. Perhaps he was finally free.
Perhaps even Bertie and Jeeves hadn’t been aware of the faulty door hinge on the barrier between Gussie and Tuppy.
The door’s squeak sealed Gussie’s fate, as he was exposed once more to the light of the bedroom. More importantly, however, he was exposed to Tuppy.
The larger man growled as he neared his prey, slowly, and then sprang at the same moment Gussie decided to try his hand at defying gravity. They stumbled over the bed and out the door before Bertie could shout a “Now, look here!”
Gussie bolted, reverting to his old plan of getting back to his room. Yes, if he could just get in there, he could tie the sheets together and lower himself out of Brinkley Court just like he’d read in the mystery novels when he was a child. Almost there, he thought.
“You snake in the grass!” Closer, closer.
“You rotten little—” Yes, he was in. He was safe now.
He propped himself tight against the door, and finally heaved a sigh of relief.
“Fink Nottle!” Tuppy shouted from the hallway. His patience was wearing thin, his blood boiling to a temperature unlike nearly anything he’d felt before. No, this task would require the Glossop cunning.
He had to leave the door if he was going to tie the sheets, Gussie thought as the double-lock clicked into place. Perhaps the locks would be enough. Perhaps, if his lucky stars had anything to do with it, Glossop would wait for him outside his room, only for him to never return.
But then... what about Angela?
What about Madeline? Gussie went slack against the door.
No... Blast all women. Blast them right to...
Tuppy’s third heave sent him soaring—or, rather, falling—into his victim’s bedchamber, and the door came down on Gussie with a smack.
While Gussie could only whimper in pain, the one thing he did manage to realize was that Tuppy was somehow now situated on top of him, straddling his hips as he would a Dapple Grey. His hands, however, were pressed rather tightly against his throat, as he would a bucking stallion Dapple Grey.
He looked in the eyes of his assailant, and for a moment, Hildebrand Glossop stopped strangling the man he thought he hated.
Angela’s voice rang from behind them, “I’m not going to ask what you’re doing, Glossop... only that you not consume my fiancé, and you repair that door immediately. Mummy will be most distressed. She’ll probably throw you out of the house. Then again, perhaps you could just leave it. Really wreck it, in fact. Leave the splinters. Seppings will clean them up once he’s shown you out.”
“A-Angela!”
“Yes, Gussie dearest?”
“He’s trying to kill me!”
He tried to make eye contact now with his fiancée, but her blue eyes were cold and icy, and lacked any sympathy.
“Well, fight for your honour, man! Fight for me! His weight is mostly fat, anyhow. You’ve got more muscle.”
“But Angela! I’ve got no muscle!” Angela turned and started to walk down the hall, but turned her head sharply back to call out the best encouragement she could offer her pathetic excuse of a champion.
“If you won’t do it for your honour...”
“What honour?”
“And you won’t do it for me...”
“But so is Tuppy!”
“Do it for those blasted newts of yours. Turn Glossop into a jelly, or I’ll pull the plug on their bathtub. Good luck, darling.”
“Ang- Ow!” Angela had disappeared around the corner, and Tuppy stood on his feet with sufficient struggle, stepping on Gussie’s hand in the process.
“Right, Fink-Nottle. You’re going to help me repair this door, out of respect for Angela and the lady of the house.”
“But, I-”
“DO IT.”
“Right!” Gussie sprang to his feet. Then his cunning mind kicked back in.
“I say, Tuppy... Perhaps it would fix better if you were on the other side.”
“Don’t even try it, Fink-Nottle.”
“Alright... it was worth a shot...” They positioned the door back in the cavity and twisted the screws back into their places on the hinges. It only took a matter of ten minutes, but it seemed to calm Tuppy down enough to focus on the door rather than his friend’s traitorous behaviour. His blood was no longer pumping in his ears, and he felt the red heat leave his collar. The locks, too, were set back into place, and the two men tried opening and closing a few times.
Tuppy caught Gussie’s eye once more, his memory playing in front of him: a time at Eton when he didn’t concern himself with women. He’d known Angela well enough to call her a friend then, since he knew Bertie and he’d spent time at Brinkley in the summers, but she was different then. Pretty enough girl, surely. But there wasn’t the same spark as when he saw her as a woman.
No, those were the days when any and every need a boy had could be satisfied with the aid of their own palm, or sometimes, with other boys.
Bertie, Bingo and Gussie where the favourites in their house, as he remembered; Bertie because he was good-looking, Bingo because he was easy, and Gussie because of his shy enthusiasm. There was something highly attractive about innocence in the bedroom. Something about it that stirred the protective, masculine instinct in the boys of the dorm, and Tuppy was no exception. In fact, came the time when Gussie was Tuppy’s particular favourite, and vice versa.
Gussie had admired that Tuppy was... more of a man, or boy. As a younger man, Gussie was fonder of the boys with a little extra to offer, and Tuppy, although certainly not the biggest boy in their house, was the best endowed of the heavier set boys. His manhood was not disproportioned to his stomach, that is. And that was just when they were sixteen... imagine, now that they were twenty-six...
Their thoughts trailed off simultaneously and their vision blurred so that although they stood behind the locked door staring at one another, they saw nothing but the happy childhood they left behind. For what? To be tied down to a temporarily beautiful profile for the rest of their lives? To grow old with some beazel that hated them after the first decade of marriage?
Bertie was lucky to have Jeeves, Gussie thought. Someone who, it seemed, cared a great deal about him. Someone he had a relationship with, but whom he’d never have to marry. Someone to live with, sleep with, and love without all the drawbacks that woman seemed to collectively have.
But a lifestyle like Bertie’s had too many risks. There was certainly something suspicious about a man who turned down all possibly fiancées to carry out a comfortable “bachelor” life with his valet. Surely the day would come where he would be caught with something, convicted of something, and charged with something. No, marrying off would be best in the long run.
But what if... just this once...
“Gussie,” he was stirred from another contemplation, one that had not only clouded his thoughts, but that also hoarded the attention of certain unmentionable parts of his body. Between the swell of his manhood and the severe and familiar heat he felt pressing on the inside of his face, he was sure none of the blood was making its way to his brain. Rendered speechless, he simply gaped at his friend and the object of his daydream.
Tuppy, too, was reminded of reality only by the sharp sting to his groin that meant he’d thought far longer than was gentlemanly on the subject of Gussie’s arse. His fingers still seemed to remember that warm gentle curve from all those years ago. Maybe, just maybe...
“Gussie,” he repeated. He wasn’t sure how or why he’d said the name in the first place, but now he had incentive. If he could just set his trap, Gussie would come. Oh, would he come.
“You know, what you did... going and getting engaged to Angela... that just wasn’t cricket, Gussie. It’s not the done thing.”
“But, Tuppy, Angela-” Oh no, was he going to go back to chasing him like a wolf would a rabbit.
Yes, that was it. Now it could be turned around on him: he had Fink-Nottle now. “Gussie, women have no morals! Especially Angela. She’d do anything to spite me. She doesn’t understand that I love her more than she could know! In fact, plain and simple, she doesn’t understand anything! She’s almost as thick as her cousins! Look at Claude, Eustace... look at Bertie, for Heaven’s sake! Between all of them they haven’t a modicum of propriety or discretion or sense of real moral value. When I marry her—and I will be the one marrying her—I’ll make her a proper, honest woman. But first...” Here he snatched at Gussie’s lapels, pulling him close. “I’m going to make you an honest man.” He forced his mouth to the smaller man’s labials as he would one of Anatole’s steak-and-kidney pies. But unlike one of Anatole’s steak-and-kidney pies, Gussie was still intact four seconds later.
But by the fifth second the noted newt-fancier had turned into an absolute jelly: his legs wobbled and abandoned their solidarity. Years of celibacy, locked up in a Lincolnshire cabin with Salamandridae had left Gussie overly-sensitive. And, while he might not have been as good a kisser as the ginger prefect he’d once known at Eton, Tuppy certainly was certainly a unique experience.
“Do you mean...”
“Yes, Gussie...” Gussie wondered inconsequentially where his jacket had gotten to, while Tuppy focused intently on the collar of his companion, and more specifically, its removal.
“Like at school, when you...”
“Yes, Gussie...” The larger man exposed more flesh with each undone button of the white shirt, and began nibbling intently against Gussie’s thin, pale neck. The nibbling, delightful as it may have been, did not last long. Gussie was just beginning to undo Tuppy’s jacket when he was grabbed by the sides and half-thrown, half-carried across the room to the bed. Once there, Tuppy reinforced his authority over the other man by ripping off the remainder of his clothes as Gussie sat beneath him, trying in vain to repeat the gesture being performed on him.
Finally Tuppy had Gussie in the altogether, still squirming frantically beneath him. Gussie, meanwhile, pulled at the buttons of Tuppy’s trousers, and Tuppy disrobed with haste. He stared hungrily at the lighter man, his eyes moving from the dark curls above his brow, to the faintly defined chest, the trim waistline and finally the curve of his hips, between which lay the beading evidence of his arousal.
It was the work of a moment for Gussie to gently push Tuppy on his back and place the twitching arousal at his soft, pursed lips. He bowed his head and took the head of Tuppy’s cock into his mouth. With each dip lower he took in more of the sensitive appendage, and with each dip lower he earned a louder moan of appreciation. Occasionally Tuppy would murmur an instruction or encouragement, but for the most part he was reduced to low groans and hisses.
For once, Tuppy’s mind shot ahead of his body, and he stopped Gussie’s bobbing with sufficient effort.
“Tup-” Before Gussie could utter another sound, he was manoeuvred to lay back on the bad
Tuppy positioned himself in much the same way he had when they were boys. Gussie spread his long lanky legs eagerly, and Tuppy situated himself between them, gently aligning his and Gussie’s members.
Gussie gasped at the rush of pleasure he experienced as Tuppy’s lips met the small patch of pink, now hardened flesh situated conveniently on his chest. His gasp turned into a breathy moan as Tuppy continued his exertions with the addition of friction between their members. One of Tuppy’s hands passed their abrading membrane and grasped at Gussie’s stones, earning a higher, more playful squeal, which trailed into another soft moan as he rolled them. He lifted his head to kiss Gussie once more, biting the moist lower lip for good measure when he was finished.
Gussie writhed under the other man, his arms wrapped tight around the soft, broad back that spread across him. He nipped at Tuppy’s earlobe, and the latter uttered an “Oh, God,” into his neck. They moved in their established rhythm, revelling in the heat and tension building between them.
Gussie reached for the pillow above his head, only successfully grasping it at his fourth try. He pulled it down closer to him, and gripped it tightly in his clenched fist. Tuppy’s spare hand wrapped tightly around Gussie’s wrist, the other hand still alternating between stroking their rocking members and rolling Gussie’s stones in his palm. He wanted Gussie to orgasm first, and tried his best to stave off his own need by focusing on inducing Gussie’s release.
It was not a difficult task.
His fist twisted the corner of the pillow he held as he violently came, his screams rendered into a murmur by Tuppy’s forceful kiss. Tuppy was brought off, too, after a few more strokes against the sticky heat between them. Their releases covered them both, and they lay panting and groaning lightly in post-coital almost-bliss. Tuppy rolled over on his back after kissing Gussie one final time, and they entered their petit morts.
Gussie sighed from his place perched on the roof. Perhaps if Tuppy hadn’t been quite so smitten with Angela, he could forgive an old school friend. He’d always been a fathead, but his violence and aggression had only gotten worse since he’d latched himself to the Travers beazel. She changed him, no doubt about that. There was a time when his fantasy might have come true; when he might have made it into his room safely, or he might have seduced Tuppy and gotten away without a broken bone. Now, however, all he could do was wait for Mrs. Travers or Bertie or Angela to come along and rescue him. His pursuer shook his fist once more and shouted something about snakes and traitors and Fink-Nottles, but Gussie continued his musings, wondering once more what Jeeves and Bertie really were all about, and trying very hard not to panic.