Work Text:
If either of them had stopped to think about it, they would have realized that it all started sometime before Cornwall. Even before the time Vod nearly got kicked out of uni— which she still swears isn’t her fault, the fascist administrative fucks— Oregon had started caring. It was fucking unnatural and weird, like most people’s emotions, Vod found. But mostly, Vod had been able to ignore it with a healthy dose of pharmaceuticals and alcohol, and had been able to take pleasure in the fact that agreeing to appeal her exclusion went right along with Oregon finally deciding to stop screwing around with Shales.
Not that Vod really cared outside of the fact that she’d rather one of her friends didn’t have to deal with wrinkly child-toucher old man cock and balls in her face and in their house on a semi-regular basis. Not really, anyway. Either way, around then, it’d started to get weird.
Vod had only been awake about ten minutes, and still hadn’t worked out whether or not she was going to start off the day with class C’s or just fuck it all and move on to A’s to start the day off proper. She’d lit one while she decided what to do, nearly falling asleep again just after when Oregon had barged in and started hassling her about appealing her exclusion. There was this weird shining look in her eyes. Vod had written the whole thing off at the time to overcompensation for still being with the twat pedo, and to wanting them all to come to that mental dinner on pool tables, but now she was starting to think differently.
From then on it was toast points at breakfast, buying rounds at the pub more often than not, and a bunch of other bollocks that Vod tried to write off to Oregon just being her wing man. Maybe it had started to gradually go a it above and beyond, but she figured they were just really good mates. At least, that was what she’d been able to tell herself up until this whole thing with twitter and the gays and Oregon prying with questions the entire evening about whether or not she was a lezzer.
Once that had started up, Vod began to wonder whether or not all the stuff with the toast points and pints and caring was something else.
Or maybe she was just a little drunk from the shit load of wine they’d all had that day. It tasted like someone’d already drank it once and pissed it out, but it had done its job. Enough so, that by the time Vod grabbed two rifles and insisted she and Oregon go off to find dinner, she had gone through enough that she didn’t really think the fact that she’d never actually gone hunting before mattered much at all.
“Have you ever actually gone hunting before?” Oregon asked, holding onto the rifle, and trying to work out just how she was supposed to help out when she didn’t even know what they were hunting. With the luck she’d been having, they’d somehow end up shooting J.P. or Kingsley in the dark and she’d end up getting even more hate tweets about how she hated gay people and had accidentally killed her housemate. Apparently, that was prone to happen in Cornwall.
“Okay, no, but… it’s pretty straightforward,” Vod replied, looking through the brush with the practiced eye of someone who fully believed that just being convinced that she could shoot something for dinner was enough to make it actually happen. “You just point the thing at the thing and shoot it, cook it up and you’ve got supper. Simple as.”
“Okay, gotcha,” Oregon replied, maybe a little relieved, but still skeptical about the entire thing, “Am I even holding this thing right?”
The fact that she’d spent most of the time so far trying to work out what was wrong with her shoulders probably had something to do with the odd way she appeared to be holding it. Oregon had hunched over, trying to mimic Vod’s posture while also trying to look like that wasn’t what she was doing at all.
Vod turned around, considering her mate for a moment.
“No.”
Holding her own firearm inexplicably expertly, she continued onward, looking through the brush for movement. She’d worked out how to steady it with one arm so that she could take periodic swigs from one of the bottles of wine she’d brought with them from J.P.’s massive house. Tossing back a large gulp, she shoved the bottle at Oregon.
“Hold this,” Vod said, and quickly steadied her rifle before firing it into the brush. The shot rang out through the countryside, echoing as Vod waited for something, and Oregon waited to see just what Vod was waiting for. She was also trying to work out whether or not her thinking Vod looked quite alright holding the firearm was because she actually thought that or because of the whole twitter lezzer thing.
She took a long drink from the wine bottle, hoping to put the idea out of her head. It was one thing to try and get off with Vod to prove she didn’t hate gay people-- which she definitely didn’t-- but another to actually get off with Vod for the purposes of just that.
“Okay,” Vod said, and it pulled Oregon quickly out of her own head, “If there actually was anything out here, then I’ve probably scared it off.”
“Then why did you fire? I thought you saw something!”
Vod shook her head no. “Besides, you’re the one who’s got the horses or whatever,” she said.
“We didn’t shoot them!” Oregon replied.
“Right,” Vod replied, realizing, “That wouldn’t... actually make any sense at all. Shit.”
She grabbed the bottle from Oregon and sat down on the ground, the gun in her lap. Taking a large drink from it, she couldn’t help but think that maybe they should have brought two out. Or fashioned some sort of knapsack out of stuff from J.P.’s attic so they could have more than even that onhand.
“I s’pose we’ll just have to wait them out, then,” Vod decided, “The animals. Eventually they have to come back and like... check to see where the shot came from, right?”
“You’re really talking bollocks right now,” Oregon replied, the words coming out half a laugh, and she sat down next to Vod, setting her rifle behind her on the grass.
“Yeah, well, it’s the shitty wine, innit?” Though even before she’d said the sentence, Vod had already brought the bottle up to her mouth to take another gulp out of it. Realizing afterward that there was only enough left for one more drink, she passed it back to Oregon.
“Thanks.”
The two sat in silence for a moment, the shadows around them lengthening as the sun continued setting. Oregon finished off the last of the wine, the taste of it familiar to her somehow. It wasn’t bad wine at all, actually. She thought it tasted quite a bit like one she’d had at something or other her parents had thrown when she was younger, though she wasn’t about to admit that to Vod.
“So why do you care what all those fuckers think about you anyway?” Vod asked suddenly, breaking the silence. People said loads of stuff about her all the time, she was sure, but she’d gotten to where she really didn’t give a shit either way. It never made much sense to her, people getting all bent out of shape over stuff like this. Especially when it was just twitter. That wasn’t even real anyway.
Oregon was always somewhat struck by how suddenly Vod jumped into subjects, even after already living together for a term.
“I don’t want people to think I’m like that, you know?” she said, suddenly feeling a little melancholy, “Because I’m not. I’m not a homophobe.” Oregon was suddenly very aware of her shoulders again, despite the fact that she still had absolutely no idea what Vod had meant when she pointed them out.
“They’re not even your mates though,” Vod replied, “They didn’t exactly give a shit before their manky little magazine went under, so why even waste your time giving a shit what they think? End of the day, you’re still gonna be great, you’re still gonna be hot, and they’re just gay and alone wanking over unprinted articles about cock rings. Doesn’t matter what they’ve photoshopped.”
Taken aback by Vod’s words, Oregon wasn’t sure if the warmth that came to her face was because of the 2003 Romanee Conti or because of the compliments.
“...thanks,” she replied, not really sure what else to say.
They were both silent another moment, until Vod finally set her gun down next to her on the grass.
“Fine. Fuck. But if we’re going to do this, you can’t actually tell anyone, okay? And no pictures of souvenirs or anything,”
“If we’re going to do what?” Oregon replied, though, as Vod leaned over to cover Oregon’s mouth with her own. If she’d been thinking straight, if she’d been able to get over the shock of exactly what was happening, Oregon might have pulled away to point out that the whole point of asking her to do this had been to point out to other people that she didn’t hate gay people.
All of that logic, however, seemed to fall away as she found that she liked this quite a bit. And it wasn’t that Tony had become the standard to which she was going to rate every snog from now on, but she couldn’t help but compare how Vod’s lips were quite a bit softer, and how, despite the way she’d gone about it, the kiss was quite gentle as well. For some reason, she’d imagined it wouldn’t be that way at all.
When Vod pulled away, there was a surprised expression on Vod’s face that Oregon hadn’t expected at all.
“This is... this is just because of the thing, alright?” Vod said, though her uncharacteristically hushed tone said otherwise, “If anyone asks, there’s no way I’m getting off with you.”
“Yeah. Right. Because of my shoulders.”
“Because of your shoulders, yeah,” Vod replied, though she had already leaned in to kiss Oregon again, desperately needing something she hadn’t even known she wanted before now, even with all the toast points and the caring and all. Maybe it was because she’d never thought it was exactly an option before.
She pressed onward, deepening the kiss as her tongue probed the inside of Oregon’s mouth as if this was the mot natural thing in the world for them to be doing with each other. The other woman leaned back on her hands, then all the way back onto the grass as Vod nearly straddled her, one hand moving down to cup her breast.
“Wait, hold on a second,” Oregon said, pulling away only long enough to speak the words, not wanting to break contact at all, really, “I think I’m lying on something, can we just--”
“--lying on what? What d’you mean?” Vod asked, though the rifle Oregon had forgotten she’d laid behind her went off just then, and they both jumped up with a start, scared shitless.
“Fuck!”
Oregon’s heart was beating in her ears, a mixture of adrenaline and all that was still leftover from what had just happened between herself and her best mate.
“Oh my god,” she said, though as she caught her breath, she let out a relieved laugh that Vod echoed. At least, until she looked off into the distance and spotted something still and laid in the grass that looked like maybe it shouldn’t be still at all.
“Shit,” Vod said, “I think we shot something.”
“It’s not a person, is it? Oh god, please tell me it’s not J.P.” Oregon replied, her worst fears coming true right before her eyes.
“Looks like a chicken,” Vod responded, dusting dirt off of her trousers, “Come on, we’d better go fetch it. I can make coq a vin.”
“How do you make coq a vin?” Oregon asked, and the moment completely gone now, she bent over to pick up her rifle, which was still cooling from the shot.
“Fuck knows.”