Work Text:
“I can’t believe I’ve been quarantined,” Sabine says. “I just needed to pick up some things I had forgotten.”
JP sighs loudly. “Just be glad we’re giving you a place to stay, all right?”
He thinks his flatmates could be a bit more appreciative, considering he’s letting them crash in his parents’ country house. It’s been for sale for months, but the house market was shit even before zombies started to attack brokers, so there’ve been no viewers at all.
She glares at him. “Britain is the only country in the world that is infected. If I had stayed home, I would’ve been fine.” She stomps off, muttering some swearwords under her breath that JP doesn’t understand.
“Neuken in the keuken!*” he yells after her, which is the only Dutch he’s ever managed to remember that doesn’t have to do with weed.
Sabine gives him the finger while heading upstairs.
JP turns to Howard, who is looking unimpressed as he drinks his beer. “You know, you’d think she’d be more grateful. I am basically guaranteeing her continued survival.”
Howard looks yearningly at the stairs. “You think that the thought of nearly dying turns her on?” he asks. “Or me protecting her from zombies?”
“Oh no,” he says. “I am not letting zombies into mummy’s kitchen just so you can get it on with the Dutchman of the Apocalypse, okay? Just get her drunk like a normal person.” He stumbles from the drawing room into the library, where Oregon is trying to read all the books left in his parents’ library. Vod, meanwhile, is lounging in one of the wing chairs, clutching a bottle of wine. “Hey!” he shouts, grinning cheerfully.
Oregon is still focused on her book, and Vod gives him one look and a nod.
“Have you ladies reconsidered the whole,” he grins again, “kissing thing? Because let’s be honest, you two did cheat me and Kingsley out of it last time, so I think it’s only fair-“
“Where’s Kingsley?” Vod asks.
“Fucking Josie somewhere in Cardiff, probably,” he says. He doesn’t entirely blame Kingsley for heading there. It’s not like brain-eating zombies are going to go after the Welsh any time soon, so Josie and him should be fine for a bit. “Who cares?” Not him. At all. Not one bit.
“I don’t want to cheat Kingsley out of his rightful lesbian shenanigans,” Vod tells him, then takes a big gulp from her bottle of wine. “I mean, that’d be unfair.”
JP scoffs and is about to make a very scathing remark when Oregon interrupts them.
"She fans herself
whilst I work willingly, my slow heat entering
each pearl. Slack on my neck, her rope."
JP and Vod exchange a meaningful glance. He’s done an A-level in English Literature and can smell girl-on-girl action from a mile off, and he knows Vod’s not stupid. “I think I did that for A-levels,” he says, grinning at Vod who just rolls her eyes. “Something about a rabbit’s foot, right?”
Oregon looks up from the book and stares at him, surprised. She turns back to the book and keeps reading.
“I dust her shoulders with a rabbit´s foot,
watch the soft blush seep through her skin
like an indolent sigh. In her looking-glass
my red lips part as though I want to speak.”
JP watches Vod squirm on the chair. “Vod, did you do that one for A-level? GCSE maybe?”
Vod glares at him some more, and takes an angry sip from the wine. “Well, it’s about sex, all poems are.”
“Not all of them!” Oregon insists, and JP can tell it’s a long-standing argument between them. “This one, for instance, is clearly about – “
“Yes?” JP says, because he doesn’t remember most of his English Lit but he remembers the bits that were blatantly about lesbians. He’ll convince his old English Lit teacher of the obvious sexual tension between Elizabeth Bennett and Charlotte Lucas one day. Well, probably not, considering the latest news reports. But whatever, Vod and Oregon are about to kiss. He has to be here for that momentous occasion.
“About a woman worrying for another woman’s virtue,” Oregon eventually says, not looking either of them in the eye. “I mean, that’s a big part of female friendships, the worrying about the other finding a suitable husband. You had the same thing in Northanger Abbey, really, and a lot of other works by Jane Austen. In fact, I think –”
“Keep reading,” Vod says, taking another sip of wine and glaring at JP again, who pretends to ignore it.
Oregon keeps reading. “Full moon. Her carriage brings her home. I see
her every movement in my head.... Undressing,
taking off her jewels, her slim hand reaching
for the case, slipping naked into bed, the way
she always does.... And I lie here awake,
knowing the pearls are cooling even now
in the room where my mistress sleeps. All night
I feel their absence and I burn.” She pauses for a moment, and JP smirks when she starts to blush. “Oh,” she says.
“Oregon,” he says, grinning, “has anyone ever given you a pearl necklace?”
Vod stands up, and starts shoving him out of the library. “Just fuck off, JP.”
“It’s a genuine question!” he calls outs as Vod keeps pushing him out of the room, because she is stronger than she looks and it is only because he’s had a lot of wine already, because otherwise he could totally take Vod on and watch the lesbian shenanigans between these two.
“Go talk to Giles!” she shouts back, and slams the door in his face.
He finishes his bottle of wine. It is so unfair. Howard has Sabine, Vod has Oregon. All he has is his old schoolchum. He stumbles up to the stairs to the guestroom Giles has taken. “Giles!” he shouts. “How about a Power Shower? For old time’s sake?”