Chapter Text
Roxy didn’t notice it at first.
To be completely honest with herself, she was incredibly surprised to have noticed it all; and she wouldn’t have, if not for her last ditch effort to win the level by muting the game music to see if it would help. She had left her headphones around her ears out of habit.
Twenty tries in, and strings of mangled syntaxed curses trailing her wasted efforts, she had taken a deep breath and tried again.
In that pause, she heard something, from the general direction of the bunkbeds behind her.
At first, she assumed Rose was just reacting to whatever was in the book she was reading; Rose always read when she was watching her game.
A few lives lost later, and a few more profanities shouted, Roxy heard an unmistakable moan.
It wouldn’t have been the first time Rose had been reading some form of erotica to be sure, but Roxy certainly never recalled Rose getting herself off to it with her in the room.
They were close of course, but they had a few boundaries, and Roxy had believed masturbation to be among them.
She blushed, but tried to carry on normally; the last thing she wanted to do was call attention to it and accidentally traumatize her sister for life somehow because of it. Rose chose odd things to get fixated on, if her strangled relationship with their mother was anything to go by.
Roxy focused on the game, trying her best to get Mario through the utterly hellish levels Dirk had constructed for him.
Rose was quiet, or at least, quiet enough that Roxy couldn’t hear her, so she relaxed as much as the game let her until another death made her swear which prompted another noise from Rose.
Roxy bit her tongue -a habit she exhibited when she was frustrated- and she wondered just why Rose would choose now out of all times to get her freak on.
She thought about it during her next try, completing the first few segments of the level by muscle memory alone; she and Rose spent a lot of time together, they were best friends after all, and it certainly wasn’t unusual for one of them to go inquire after the other, should one of them decide to bug off on their own for too long.
Now that she was thinking about it, it made perfect sense.
Normally, when she was gaming, she was so utterly focused on the game, she was completely oblivious to the world around her; the blaring music that normally assaulted her ears would easily drown out anything Rose would be doing, and because Rose was always reading on her bunk behind her while she was playing, she would free to do whatever she wanted wanted without having to fear that she would get interrupted.
It was actually pretty clever, Roxy mused.
Her amusement was quickly torn apart when her walljump fell a bit short and landed Mario face first into a giant saw blade of an immediate, unforgiving, and gruesome death.
She screeched.
Rose moaned .
Roxy held her breath as Mario respawned, once more, at he beginning of the entire level; Dirk didn’t believe in save points, the bastard.
Curious, Roxy decided to test something; she was a scientist after all.
She ran the level to the best of her abilities silently.
Rose was silent behind her.
She tried the course again, this time, throwing curses and frustrated hollars at the screen in front of her like she usually did; when she finally died, Rose groaned, deeply.
She repeated the experiment, completely disregarding her former goal of actually completing the level. She alternated runs of silence and screams, until she was certain of the findings.
Her conclusion was that from what she could tell, Rose only made noise when she did; she supposed that her sister was trying to mask the sounds of passion under her sounds of rage, too better keep from getting caught.
Roxy frowned, let the controler rest in her lap for a moment, and rubbed her temples.
Part of her felt a little guilty. A little gross even, for experimenting with her sister’s libido.
She decided that the fastest way to end the awkward situation she had found herself in, would be to call it a night and stop playing entirely. Maybe throw some Bagelbites into the microwave and let Rose finish getting up to what she was getting up to.
Although, Roxy thought, that would be assuming that Rose would continue once Roxy finished, which, if her reading on the situation was right, would be an inaccurate assessment.
Roxy shifted in her seat, letting Mario die and respawn repeatedly while she thought it over.
She exhaled sharply, vexed at the kill counter and at her own moral convictions; she had spent several minutes and dead Marios secretly fooling around with her little sister’s self exploration and she figured she owed it to her to let her finish in the very least.
With her mind made up and her resolve reforged, Roxy rolled her shoulders and tried the level one more time.
And one more time.
And one more time after that.
God she hated Dirk.
The swearing came naturally, expletives and gibberish slurring together to form half unintelligible phrases; she jumped better when she shouted “fucking jump you piece of fuck shit ,” proven science there, and in order to get past the lava pits she had to hurl mangled declarations of how stupid the entire level was in between swaths of cusses and scurrilities that would have made her mother break out the bar of soap had the workaholic woman been home to hear them.
As she got progressively frustrated, to the point of becoming outright furious, Rose’s quiet noises grew into boulder moans and affirmations of pleasure, which broke Roxy’s concentration, which made her lose more and in turn, made her more frustrated and shot more obscenities.
The hair on the back of Roxy’s neck stood up, making her wonder if she had completely misread Rose’s intentions when she moaned an intensely depraved “ yes ” after she had screamed something particularly venomous at the game.
All of her concentration and hand-eye-coordination gone, Roxy was left spouting nothing but ‘fuck yous’ as Mario and her sister tried desperately to get to the end of their respective goals.
Three more deaths down in a new area later, Roxy had just regained enough composure to progress nearly to the finish line when Rose whined a name.
Surprised beyond measure, she faltered; Mario plummeted to his death just a fraction of step away from the finish line, prompting one more scream of rage from her throat.
She threw the controller onto the floor and held her face in her hands, still screaming during every other breath.
Behind her, she could hear Rose breathing heavily, moaning and sighing.
Rose repeated the name a few times, confirming that the first iteration had not been an accident, and then Roxy heard a final high pitched hitch in her breath, and a final sigh, and then silence.
When her own breathing righted itself, Roxy slid off her headphones and ran her hands through her hair. She huffed, resigned that it would take another night at least to beat Dirk’s lastest creation, and dared to turn around.
Rose looked completely innocent on her bunk, book in her lap, and slight quirk of brow as if regarding her latest failure with quiet amusement.
If Roxy hadn’t heard her, she wouldn’t have been able to tell Rose had been up to anything at all.
The thought settled strangely in her shoulders; just how many times had Rose got herself off to her gaming forays? Was it any game? Or just the stupidly insane Mario Maker levels Dirk kept sending her? Did her sister had a thing for watching Mario experience death in multitudes of ways? She hoped not; Mario was kinda adorable in a determined protagonist sort of way, but naughty-night dream man, he was not. Even when getting devoured, melted, or blown up. Especially not then.
Or maybe she was just thinking too hard about it.
Did Rose actually know she had been listening? Had she planned it as a way to get her goat? Is that why she had called out the name she had?
It wasn’t above her sister at all to find new ways to yank her chain for the hell of it.
Roxy bit her lip, unable to think of something to say.
She’d been looking, speechless, at her sister for too long now, she realized.
“You almost had it the last time, if that’s of any consolation,” Rose offered, from her perch on the bottom bunk.
Roxy shook her head; “Yeah, almost,” she agreed, playing off of Rose.
She wondered how red her face was, and if Rose was mistaking her embarrassment for residual anger, or just as loss from all the lack of winning she had been doing.
“Are you going to attempt it again tomorrow, or are you going to hack it.”
“And give Dirk the satisfaction? Fuck nah, I’m going to beat it fair and square and rub it in his dumb egotistical face.”
“He’ll be delighted by your success, I’m sure.”
“Di Stri totes won’t be the only one, I’m sure.”
“Oh?” Rose replied, smiling.
Roxy rolled her shoulders and twisted in her seat, stretching; choosing to ignore the bait she accidentally set herself up for; “So Rosey-girl, how was your book?” she asked instead.
Rose closed the novel, using a ribbon dutifully marking her place in between the pages.
“Enthralling. It was quite immersive, albeit I will be the first to admit that for all the passion, the antagonist left a little something to be desired.”
“Shame,” she replied, standing up.
She cast a look around, at everywhere but her sister, and decided that she needed a few minutes to herself.
“I’m going to steal a quick shower, cool off a little; be back in a bit.”
“Have fun,” Rose deadpanned, already returning to her book.
...
In the safety of the shower, Roxy allowed herself to think freely about the situation. She had been willing to become completely honest with Rose, up until the end. She had planned to apologize, explain her reasoning for not mentioning it during the fact, and would choose to omit the part about testing her sister’s volume control.
The key words in those ideas was “had been”.
Roxy had no idea what to do now however.
If it had been any other name, any of the girl’s from her grade or a celebrity, or even a fictional character or absolutely anyone else, Roxy would have had no trouble coming clean.
But the name Rose had used had been hers, and she had no idea how to handle that very important piece of information.
If she mentioned it, there would be no way that it wouldn’t change their relationship forever.
She couldn’t think of a way that it could be brought about without damaging their relationship beyond repair and she outright refused to let that happen.
She would think on it, she decided, as she finished her shower; she would think on it, and say nothing until she knew how she felt about the situation.