A/N: Hey guys. So I have had this idea for a while now, and I really want to try it out. It is set before the events of Victory (whaaAAAAT?!) so they haven't kissed yet. It's basically the tension building up between the two of them - I know, they're like thirteen, but there's bound to be something there, right?

Anyway, enjoy.

'Rudy, where are we actually going?'

'I told you. You'll see.'

'But I want to know!'

'I told you. You'll see.'

'Rudy, that's not very encouraging.'

'Thanks. I'm flattered.'

On a grassy bank, cut in two by the rippling silver ribbon of the Amper River looping across the landscape, Liesel and Rudy wandered leisurely through what was probably once a forest, their footsteps weaving between the bones of trees. Drops of golden green sunlight dripped from the tips of leaves to their faces, running down their skin like warm, pretty rain. Her fingers brushed across the spines of trees like the books in the Bürgermeister's library.

It was an ridiculously warm Autumn day, one of the stray splashes of Summer that, on very rare occasions, leak into Winter. Never ones to miss an opportunity, Liesel and Rudy had plunged into it, thieving fingers bared eagerly. Or at least, Liesel had. Rudy apparently had other plans.

So now they were here, on a seemingly endless trek along the shimmering, tin foil river. Liesel had long since given up the pretence of indifference, and instead started repeatedly questioning Rudy on where they were actually headed. He, of course, remained aggravatingly unmovable.

She looked over at Rudy, shielding herself from the light that stained her eyes. 'Have we ever been there before?'

'Not that I know of,' he said slowly.

Liesel let out a sound of exasperation. 'What's that even supposed to mean? We've either been there or we haven't.'

Rudy swung round a tree to face her, smiling brightly. 'Don't you just love the mystery of it all?'

'I'm not even going to dignify that with a response,' she said coldly to his smirk.

'Of course you're not,' he said with mock disdain, turning away and continuing to walk.

There was a short pause. 'You have no clue where we're going, do you?'

'Of course I know where we're going,' he answered, a touch defensively. 'What kind of dipshit do you think I am?'

'Do you really want me to answer that?'

'Not particularly.'

He caught her eye and grinned, and she looked away, her thoughts clouded with yellow. This seemed to be occurring more and more lately: yellow, yellow, yellow. The colour of her days with him. The taste of sun-tainted book thefts. The lemon shade of his hair. It was everywhere.

And for some reason, it was all she could think about.

Not that this was wholly surprising, to any onlookers. Adolescence had blown in with a gust of wind - dragging with it a wild variety of emotions and mood swings - and had began to envelope the two of them in a rather irritating manner. Liesel had become increasingly aware of the other girls at school suddenly gaining an interest in boys, and rouge, and breasts. At first, she couldn't possibly comprehend what was to be so fussed about. But she was still small, her chest still flat, and she had not bled. And she became horribly aware of that fact as the children around her began to eagerly and forcefully barge into some twisted form of adulthood.

It wasn't just her suddenly awkwardly aware of her own body and it's supposed deficiencies. Rudy was finding himself increasingly disturbed by the conversations he found himself roped into by his fellow football players. Mostly, it was females and their, shall we say, bodily functions. It was with an odd mix of confusion, adoration and something that cut a little deeper - very close to the knot of his stomach where the moths would begin to stir in Liesel's presence - that he began to think about his best friend in ways he barely thought possible, ways that would drag sleep from his eyes and leave him laid helplessly awake for the rest of the night.

And so it was that the next generation marched to the next stage of their lives, a jumbled, supposedly sophisticated mess of emotions, extroverts and general idiocy, dragging a bound and blindfolded Liesel and Rudy in its wake struggling for their freedom. Their lips were sewn together, their teeth snapped shut by this new awareness of their standing in life. Suddenly, their words gained new, terrifying meanings, and they had to watch what left their lips, how they would come out. Nevertheless, they continued, as far as they could, being children.

But it didn't quite stop the ache in his chest as he watched her trace the words on a page with her finger. Nor did it stop her eyes being stung with yellow as he smiled at some sarcastic remark she had made. Though they couldn't quite place why.

*One Small Fact*

Despite all they said,

Jesse Owens and the Book Thief were becoming teenagers.

They were growing up.

Understanderbly unsatisfied with the answers she had been fed, Liesel changed tack. 'Are we nearly there yet?'

'Uh...maybe?'

'Rudy, you said you knew where you were going.'

'I do!' he replied, affronted. Then after some thought, 'Just give me five minutes.'

A sharp sigh of annoyance ripped from her lungs. 'Come with me, he said. It'll be fun, he said...'

'And aren't you just having the time of your life?'

'Just give me five minutes,' she snapped back.

Rudy was silent beside her, but she knew enough about him to work out that he was suppressing a grin - because nothing seemed to give Rudy Steiner more joy than to get on her nerves. That idiot.

'Seriously, you need to have a little more faith,' Rudy pointed out.

'Why don't I show you a little faith when you give me reason to,' she replied levelly.

'Touché.'

Despite herself, Liesel felt a smile bite the corners of her lips and she irritably shoved it down. Screw that smug bastard, she wasn't giving him the satisfaction. Her eyes strayed over to him and found with a mixture of confusion and something else that he was staring right back at her. There was a moment of not quite knowing whether to look away or continue to stare in some sort of defiance, though why she was feeling so defiant at this turn of events was beyond her. Either it was Rudy's aggravating demeanor today, or it was the annoyance at being caught off guard by his gaze. Yellow. Goddamn yellow everywhere.

Not wishing to back down, she decided to proceed with the latter. For the next few minutes, the two engaged in what seemed to be a staring contest with no winner and no particular intention - though it did cause both of them to walk into several trees.

*Why She Stared*

Yellow

*Why He Stared*

Pink

Why pink?

It was the colour of the Book Thief's lips.

That dusty, faded shade of pink that curved into a grin filled his thoughts and made his poor heart pound at the same speed as his racing feet. As he looked at her, his wonderful best friend, all he could see was the tender flesh of her lips, and how much he would love to taste them against his own, run his fingers through her hair, hold her face in both hands as he kissed her... Shit. Stop.

He dragged his eyes away and tried to focus his thoughts on the silently observing river through the trees and soothe the ache in his chest where his heartbeat had suddenly skyrocketed.

They continued on in relative silence, carefully and precisely looking anywhere but each other's faces, where there resided a guaranteed increase in temperature and just general awkwardness. Liesel had forgotten her interrogation of Rudy and had settled with just accepting this apparent adventure. It was a beautiful day, so thankfully, there was a lot of pretence for them not looking at each other. She could easily be avoiding him and pass it off as taking in the scenery.

Suddenly, Rudy halted where he stood, causing Liesel to nearly trip over in her haste to look round.

'Thanks for the warning, arschloch,' she called, as he peered through the trees.

'We're here,' he said, grinning at her.

Liesel looked around in confusion. 'What do you mean? It's just trees.'

'Don't be ridiculous,' he said, shaking his head. He reached out and grabbed her hand, pulling her closer, and pointed through the forest bones. 'Look, it's right there.'

Trying to ignore his proximity, she looked more closely through the green and brown teeth of the woods, and saw what seemed to be a clearing. Before she could distinguish any defining features, he dragged her eagerly towards what turned out to be a huge, beautiful tree, twisting upward into the sky and blocking out the sun.

Both simultaneously looked up in awe at the curling branches reaching across from horizon to horizon, weaving through the blue and creating green cracked glass shadows across the ground. Their eyes fell to the long, thick rope hanging from one of the lower branches (still a good six metres up) and they felt the longing bite their fingers.

It was around that point that they realised that Rudy was still gripping her hand, and they hurriedly took a step away from each other, him scratching the back of his head sheepishly. There was a sharp moment of not talking sliding across their foreheads, and then Rudy bounded towards the rope and leapt onto it, swinging back and forth.

Liesel watched in wonder as he flew through the air on the rope. 'Come on, you shitdick, it's fun!' he yelled to the sky.

A grin spread across her face and she found herself positively running towards the rope, and her wonderful, wonderful yellow best friend- nope, just the rope, just the rope. Rudy slid down it to the ground, looking smug.

'So is this reason enough to put a little faith in me?' he asked smirking.

'How did you find this place?' she cried smiling, and his eyes were painted with pink.

'Technically, I didn't. Kurt told me about it,' he shrugged.

It was one of those many occasions where Rudy Steiner would strategically leave out approximately eighty percent of the original story. Yes, Kurt had informed him of the place. Yes, he told his younger brother how to get there. But only when asked. The truth was, he wanted to please his Book Thief, maybe get a kiss in return. In all fairness to the romantic little bastard, he had fulfilled a lot of what he set out to do.

However, the latter of his aspirations was a little harder to achieve.

'So you didn't know where you were going?' Her eyebrows were caught halfway between her forehead and her eyes.

'I don't recall ever saying that.'

'I was right, wasn't I?'

'I suppose.'

'Thought so.'

Her hands reached up and gripped the rope. She looked back to Rudy and found him gazing at her with an odd expression on his face: what seemed like tenderness and something else, something she couldn't quite place. Then he seemed to snap out of it and grinned.

'Do you know what you're doing?' he said.

'Sure, how hard can it be?' She waved him off and jumped, letting the rope drag her a few feeble feet and back again. She sighed an slid down. 'I'm guessing that's not how you do it.'

'Nope,' he shook his head disapprovingly. 'Let me show you.'

Liesel stepped back and let Rudy grab hold of the rope. He pulled it back towards the trunk of the tree. There was a pause where he threw a reassuring glance at her, then he jumped, flying through the air as he gripped the rope in both hands. In truth, she didn't watch the swinging. She watched him, the sunlight spilling across his lemon hair in short bursts as he glided through the shadows.

Yellow. Yellow, yellow and more yellow. It burned beneath her eyelashes, blossoming up through the rust like a sunflower in mud. She looked away, let the flower wither and die and be swallowed by the cold hard metal. She couldn't afford to let it grow. She just couldn't.

'Oi saumensch, it's your turn,' she heard him call and she ran across to the him. 'Go stand by the tree,' he ordered, and she obeyed, standing by the wide trunk. Rudy pulled the rope over to her.

'Take it,' he said.

Her fingers grasped the rope just below his. He let go, and she stumbled a little, dragged by the uncomfortable angle against the overhanging branch. His hands flew out and caught her around her waist, and they froze. The pressure from his fingers against her ribs made the blood in her veins grind painstakingly down to a halt as she took in this surprising and unsettling turn of events.

Rudy had touched her several times throughout their lives, and she herself had administered several touches to him, mostly in the form of friendly - and some not so friendly - punches. They were not strangers to each other, far from it. He was her best friend, and she his. But suddenly, the sense that they were doing something wrong bit at their skin and stuck to their teeth. And Liesel could do nothing but internally curse her stupid, stupid body for being so damn susceptable to random emotions flying out of nowhere and slapping her in the face whenever Rudy happened to touch her.

Rudy's grip on her slid away and he took a step back, with the look of someone having a fierce battle with themselves.

*Did He Want To Let Go Of Her?*

Take an educated guess.

His hands burned, hanging limply by his side for lack of any better option (he couldn't exactly punch a tree in frustration - that would raise suspicion - and he couldnt walk forward, take her in his arms and kiss her - that would most likely raise some suspicion too). He looked up at her and forced a struggling and reluctant grin to rise to his face.

'You're pretty shit at this, aren't you?'

He could see the desperate relief flood her face at the distraction, before being replaced by gloriously happy indignation.

'Well you're pretty shit at teaching me,' she retorted. 'Now shut up and tell me how to do it properly.'

Rudy shrugged in defeat and grabbed the rope again, dragging it back towards the tree trunk. Liesel stood and watched as he leant back against the rope.

He looked at her expectantly. 'Well? Are you coming?'

'Oh yeah.'

She ran over to where he stood and took hold of the rope a second time. This time Rudy had moved well back, repeating feeble excuses in his head that she was a better learner without him stood there. Why he was trying to back himself out of it is beyond me, because there wasn't really anything to back out of, let alone worry about. But paranoia does strange things to humans, especially youths. It can be quite entertaining.

Liesel mimicked him, leaning back into the tree trunk, the rope tightly woven between her fingers. She looked over at Rudy for reassurance, who nodded encouragingly. A long dose of oxygen swelled up in her lungs, and she jumped.

And then she was flying, swooping through the golden green shadows cast by the bones of trees like a bird. The ground swung bizarrely beneath her feet and the wind ran its fingers through her tangled hair. The sunlight painted her skin as she grinned, and let out a long, ecstatic cry. She could feel the air brush past her face and she let her head tip back in elation as the cracked glass blue of the sky rippled across her eyes. The sky tasted of leaves. It was glorious.

Rudy watched her, a constant, aching smile threatening to appear with every turn of her head and every smile that lit up her dazed metallic eyes. Her face took on a dreamlike quality, as if she couldn't quite believe the reality of her current situation but was determinedly not questioning it for fear of it ending. He watched her, and hoped to God that she would always be this happy, this perfect. He looked at her, her face flushed, wrapped around the rope, and he wondered fleetingly what she would look like if she were wrapped around him, her fingers winding into his hair, the pink of her lips caught between his own. Then he pinched himself hard and tried to forget the sweet, faded shade of pink that he loved so very much, and the girl he loved even more.

Seems to me a fairly impossible feat when the girl was stood in front of him, still gripping the rope, her almost-German hair falling over her dizzy smile, trying to catch her breath. But what do I know? It's not like I've ever had to struggle with adolescence. In a world with so much suffering to be witnessed, I suppose that's one small upside to this job.

'It's your turn, dummkopf.' Rudy was dragged out of his reverie to see Liesel still gripping the rope, still grinning that whimsical grin as if not quite out of the dream she had been caught up in, and he felt his insides clench with raw, tumbling adoration.

Kiss her. Just kiss her.

His body was prepared to act at a moment's notice from his brain. His feet twitched unconsciously with a longing to walk up to her and sweep her off her feet like the swing or something equally manly, but in retrospect, he probably wasn't big enough to pull off that kind of action anyway. His heart urged him, positively begged him, wrapped its arteries around his ankles until he agreed to its terms and conditions, to just walk over there and steal her lips, like she had stolen him.

Just kiss her.

But something kept him rooted to the spot, something heavy and constricting tying him down like barbed wire. Was it fear? Most likely. But what of? Now that's a good question.

*Some Possible Reasons to Fear for Rudy Steiner*

+ Embarrassment: quite likely

+ Insecurity: again, quite likely

+ Rejection: most certainly

+ Fear of losing her: inevitably

He was bound by fear. It dripped from his skin and blinded him. He was afraid, because he had everything to lose, and when someone has everything to lose, they tend not to try and risk it. Ironically enough, it was only a few months until he threw everything on the table so readily, so boldly, so terrified, and finally - finally - received his due.

'Well, if you don't want a turn, I guess I'll just have another go,' he heard her eager voice somewhere far away and her yell of exhilaration as she began to fly a second time.

God, she was so wonderful. His saumensch. His Book Thief.

She slid down once again, her feet hitting the ground, and Rudy was once more brought back to his surroundings.

'Christ, Liesel, why don't I just cut the crap and leave you and the rope to it?' Rudy called and heard her laugh sounding against the trees.

'Very funny,' came her sarcastic reply. 'Do you want a turn or not?'

'Yes, ma'am,' he said, and if Liesel were only a few metres closer, he would have earned himself a cuff around the head.

Liesel stepped back from the rope and Rudy, nearly tripping over a highly conspicuously positioned root sticking out the ground, mounted it gleefully, kicking off and swinging back and forth, trying forcefully to forget the way his heart was increasing in speed with each minute that he was around her.

The hours slipped by in a giddy whirl of crying out in ecstasy as their world became sky, arguing over who got to have a go next, and using the time spent waiting to silently and tenderly observe the other as they flew back and forth.

Liesel watched Rudy as he swung through the air, his grip tight on the rope, his face split into a wide grin, and tried not to smile. There was love deep down, stirring in her somewhere in the dusty region of her heart that she never had the interest to explore. The question was how she loved him. He was her best friend. Generally, she could pinpoint the line between platonic and something else entirely, but some days, days such as these, the line grew distorted and the term friendship just didn't seem to fit the description any more. Some days she wanted to slap him, some days she wanted to build castles out of mud with him, and some days she just run at him, and do what, she wasn't quite sure, but she knew that whatever it was, it could barely be confined to the boundaries of 'friendship'.

Yellow tinged her eyes, as it had so many times today, and she wondered why. It was a confusing and unknown emotion that pinched her ribs and caught in her lungs, an she didn't understand what its purpose was. So, like so many other things, she oppressed it, buried it deep down below her chest and kept it captive there, until she would work out what to do with it.

*An Observation*

This resolve lasted a sum of about two months.

In the arms of the icy river, not far from where they were now,

She finally gave in.

Of course, when adolescence hits and awkwardness becomes the essence of the human soul, life sometimes enjoys screwing them around with the desperately vulnerable creatures that stumble around the Earth in a confused mess of emotion, rebellion and longing.

So was it necessarily very surprising when the events that followed occurred? Absolutely not.

It was a simple misunderstanding of sorts, albeit a devastatingly ill timed one. What was painfully ironic about the situation was it could have easily been avoided by anyone else in the world. But of course, it was Liesel and Rudy. And on a day when pink and yellow ruled their eyes and stole their hearts, something like this was bound to happen.

So how was it that Jesse Owens found himself laid on top of the unsuspecting Book Thief, a mere few centimetres of panicked breath all that separated their lips? How indeed.

'Rudy, stop hogging it. It's my go,' Liesel said indignantly as Rudy kicked off again.

'You said that before,' he called as he swung to astounding heights. 'It's always your go.'

'Well it's not exactly your go anymore,' she pointed out irritably.

'You know, it's so hard to care when you're having this much fun,' he called cheerfully as his voice swooped across the trees.

In retrospect, it was hard to understand the reasoning behind her actions as she wasn't sure what she wanted as an outcome. As his altitude began to deplete, Liesel took her chance. Fool.

Misjudging his speed, she caught the rope as he swung past, and it threw her to the side like a broken toy, dragging a fairly surprised Rudy with her. She felt the leaf bones shatter under her, the roots bite her spinal chord like rock candy. There was tumbling and rolling and yelps of pain and cracked glass eyes until they ground to a stop at the foot of the tree.

When Liesel finally dared to open her eyes again, she was both shocked and disturbed to find Rudy barely even an inch from her face. His icy blue eyes were wide and frozen in acute, devastating understanding, and she could see herself reflected in them, only her and the horriffingly close pink of her lips. They stared at each other, stuck at a stalemate, her buried under him and terrified to move. The moment she moved would be the moment they would be forced at gunpoint to acknowkedge their proximity, the marvellous, terrible truth that was their current situation.

She could taste his slow, measured breaths on her face, across her lips, and she could feel her heart failing, the needle sharp longing stab her through the lungs, dragging the oxygen from her teeth like barbed wire. He was so close. He was so very, wonderfully, horribly close. He tasted of yellow. Such a beautiful colour.

Rudy was centimetres from her face, his lips an inhale of air away from hers, close enough to kiss or bite. His mind had shut down on itself, silencing any articulate thoughts that he may have had. Only pink, only goddamn pink and the short, fluttering sound of her panicked breathing. He wanted to lean down and steal the panic from her mouth, just feel her lips against his, taste the pink on the edge of his tongue, graze his teeth across it. Just a few more millimetres and he could have claimed her lips as his own, like he had dreamed of doing since he first saw her, and yet it felt like miles. How could such a short distance be so unbearably far?

Kiss her. Just kiss her.

Oh how he wanted to kiss her. Just forget the Führer and the bombs and the Victor Chemmels. He wanted a victory.

'Rudy?' Liesel said, testing the air on her tongue as if it were poisenous.

'Yeah?'

He knew the grin that was forced to her face wasn't real, he could tell by the way her lips trembled as they curved shakily into a smile, but it was enough of a cue to realise that she just wanted to laugh the whole thing off and forget it as quickly and discreetly as if it were a dead body. Of course she wanted to forget.

'Rudy, get the hell off me, I can't breathe,' her face was a little too bright for conviction, but he scrambled to his feet regardless.

'It's your own damn fault saumensch,' he threw at her, trying to keep the disappointment from stinging his words.

Liesel tried to sit up, her lips in the shape of a retort, but it tore from her throat in a wince of pain and she fell back into the ground. Literally no thought crossed Rudy's mind as he practically sprinted to her side. Her fingers had crept up over her shoulder to her back as she traced her shoulder blades for mines. Another wince caught in her throat and he knew her fingers had stepped on a mine.

'What's wrong?' he asked.

'I dunno, must have scraped my back when we fell,' she said thoughtfully. Their eyes fell upon the root that jutted up from the ground like a broken bone a few feet from them. 'Shit,' she muttered.

'Does it hurt?' he said.

'No Rudy. It feels like a freakin pillow punched me,' she snapped, and another wince was caught between her gritted teeth.

It took a lot of restraint to stop himself from wrapping his arms around her and cradling her until the pain stopped. But he didn't. Because he had everything to lose.

'Can you get up?'

'Probably,' she shrugged. She placed her hands either side of herself and pushed, strain pulsing through her limbs, before she collapsed down again. 'Just give me a minute,' she gasped, grimacing in discomfort.

'Let me see.' He heard the words leave his lips and he wondered what the hell was going through his head. Liesel looked at him for a moment, her metallic eyes searching, then what looked like defeat blossomed across her features and she began to tug at the buttons of her shirt.

Rudy kept his gaze averted as she slid her shirt from her shoulders, and the back of her neck, then her shoulders blades, then her spinal column were slowly revealed. He knelt behind her, and studied the long, angry read scratch that stretched across from her shoulders to the folds of her shirt. There was a smudge of blood towards the back of her neck and he brushed it with his fingers. The longing to lean forward and press his lips against it, against her neck, her shoulder, her lips, burned in his throat, yet he kept his distance. He reached up and dragged the almost-German hair hanging down across her back over her shoulder, and he felt her tense under his touch. A pang of regret pinched at his palms as she flinched away from him a little.

Liesel felt her eyes grow hazy, tinging at the edges of her peripheral vision with yellow, as she felt his breath drip across her neck. Her skin bured with it as he ran his fingertips across the long, stinging scratch, though the pain had evaporated minutes ago, as if it had never been there. It was that lemon shade of yellow that made her want to turn, take his face in both hands and kiss him for all his golden worth.

But she couldn't. She couldn't afford the high price. No more yellow. She couldn't afford it.

She felt the warmth of his hands withdraw and she let out a breath she didn't know she had been holding in. Though the lack of his touch was suddenly overwhelming, she could still feel his shallow, measured breathing against her shoulder. They stayed there, two adolescents frozen with an indistinguishable mix of fear and desire. It suddenly struck Liesel that she was, in her present state, only partly clothed. she hurriedly dragged her shirt back over her shoulders, and stumbled to her feet, backing away and keeping her gaze fixedly away from him.

Rudy got slowly to his feet, taking in the confused, sharp metallic glint of her rusty eyes, and knew he had never known anyone more wonderful.

The words were old in his throat but always waiting hopefully behind his teeth for release. They were battered and worn, chipped away by the continual refusals, but never any less optimist. They ached in his lungs, positively dripped from his mouth. But what could they bring except another rejection? They were cursed words, he was sure, yet it didn't stop them slipping from him and falling to the ground like snow.

'So,' he said. 'How about a kiss saumensch?'

Rudy could have sworn he saw a flicker of a smile at the corners of her lips, but whatever was there was replaced rapidly by a soft, cold expression. 'In your dreams Steiner.'

He grinned. He knew the answer before it came, and in retrospect, he had probably thought that knowing the outcome before it came would soften the blow. Wrong. He still felt the familiar stab of hurt puncture his heart. But he grinned regardless, laughed it off as if it were nothing, like he had taught himself to do whenever she tossed his words to the ever growing pile of his rotting hopes. He grinned, because what else could he do? He loved her too much to give her anything less. He grinned, because it was enough for her.

Liesel smiled softly, and he felt his heart ache. 'Come on saukerl, let's go home.'

He nodded. 'Yeah, I think we've had enough damage for one day.'

'It's funny how one of us always seems to end up injured on our outings,' she commented dryly.

'Eh, you can't have a good adventure without breaking a few bones.'

'-Or necks.'

They laughed, and began to wander leisurely back towards the Amper River, leaving behind the pink and the yellow in favour of the far calmer, slightly less temperamental ice blue and rust brown. Beautiful, sweet colours they were, no adulthood corrupting them, just the raw, childish core that resided in both of them.

As for Rudy, as they walked back through the bones of trees, through the bones of their childhoods, he wondered if he'd ever receive his victory.

A/N: Hey guys. Let's play: spot the Doctor Who reference! Free imaginary cookies for anyone who does.

I'm so sorry that this took so long, it wasn't my intention, but this was harder to write than I expected. I hope you enjoyed it, and please leave a review to tell me what you think.