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Sirius is old enough now that her father urges her out the door the moment she wakes up and doesn’t expect her home until after the sun begins to set. For her, it doesn't feel strange; as doting as her father is, he knows she’s not a stupid little girl who’ll stumble into unnecessary trouble. Unfortunately, Rudolf’s family doesn’t quite have the same confidence in her.
At nine in the morning sharp, a series of polite little knocks shake the front door of Sirius’ family’s summer home, and she knows instantly who it is. For her part, she’s already slipping on her running shoes and tying them as tight as she can, but she makes it to the door before the second round of knocking starts.
She tilts her head up. Luna beams at her. Her short hair is pulled back into the tiniest ponytail, and she has a cute woven tote slung over her shoulder. Today, she has her track gear on.
That uncomfortable feeling in her chest she’s been getting around her is back again, mixed with excitement. It’s been a month or two since she’s had the opportunity to run with Rudolf, and they’ve got an entire month or two to themselves. Maybe she’ll close the gap a little. What kind of face would Rudolf make then?
“You’re smirking,” is the first thing Rudolf says to her.
“I’m not,” she retorts. Sirius’ father pokes his head out into the hallway from his study, and gives the two of them a firm nod. Rudolf waves to him before she brings her hand down to grab Sirius’ wrist and drag her outside. She manages not to trip over the doorway.
The door clicks shut and it’s just her and Luna, bouncing on the balls of her feet in the kind of childish display she doesn’t do when they’re around adults. The air feels thick in a way it shouldn’t when they’re together.
“My brother bought me new shoes,” Rudolf says excitedly. “I waited to break them in until I could race you.” She plays with the strap of her bag.
Sirius looks away. Why does doing something she wants to do have to feel so awkward? “There’s the track down the road, or the beach,” she suggests, sliding one of her hands into her shorts pocket.
Luna grabs her other hand and swings it. “The track,” she decides. “Father doesn’t want me going as far as the beach.”
“That’s dumb,” Sirius says, scowling. Rudolf is fourteen (which is practically grown), brilliant, and very, very, very fast. Nothing can touch her. It’s ridiculous to think otherwise.
Rudolf’s ears droop, but she doesn’t defend it. “…Are you feeling alright, Sirius?”
She feels her face heating up. “Why’d you think I’m not?”
“You seem like you’re in a bad mood,” Rudolf explains, frowning. “Is today a bad day?”
Are you stupid flashes in the back of her mind, but she would feel awful if she said that to Rudolf and had to see her ears pinned back to her head and her big shiny eyes downcast.
“I’m fine,” she retorts. “Stop treating me like a baby.”
“I’ll believe you,” Luna says warmly, squeezing her hand, “but you can talk to me if you need anything, you know?”
I can’t, Sirius thinks. “I know,” she says. She can’t shake her hand off or Rudolf will think she’s rejecting her friendship, which is something she absolutely doesn’t want to do. She does like her in the normal way two girls who are friends are supposed to like each other, after all. So she lets Luna intertwine their fingers and fix her with a sweet little smile as she leads her down the steps and towards the sidewalk.
As soon as they can get to running, she won’t feel like this anymore. It’ll be fun, they’ll both be happy, and they don’t have to talk to each other.
The practice racecourse in the local park is nowhere near the size of an actual course, nor does it come close to the one at Rudolf’s house or even Sirius’, and it’s mostly used by small clubs and girls who live here year-round who run for fun. But the turf is decently well-maintained, and crucially doesn’t cost any admission, which is nice since Sirius’ father hadn’t given her an allowance for today.
When they approach, Rudolf lets go of her hand to raise up on her tiptoes and peer over the metal fence. “There’s a club training right now,” she notes.
Sirius scoffs. “They can’t be taking up the whole course.”
Rudolf falls back onto her heels. “There are maybe fifteen of them,” she says dejectedly. “I think it’s a boys’ track team, actually.”
“Well, we can show them something, then.”
“Sirius, I don’t… I’d rather it were just the two of us.” Her ears are pinned back again.
Sirius doesn’t want to wait for them to leave. She likes Rudolf and she really can’t be stuck next to her doing nothing for more than fifteen minutes right now, or she might actually start to be in a bad mood. “The whole rest of the park is open,” she suggests.
Rudolf glares at her. “You know that’s not allowed.”
“We can go to the beach.”
Her eyes are fixed at the ground to avoid Luna’s intense gaze that makes the hair at the back of her neck stand on end. God, she’s so weird. Rudolf’s pristine new shoes shuffle back and forth.
“If you won’t tell my father,” she says after a beat.
Sirius barks out a laugh. “You want to run with me that bad?”
“Badly,” she corrects, and despite herself, Sirius smiles at the ground. “I think it should be fine, if you’re with me,” Rudolf says hesitantly.
“Don’t know why it wouldn’t be in the first place. Come on.”
Rudolf’s shoes clack against the sidewalk. She takes her sweet time crossing the road, checking about four times both ways and missing the first time the light for pedestrians switches on. Sirius’ stomach churns because she can’t stop thinking about how cute she is.
A nice, abandoned stretch of beach waits for the two of them about a few blocks south and one block to the right. They’re not even that far from Sirius’ summer home, maybe a few minutes’ run unobstructed. It’s early enough in the morning that the only beachgoers they can see are specks in the distance.
“If I leave my bag here, no one will steal it?” Rudolf thinks aloud, stopping before slinging her bag over the back of a public bench.
“If they do, just chase ‘em down,” Sirius reminds her. “What’re they going to do?”
Rudolf tilts her head. “I suppose.”
The sand under their feet is dark and compacted from the high tide, not yet dried completely by the sun. It provides a completely different experience from running on turf or even a usual dirt track. Their shoes leave firm imprints.
Sirius points to the nearest flag planted in the sand. “We can start here,” she starts. “And end there,” she continues when she knows Rudolf is listening, pointing to one in the distance right next to a lifeguard tower. “There might be space to turn around there and come back.”
“I don’t think there’s a wide enough area,” Rudolf says. “We should stop and wait before we turn around.”
Sirius rolls her eyes. “I guess. I don’t want to wait for you for that long, though.”
Rudolf scoffs, stretching her knees to warm up and kicking the sand to test how it gives. There’s a glint in her eye, the competitiveness she rarely if ever shows to anyone but Sirius these days. With her foot, she draws a deep groove into the sand.
Sirius lines up next to her. This plays into her natural instincts — now being next to Rudolf doesn’t feel weird at all.
“I’ll count down,” she announces. “Three…”
Symboli Rudolf leaves her in the dust.
It’s supposed to be even ground, unfamiliar to both of them. While Sirius struggles to get proper footing on the sand, Rudolf kicks it away with powerful strides.
With limited space and a straight shot to the end, it’s nothing like real practice. They’re merely two kids playing games in the sand. But Sirius can’t shake the feeling of awe she gets watching that back grow more and more distant in front of her.
She’s amazing.
When she reaches their established finish line, Rudolf slows, and Sirius realizes just how distracted she’s being with burning shame. In a space of less than a sprint she lets Luna beat her by what must be three or four lengths, and she knows she can do so much better than that.
She barely comes to a full stop before turning around at the flag and furrowing her eyebrows. She won’t even look at Luna this time, not even when she hears her giggle next to her. From the sound of sand shuffling, she can assume Rudolf has assumed her position to her left, and she begins the countdown again.
This time, Sirius tries to divert her attention to every single step she takes. Don’t slip, don’t let yourself sink into the sand and waste your energy, don’t look over and get discouraged, because that’s not supposed to be you.
In the end, it makes a difference, because she’s barely half a length behind Rudolf when she stops at the line drawn in the sand. She smirks, wiping sweat from her forehead, as she looks over to see Rudolf, brow furrowed, on one knee, pressing her thumb against her ankle, and her heart drops into her stomach.
“Luna,” she sputters, before she’s cut off.
“Don’t worry about me,” Rudolf says immediately. “It’s not a fracture. I stepped on it wrong… I think.”
Sirius walks over but hesitates to put a hand on her shoulder. “You can stand, right?”
“Yes, I can stand,” Rudolf reassures her, but she winces when she tries. “Sirius, stop.”
She steps back and puts her hands behind her back, spine stick-straight. I’m sorry doesn’t really cut it when she doesn’t know what she did, and she also can’t let Rudolf know she is sorry, for something she can’t let her know about in the first place.
Maybe if she breaks her ankle for real because of Sirius being a bad influence, weird, and a freak, her father can ban them from ever talking to each other again, and the thought of it makes her want to cry like a stupid child even if it would be the best thing for both of them, probably.
“Stop making that face, please,” Rudolf begs. “I hate when you look like that.”
Sirius can’t will her ears to perk up. “I’ll get your bag,” she says, deliberately not looking at Rudolf. She picks up the crocheted tote from where it sits on the bench nearby and hands it over to Luna with her gaze fixed on the ground.
“Sirius, I’m okay,” she reiterates. “I just won’t run for a few hours and I’ll be fine.”
Sirius’s gaze turns up a little bit, and she doesn’t look like she’s in that much pain, but it still upsets her. “We should go back,” she begins to say, but Rudolf stops her with a hand on her chin.
“Perk up,” Luna tells her, smiling, tilting her head to look up at her, and Sirius’ expression shifts away from one of worry to one she’s not familiar with, because she’s never felt like this before. Rudolf is tall now.
The hand leaves her chin, and Sirius doesn’t even think to look away.
“We shouldn’t go back right now. I’ll get in trouble,” Rudolf finally says, sheepish. “I’m sorry, I should’ve told you no.”
Rudolf has never been one for disobeying her parents. It feels half-good-half-bad knowing she trusts Sirius enough to do something like that with her.
She won’t say something stupid like “no, I’m sorry,” because they’re both big girls, and Rudolf makes her own decisions just as much as Sirius does.
They sit down on the bench together so Rudolf can rummage around in her bag. She pulls out a green wallet, decorated with white flowers.
“I have a little bit of money,” she says. “We can go to a cafe…?”
Sirius nods. “Um, sure,” she agrees. Father won’t let her have her own smartphone yet, and she knows Rudolf’s parents are the same way, so it’s not like they have any way of looking up what’s in the area. Despite coming here every summer, she’s just barely at the age where she’s even allowed to go outside by herself, so she pays little attention to what kind of places there are around here other than the public park and the beach.
“We can walk around until we find something,” Rudolf says. She uses the back of the bench to hoist herself up onto her feet. This time, her eyebrows furrow, and she kicks her leg out to stretch her ankle, but she seems as fine as she’s going to be for the next few minutes.
Without thinking, Sirius takes her outstretched hand and lets herself be guided. Luna isn’t looking, she can’t see how her lips purse and her cheeks get redder, and she sure hopes she doesn’t notice if her hand starts getting sweaty.
They walk like that, hand in hand, until they come across a building that’s decidedly not a café. Rudolf’s hand shakes with excitement, and she looks at Sirius pleadingly.
“I’ve never been to an arcade,” she tells her.
“You can just say you want to go,” Sirius teases. Rudolf blushes, but doesn’t let go of her hand, dragging her towards the admittedly gaudy neon-colored building.
It isn’t even a good arcade — paint chips in the corners of the walls, and every game cabinet she can see with a year on it is three or four years out of date, but she can’t pretend she’s not a little excited. She’s never been to an arcade before either.
Rudolf, to her mild chagrin, doesn’t let go of her hand even while they’re inside the arcade. “Is there a front desk?” she muses aloud. “I don’t know if we have to pay to get in...”
Sirius uses the hand Luna isn’t playing with absentmindedly to point towards a kiosk with a big sign that reads “Purchase Credits Here.”
“Oh!” she exclaims. They walk up to the kiosk together and Rudolf taps the center of the touchscreen, bringing up a screen with numbers bigger than either of them is willing to spend displayed prominently.
“It’s only two hundred yen for a new card,” Sirius points out. Rudolf lets go of her hand and places it on her hip.
“Father didn’t give me much, and I want to have enough money for lunch.”
“If you buy thirty credits and a new card,” Sirius explains, “we can play a few rounds of whatever and you’ll still have enough left over.”
Rudolf sighs. “Thirty is too much. I need to have enough for your lunch, too.” She hits a button that lets you input how many credits you want to buy, and types five.
“Five?” Sirius whines, and Luna giggles, cute and high. The card Rudolf bought shoots out of the machine and lands halfway across the floor.
Picking it up, Rudolf turns her gaze to the empty arcade with big eyes. It’s early in the morning on a weekday, and even though it’s summer, most kids aren’t clamoring to go to the arcade at half past ten in the morning, so they’ve got a free pick of any game two people can play for five credits.
Sirius follows her around, heart squeezing at the sight of her best friend wide-eyed like a little kid. She stops in front of what Sirius thinks is a dance game.
“With your ankle?” Sirius warns.
“I want to try it, though,” she says. Sirius doesn’t want to deny her, not when she looks like that.
“If you break it for real I won’t…”
“Won’t what?”
“Nothing.” Sirius waves her off as she slides the card through the credit thing. It’s two and a half for one player and four credits for two. Not like they’ll have a use for the leftover one.
Rudolf slips her racing shoes off, pointing to a graphic sign forbidding the use of metal race shoes on any of the game machines, and Sirius follows suit. She takes the left half of the setup, giving Rudolf the right.
Luna’s ears flatten back towards her head when the game starts up, volume far too loud in the quiet arcade. Sirius taps the up arrow with her foot to proceed to “song selection.”
Rounds and rounds of ten-second snippets of the loudest songs she’s ever heard go by, and none of it is the kind of music she likes. She watches Rudolf’s face the entire time until they hit one that finally makes her ears perk up.
“Stop! I like this one,” she says, stretching her ankle out and accidentally hitting the side arrow that moves on to the next song. “Wait, Sirius, what did you do, make it go back!” she sputters.
“That was your fault!” Sirius laughs over the sound of the arcade machine. She hits the back arrow and waits on a sickeningly cute song from some Umadol that was popular when they were little kids.
“You like this song?” Sirius teases.
“I saw her winning live in person!” Rudolf says defensively. “How do we…”
Sirius hits the up arrow to select the song. Four options appear: Easy, Normal, Hard, and Insane.
“Pick Easy,” Rudolf tells her. Sirius scoffs.
“Easy is probably for four year olds.” She taps the right arrow to Hard and hits the up to confirm.
Rudolf scrambles to get her feet into the right position as the word Ready? in English flashes across the screen. Sirius is so busy watching her that she misses the first three, or four, or ten notes.
It’s so insanely fast that Sirius feels her head spinning. Somehow, the game expects her to be able to swing her legs around like crazy and hit two different arrows at the same time or something. She could’ve sworn she sees a group of three at some point, and nobody has enough legs for that.
Next to her, Rudolf laughs. “I got five!”
How many arrows are there? The assault continues, notes flying across the screen. The worst part about not knowing the song is that she doesn’t know how much longer this is going to take, and it’s embarrassing as a racer that she somehow lacks the stamina and brainpower to keep up with a stupid arcade game.
Not that Rudolf can, either. Sirius hits the last four notes, which are spaced out to a normal degree possible for humans to hit, which is somehow the maximum combo she’d achieved. She looks over, and Rudolf is smiling wide, hunched over and breathing hard.
A voice from the arcade machine blasts her eardrums out. “Player 1” — the one on the left, Sirius — “wins!”
Both of them gasp in unison. “Huh?”
On what must be the results screen, Sirius’ accuracy rating is a twelve to Rudolf’s ten.
“Come again!” the machine says. She can’t stop herself from laughing.
“You’re smiling,” Rudolf comments. She picks up their shoes from where they’re laying next to each other and slides Sirius’ pair towards her.
She uses tying her shoes as an excuse to hide her blush from Luna. “Well, yeah,” she says. “I had fun.”
A hand ruffles her hair between her ears, and she thinks she’s going to stop breathing, keel over, and die. She’s been having so much fun and feeling so normal hanging out with Luna that she almost let herself forget she’s a freak for whom innocent touches like this make her head feel fuzzy.
It’s only the briefest of touches before she lets up and lets Sirius rise to her feet. It must be projection, or maybe the exertion of playing the game that makes her think Rudolf’s cheeks are pink, too.
“Are you hungry?” she asks.
“Are you?”
“Somewhat,” Rudolf admits.
Sirius smirks. “You can say what you want, you know. Don’t forget your bag.”
Rudolf scrambles to pick it up from the railing on the back of the dance game cabinet. She completely forgets the credits card on the floor while they leave.
Instead of heading in the direction of their families’ summer homes, they find themselves turning down the street in the other direction almost unconsciously, even if it’s not what Rudolf’s father would want, even if they’d get in trouble for it if he ever found out.
Rudolf points at a sign with a graphic of a crepe drawn on it down the street. “What about there?”
“Is it just sweets?” Sirius says, frowning. “I don’t really like crepes.”
Rudolf rolls her eyes fondly. “I’m sorry I don’t have the money to take you to a steakhouse,” she teases. “Look, the menu’s on the window. If there’s nothing for you, we can try somewhere else.”
Rudolf bounces on her heels while she waits for Sirius to read over the menu. The first half is all sickeningly sweet fruit confections that don’t sound appetizing at all until she gets to the savory section, which she didn’t know was something that existed.
Ham and Gruyère cheese galette… it sounds like something her father would bring home for her to try from overseas. “No, let’s go here,” she acquiesces. Rudolf laughs.
The café is mostly empty aside from a few people chatting away in the corner. The cashier smiles at the two of them and Rudolf takes the initiative to walk up to the counter.
“What can I get for you girls today?” the young man in an apron asks. Rudolf fiddles with her bag, fishing out her wallet and counting the notes she has neatly tucked into it.
“I’ll have a… strawberries and cream,” she says, straightening out the money so it’s perfect. “And a café latte. Small, please.” She turns to Sirius. “What do you want?”
“I’ll have a ham and Gruyère galette,” she orders confidently, willing her mouth to sound out the French correctly. “That’s all.”
“Will that be for here or to go?”
“Here.” Rudolf nods. She hands the money over. “You can keep the change.”
The man smiles at them. “Thank you. You can take a seat, and I’ll bring your food out when it’s ready.”
Rudolf thanks him, before walking towards the row of seats arranged against the window. She pulls one out and hoists herself up, patting the one next to her for Sirius.
“How’s your ankle?” Sirius asks, taking her seat by Luna’s side.
Paying attention to cars driving past outside the window instead of Sirius, Rudolf’s legs kick the window and jolt where they’re sitting. “I forgot I hurt it in the first place,” she answers.
“I’m… glad.” The atmosphere is so unbelievably awkward and warm and comforting all at once.
A small mug on a plate is slid next to Rudolf. “Your latte,” a man says.
“Thanks.”
“I didn’t know you like coffee,” Sirius comments, resting her chin in her hand.
Rudolf blows on the steaming cup in front of her. “I wanted to try it.” Sirius watches her bring the cup to her lips to take a sip. “It’s sweet! You should have some.”
“I said I don’t like sweets,” she retorts, but she takes the mug from Rudolf, who’s now the one watching her as she places her lips right over the spot where Luna’s had just been, and those eyes bore holes into her.
“… I wonder if this is what a date feels like,” Luna comments quietly.
“Oh. You’ve never been on a date?” Sirius replies, voice cracking as she tries not to break the mug in her hands. Of course she hasn’t.
“Father would never let me. And,” Luna’s voice drops to a whisper for only Sirius to hear. “I… sorry, I can’t say it.”
“Can’t say what?”
Rudolf looks away. “We’re in public, Sirius.”
She kind of wants to cry.
“Wait, I want to know what you mean,” she blurts out. “If you’re like me, then…”
She hears Rudolf’s breath hitch.
“Nobody’s around,” Sirius says. Her ears are pressed back, like doing that’ll make her smaller, more invisible to everyone in this café except for the girl next to her. Rudolf’s eyes shine as she brings a shaking hand up to Sirius’ cheek.
“I think I like you,” she whispers.
Sirius shivers.
Her eyes dart around the room and out the window before she realizes she just doesn’t care anymore and she leans in to kiss Luna on the lips.
She’s sweet.
It only lasts for a fraction of a second before they both pull away, scared of what they’ve allowed themselves to do. Luna leans down over the table and hides her face in the crook of her arms.
“I’m so stupid,” Sirius hears her mumble. “I know it’s wrong, but I’m so happy.”
A weight is lifted off of her shoulders, but a billion new ones line up to take their place. She’s not a pervert, because that would make Luna a pervert too, and she’s clearly not. She’s pure and innocent and pretty like the daughter of an important family is supposed to be, and she’s also just like Sirius. She likes her.
Sirius leans her head down too so her mouth is near Luna’s ear. As much as she wants to believe they’re in their own little world, they are still in public, and she can’t fathom the idea of sharing any bit of this moment with anyone else in the world. It’s not even because of shame this time.
“That was my first kiss,” she whispers, and just saying it out loud makes her feel indescribably light and giddy.
Luna groans. “Don’t say that,” she whines, and her tail wags ferociously behind her. She tilts her head, still resting in her arms, so Sirius can see half of her face, and it’s almost too much to look at each other. “…It was mine, too.”
Sirius’ ears flick to footsteps behind them and the bubble is shattered. Her back goes straight and her ears stand at attention. “Wait, Luna, get up, the food is here, I think,” she stammers. The waiter slides their plates in front of them wordlessly, and Sirius feels like her head is about to burst.
Under the counter, Luna’s fingers intertwine with hers.