Last assignment for the History class, and for once, it wasn't really something Lucas and Fliss could do together. They'd separated for an afternoon, to write their assignments alone, but before handing them in, the teenaged couple had decided to share with each other what they'd written about. For once, they had the treehouse to themselves, since Liv, Bess, and Alex were walking Bella, Johnny had taken Maria into the city to pick out a cat from the shelter, and Jessica had dragged Matt to Miranda's to get him measured up for his first semi-formal suit. With time to themselves, Fliss had suggested the treehouse, and was already there when Lucas arrived, with a jug of lemonade and snacks, too.

Lucas arrived shortly after her, a backpack slung across his shoulders, relieved to find her alone for once. As fond as he was of both their families, sometimes he just wanted to spent a little quiet time alone with his girlfriend without their siblings constantly teasing them or their parents watching. It wasn't because he wanted to do anything they wouldn't approve of, but because he just liked spending time with her.

"Hey," she greeted him with a smile, patting the bean bag next to hers. "Take a load off, handsome. Did you have a good time?" From anyone else, that might have been flirting. From Fliss, it was genuine curiosity combined with flirting, which she was beginning to realize had a very interesting effect on her boyfriend.

It wasn't easy navigating the ladder and treehouse with a pair of wings folded against his back, but he'd learned how to manage it. He flushed a little with the effort or maybe it was her flirting that had caused it. Either way, he wasn't going to say, and the sight of her baring her midriff wasn't helping matters any. He was seventeen years old after all, and his hormones were raging. "Now that summer's almost here, the shop's getting busy," he told her, regarding his job at Custom Kings.

"I should come down and distract you at work sometime," she offered with a bright grin. "Or do the babies do that, anyway?" Despite her numerous out-of-school activities, Fliss hadn't yet had a job. Maybe that was something she should do over the next year, she considered, so her parents would take her a little more seriously.

"Sometimes they do," he said as he shrugged the backpack from one shoulder and lowered himself into the beanbag chair. "Tommy thinks I should enter the surf contest this year. He says he's never seen anyone surf with wings before."

"You should! You're awesome on a board," Fliss pointed out, always ready to praise and encourage him. She leaned over, touching a kiss to his lips. "Hi, by the way. I kinda missed you this afternoon."

He smiled into her kiss, never tiring of them. The pair were no strangers to kissing, but they hadn't gone much further than that. Lucas cared too much about Fliss to take advantage of her, and despite the frustration of being a hormonal teenager, so far he'd managed to keep his urges under control. "I miss you, too," he told her, that soft smile on his face that he saved just for her.

"It's gonna be weird in September," she mused thoughtfully, wriggling over to hug him. "With you at uni and me still at BC. We're not gonna lose this, right' We're not gonna forget to be together, are we?"

"I could never forget you, Fliss," he assured her, frowning a little at her question. He'd been worrying about it, too. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll still live right next door. There's no reason to think anything will change." At least, not as far as he was concerned.

"Good." She raised her head to meet his eyes. "Because I'm not gonna change. I just don't want you thinking that, just because we're not around each other all day, that I'm not thinking about you. I miss you when we're not together."

He reached for her hand to link his fingers with hers, trying hard not to let her see how it worried him. He wasn't worried he'd find someone else, but that without him around all the time - especially at school - it would be her who met someone else. "I miss you, too, but I can't stay at BC. I need to go to university if I ever want to get into the medical field."

"I get that, I really do," she tried to assure him. "And it's not like I'm gonna be at BC forever. Mom and Dad want me to stay for another year, and then I'm gonna start at the fire station. But you and me" We're here to stay."

"I can't imagine my life without you, Fliss," he told her, though he didn't want her to feel obligated to him in any way. He knew they were both young and anything could happen, but as far as he was concerned, he had found the girl he wanted to spend the rest of his life with and that girl was Fliss. "They're gonna let you start at the fire station after graduation?" he asked, eyes widening.

"Yeah, they agreed to it," she nodded, as surprised as he was. "I figure I'll do maybe two days a week at the station itself, because I want to learn how to EMT, and I guess that'll need a bit more school. But so long as I start at Old Temple, where Dad can keep an eye on me, they seem okay with it."

"You don't want to be a firefighter, like your dad?" he asked curiously. After all, she had a rare talent for controlling fire, not unlike her father's, even if he wasn't her birth father. That shared talent for fire was in part what had drawn Johnny to her in the first place.

"I wanna do both," she admitted with a shrug. "I want to be able to get there and deal with the fire, and be able to help people who got caught in it. It really frustrates Dad sometimes that he can't help the people he rescues beyond delivering them to the EMTs and the paramedics. I don't want to be frustrated like that."

"But his talent isn't healing, Fliss. It's fire. Even if he was trained in healing, the fire brigade needs him more. No one in the city can control fire like your dad can. If it wasn't for him, things would be a lot worse." He wasn't saying that Johnny shouldn't want to be able to help people more than he already did; only that his talents could be put to better use. There were plenty of healers in the city, but not many who could control fire, and the same went for Fliss.

"I'm not saying it's a bad thing," Fliss tried to explain. "And I don't want to be a doctor, or even a nurse. But I want to be able to do what needs to be done, so that people don't have to wait. The fire thing, that's the priority, it always will be."

"I want that, too, but ..." He frowned as he tried to put into words what it was he was striving for. "I want to put my wings to good use. What good are they if I can't use them to help someone?" he asked, still trying to sort it all out in his head.

"Didn't you go to the diviner with your mom yet?" Fliss asked. She understood, at least as much as she could, that he was in a kind of limbo, not knowing quite which way to go. "Maybe that'll help."

"Really?" Amber eyes widened, truly touched to hear him say that. But she knew that couldn't possibly have been the subject of his paper; he would never write down in detail something that was so very private. "That's so beautiful."

"Really," he replied, his expression open and honest, his eyes shining with adoration. "You're my happy place, Fliss," he told her, unable to think of any better way to say it. He didn't feel the need to explain why, hoping she already understood. "I was all alone before I met you. I love my family, but it's different with you. I feel like I belong when I'm with you."

"I feel the same way about you," she confessed softly, hugging him as she leaned close. "But you put it into words so much betterer than I could have." Was she teasing him' It was possible. Fliss wasn't always at home to serious sentiment, but she didn't always mock it, either.

Maybe that was why they got along so well - they balanced each other out. He frowned a little as she hugged him, his arms going around her to hold her close. "I'm not so good with words, Fliss, but I'm serious about you. You don't have to worry about losing me. It's never gonna happen."

"So we both have to stop worrying," she pointed out, holding his gaze fondly. "Because I'm just as serious about you. No one makes me feel the way you do, Luc. And that's something I don't want to take for granted, so I won't."

"I know we're young, but I know how I feel, and I know my feelings for you aren't gonna change," he added earnestly, meeting her gaze. Of course, no one could predict what might happen in the future - not even a "diviner" could say for certain - but at that moment in time, Lucas couldn't imagine himself ever loving anyone but her. He touched a kiss to her lips, soft and sweet and tender, sealing the unspoken promises with that kiss.

Kissed so softly, Fliss reveled in the tender touch, feeling the familar thrill of nervously excited butterflies in her stomach. "You know," she murmured, resting her brow to his, "home might be my favorite place, but you're my favorite everything. And someday we'll make a home together, I hope."

He sighed softly as their lips parted, unknowingly sharing the same feeling of butterflies in his stomach that she was. He smiled at her words, sharing those feelings, too. He hadn't yet revealed what place he had written about in his paper, but it didn't really matter. What was important was the connection between them. "I want that, too, Fliss," he admitted quietly. It was why he'd given her a promise ring - it was his promise to love her always.

"But first, I have to at least finish school," she sighed, rolling her eyes. She understood why her mom was so insistent about that, but at the same time, she was really impatient to do what she wanted to do with her life now she'd made that decision.

"Just one more year," he told her, touching a kiss to her nose. If he'd been back home on Earth, he'd have another year to go himself, but things were different here, and he was anxious to get on with his life.

"Seems like forever," she grumbled, smiling as she kissed him once again. She couldn't get enough of Lucas' kisses, sure she never would. "But you didn't tell me what you wrote about today. I'm really curious now."

He felt the same about her kisses, though he thought they might have a slightly different effect on him than they did on her. They were mostly innocent kisses though, not the kind that might lead to something else that neither of them seemed ready for. "It's stupid really," he said with a shrug. For some reason, he'd had trouble with this essay, but he wasn't sure why.

"Luc, nothing you do is stupid," she pointed out. "Everything you do is thought out, and that's something I love about you. So I really doubt that your essay is stupid."

His frown told her that he wasn't sure he agreed with her, but he appreciated that she believed in him. It was their last assignment anyway, so it probably hardly mattered whether he got an A or an F. "There are so many places I like, it was hard to pick only one," he admitted, feeling a little stupid for not picking something as simple as home, like she had, but then, they were different people with different thoughts and feelings and ideas. "I wrote about the beach," he admitted at last.

Her fingers smoothed at his frown until his expression relaxed, her face lighting up in a bright smile. "Oh, of course!" Fliss nodded, understanding that choice - not too private, and not obvious to anyone who didn't know him. "I think that's a brilliant choice," she told him enthusiastically.

"You know why?" he asked, wondering if she knew him as well as he knew her. Most people liked the beach for the obvious reasons - because they enjoyed the sun and the sand and the surf - but he had other reasons than those.

"Because it's your place," she mused thoughtfully. "It's a quiet place where you can just be yourself without worrying that people are looking at you and passing judgment on you. Where you don't stand out, because you fit there. It's an edge, the line between the sea and the sand, and you walk the line between the sky and land. You don't have to think anything at all, you can just listen to the surf."

Blond brows arched upwards, both surprised and impressed by her insight. In fact, she had somehow managed to put his own feelings into words even better than he had. "Something like that, yeah. It's quiet, peaceful. I sometimes imagine that's what heaven must be like, but it would get lonely after a while, unless you were with me."

"We should camp out on the beach sometime," she suggested. "Just us, no whiny brothers or sisters or parents, and no demanding pets. Just us and a tent."

"Think they'd let us?" he asked, curiously, not wanting to get his hopes up. "Tommy and Lena said we can visit anytime. They even said we're welcome to build a cottage there someday, if we want."

"Wow, really?" Fliss' eyes lit up once again. "That's really generous of them, they're really private." She bit her lip as she smiled, tucking herself close against him again. "And I'm sure my parents would let us camp out for a couple of nights. I mean, it's not like we'd be completely out of contact, is it?"

"Maybe when school is over," he suggested. Summer was coming, and they wouldn't have to worry about going to classes or writing papers for a while. He wasn't entirely sure what he was going to do come fall, but he still had some time to figure it out. "We could camp near King's Cove, so your parents don't worry," he suggested further.

"In the summer, yeah," she nodded, excited by this little plan. She didn't think her parents would object. They liked Lucas; more that that, they trusted him. "And that's a great idea. Being close enough to responsible adults without being on their doorstep, I can't see any of them saying no to that."

Lucas was frowning again, this time with worry. "I've never gone camping before," he admitted, a bit sheepishly. It just wasn't his family's thing. Sure, he'd learned to swim and surf and he was plenty athletic, but his father had never been very outdoorsy, and his career had come first.

"Neither have I," Fliss giggled. "But we can find a tent with a decent sized opening, or we can rig up a bivvy. There are woods just off the beach, so we'd have trees to hang a shelter between. It'd be an adventure, just the two of us."

Lucas smiled finally at the idea of spending a few days or even a single night alone with Fliss away from the prying eyes of their families and the stresses of school, just the two of them on their first adventure alone. "I'd like that a lot," he admitted. And with King's Cove close by, help would be available if they got into any kind of trouble.

She beamed, delighted that he'd stopped frowning and was smiling in agreement. "It's a date!" she declared happily, rewarding him with another kiss for giving in gracefully. "So ....we're all done with our assignments, huh?" She waggled her brows, attempting to look suggestive but only managing to do a terrible Groucho impression.

"If our parents agree!" he reminded her, which wasn't a given, though he saw no reason why they wouldn't. They either trusted them or they didn't; it was as simple as that. He laughed at the face she was making, knowing where she was going with that suggestive look of hers. "Yeah, I guess we are," he admitted with a slightly shy smile as he drew her even closer.

"Oooh, goodie." Giggling, Fliss eased closer with his urging, smothering her giggles in a few soft kisses. They might not be wholly comfortable with each other physically yet, but they could lose hours with kisses, and for once, they had a couple of hours to lose. Just as well she didn't wear lipstick, or he'd never live it down.