Author's Note: Hey guys! Sorry about the long wait- final exams were this week. I didn't get more than five hours of sleep each night, and was so busy and overworked that I literally forgot meals and bedtimes. Not good… But they're over now, and I can continue this!

Thanks to Vitawash and Hellscrimsonangel!

Chapter Eleven

"So what've you got in that backpack?"

"Swimsuits. I took the liberty of finding one for you, too."

I stumbled on a stone and had to jog a step to catch back up.

"What?"

"The volume at which I spoke was enough-,"

"No, I mean… we're going swimming?"

"I am. I wasn't sure if you were going to. I thought it would be fun to practice flying above the pond, and it would cool me off well so that I could fly more without suffering heat exhaustion."

"But I… W-Why didn't you tell me before, so I could change into it? Where am I supposed to put it on- out here?"

"The dress looks nice on you." I blushed, flattered, but it only lasted for a second, because he added, "And you rarely dress well, I thought to not spoil it- you look almost pretty. If it makes you more comfortable, you can change in the trees and I'll turn around and cover my eyes. John feels the same about privacy."

"I'm fairly certain just about everybody feels that way," I huffed.

"So you're saying I'm abnormal?"

"N-no, I… well, yes, but- no, I…" I sighed and looked at the grass at the side of the path, giving up. I could practically feel him give me that one-eyebrow-up look.

"You don't have to go swimming, anyways. You can just sweat in the sun, if you wish. I'm going to change, though."

"Why didn't you just change at the house?"

"I was already dressed in this. And I wanted dry clothes to put on after." We got to the glade and put our backpacks on one of the benches. He immediately began unbuttoning his shirt. I turned away, face red again, and found the swimsuit he'd brought me in the backpack.

"I'm going over here to change," I warned him, still not looking back, and went into the woods. I went about twenty meters in, and found a thick tree and a cluster of bushes that made me feel slightly less exposed. I looked at the swimsuit- simple enough bikini, plain emerald green. The top was halter, and overall, it wasn't so bad. Not overly exposing. I gingerly untied my dress and pulled it off, draping it gently over a branch, and put the swimsuit on.

I hoped Jim wasn't in the woods, watching me, though he doubtless was. But then, we'd grown up together. He was like a brother. We'd seen each other naked before, but that didn't mean I was exactly comfortable with it. I knew he wasn't watching Sherlock undress- despite the whispers and rumors, his sexual preference was women.

I made my way back to the glade, holding the dress folded in front of myself like a shield. I wondered if Sherlock was punishing me for not letting him have the morphine. It would be childish and immature, exactly his style.

He wasn't in the glade, and I looked around for a moment, scanning the area. I didn't see Sherlock. I did, however, see Jim crouched on a tree branch, wearing golf shorts and a green shirt, grinning like a cat. So he had been watching me! I smiled and laughed silently as he turned and spread his wings, quickly vanishing.

I heard a shout and looked up. Just in time to see Sherlock do a perfect swan dive (wings and all) into the little pond. From about twenty feet in the air. Giggles were inevitable as I set the dress on the bench and ran over to the edge of the water. His head popped up and he swam over to me, climbing out.

He shook his head, splattering me with water from his hair, and I yelped from the cold. Then he shook his wings too, and I was almost as drenched as he was.

"Running takeoffs aren't a problem," he informed me.

"I guessed as much. Any stiffness or soreness?"

"A little, but it went away quickly. The water is a bit chilly, but nice." He ran hard for a few meters, pumping his wings, and jumped into the air, getting enough altitude to clear the trees before he got to the edge of the glade. I watched, feeling a mix of envy and adoration. It was literally a dream come true- angelic Sherlock, shirtless and covered with water.

I chased the thought from my mind and decided to test the water of the pond. It was obviously man-made, because the bottom was very pebbly and not mucky at all, and it sloped down at a regular angle. It was fairly chilly, but I dove under quickly, which got the worst of the cold part over with quickly.

When I reemerged, gasping from the cold, I pushed my hair out of my face and half-floated, half-tread water, watching Sherlock practice his turns and swoops in the air. Evidently, the water didn't hinder his flying at all, which didn't surprise me- the natural oils gave feathers an almost waxy texture, which shed water readily.

His turning was still fairly shoddy, and he swooped low over the pond, trying to bank corners more gracefully. He plunged into the pond twice, on accident, when he turned and lost the upward lift.

"How's the air today?" I asked.

"Excellent," he said, breathing hard as we swam to the shore. He'd just plummeted down, but on purpose that time. "I'm working on using thermals for lift. The humidity and heat is making me tire more quickly, though. And I need to practice turning more."

"And landing," I suggested, smirking. He frowned, and I saw the look in his eyes- challenge. He ran a few steps, took off, and then swooped back (another wobbly turn) before heading toward me. I knew what he was going to do- show off his perfect landing.

It didn't quite go that way.

He turned his wings and flapped twice forward, to kill his momentum, but he underestimated his speed, or underestimated his stopping ability, because he kept moving forward, albeit at a slower pace, which was lucky.

Lucky, because the only thing left to stop him was me, and he'd planned the landing to be right in front of me, in a very show-offy manner. I only had time to squeak in fear before he crashed into me, knocking me flat on my back.

It wasn't exactly like in the movies, when boy falls on girl, or vice versa, because in the movies, usually the two aren't soaking wet from swimming in a pond, and usually the girl lands on the guy because she's lighter. It also doesn't show that whoever hits the ground almost certainly gets the wind knocked out of them, and it doesn't show the pair knocking foreheads painfully.

I managed to suck in air finally as he groaned, rubbing his head. And then it was a bit like the movies, except he was crushing me a little. I blinked up at him, still slightly stunned, and he finally managed to extract his limbs from mine and get up. He held out a hand and helped me up.

Over his shoulder, I saw a pair of brown eyes, pupils ringed with gold, shining darkly in the woods. I wasn't sure what I saw in them, but I almost shuddered.

"Are you okay?" Sherlock asked. I rubbed my head and coughed.

"Y-yeah, fine," I said weakly. "You?"

"Yes. You don't have much adipose to create a soft landing, but your boniness didn't hurt much. Less than the ground would've, I imagine."

I frowned and continued on my way to the backpacks. Jim was nowhere to be found.

"I was right. You need to work on your landings."

"No, I simply overblustered a little bit."

"Is overblustered a word?" I mused, pulling out sandwiches and sitting on the bench, handing him his.

"It- yes. But I wasn't wrong."

"Yeah, you were."

"Hmph. No."

I decided to let it go and eat my sandwich. He followed my lead, and it was blissfully silent for a few moments.

"Do you think Moriarty is watching us?" he asked.

I knew better than to do a bold-faced lie to Sherlock, especially when I was still a bit shaken from the crash. So far, I'd managed to avoid telling complete and total lies to him. I was good at acting and withholding information, but that was it. Anyways, I didn't see that the truth could do any harm. I knew Jim well enough that I could all but hear him in my head, telling me to go ahead.

"I… yes. I've seen him twice," I confessed.

"Does that frighten you?"

"Well… I'm not scared for me. I'm scared for you, because he never really did anything awful to me. He's just done terrible things to you. I mean, god, he blew up an old lady that you were talking on the phone to," I said with a shudder. Jim and I had quite a row after that day, but his bambi eyes, my inability to hold a grudge, and the fact that we were each other's only best friends kept us together. He'd apologized (I was probably the only one in the world who he would apologize to) and I'd forgiven him.

"I'm too much fun for him to kill," he said lazily. He lay back in the grass and tucked an arm behind his head to watch the clouds meditatively.

"But… he already tried to kill you!" I exclaimed. A part of my brain began assembling the proper responses for his responses, running ahead in the conversation, making my deception into science and calculating results.

"He also 'killed' himself. It was just a challenge, again, a game within a game- killing me, and trying to get me to find out how to undo the havoc he'd wreaked. I wasn't absolutely certain it was another game until he 'killed himself'. He may be a psychopath, but that doesn't mean he doesn't take pleasure in life."

The answer I knew was you're absolutely right, he does love living. But instead, I said the answer Sherlock expected from me. "But… he's insane! He doesn't think like normal people-,"

"-you're exactly right, but his thinking is…" he huffed with frustration, struggling for the correct words, "different, but it's not exactly addled. No, no, it is addled, but it's not… he enjoys thinking, and thinking is something that is done when one is alive, so if he takes away being alive, then he takes away his thinking… That's not the right way to describe it. But he wouldn't actually kill himself. He's having too much fun in this life," he summarized.

"And you know this?"

A small smile touched his lips. "Yes. We are alike in many ways. He says that I am him."

I blinked like I didn't know that. "He… hmm. Weird. But you don't go blow people up for fun, or poison children, or commit crimes."

"Correct." He stood as I finished my sandwich, and dug through his backpack. When he found what he was looking for and pulled it out, I flinched involuntarily, because my first thought was a gun. My second thought was a blowdryer. My third thought was mostly confusion.

"What is that?" I asked, looking at the gray device he held.

"Radar detector. I, ahem, 'acquired' it from Sally Donovan a while ago. Thought it might be a fun toy, and it's finally got a use." He handed to me, and I held it the way he did, like a gun, finger on the trigger. "I want you to measure my speed. This is still all an experiment."

"Oh. Okay," I said.

"How's your aim?" I shrugged, a response that could be taken many ways. In truth, I was an excellent shot. Because of my association with him, Jim had taken me to shooting ranges and quite a few fighting 'classes' (where the teachers were obviously not teachers, but assassins who worked for him), despite the fact that our association was unknown to almost everyone, save for Sebastian and my mum.

"You've got steady enough hands in surgery. You'll do fine," he decided.

First we did take-offs, measuring his speed, his wing's speed, and finding the velocities he had to achieve to get off the ground. Then we did landing, finding the maximum speed he could land and keep his feet at. (It was a discouragingly small number, and took many crashes to find. By this point he had more than a few bandages and had donned a shirt merely to protect the skin of his chest.)

Then he had me record flying speeds. The slowest he could go while staying in the air, more wing speeds, and seeing how fast he could fly. I tried to make predictions (silently so he wouldn't laugh at me), trying to figure out if his diving speed would be faster because he had more mass, or slower because he had more surface area than most birds. It wasn't anything near a falcon's speed, but still alarmingly fast- I clocked him at 91 kilometers per hour.

Our tests eventually became just play, though, seeing how fast he could go, and him diving through the air at terrific speeds, making me gasp and him laugh from the rush. At one point, he dove low over my head, almost hitting me, and emitted a strange sound- a sort of whistling screech.

He fluttered his wings and landed, and I gave him an odd look. "What on earth was that?"

"Owl cry," he said, brow furrowed, looking equally confused. "It just sort of happened."

"Can you do it again?" I asked. He chewed his lip for a moment.

"I don't think so. Maybe." I saw his pale throat tighten, and the same sound came out from behind his bared teeth. "Hmm. Strange."

"Uhm… yeah. Okay," I said faintly, grabbing my notebook to jot it down. He turned and peeled his shirt off, heading for the pond for another dip.

The afternoon was almost gone by then. The sun was setting and it was cooling off. I went into the woods to change back into the dress (extracting a promise from Sherlock to stay turned around with his eyes covered) and found the fairly secure place I'd stopped earlier.

I'd just reached behind me to work on the knot at the top of my halter when the tree above me crackled.

Something dropped out of it and pressed against me. Something soft touched my mouth.

Another mouth. A kiss.