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TWENTY-ONE; 𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒇𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒉 𝒌𝒊𝒔𝒔!
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PETER COULD NEVER get sick of this. Free-falling into the wide blue yonder of Midtown Manhattan. Blue above, grey below, red-and-blue in between. God, what a feeling.
Only today—or tonight—it'd been different.
A little different than how he'd imagined this situation would go down. He may or may not have completely neglected and underestimated how sick his to-be-girlfriend was. Yes, it was all his fault; he was ready to accept the weighty blame of further sickening this poor, unwilling girl with the swing of her life.
"Go higher!" she squealed in his ears, the winds whipping at her hair.
Clara Rose was more relaxed than he'd anticipated her to be on her first official web-sling experience. Initially, for two minutes, she was rupturing eardrums all over town and then she fell about into the kind of breathy laughter that resounded in his chest. She was starting to enjoy it, too. And also he'd narrowly avoided slamming face-first into an e-billboard or two because of what this extreme proximity was doing to him.
Once or twice, she'd reach out to the vanishing wind as if attempting to catch it by the threads between her fingers. And she would laugh to herself.
"This is incredible," she said to him, still breathless.
"We're gonna go higher, alright? Hold on!"
"Woo-aaaah!"
He decided to impart the whole Spider-Man experience to her—only because he didn't find anyone else willing—and scaled them right up to the polished, steel leviathan that stood as the Chrysler Building. Right up to the higher levels where the business floors rested as quiet as graveyards. Bad call: the drop in temperature was getting to her.
He snuck a look downward when Clara Rose's weight dubiously started to shift on his back. It was at the tips of his feet where a whole constellation of lights lay beneath, each little glow its earthly star. Quite the fall, but also quite the view.
He couldn't imagine how cold she must be feeling, especially with her recent recovery from the flu. She wasn't even wearing protective clothes; he'd stolen her away while she was still in her pyjamas. Her dark-socked feet remained snugly belted around his midsection and sought comfort from the chill against his neck. He felt her peek a look when she realized their ascent had stopped midway.
"Still afraid of heights?" Peter asked, shouting over the bitterly frigid drafts that pierced at them.
She tautened her embrace a good fraction. "Not when you're around."
