There's a moment, in some peoples' lives, when you realize you weren't destined for anything normal. Sometimes, if you're lucky enough, you get two.
Discovering my powers was the first.
And Peter Parker was the second.
And everything that followe...
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A stillness. Embedded in the air. Embedded in the night. I almost don't hear the rushing wind and grinding wheels of the nearby subway cars. My head is off in the clouds, reeling and repeating the past ten minutes rhythmically like a dream. His breath is still lingering on my cheek.
"Do you...Do you wanna go back to my apartment to catch up?" Peter asks, with his eyes somewhat glazed and an awestruck smile strung across his lips.
I poke at the spider symbol clinging to the center of his chest, releasing a small laugh, "Um. Yeah, I think we both have some explaining to do, Spider-man."
"I can swing us. If you want," he offers, scratching the back of his neck.
I take a quick peak at the concrete below us, then trace my vision back up to Peter's brown eyes, "Promise we won't die?"
His gloved fingers enlace with mine, and he assures me as the wind moves his hair delicately, "I promise."
He unzips a backpack beside his feet and hands me his suit jacket, shielding my bare shoulders with the gray fabric before closing it back up and swinging it onto his shoulders. I step closer and move my hands beneath his arms, sliding them up over his shoulder blades. We move to the edge of the school roof.
"I swear, Parker. If we die, I'll kill you."
Peter laughs, telling me once more before stepping off of the ledge, "I promise. I got you."
We fall together in a terrifying, extraordinary kind of way.
I never thought Queens was beautiful. I always thought Queens was one of those places where you get trapped, like a tar pit or a block of amber. Yet now, somehow, flying dozens of feet above the ground, staring at a sea of twinkling gold, it feels like a piece of the sky has found its way down to the earth. The same weightlessness fills my chest as it did the evening of the lavender sky. But instead of the red mask my eyes anchor onto the comfort of Peter's face. His cheeks, reddened by the coldness of the wind. The kindness burrowed in the color of his irises.
And what a wonder it is to fly. To misplace physics and not even care at all. To rise and fall, only to rise again and fall once more. Despite our inability to fly, there is something very human about soaring through the air. It's ridden with uncertainty. Choatic. Knee-buckling. Beautiful uncertainty.
Peter's heartbeats quicken and imprint themselves on my fingertips. We land, finally, on the sidewalk beneath the awning in front of his apartment complex. Jar Jar greets us with a muffled coo before we trail inside and up a couple of steps, to the fourth door on the right. Peter stops with his keys dangling in his fingers, his back against the wood.
