"That's not a resolution. That's a death wish."

That's what Wallace had declared when Ian shared his wild hare fantasy on the 31st of December the year prior.

"Tell me you're joking," Wallace added, knowing by the look in Ian's eyes that he was not joking even the smallest bit. Wallace's stomach flipped.

Now, here they were.

Wallace had been sure that as each month passed away and a new one came on, he would hear nothing more of the silly midnight eve's rush to reply to the ever popular question of what each party present had ordered what for Christmas.

Now, a couple thousand feet up from the ground, a terrible twinkle flitted through Ian's eyes as he watched Wallace cowering back from the door, like a wounded animal who didn't quite trust his master.. "What's the matter, are you scared?" he asked, a challenge to his tone.

Wallace looked over the edge. "Yes," he replied. "Yes I am, and I'm not ashamed to say it, so don't look at me like that, like you think you're going to peer-pressure me into this."

Ian snickered and bent down, scooping up a helmet from the floor and strapping it onto his head. He plucked up another and with a thump, pressed it into Wallace's stomach. "Well, it's up to you," he said. "You can stay here if you like."

Wallace clutched the helmet. "You can't mean to actually go through with this." He glanced at the door.

Ian was shrugging on a parachute.

"I mean, you really, really cannot mean to actually go through with it."

Ian was strapping on the buckles and belts that went over his chest and under his arms, testing out holding the little knob that would deploy the 'chute.

"What if that thing doesn't pop out like it ought to? What if you get caught in a wind and you go falling off into those trees over there? What if you hit the ground too hard and you break your god-damned leg? What if --"

"Wallace," Ian interrupted.

Wallace shifted uneasily, but he stared up at his friend with wide, nervous-looking eyes.

"Honestly, mate, it's going to be brilliant."

Wallace closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them back up again, Ian was holding out a parachute pack to him, one eyebrow cocked daringly, a smirk playing on his lips.

Ian's voice shivered as he spoke. "Once in a lifetime opportunity, this is... and you've come this far already. A shame, really, to let a bit of anxiety stop you now, isn't it?"

Wallace stared at Ian.

Ian reached out and the door opened, rushing air roared into the little aeroplane hull and Wallace instinctively stepped back, his mouth going very, very dry as he watched Ian inch closer to the mouth of the door, his toes already out and over the threshold. Far below, the land was nothing but patches of color, of purples and hazy greens and grays. Cars crawled by on distant interstates and chimneys pumped plumes of smoke among trees that hid their roofs from view. The drop from first step to final resting place seemed too great a plunge to ever calculate, and Wallace felt his insides going green at the very thought of how it would feel to disembowel himself by jumping out of the safety of the plane.

Ian clung onto two metal handles on either side of the door, leaning so that he was dangerously close to actually doing it.

"Wait," Wallace pleaded.

Ian turned to look at him.

Wallace struggled hurriedly to push on his helmet, yanking the strap across his chin tight and fast, not giving himself time to think, to hesitate... He struggled with the pack and Ian watched, his amusement growing with every tug and pull on the straps that bound the parachute to Wallace's body. Ian didn't dare speak - it might waylay whatever was causing this rebellious streak to course through the usually meek Wallace. Instead, Ian just watched as Wallace repeated all the motions of preparation that Ian himself had just done, and then grabbed hold of one of the metal handles himself, standing beside Ian at the door.

The wind rushed up, the plane hummed, and Wallace didn't dare to look down.

"Are you quite ready?" Ian asked.

"I never will be, no," Wallace replied.

"Geronimo!" Ian said, and he took the first step off into the thin air, his hands crossed over his chest, and his mouth breaking into a wide grin as the feeling of falling engulfed him entirely, his body plummeting like a stone through the air.

Wallace shook, his knuckles white with his grip on the handle. Now was his moment, it was his chance to run like the devil and tell the pilot to just get back to the ground so he could pick up whatever shattered limbs would remain of Ian after he touched down... Now was the chance to back out.

And he probably would've done if his sneaker hadn't caught on the lip of the gangplank and he hadn't tripped, tumbling quite mentally unprepared, right out the door.

Wallace spun as he dropped, panic filling every droplet of his blood. First there was dull earth, then brilliant sky, then dull earth again. Head over heels - or heels over head, which makes much more sense than the right way around - Wallace fell. Below, Ian was hooting and his arms were spread out wide to either side, his legs apart. Ian looked like a graceful starfish or a flying squirrel, while poor Wallace clutched his knees to his chest, rolling and sobbing, an unfortunate human meteor, who was quite regretting having never filled out a last will and testament.

But then he caught a wind just so, and the invisible hand of the atmosphere seemed to catch him and straighten him out a bit. Instead of flipping pell-mell over himself, Wallace was suddenly at least a wee bit balanced, and he could at least see the landscape below.

To say it was beautiful was an understatement. The mountains reached up into the air, like the teary-eyed parishioners in his mother's old church who held their palms to the sky in worship every Sunday. Trees stood sentinel about those craggy believers, the grass swayed in dewy wind. A fog had settled over a lake away in the distance, promising a rainy day to come. But for now the sky was the color of a robin's egg, wispy clouds drifting over the field far below, casting blurry shadows of their forms.

Wallace contented himself with the thought that - if he were to die by crashing headfirst into a tree or the earth at the bottom of this long fall back to earth, that at least he had a loverly view as he went down.

There was a hiss and a pop and a rush of air and suddenly Wallace was falling past Ian, who had deployed his gaudish, colorful 'chute, the span of which was wide as four Ians tall, and hung in the air, suspending him from the harness he'd connected, making slow lazy circles, like a paper aeroplane far above Wallace's dropping descent.

"Pull the string, fella!" Ian hollered.

Right the string! Of course! He'd forgotten the string!

Wallace's hands scrambled for his own string, wrapping his fist tight about it, and yanking as hard as his very weary muscles would allow. And then, with the same familiar fwumpff as the first one, Wallace's 'chute had burst open. The wide, multi-colored fabric billowed- and caught the wind, looping Wallace about through the atmosphere like an olive in a martini - gentle and silent.

Suddenly, Wallace no longer considered what he was doing to be falling, but rather flying, and he felt the anxieties he had held in his chest dropping away from him as he glided over the world. From up here, the things that so consumed life on the ground seemed small and insignificant, as tiny as the pebbles in the dirt of the field he was drifting toward. Wallace felt weightless in every sense of the word, and it was the first time that the nervous little man had ever dreamed of it.

Ian went spinning by, an expression of euphoria and rapture making his cheeks glow, and Wallace saw his mate's grin deepen upon seeing him. Wallace suspected that his face bore a similar countenance to Ian's, now that the experience was underway. Ian gave Wallace a hearty thumbs-up.

Too soon, the ground was rushing up at them, the grass becoming distinguishable as separate blades, the trees seeming to grow taller around them as they spun gently to the ground and hit it running, the momentum of the drop burning off as fast as their legs could carry them before landing in a heap of parachute and dizzy laughter. Overhead, the others in the plane were spinning down, too, their own parachutes bright spots of color in the blue sky, and the plane was buzzing away.

Ian looked over as he undid the strap of his helmet, letting the gear roll away. His hair was messy and his face flushed. "How was that to kick off a New Year?"

Wallace's stomach was still coming back to him, his perception of the ground beneath still strangely foreign. He nodded, weakly.

"And you thought I was crazy for making you resolve to try new things!" Ian glowed.

"I mean, you are crazy," Wallace pointed out. "Just not quite as crazy as I thought when you said you wanted to jump out of an aeroplane. By trying something new, I'd hoped you'd intended something more like... trying sushi, or... I don't know... kickboxing."

Ian's grin only widened. "Oh Wallace. Just wait until you see what else I've got in mind for the rest of the year!"