I was not sleeping tonight.

Man, I'd already started on that fanfic bullshit. What a drag.

Fine, so I had good reasons for that. As it turned out, muscle memory was an especially tricky case for me. I was one person - probably - that'd lived two different lives in parallel and just jumped into the body of another person that'd already developed his own way. So, I had my own abilities and skills, all the way down to simple tics like my constant shifting like I was some sort of video game character playing out an idle animation, but tended to be more languid otherwise. Peter, in comparison, had way more stillness, but he was positively brimming with energy, which he brought out in explosive, animated movements. He had way better handwriting. More precise movements. Better senses. Better acrobatic ability. I was a faster typer, but I'd be embarrassed if I wasn't since I was, y'know, a writer.

And he was bloody smart. Good Lord. This guy. With time to acclimate being Peter Parker, and with time to sit in his room and calm down and let myself genuinely think, it was...it was amazing. It really hit home why the man was such a chatterbox. Thoughts and ideas spilled out and he needed some way to let everything out, and far faster than mine ever had. And unlike me, his body could keep up with his brain - his mouth could keep up with his brain. I was used to feeling a tad like Otto Octavius - an okay mind (not in his case, he was a literal genius, duh) in a useless body.

I already had a very good outline of my plan.

Why worry about canon? It was nonsense.

My literal presence had already irreversibly altered the timeline. I missed a few messages from Ned, which led to more messages, which meant he'd be more frantic in our meeting the next day. That would, knowing him, mean he'd hang around in the afternoon since the last time Peter didn't respond to his texts was when he was recovering from overworking himself, which meant less time for Spider-Manning, which meant there was one or more persons I wouldn't be able to help, which would set off all sorts of butterflies. I would be better off staying focused on what I knew I could affect, and work towards the biggest goal I knew we had - killing Thanos before he fucked the universe.

(His goal was dumb as hell. Halving the population on Earth alone meant little since after getting over their grief, humans absolutely would get those numbers back up in three decades, definitely less than five. Destroying the stones made it even dumber. 'Nuff said. Not important.)

Civil War was a plot device meant to put them at a disadvantage before Thanos. I would help take away that disadvantage. The best person to help me work towards this goal would be the Ancient One, and beyond that, Tony Stark. He'd created Ultron because of an enemy he knew was coming, but he had absolutely nothing to go on that would help him become more proactive. I had everything he needed to know. If I could find a way to contact the Asgardians, all the better. Carol Danvers, too, and the Skrulls through her. Hank Pym, proviso to that I could convince his stubborn ass to help.

(Helping him by contacting Janet was not feasible. I did not know enough about the Quantum Realm to figure out a way to find her and possibly risk alerting the denizens of said realm, who I also had no way of knowing who they were, which notable figures laid in wait in them, and how they'd react or how Janet's reputation stood among them, and whether first contact would be peaceful, and how the MCU's version of the Quantum Realm would be depicted, and how he would react to a fourteen-year-old telling him he knew that his wife was alive. Then there was the complication that was Bill and Ava Foster. Anyway, barring everything else, I could not simply place pressure on Mr. Stark to map the Quantum Realm - it wasn't entirely impossible that his tech wasn't quite there yet, for one. He hadn't the Bleeding Edge Suit just yet. Though, in a perfect scenario, he, Pym, and Foster could theoretically cook something up and help Ava in the process. Too many unknowns, I wasn't trusting everything to go the way of A Hope Comes to Brockton Bay.)

Even if I couldn't convince Pym, that was fine - I could convince Scott Lang and possibly Hope.

If I gave them all as much intel as I could give, or could give in a way that allowed them to act more definitively, would it help? Or would the whole, if I tell you what'll happen, it won't happen deal come over to bite me in the ass? It was hard to know. But that was fine. That was the brute-force, cheaty cheating cheater method, and it wasn't like the outcome quite mattered to me since my knowledge of the future beyond Far From Home was quite literally a bloody splatter in the capital city of a country in a different continent, in a separate year, in a separate multiverse.

Hence, Plan B, which was the likeliest one she might advise me to take - if she didn't decline my proposal to gangbang the future and cheat like hell.

The Allen Protocols. Subtler ways of dealing with the matter that would allow me to hit just as hard. Words to the right people at the right time. A word to the Ancient One here, a nudge to Tony there, and, if I would allow Infinity War to go the way it did, stop Quill, get the Gauntlet off, and sever his legs with the portal. From there, he'd be much easier to kill - then we could portal back over to Earth and finish things off.

Obviously, many adjustments would have to be made. There was no way I'd play through Homecoming intact - I'd butterfly a lot of what happened in that event. Unless I figured out how to forcefully grab and keep everyone's attention and get them all to stop being idiots in Civil War, that one would have to go with minimal nudges, which would have bigger consequences than what I could safely predict.

I would kill to have Contessa, Tattletale or Accord in my corner right now. Though, having them in my corner meant having the Entities in this universe, which would raise enough red flags to resurrect the Soviet Union.

Then there was Wanda. I had no idea what'd happen to her, but I didn't have Spidey-Sense in my old life. What little I saw and knew of WandaVision made them go right the fuck off.

Nope, Wanda needed a friend. She would get one, and hopefully, eventually, more. And a face full of Ancient One - or Wong - or (last resort) Stephen Strange.

That was just the stuff I would deal with as Spider-Man.

Peter Parker had more mundane problems.

Like my badly suppressed identity crisis, but I'd deal with that later. Or at least in small steps. "Professional crastinator, that's me."

My handwriting was bad on its best day, but the first sentence I'd written just blew my mind with its hideousness. Chicken scratch feared it. Doctors and pharmacists would never be able to decrypt a lick of whatever the hell it was I wrote. It was a horror movie all of its own.

"I have no words for this, man."

If it wasn't for the fact that this homework was due the following day and fuck you for this Peter, I would totally drop all that nonsense and go practice the basics of Spider-Manning to familiarize myself to it.

It took me fifteen minutes of trying to convert my even uglier handwriting to Peter's before I finally started to see results. It took me longer than I wanted to admit before stumbling on the thought of, 'How come it was easier for me to pull acrobatics and wall-crawl than it is to just write?'

Simple (which made me feel even dumber): I was forcing it.

I wasn't used to the idea that I was in a different body with its own abilities, that when it came down to basic things, it had plenty of time to be experienced at them. It was a different kind of experience, even if it had the same (less, since I was older) breadth as mine. I needed to get used to commanding the body and then letting it do its own thing. Control by surrendering control.

I gave myself another thirty minutes of practice before deciding it'd do and moved on to homework. That took forty-five minutes - and only that long because I was writing slowly to avoid too many mistakes and puzzling out how Americans did their homework and the educational system in general was a minor distraction that was greatly whittled down by the indomitable power of sorta-kinda-not-really-but-really first-hand experience. It was easy. Between my experience beyond high school (which was kinda why I was a fairly cheerful fellow) and Peter's smarts, this stuff was cake. Satisfied that I'd knocked everything I needed to out, I moved on to the biggest problem. I absolutely could not move on and save the world without doing this. Yet it was so vital to my entire existence that I would probably die if I did not see to it. I had to do this. I needed to do this. It was simple.

On paper.

I would rather someone just throw me into the ass-end of a Dark Souls major boss fight with zero instructions, no ways of knowing my inventory or controls, and lock me in the room until I beat the boss.

I would rather walk on a cactus.

I would rather attack a buzzed professional boxer while I had one lame leg.

I would rather fight Galactus.

I would rather drink a concentrated shot of infected human piss.

...Okay, I totally would not do that. Ew.

But I would really rather have been doing anything else.

"You're Peter Parker," I told myself forcefully. "You're Spider-Man. The baddest of arachnid asses that will ever be. The OG. The hero. My hero, over literally every single one else. The one that started it all. You're a man. You're the man. And that's technically correct because I'm 35 in added years. You crushed exams. You made web-shooters. You invented the best mode of transport ever. You're metal. You're amazing. Spectacular. You can do this. You can..."

I pulled Peter's pants off his waist and reached for...

"You can't do this." I let go of the waistband with a hopeless, strained grunt, feeling it snap back to my/his waist. I sighed and sat back down on the toilet seat.

"This has to be the gayest thing I've ever tried to do," I grumbled. "Not that I think gay things are bad, I'm just super strictly hetero. Same with Peter, because he technically has a harem. But...come on. This is technically not gay because you're Peter Parker, this is your body..." I blubbered and made more nonsensical noises. "Blah. Come. On."

I pouted. "If I don't do this, his bladder will eventually burst and I will piss his pants and Flash would love for that, by the way. And Peter's reputation would be gone forever." I squinted at the last word. "No, definitely don't say forever like that, you sound like an airhead. Can't pull it off with this voice."

Why was I making this so ha...so difficult?

"How will you even drain the dragon when you won't even touch the damn penis?"

I shuddered. "Okay, phrasing. Bad phrasing. Don't phrase it like that. How do urologists deal with this, man?" With a huff, I got back up and spun to face the music. "Simple enough. Just don't look, open the waistband and noooope lost me again. Dammit Parker."

I punched myself - soft blows, of course. "You're gonna wake May up," I hissed at myself, "and then she's gonna ask what's going on and it's gonna be even more awkward. She can't sleep properly these days because she's not used to sleeping without Ben and you know this. You. Must. Do. This."

"If there's a possibility that this is some sort of self-insert fanfiction and it's being published somewhere and another author is reading this that has indeed dabbled in self-inserts," I rambled, "I just want you to know, I hate you. You never mentioned this part. None of you ever mentioned this part. This is so freaking awkward, dude."

Deep breaths, Peter Parker. Deep breaths.

Inhale, exhale.

Inhale, exhale.

Band-Aid. Over. Over with.

I pushed the waistband and boxers down his thighs, whipped out the dragon, and no-scoped the toilet bowl. Booyah. Just get it over with and you'll be fine. Don't look at it and you'll be even better.

"Peter?" May's sleepy voice hit my ears. "Is that you?"

I tensed and accidentally dribbled on the rim of the toilet. Dammit! I woke May up! Plus now I have to clean this!

"Yeah!" I called out. "Just taking care of business in the toi-bathroom. B-business in the bathroom."

American terminology, Peter, I chided myself.

"Did you go out?"

"Nah, it wouldn't do me any good right now anyway. Also, we agreed to my temporary retirement until you've had the time to think about it."

"Go to sleep, okay?"

"Will do, May. Sorry!"

I finished up, cleaned the toilet with a generous application of disinfectant and tissue, flushed, washed his hands thoroughly, and went to bed.

The worst part is that I have to do this again.


I sniffed. Was it weird that I was already used to the smell of mold and algae wearing the building like the scent of a dead body in a perfume bottle?

13 October 2020, my phone said at a check.

I hoped, if the multiverse existed, that the other version of me was having a much better day than now - a much less final one, for starters.

"This is my last voice recording," I said, glancing at the jutting rebar. "Not sure when the last time was that I actually recorded myself doing anything beyond selfies from back in the day, but either way, this is the last thing I'm doing. When you find this, I'm dead. It was a suicide. I did this, I killed myself. No one else. There's nothing I can say to justify this. The simple fact is, I wasn't strong enough to handle everything. And never, never in my entire life, surrounded by family, have I felt so alone. I should've asked for help, but I was afraid of rejection. I was afraid of not being good enough for all of you. So this is my solution. I am sorry."

I paused, sighed, and strengthened my resolve. I really would hurt her when I did this, but all I could do was hope she found the strength to move past my death. She was stronger than I ever was. "If this ever finds its way to you, Halle," I told her, "I... I'm genuinely sorry. I wasn't strong enough. Not like you. I'm so sorry. So... I-I'm sorry. But there was no other way I could think of. Life just wasn't that good for me. Maybe it was and I just couldn't see the good in it. There's nothing else I can say or do. I'm alone in the sea, alone in the stars. Maybe I should've held on, but I couldn't. And when I do, maybe I'll be missed, but I sure as fuck won't be remembered."

My grief and fear burst out of me, and I let out a loud wail, tears flowing for the first time in years. "Fuck! I... fuck! I can't! I can't! I just can't take it anymore! I...!" I babbled, short on words, so overcome by emotion and fear that I just couldn't say anything coherent. This went on for a minute, until I calmed myself down.

Do I cancel the recording? I wondered. Do I... no. No more fake shows of strength. They have to know what became of me. Don't lie to them anymore, Johnny. I have to keep this, keep going. It won't matter anymore.

"I'm sorry. I really am! I... this is it. This is it. If you hear this recording...goodbye." I looked out over the town and sighed, breathing in the air, feeling the oxygen going in and the carbon dioxide going out, one last time. "Goodbye. Live long and prosper more than I ever had and ever will."

I ended the recording.

I checked the phone, making sure I'd set the directive to look for the recording in my lock screen, then stashed it in my bag, making sure it was snug under the padding so it wouldn't take any damage once I hit the ground. If for its own sake, and maybe for the sake of what little there was left of my ego, I needed the phone to survive, and I needed them to see why I did it. I put my bag on and tightened my straps.

"Heh," I chuckled bitterly. "Hope I don't traumatize anyone wearing a Kingsons bag. I walked 14 kilometers, all the way to Mbabane, just to freaking jump off a building."

I had valid concerns that if I did it anywhere else - that is, the mountains I passed on my way to town, nobody would find my body. What good would the suicide note be then?

But things were nice while they lasted. I finished using every last minute I had left to entertain myself browsing through YouTube and fanfiction - for some strange reason, I felt compelled to see if Marvel Studios had announced anything for the MCU other than what was already coming. New trailers, new details, new material, anything. I even joined in an argument about Civil War for a minute, but I didn't waste a lot of time on it - my feelings were already clear. It wasn't that I was Team Cap or some shit so much as that I was vehemently anti-Thaddeus Ross, and knew, as evidenced by Infinity War and Endgame, that his bullshit plot point was fucking things up for everyone, and I knew with confidence - though they hadn't confirmed it yet - that the Accords would fail and be repealed. I finished those minutes, meandered around town, and then looked up and saw the ugly behemoth of an unfinished building. I'd never explored it before - so today seemed as good a time as any.

The elevator shaft was terrifying, water of unknown depth and unnamable trash waiting at the bottom. I resolved myself to jumping off the exterior - they'd never find my body if I jumped down the shaft instead.

"Why the hell is was this ugly-ass building just abandoned?" I wondered to myself, and not for the first time. "It's such an eyesore. Imagine explaining this shit to tourists."

Luckily, I was the sole inhabitant of the soulless behemoth, and thus climbed all the way to the seventh floor. I had to make sure. I had to be as dead as the building itself.

I made it to the last floor and took in the view of Mbabane. The mid-ass third world country's capital that I once called home.

"Well. Who woulda thought you'd get this kinda view from a trash heap?" I commented dryly, fished out my phone, and started my recording.

I finished up, said my goodbyes, stashed my phone.

"Thanks for bringing me here, God," I said, "but fuck this world we made."

I jumped. Somebody may have noticed me and screamed. Somebody may have been me.

I'd never know.

I'd never know anything again.

That was perfectly fine by me.

The ground was coming at me something awfully fast...

I burst awake with a gasp, and sat up, gasping for breath like I'd run a marathon at full sprint all the way.

I had no idea how long it took me to recover. The time was 2:02.


I did not have a very good sleep.

It wasn't just the nightmare of my death. Peter clearly had different ways of sleeping. I had to become comfortable with that.

When it became painfully apparent that I wasn't sleeping anytime soon - how odd, he had the same habits I did when it came to sleep - I gave up and decided to do things.

First, the onesie.

"Bruh," I whispered to myself, "thing really is a damn pajama with extra steps."

I found the web-shooters - bulky as they were - and vowed to redesign that. If Andrew Garfield could make one out of a wristwatch, I could do it too. Or at least try.

I'd have to see what I'd find in the dumpsters. Hopefully, I could get lucky...

The suit was comic-accurate, though, I'd give it that - besides, everyone had to start somewhere. I'd have to design the one I wanted to go for.

Hm... did he have a pencil?


He had a bit of kit on him, thankfully - not as much as I'd have preferred, but I could probably do wonders with a 2H, an HB, and a 2B. A drawing book, too, where he dabbled every now and then. He wasn't as good as, say, Michelle Jones or the Tobey Maguire version of Spidey, but I had the feeling that was just detail and he'd be fine with experience.

At the very least, it'd keep me busy.

I found his recently iterated formulae for the web fluid - so far, he was at Version 1.61. It'd last for longer than the initial design, forty-five minutes or thereabouts, and it was much stronger, so there'd be less accidental snapping while I was in the air.

I shuddered at the memory. If he hadn't thought fast and thwipped out another one...

I'd definitely play with it later. I wrote down a few ideas on what I wanted to improve and made a basic outline for a Taser web and an Impact web. For the latter, I'd have to play around with the rigidity-flexibility ratio, even add a graphite chain and see what happens, and for the former...

... May was going to be mad at me.

Later then.

Peter already had plans to upgrade the fluid and the web-shooters, and there would be so much to do as long as the science lab kept providing and the trash gave up good goods...

With little else I could do coming to mind without finding more components to tinker with, I decided to go back to the drawing board and see where I stood.

I experimented with shapes, at first, warming up, wanting to understand the pencil and the way this body would draw. I loved the way it was easier to make my strokes clean, the significantly steadier hand bringing the image in my head to paper with amazing precision, and the smile it brought to my face. I remembered the time I drew the Mercedes BIOME Concept back in 2013 - my magnum opus by far, one I would be sure to try out again, if it existed in this universe. If it didn't, I could probably MacGyver something...maybe draw an electric, retro-futuristic DMC-12? Tony would probably love it.

"Sure," I said. "Why not?"

I moved on from shapes to faces, drawing Zayne Atheros's face as I remembered my description of it. A slightly aged (it was the stress of his job) teenager with short, black hair, grit on his face, a bristly baby beard (realistic, I had one at seventeen too in the old life, as did a lot of my classmates - it was hilarious thinking about my slight jealousy that they could grow mustaches while I had zip, zero, nada), and a scar going down his left jaw, through the vein, all the way down to his collarbone - the remains of the fatal injury dealt to him by the Eyes in the Abyss when he was fourteen. It took me almost fifteen minutes to finish it up, and I was proud of the result. My art style was modeled after a little Jim Lee, a little Kenneth Rocafort, sometimes more the latter than the former, and sometimes vice versa - and I was much closer to it than I had ever been. I was finally making that combination work, because it was cleaner now.

(They say when you stare at the abyss, I wrote alongside the finished product, it stares back. But what if the abyss wanted to go sightseeing? Ask him.)

Age of Darkness - my own creation, my former life's work. I was definitely going to recreate that here. I'd just have to write down vital notes on the lore, do a ton of research on the myths again, world-build like mad. Again.

Just the way I liked it.

"I can do this," I told myself. "I can totally do this. I have to. Someday, I'll finish this and publish it."

I moved on from the face to the body and buggered it up.

"I'm gonna have to watch some videos on anatomy and start practicing again..." I noted with a sigh.

Yeah, I didn't sleep for the rest of the night. I just practiced other faces from Age of Darkness. Koyomi, Jin, Rift, Jaz, Minato, Ria, Erik, and more. Five o'clock kinda snuck up on me. I was about to get up when I recalled I didn't have to do anything until 6:00 am.

Which, wow. Made it even more amazing that Americans got as much as they did done.

When the time came, I got started on the shower, did my ablutions, and by the time I was done with everything and ready for school, May was sipping on some coffee and pointed some out to me. Tea, that is, not coffee. I wasn't old enough yet, but tea was fine.

It was nice, actually - but I'd have to introduce her to rooibos sometime. Now that was real tea.

I made sure to grab my headphones and looked up Peter's playlist.

Huh. He had Ramesh and Ereen's Changing Colors.

"Let's play this one," I said and hit it up. A few minutes later, May and I were out of the apartment and on our way.

"See you later?" May said, before we went our separate ways.

"See you later," I said, kissing her on the cheek.

Let's do this.


Author's notes:

(Edits made, jarring inconsistencies found and eliminated.)

...I finished this a little faster than I anticipated.

That'll do for now. Next update will be in the next two, three days, and the pace will start picking the hell up from here. I was just warming up over here.

I've changed the rating to M, because I have a potty-ass mouth and I see opportunities to make myself suffer because of it. Plus, I'm playing it safe. No lemons, romance probably won't get a lot of focus either, but I'll drop enough so you guys can let me know what I'm doing wrong and where I can improve. The pairing will be there when the pairing's there, I want it to develop organically, and not completely take over the story. I do have a massive outline for this story - I'd actually written it before, two years ago, with ten significantly longer chapters and word count than this (last I remember, it was approaching 65K words), all the way to the end of a very different Spider-Man Homecoming, with surprises I can't wait to show you guys, but my laptop died and I crashed out of the writing game before I could even let myself get started.

I hadn't posted it because I was afraid of the reception. I was afraid of not being good enough.

Fuck, 2017 all the way to '21 was dark for me.

This time I just forced myself to post the first chapter (it was practice and my cousin said it was pretty good so I gave it a bit of polish and posted it), and your encouraging favorites and follows encouraged me to speedwrite the second chapter and just put it up before I could talk myself out of it. You guys proved me wrong about this and I honestly couldn't be more grateful. Thank you so much for your support.

The suicide is based on a true story - mine. The difference was that I was missing for long enough for my family to notice and start calling, and, well, I let myself answer, and here we are today. I'm in a much better place, because I was made to realize I'm not alone. None of us are - and if we are, there are nearly eight billion people on this planet. Find your support system, find people you can confide in and be yourself around. It'll probably be difficult, but it is more than worth it. I only wish you the best in your future endeavors.

So, I'm going to give the first couple of chapters a bit more love before moving on to the fourth chapter. I've noticed a few mistakes, the thoughts and part of the dialogue are either chaotic or lack meat, especially in Chapter 2 since I was hasty on it, so I gotta improve where I can. I'm also going to make a few fixes on this later, if I have to. Do let me know where else I need to work on my abilities, if you will. Feedback is always, always appreciated.

Thanks again, and I'll see you in the reviews or the next chapter!