Peter wondered if that was something he should just start to build his identity around, as though never quite being on time was just a perpetual part of who he was and something he shouldn't be punished for. He wasn't sure how well that would fly with Principal Morita, or any of the other professors at Midtown School of Science and Technology, but maybe when he finally transitioned into University he could somehow make it work. Make it seem like that was kind of what he was about. The Late-- wait, no, scratch that idea. The Late Peter Parker just wasn't going to work, what it? Parker paused to become later and to tie his uncooperative tennis shoelace, a task made more difficult by the fact he refused to remove the doughnut in his mouth so he could see the shoe properly because he was still stuck in thought about how the dead, having no concept of time, could even be late, so it seemed a strange thing to call the demised.
But was demised the right word? Departed. Deceased. Defenestrated. Dead.
"—made it very clear you wished I was dead."
Hearing the word that he'd been thinking at the exact same moment that he'd been thinking it jerked Peter away from his own thoughts, and his attention turned to the twenty-something college student smoking and wearing a coat that looked too long and too black for a warm midday in early April. Parker might have noticed that the older boy looked familiar if he hadn't been so concerned with the fact he looked upset — Or maybe he didn't. Maybe the dark sunglasses he wore, the smoke he exhaled and the stoic turn of his mouth which clipped off the words he spoke into his cellphone concealed the fact that he looked or felt any particular kind of way. Peter just knew he could feel it in the air like the prickle of a cold wind, like walking into the visually undetectable whisps of a spider's web.
Parker (still getting later) shrugged his grey, battle-worn Hershel bag to the concrete and unzipped it to tuck the remains of the doughnut he was eating into the brown paper bag full of ziplock containers, each adorned with Peter's name in penmanship so neat it betrayed the fact he didn't write it. Beside May's healthy, lovingly packed lunch, was another less-sacred brown bag marked with a telltale pink and orange logo that Parker knew never to bring past the threshold of his Aunt's apartment.
She'd once told him that she wouldn't love him any less if he was gay, trans, or a gamer — but eating Dunkin Donuts was still a sin unforgivable in this, the year of our Lord two thousand and ninteen.
With that thought in his head, and with the bag and its offensive sugar-oil pastry contents in hand, Parker approached the college student, just as he was ending his call.