Reply to AnimaLover48: Aw, thank you! Maybe not perfection, I'm not much of a writer. But thank you!
Reply to Punzie the Platypus: Thanks! Yep, Peter's a total dork.
Michelle, Peter's noticed, wears a line of colorful rubber bands along her forearm underneath her long jackets.
He notices a lot of things about her, now that he's realized just how little he knows.
The way that she curls over her food, more interested whatever book she's reading than in what she's eating, that she wears mostly dark colors but is won't complain if she's forced to wear something bright.
How she raises her eyebrows kind of crookedly, one following the other, and the way that she likes to run her finger down the book page when she's thinking to keep up the illusion of being physically busy, when really, it's her mind that's thrumming and she hasn't read a single word on the page.
She thinks a lot, and when she's done thinking, she likes to say one sentence that sums up her thoughts, or something that will spark a discussion.
Then she'll draw away, retreat back to her shell, and just be content to listen and watch them over the top of her book.
She snaps the rubber bands on her wrists when she gets frustrated, making a stinging, slap sound, and it brings her back to earth.
She watches others a lot, Peter realizes. He used to be curious how she knew so many things when she always seemed lost to the world, nose buried in a book, but many times he'll look at her only to notice that she's spent the past hour not so subtly staring at a couple snogging with a mixture of disgust, pity, and utter apathy.
"Jealous?" Cindy teases, elbowing her and smirking.
Michelle gives Cindy a look filled with such disbelief that Peter feels like an idiot. "Gross." She says, and turns back to her book.
Cindy just laughs at that, and agrees with Michelle's sentiment.
Peter just sits and listens, content, for once, to play the part of the viewer and just watch for a while.
He asks her about the rubber bands one time, in the cafeteria at lunch. She glances at Ned, a quick flicker, and then she shrugs and says it's not important. "Tell you some other time," She says, which, by that point, has begun to mean in private.
He nods and agrees, then distracts Ned by talking about the color spectrum and the pros and cons of infrared vision.
Michelle tells him about it while they're working on Decathlon stuff in a cafe, draped over her smoothie and eating Peter's muffin while he eats a cookie and dips it in his lemonade. (She teases him mercilessly until she tastes it, then she starts doing it, too.)
"I read online that rubber bands are good for, um," She sort of falters, stumbling through her words, and stops mid sentence to take a long sip of her smoothie, nervous and fumbling and not really Michelle, but still her.
Take your time, it's okay, Peter wants to say, but he's kind of afraid to because this is Michelle, who accepts no pity and would probably clock him if he said that.
He says it anyways.
And it's a testament to how she's feeling that she doesn't even get mad or insult him, just sort of nods and pulls nervously at the bands on her wrists, letting them snap back with a little thwip, and Peter can tell that she's frustrated with that little movement.
She keeps doing it for a while, pulling through them in order, from pinks to reds to oranges in rainbow order, moving methodically down her forearm before she stops a few bands in, takes a deep breath, and stops.
"I heard that it's good for when you feel like self harming." She admits, and the admission stings Peter, and she starts picking at the bands and he just wants to lunge over the table and grab her wrist and maker her stop but he knows that won't help anything and knows that he can't really help her any more than she's already been trying in that area, so he just stirs his lemonade and sort of stares at it as though it would give him all the answers. "Like, it kind of stings but it only hurts for a second and it doesn't leave any marks or wounds and it's not so bad."
"Oh." His voice sounds small and sad, and he wishes that it didn't come out that way (not quite for his sake, but more for Michelle's, who looks downtrodden and worried and nervous and he can hear the shaky little thwap of the bands hitting her skin). "Can I hug you?"
The words startle him, and they startle her, too, he can tell by the way that her hand freezes and her eyes turn wide as saucers and she stares at him, mouth wide open and cheeks red and hands frozen mid air.
Then she sort of sighs and nods, and as he hugs her, she affectionately murmurs in his ear, "You're such a loser."
He's worried about her but he smiles anyways because she's alive and well and she's not hurting herself too badly so he asks, "Is that a bad thing?"
Her lips twitch, like she doesn't quite know but does know but just doesn't want to say it, then she answers truthfully, "Not with you."
He smiles at her, and she doesn't smile at him but she tucks her head onto his shoulder and eats some of his cookie so he takes it as a win.