For about a week, Michelle forgot about Peter Parker.

Yeah, he'd acted pretty weird when he'd stepped into the coffee shop that one afternoon, but she'd seen stranger. Being stared at by creepy guys she didn't know was, unfortunately, nothing new, and Peter Parker's stiff movements and odd comments could have easily been the result of anything from drugs to psychopathy.

This was New York City, after all.

But the moment he stepped into the coffee shop for the second time—a little less stiff but no less prone to staring at her—Michelle remembered every detail of their first encounter. And for some reason, she especially remembered his haunted brown eyes; the expression they'd held then was the exact same one she saw reflected in them now.

"Hello. What can I do for you today?" Michelle asked dryly as she came up to the counter, trying just a little harder than she usually would to smile convincingly at him through the rush of cold air his entrance invited into the shop. She normally didn't bother trying to force her facial muscles to contort into positions that would end up being awkward for both herself and the unfortunate stranger she was trying to smile at, but…this guy looked like he could use some hot coffee or a few sugar-encrusted stale donuts, if the bags under his eyes or his slightly hunched posture was any indication. Even if he did seem a bit off overall.

"I..uh…can I just have a plain coffee? Again? Please," he said after a pause that was just a fraction of a second too long to be normal. His wide eyes would have been almost amusing if it weren't for the context.

Michelle nodded and accepted the crumpled five-dollar bill he extended to her, pretending she didn't notice and therefore wasn't disturbed by the way his entire body seemed to freeze as soon her fingers brushed his.

He told her to keep the change and accepted his black coffee a little while later with a mumbled thanks, his eyes downcast for the first time since he'd stepped foot inside.

"Have a nice day," MJ said robotically as she turned to wipe off the counters, preparing herself for the relief of having the shop all to herself again until Ned showed up in a few minutes.

"You too," the guy said quietly, but he didn't leave. Instead, he took a few stilted steps towards the door before abruptly turning and, without looking anywhere but his feet, slid into one of their ugly, crunchy booths in the corner. Michelle watched him do this from the corner of the eye and sighed internally, though she was grateful he was no longer staring at her.

She actively turned her thoughts to something else then—the upcoming MIT scholarship informational session, to be specific—and ignored the sudden headache growing in the back of her head until Ned arrived.

When she had served Ned his customary donut and they'd both settled in the back corner to work on the last of their homework during the lull in business, she happened to look up at where the guy had been sitting.

His coffee was sitting on the table, full to the brim and still steaming—

But Peter Parker was gone.

After that, Peter Parker became a regular at the shop.

Even Ned noticed how often he was there when they were hanging out, and he was usually so engrossed by his phone or his schoolwork that Michelle had thought he was never aware of anyone in the shop but her unless someone else talked directly to him. At first, Peter came in about twice a week—always in the afternoon, soon after she started her shift but before things really started picking up. Soon, however, he was coming in four, maybe even five times a week.

And each time, Michelle found herself inexplicably struck by how…sad he seemed.

She'd found over the course of the past year or so that working in this little coffee shop/bakery was a surprising source of inspiration for her art. All sorts of people came through those doors, usually bearing with them some quirk of personality or idiosyncrasy of dress and demeanor that made for a great starting place for her random sketches. She'd even toyed with the idea of creative writing just because she knew some of the people she served could be the basis for some great characters.

But Peter, though he stood out from her usual customer base, was a little different.

He stared at her less now and still never managed more than a sentence or two of stilted interaction with her before his eyes dropped like weights to his feet, but for some reason his presence only grew more unnerving over time.

When his eyes met hers, it never failed to give Michelle a pause. Why? She wasn't really sure—she only felt like there was something important trapped in his gaze. Something she was missing. Some ache she should feel like he did but simply didn't understand yet.

And Michelle never liked feeling like her powers of observation were lacking. It bothered her to the point that she came to look at him almost like a puzzle to solve, some kind of mystery to unravel. She didn't know what she was looking for in him, exactly, but she was going to find it.

So she took to doing one of the things she was best at: people-watching.

Peter always managed to look more ragged each time he came in to order his coffee or, these days, maybe even a chocolate donut. The slump of his shoulders grew deeper. The circles under his eyes darkened. His clothes became more ragged too, dirtier and thinner even though it was well into the white winter month of December and she knew he had to be bitterly cold walking around outside.

Even his voice, Michelle noticed, became each visit a little flatter in tone.

She didn't normally pay such close attention even to the shop's most intriguing customers, but again…there was something about Peter Parker that fascinated her.

Or maybe fascinated wasn't the right word.

It was more like he haunted her.

She even tried sketching him a few times, just because she couldn't quite place why he freaked her out so much and sometimes drawing was the best therapy she'd ever gotten involved with. But each time she went to draw his eyes, she couldn't bring herself to put her pencil to the paper. And it wasn't just because she didn't think she could do them justice with mere grey lines and cheap sketchbook paper—a thought which had caused her to abandon numerous art projects in the past.

It was because she felt, in the weirdest way, like she was seeing herself in Peter's expression, reflected back to her like a mirror when he managed to maintain eye contact with her for more than a few seconds. She knew she'd never seen him before he'd visited the shop for that first time before Christmas, but the kind of sadness he radiated was familiar in a way that only deepened the gnawing sense she needed to figure out why Peter puzzled her so much.

She knew what depression was and how it worked—she'd been fighting a particularly strong wave of it herself for a few months now, actually—and she could tell just through her brief interactions with Peter that he had to be dealing with it in some way too. Part of her inexplicably wanted to help him with it even though she knew it would take much more than just a stranger's words to give him what he needed to push through the worst of it.

But a much bigger part of her also knew that they were strangers, and these haunting thoughts really didn't make sense. Whatever Peter Parker was going through, it wasn't something she was going to ever understand just by giving him coffee and donuts.

And for some reason, that scared her.

A/N: Thank you for reading - I hope you enjoyed it as much as I've enjoyed writing it! More chapters coming soon, Lord willing. :)

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." ~1 Corinthians 13:4-5