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Peter Parker is the weirdest regular MJ has ever had the moderate pleasure to serve. Her job isn't glamorous, but it helps pay for books and, like, food for when there isn't any around the house. Still, it isn't like she loves serving stale donuts to freakshows in Queens and since the Avengers touched down in New York it has been a full-on freakshow.
And yet, in all of that time, and for all the weirdos, Peter Parker takes the cake. It isn't like he is mean or crazy or even creepy, which she endures almost every shift from one or two guys that think because she is a server that means they are paying for her attention, but he is weird. Odd.
She can't put her finger on what about Peter Parker makes the back of her brain itch, but she watches him. Observes. And he drives her totally insane because there is something about him. King of the weirdos, she lightly jokes to Ned, after Peter leaves with his daily black coffee.
Which is another thing! Michelle serves coffee all day long. She knows what a dark coffee drinker looks like and Peter Parker is a milk and sugar kind of boy if she has ever seen one. She has a sneaking suspicion he doesn't even drink the coffee she serves him.
Weird. It is all so, so weird.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about Peter Parker is the way he looks at her. Nobody looks at MJ the way that Peter Parker does and instead of making her skin crawl, she always feels her cheeks heat under his warm gaze. If she were more brave, she would call him out, but she is afraid if she does, he will go away. And the thought of Peter Parker disappearing makes her heart seize in terror.
"Do you go to high school?" She asks, as she pushes a complimentary donut his way some time in late-Spring.
He turns a pretty shade of pink and, gosh, he is so pretty, isn't he? "Uh. No. No, I'm, uh, getting my GED, actually."
"Drop out?"
Peter smirks into his coffee cup. "Something like that." He lifts the donut in a quiet thank you and turns to the glass doors.
"Wait!" She says dumbly. And she is dumb. Because she doesn't know what to say to him now that she has his attention. He stares at her and she can tell he is expecting something but what is frustratingly beyond her.
He prompts softly, "Yes?"
"Do you even drink that coffee you get every day?"
"What?"
Michelle leans her elbows on the counter, inching closer to her weirdest customer. The last thing she needs is her boss eavesdropping. "I never see you drink out of that crappy takeaway. So, do you? Drink black coffee."
He blinks down at his cup and then breaks into an embarrassed smile. "No. I don't."
She feels an overwhelming sense of fondness for this silly regular. The one that doesn't even drink the bitter brew she makes each morning. "You don't like coffee at all, do you?"
Peter shakes his head. "Nope."
"Why black coffee then?"
"My old girlfriend drank it like this. It, uh, makes me feel close to her."
MJ nearly gasps from the sharp pain of that word-- girlfriend. She quickly burrows it away. It is swallowed up and left to fester in the pit of her stomach. She will pick it apart over and over again later when she is allowed to feel the anguish that this boy she doesn't know cared about someone once.
She busies herself with wiping down the counter. It feels better than allowing herself to do something stupid like cry. "What happened?"
"She's not in my life anymore."
"Why not?"
"It hurt too much."
MJ feels her chest compound with emotions so fleeting that she can scarcely hold onto one longer than a flash. But the resounding feeling she is left with after the feelings flee and leave her a carved out husk is longing. She swallows these traitorous feelings and asks, "What hurt?"
He taps on the rim of the coffee cup and it strikes her as an anxious gesture. Her weird, little regular is a lot of things, but now she knows he is fretful. She burrows away the knowledge, like a dragon hoarding gold.
"Loving me, I think." He finally says.
Michelle looks at him a moment too long before she starts to laugh. Surprise colors his features and it only makes her laugh harder. He squeaks out a nervous, "What?"
"Nothing," she swats at the counter with her rag. "No, its just...you're kind of dramatic, you know that?"
His eartips turn a darling shade of red. "Am not."
"Yes, you are. You show up every day to buy coffee you obviously can't afford and don't even drink it. And you do it for some symbolic gesture of some girl that you broke up with."
"I didn't say that." His voice is hard. It softens when he says, "I said she was an old girlfriend. Not that we broke up."
"Oh."
"Yeah, oh."
"Is...did she die?"
Peter's face folds into itself. She wants to leap across the bridge between them, always a bridge she thinks for some reason, and smooth the features on his face. He looks so much better when he is smiling. No, he looks so much better when he is smiling at her.
Instead, she stands shameful and stationary behind the counter separating them. It feels like a hundred miles.
"Thanks for the coffee, MJ."
When he leaves, she sees him take a sip of the coffee from the window. It makes her think he might be drinking it for that girlfriend he mentioned. Michelle wonders if maybe she tasted like black coffee when he used to kiss her.
There is something nearly there, gently pressing at the back of her mind, like a half-forgotten memory, but once he disappears from sight, she loses it again.
She sips from her own cup of black coffee and wonders if his old girlfriend tasted like she does.