I feel like "gazing" is a better choice than "staring" without losing too much of the humanistic sense of it. It is a little uncomfortable. It's supposed to be.

I feel like "gazing" is a better choice than "staring" without losing too much of the humanistic sense of it. It is a little uncomfortable. It's supposed to be. That's okay because we are all human. "Stranger" reminds us that we really don't know these people, yet we do know we share a human experience regardless.