Her eye was twitching again.
"Hey! Son! Get up here and man the counter, would you? I need to take my ten!"
And if Kei wasn't careful, he'd be twitching.
But Pan swallowed her pride and pushed her way past fryers and flippers, careful not to accidentally shove one of her coworkers onto the stoves or into the boiling oil. How degrading is this? she grumbled to herself as she passed Kei and took his place behind the register. It's a deadend job in America, but apparently, since it's American, that makes it automatically ok to spread the plague to Japan. Damn Americans, we give them animation and stereos, and what do they give us? They give us fucking.... Her innervoice broke off into inutterable grumbles and gutteral cursing as she plastered a fake smile on her face and reached for her cheeriest voice.
"Welcome to McDonald's. How can I help you?"
"Thanks for coming in tonight, Son. I know it's your night off and all, but..."
Pan shrugged as she clocked out, pulling her jacket and her bag out of the lockers that didn't lock and kept valuables as safe as her grandfather did the world. She paused just long enough to admire the irony of that statement; her grandfather on her father's side kept things as safe as the lockers on campus--the ones that practically equated to small, immobile, steel-inforced tanks. Her grandfather on her mother's side though...as much as she loved him, her grandfather Satan was as oversensationalized and commercial driven as was the plague that America had sent them. It was probably was probably more than coincidence.
Not trusting herself to say anything, she pushed out into the lobby where the dinnertime rush had slowed to an unsteady trickle of couples wanting milkshakes or french fries, just so that they could sit in the booths and be mushy together. She curled her nose at the thought of eating anything that ever came off the lines. Processed "cow" could be considered an acquired taste, but even the fry fumes corroding her brains cells wasn't enough to convince her.
Pan ground her teeth, forcing a sneeze. As if working there wasn't enough, now she had to smell like the damned place.
If she ate before she reported for her shift on Sunday, it'd be a miracle.
She shivered at the thought; rice. She would live off rice for the rest of her life.
America couldn't ruin the Godsend that was rice, no matter how hard it tried. Dende wouldn't let them. And if he would, she'd have to "talk" him out of it.
Placing gloved hands against frosted glass painted with happy snowmen, she pushed open the door, the icy wind that rushed in raising every hair on her body to stand at full attention. Forcing the shock from her face, she fought past the instinct to go hundle over the ovens and burners in the back, and trudged forward. If she wasn't careful, her blood would freeze in her veins.
Note to self: get a job I can stand.
She glared down at the grease on her boots that the frostbitten snow couldn't slowsh away. It was eleven o'clock on a Friday night. Her uncle would be making kissy-kissy faces with his fiance in the living room by now, and her parents would have given up on making him leave and retreated into their own room to watch a movie or to read a book together.
She debated catching a bus to the edge of the city, maybe take the subway, but the reality of the situation was that she couldn't afford it. Actually, in all truth, the reality of the situation was that she was scared witless at the thought of riding the bus this late at night: she was still skirting heaps of laundry with the fear of seeing it move. It'd been 2 months.
So she walked.
And about jumped out of her skin when her cell phone sprang to life in her pocket, singing some techno song that Bra had programed into it and vibrating from the volume level said Briefs had left it at.
"H-hello?" she gasped after fumbling with thick gloves and frozen buttons, feeling the phone glue itself to her ear as she tugged at her earmuffs.
"Weren't you supposed to meet me at the park three hours ago?"
Pan swore colorfully, slapping her forehead.
"Get ringed into working again?"
"Yeah," she mumbled sheepishly. "And I meant to call you, I swear, Tats, but...um...well, your home line was busy and I didn't have time to dig through my backpack to find your cell..."
"It's ok, Panny," he laughed quietly. She could imagine him, sitting in his apartment in front of The Beast, chatting with friends or playing CounterStrike, his feet propped up on the desk in front of him, keyboard on his lap... His nice, warm apartment with the heater cranked up to 70 and a pot of hot chocolate on the stove...
She blinked and caught herself before walking off the curb into late night traffic. No use daydreaming about fire when the only fires it would lead to would be the ones in Hell. No doubt, Hell would be a giant McDonald's.
"What was that, Tats?"
"You ok, Pan?"
She blushed inspite of herself as she waited for the light, suddenly struck with the wive's tale that "if you're not careful, your face will freeze like that." Idly, she wondered if this was one of those situations.
"Yeah. What'd you say?"
"I asked where you were. You could at least let me drive you home since you stood me up."
She sighed and rubbed her forehead. "Tatsuki, I said I was..."
"I'm kidding Pan," he laughed. "Where are you? I'm sure you're freezing out there in that biting wind and that ice cold rain..."
"You're doing this just to make me colder, aren't you," she intoned flatly, glaring at the air in front of her; what few other pedestrians there were didn't pay her any heed. She took his quiet chuckle as a "yes". "Well guess what, Tats, you lose. If I were any colder, I'd be a figure carved out of ice."
"Maybe then you'd realize how beautiful you are."
She smiled dumbly inspite of herself, pushing her hair from her face with her gloved hand, wondering for the millionth time what she did to make a guy like Tatsuki like her.
"So, you gonna tell me where you are, or are you going leave me sitting in my icebox-on-wheels all night while you remember how to breathe?"
Pan blushed furiously and coughed, looking up and stammering out the street name and the store she was standing in front of, ducking her head as if those around her could hear him, hiding her blush behind her hair as he whispered "I love you, be there quick as I can," and hung up.
Peeling the cellphone away from her ear and sliding it back into her pocket, she looked up into the rain, sheilding her eyes. Couples moved by her slowly, the mushy lovers from the MickyD's lobby. Arm-in-arm, they mumbled sweet nothings to each other as they passed, oblivious to everything but the heat and presence of the other. Pan's blush faded quickly and she moved away from them, wanting nothing to do with their displays of affection.
Stomping her feet to stay warm, she stuck her hands under her armpits and looked up and down the street. She was worried about Bra, about the grey eyelids that makeup couldn't conceal. Or rather, she was more worried about herself; the fact that she hadn't noticed anything was wrong sooner was really rather disturbing. For the first time that Pan could remember, she had no clue what was going on with her best friend.
She hadn't even been this out of touch during the blackstar dragonball hunt 3 years ago.
Speaking of, she hadn't seen Trunks in forever. Every get-together that Bulma had organized had been interrupted by McDonald's or a surprize exam. Tatsuki's little brother had broken his collarbone a few months ago during a Capsule Corps party, and Tatsuki had been in severe need of consolation.
Pan sighed and shook her head.
She felt bad about it; she knew that she and Bra weren't going to the same university, though both of them had applied to the same ones and tried their damnedest to pull it off. And while they'd gotten into one or two together, it had come down to a question of independence. Bra had accepted an internship with her brother that would pay enough to let her move out on her own while still attending classes. Pan didn't have that luxery and had to rely on scholarships; unfortunately, the only college that had offered a scholarship large enough to cover living expenses, on top of tuition, was at the other end of the country.
She wasn't exactly looking forward to leaving all her friends behind. Not yet.
Though she might as well have already done that at this point; she really didn't have time to spare anymore. Her life was a variation of eat-school-work-train-sleep-talk to boyfriend on the phone-sleep. Unless one of them went...
A small car pulled up to the curb, the driver leaning across the passenger seat to open the door from the inside.
"Need a lift?"
Pan smiled thankfully and got in, giving Tatsuki a frozen kiss that made him breathe sharply through his teeth. His warm brown eyes twinkled as he cranked up the heater and pulled into traffic.
"So how's my Panny?"
"Confused and exhausted."
He blinked, swatting blond hair from his face to look at her, concern creeping into his features.
"What about?"
She shrugged. "I just feel like I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Something's got to give, but I don't know what."
He nodded, lifting a hand to his mouth and pulling off his glove with his teeth. As an intrigued Pan watched, he tossed the glove behind him into the backseat and reached towards her, blindly groping for her hand, almost as if he was terrified that he'd be the straw that'd break her back. She smiled as she looked over at him in the dim light of the dashboard and the streetlights outside. Cradling his warm fingers in her gloved hands, she patted his hand reassuringly and relaxed back into the seat.
"My car's going to smell like that damned fast food now, you do realize that, I hope," he joked, looking over at her, relief creeping into his eyes as a blush of embarassment spread over his face. He could be paranoid sometimes, but it was cute. She'd never fault him for it; it made her feel like she had a real place in his life.
She grinned. "Guess it's a good thing you like to eat the stuff, huh?"
He smiled and retrieved his hand, using his teeth to pull his sleeve over his fingers before setting it back on the wheel.
"Hey, how about we do something tomorrow? Call Bra or one of your other friends, invite them to go out to dinner or out to the hot springs with us?"
"Bra hates tagging along with us, you know that. Says she feels like a third wheel."
"Well, who says she has to be the only one to come? There's two seats back there...I can invite my brother. They get along pretty alright...why not, Panny? It'll be fun." He smirked over at her. "Besides, it's not like we'll have to pay; you get free food from your job, right?"
Blue eyes turned slowly to brown, an eyebrow quirked upwards. Tatsuki grinned and laughed quietly for a few minutes, his warm voice filling the little car. Pan ground her teeth and waited until they hit a red light before planting the back of her hand in the center of his chest.
He only laughed harder.