Author's Note: Hey everyone! This is my first fanfic so I am testing out the waters to see how this flows. I think this is going to be a Trunks/Pan pairing but not sure yet. Please review and let me know what you think!
Awkward to a Fault
Chapter 1
Pan's heart rate sky rocketed as she felt the plane start its decent toward the runway, clenching her hands unconsciously around her armrests in a bid to get her bearings. Most onlookers would assume she was rankled due to a fear of flying. If only it were that simple.
She tried to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth, slowly. In and out. In and out.
She closed her eyes as she focused on her breathing, trying to distract herself from the budding anxiety that was threatening to swallow her whole.
In a few minutes, she would be back home. She almost snorted at the ludicrous thought. No, she corrected herself. In a few minutes, she would be back in Japan, since she definitely did not consider it her home anymore.
Sure, she had family there. In fact, all of her blood relatives lived in Japan but that was well….it. No friends, not even a damn acquaintance on this continent. However, if that was her definition of what home was, she really did not have a home anywhere.
Even back in the states, where she had been since she started undergrad, she could not say she really had friends. Awkward to a fault, she had never made any real lasting friendships in her new home.
The closest thing she could call to a friend was the man asleep in the seat next to her…Daniel.
She sighed, knowing she had really screwed up even that relationship, where relationship was a very, very loose term.
Daniel was tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome and as smart as they came. But he was not exactly her friend. Bed warmer, maybe?
He was finishing up his postdoc in the biomedical lab down the hall from her. They had met a few months back during a departmental seminar she was giving when he grilled her relentlessly with question after question that left her flustered and embarrassed. Never one to turn down a challenge, she had shown up at his cubicle a few days later to address all of the issues he had brought up during the very public Q&A that she had not been able to answer on the spot.
Yes, she had been embarrassed at first, but she used it as an opportunity to learn from someone who was obviously much more knowledgeable than she was. The encounter had turned into a pleasant discussion that had given her a ton of new angles to think about and work on her project.
After that, they had met for coffee a few times to discuss research but it eventually ended with the two of them in his bed and a lot of rough sex later. She had been ashamed, still was, but she knew that a real relationship just was not in the cards for her. They continued their little rendezvous whenever the need arose, with no strings attached.
It would have been perfect if it could have stayed that way. However, when she got the wedding invitation for Bra and her Uncle Goten's wedding, she knew she needed to bring a date if she wanted to make it through the ordeal with her sanity.
That had started the very awkward conversation she had to have with Daniel to try and convince him to accompany her. She had even dipped into her inheritance from her grandpa Satan to pay for his trip, anything to sweeten the deal and convince him that he needed to go with her and pretend to be her boyfriend.
It was beyond mortifying that she had to stoop as low as to bribe her friend with benefits into playing along with her little ruse but he was the only person she could think to ask. Her mother and father had been relentless the last few years, trying to pry into her personal life and push the issue that she needed to date more. She was twenty five, three years deep into her PhD program and had only had a handful of relationships, none of which made it past the two month bench mark.
Then she got blindsided by the wedding invitation. She did not even know Bra and Goten were dating, let alone engaged and considering marriage. The only reason she could fathom that she even got an invite was due to her blood relation to her uncle.
In any case, she had very little time to formulate a battle plan. She could not come without a date and face her family, let alone her family's extended group of friends. She did not know if she would survive the secret judgement and half hidden snickers if she had shown up solo.
Well, it was too late to turn back now. Daniel had agreed to come, citing it would be an experience to travel to Japan since he had never been. He had even agreed to play along with her claim that they had been going steady for the last six months.
It had been a relief that he acquiesced so easily but she had a sneaking suspicion that their little arrangement was permanently ruined.
Inhaling one last intake of breath, she steeled herself for the task at hand and gently nudged Daniel awake as the plane neared the tarmac.
It was too late to turn back now. They were here and she hoped they both were good enough at acting to pull this off.