Labour Day
Summary: Katie settles into life as a grad student. Part of the 'Future Perfect' universe.
Disclaimer: Katie and Leigh are mine; the rest belong to other people.
For draggon-flye, for her birthday.
A/N: This is set in the 'Future Perfect' universe, which features Katie and Leigh, the twin daughters of Tim and Abby.
Katie stretched, taking a moment to look around at the tiny apartment that was finally starting to look less like a scene from a disaster movie.
She was covered in bruises, from where the boxes she'd half-carried, half-dragged from the car had banged against her arms and shins. And she had dozens of paper-cuts from the cardboard, including one on the side of her ankle.
And for a place that everyone had warned her was supposed to be cold, it was decidedly hot and humid. Her hair, pulled up in a pony-tail, was plastered to her scalp, and her clothes were sticking uncomfortably to her body.
She'd spent what felt like forever washing her new kitchen things and arranging them in the barely-adequate cabinets. A couple of pots and a frying-pan still sat in a nylon shopping-bag on the counter. She'd deal with them later, she decided, stepping through the narrow doorway into the living-room.
A futon, purchased in the hope of weekend visits from friends and family, sat facing a tiny television that she'd bought second-hand through an on-line classifieds website. She eyed it warily, not entirely sure that she'd assembled it correctly and half expecting it to collapse as soon as she sat down on it.
Under the window that was still covered by an old sheet held in place with duct tape, an unfinished pine table waited for its appointment with a can of paint. It would do double duty as a place to study as well as to eat, at least for the time being. A single folding chair was propped open next to it, its mates leaning against the wall to make more space.
Across the room, a slightly crooked bookcase held the textbooks that she'd decided were worth keeping on hand for reference, along with a small collection of novels, including her father's. The cardboard cartons that had held the books were piled haphazardly nearby, not yet broken down to be taken out to the recycling bin. Unpacking, she had once again decided that she was glad she was in the sciences. She'd briefly dated a Harvard English major who had accumulated more books for a single class than she had during her entire time at MIT. Finding a student-priced place big enough to hold that many books, much less moving them, would be a nightmare, she thought, shuddering.
Deciding she couldn't avoid her next task any longer, she slowly opened the door to the single small bedroom. The neatly-made bed was covered with a cheerful yellow comforter. Matching curtains hung from a shower-curtain rod wedged into the window-frame.
In the middle of the floor was a pile of boards, a bag of assorted metal fittings, and a booklet of instructions consisting entirely of pictograms.
Going away for her master's was a good idea, she reminded herself. The programme here was excellent, and the opportunity to work in a centre dedicated specifically to the design of intelligent machines was one she couldn't turn down. And as she'd told her rather horrified parents, she could always just get the master's degree and go somewhere closer to home for the doctorate.
To her surprise, her Uncle Gibbs had not joined in the efforts to talk her into going to Georgetown or Johns Hopkins, encouraging her to come here despite the distance. But, as Leigh had pointed out, when he was their age, he'd already been deployed a couple of times. And in the end, it had helped that Leigh's first billet was at Norfolk, the unexpected proximity to their naval officer daughter making it easier to accept their grad student's wanderlust.
But now, staring in dismay at her not-yet-a-dresser, she deeply regretted her decision.
Because there was no way in hell, she thought, reaching resignedly for an Allen key, that she'd be struggling with assemble-it-yourself furniture if she'd chosen a school closer to Uncle Gibbs's basement workshop.