Family

Katherine seems somewhat distracted today. She walks past Nick's desk for what the scientist is fairly sure is the fourth time, her fingers knotting together and her gaze focused on the floor.

"Katherine – is everything all right?" Nick inquires hesitantly after his superior completes a fifth circuit of the workspace. Perhaps she's going for some kind of office track pacing medal.

Katherine seems to notice his presence and looks up, a slightly dazed, perplexed look in her eyes. "It's my family," she hisses over to him, a note of strained urgency in her voice. "They've called me and said they want to visit me this weekend!"

"Um – good?" Nick replies with a faintly confused smile, misunderstanding her tone.

"Yeah. I'm sure it's all fine and happy when your family visits you for an entire weekend," Katherine accuses him. "But there again, I'm sure your mother doesn't make scathing comments at what you've done with your life and why I didn't go into a job like – oh, I don't know, hers? And I'm equally sure that your older sister isn't an esteemed fashion designer with her own company who my aforementioned mother dotes on."

"Guess I know where you get your scathing comments from," remarks Nick. "Anyway, you have your own company too."

"Yeah. Unfortunately, my mother is only too aware of the recent… probations that my job has been put under recently," she explains. "I may own this company and be making plenty of money on it, but she seems to have powers of picking out my bad qualities."

"The probations weren't your fault," insists Nick. "Project Eternity .2 was nowhere near completion. They knew that."

"Yet they still seemed to enjoy making me look bad. And if I look bad in other peoples' eyes, it's almost guaranteed that my mother will see me as twice that. You haven't met her. And that's not even going into her insistence that I 'find myself a man'." Katherine makes air quotes with her fingers, looking defeated. "My sister already has a firm relationship; she's engaged to some actor or other."

"Have you called them back yet?" her colleague wants to know.

"No," she retorts, flashing a somewhat uneasy look at her phone, sitting innocently on her desk by her work laptop. "What would I say? 'Yeah, I'd love you to come around this weekend. Why not?' Cause that would totally convince them that I haven't been intentionally avoiding any contact with them and them me for the last three years."

"Well, you've always been good at lying," he points out.

Katherine considers this. "There is that, I guess."

"Just say you're – tied up with work," he suggests.

"They're already on their way," moans Katherine, rubbing an eyelid with the heel of her palm. "I can't stop them now."

Nick considers for a long moment. "Okay, new plan. You may not be able to get rid of them, but you could try getting them to finally appreciate something in your life. Like… you said your mother wants you to find yourself a man?"

Katherine gives him a strange, sideways look. "What are you suggesting?"

No going back now. "I could… try and pretend to be your – um – significant other for the weekend?"

She hadn't been expecting that. "You could?" she verifies, eyes widened slightly as she tries to deduce whether he's telling the truth.

Nick swallows the rest of his nerve. "I could," he confirms.

"How good are you at acting?"

"I think I was Joseph in my Year 2 Nativity play once," he guesses.

"Good enough, I suppose." The woman thinks about it for a long moment, then apparently makes a decision and flashes him a grateful look. "Okay. Let's give it a go. Thanks for this, Nick."

"No problem," Nick assures her, though he's already slightly dreading the weekend's encounter. He's not sure how qualified he is to pretend to be someone's partner, especially not with his boss. He didn't even do the real thing tremendously well.

But Katherine doesn't look so worried any more as she seats herself back behind her desk, and Nick reasons that it has to be worth a try, at least to help her out.