[Holodeck 5:] Buy me some peanuts and crackerjacks... [for whathemademe but OTA]

[stark_spangled]

Keeping track of the seasons isn't always easy, but Steve knows the date here is for the end of March, and even if the calendar back home says "April" that still means one thing.

Baseball season.

He hasn't used the holodecks in a while. Akito has been taking up a lot of his free time, and while he's fine with that the kid has started getting on his case about brooding too much. Peggy's been gone for a month now. She's probably not walking through his door again, and that's a good thing -- for her. It just reminds him of what he's missing.

To stave off any ill-conceived attempts to set him up on dates or push him around to other people, Steve has left Akito to his own devices for a few hours. He didn't really have a goal in mind when he ended up at the holodeck. He thought maybe he'd stop in Ten Forward for something to eat, but his feet just kept going after he reached the lounge, and didn't stop until he was standing in front of the computer panel currently telling him the holodeck was vacant. He frowns for a few minutes.

"Computer, um. Are there any baseball fields on file?" he asks. The computer gives him an affirmative answer, and starts listing off more baseball fields than he knows what to do with. "Whoa, wait. Uh, sorry. How about Ebbets Field?" Another affirmative, and another long list of options. Steve rubs the back of his neck. "OK. Ebbets Field, Flatbush, New York, Earth, around the year..."

He thinks back over some of the games he's seen, but he doesn't feel up to taking a walk down memory lane tonight. He's tempted to ask about the 1920 World Series, but as he's forming the words another thought occurs to him. "April 15, 1947. Jackie Robinson's first game with the Dodgers."

There is another affirmative chirp, and at last the Computer says, "You may enter when ready." Steve pockets his hands and steps inside the holodeck doors, and with such shocking clarity it almost knocks the wind out of him he finds himself in the bleachers at Ebbets Field, just as he remembers it.

Comments

always!

[stark_spangled]

Steve turns around sharply, hands still in his pockets until he regains his footing. The surprise clears from his features into something almost warm.

"Hey kiddo," he says, smirking at Sinthia. Yeah, "a charming snoop" is a good way of putting it. "Yeah, baseball. I was in the mood for something from home."

It's good to have something familiar every once in a while, especially out here. Steve smooths his palms against his jeans and draws in a breath, glancing over his shoulder. "Do you want to stay and watch?"

[abyssum_invocat]

Her head snaps up when Steve speaks, as if she honestly hadn't noticed he was there; in a way it's true, because while his name had been on the door, and she can certainly hear some of the things coming from him, she hadn't expected his voice.

"I've never actually seen a game. But it looks like what the p-- what the men at the base were always talking about. When they talked." She looks away from the field, studying Steve's face, and blinks. The motion of rubbing his palms down his thighs says something, but she's not sure what. "Is it okay if I stay?" she asks in reply.

[stark_spangled]

The aborted word from her lips has his expression dulling slightly, which wouldn't be noticeable at all if he wasn't already feeling nostalgic. She caught him in a moment of reverie, but nothing more than that. The smile cocked on his lips isn't insincere, but neither is the sadness he's got packed away.

"Of course," he says, nodding for her to come join him at the bottom of the stairs. "What kind of guy would I be if I turned a kid away from their very first ballgame? Not a good one."

He likes Sinthia. They've had a rough couple of months, what with everything that happened off the ship and with Bucky, but Steve still hopes she can trust him regardless of what happened between him and her father. "You know, I was probably your age when I saw my first ballgame."

[abyssum_invocat]

Sinthia is, happily, a resilient child. She views Steve as a friend, even if her definition of friend is thus far somewhat nebulous and unsure; the months between Alemar and meeting Bucky haven't changed that, simply added considerations she isn't sure how to compensate for yet. She's still quiet when she comes to join him to see out at the field, though her view is mostly blocked by people's heads moving in irregular patterns, resulting in Sinthia standing on her toes to see over them.

As a point of pride she is not wearing solely blacks and greys today; there's a bright pink barrette clipped to her hair behind one ear, innocently looking faintly out of place on her dark pageboy, but she calls no attention to it. "I don't know how the game goes, but I've heard some things about it. I assumed they were statistics, but I don't know for sure." Some of the shorthand language had been engineered so as to be opaque to outsiders, she's positive.

"I don't know whether I'm eight or nine now. I think I'm eight," she murmurs, unconcerned. It's never bothered her, or it hadn't until Akito and Bucky's party, to not know when her birthday was.