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Zinda's managed to wheedle the replicators into giving her some slacks and shirts (she's still not quite sure what kind of blue jeans to ask for -- Helena and Dinah both favor the kind that sit so low on their hips Zinda's sure they'll fall right off if they're not glued on), but she's back in uniform today, humming to herself as she strides along the corridor towards Ten Forward, whistling half the chorus and singing the rest under her breath as her boots keep the rhythm.

"Do doo, do doo...the boogie-woogle bugle boy of Company B."

Maybe Steph's around, or that fine Captain who was so pleasant after he holstered his gun, but Zinda? She's up for company of just about any kind.

As long as she can get a drink during it.

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He doesn't know about one in particular, but there is a captain in Ten Forward tonight.

Steve has had an interesting couple of weeks on-board, which has left him in a less-than-social mood. But when your dead best friend suddenly shows up claiming he's been HYDRA's POW for the last 70 years, that's to be expected. He's stuck to the few faces he already knows: Nat, Clint, his roommate Andros, and a small handful of others, which means Zinda's lucky to catch his eye at all.

Then again, when you wear the uniform like she does, not catching his eye would be a miracle. He can hear the sweet strands of a familiar tune as she strolls past, a visceral memory pulling his insides back to 1944 while the rest of him is swiveling to find its source in the here and now. You'll have to forgive the gawping, Ms. Blake. Steve's seeing you through the smoke-in-a-shotglass haze of an old burned-out watering hole, somewhere in Europe.

Well, now. Everybody just hold the phone. Zinda's no stranger to stares: she gets 'em on the street and used to get them at work and everywhere in between, but you don't get to be a Blackhawk or a Bird of Prey if you shrink away from something so benign as unsolicited attention, and normally she doesn't pay it any mind. It's no skin off her back if somebody wants to look; heck, if she can improve their day, that's peachy by her.

It's just that, well. Normally? She's not getting gawked at by someone who looks like he could make a solid living as the model for those old Greek and Roman statue carvers.

She'd caught the motion of him swiveling out the corner of her eye, and once she gets to a table -- she'd been aiming for the bar another few feet away, but maybe this table, right here, just happens to, oh, seem like a better choice all around -- she pauses. Looks back over her shoulder.

And winks, broad and amiable, deliberately, right at him.

"Careful, sugar. If you don't close that pretty mouth of yours, somethin's liable to fly right into it."

Edited 2014-07-19 01:34 (UTC)

There is a brief moment where the super soldier's brain malfunctions, because increased stamina, dexterity, a faster burning metabolism, and advanced healing apparently don't make up for more than two decades of social awkwardness. His eyes widen, a deep blush crawling up his neck. He quickly diverts his eyes, like he's gazing upon the Madonna.

"Sorry, ma'am," he blusters, clearing his throat. Suddenly his collar is a little too tight. "I shouldn't have been staring. It was impolite."

He glances up through his eyelashes, but quickly returns his focus to the table. He fingers a fork, looking for all intents and purposes like he wants to crawl under the table and die.

Isn't he just a peach? He flushes and goes all confused with his words and tone, like he's plum forgotten how to string a sentence together, and she thinks it's about the sweetest thing she's ever seen.

The flattery in it doesn't exactly hurt, either. And neither do his manners -- ma'am, as she lives and breathes, while he glances down at the table in a floundering of what looks a hell of a lot like shyness, and apologizes for being impolite, as if she hasn't spent the greater part of her adult life letting catcalls go unheard and ignored. And that was before moving to a modern city, where it seems like nobody's got any kind of filters or inhibitions at all.

She holds off on drawing out a chair at the table she'd picked, considers for less than a full heartbeat's worth of time, and then saunters on over to where he's sitting, leaning a hand on the back of a chair and smiling down at him, as warm as he is embarrassed. "You know, I might consider it a compliment."

At least, she does now, after seeing his reaction at getting caught. "What's your name, handsome?"

Edited 2014-07-19 15:41 (UTC)

He won't admit to the swell of nerves when he sees her turn back, lifting his eyes just enough to watch her walking over. As soon as that hand comes down on the empty chair, Steve's eyes snap up to Zinda's face -- partly because she commands attention, and partly because he doesn't want to get caught staring dumbly at any of her other virtues by accident.

He hasn't felt this on the spot since he was fingered for lifting a fresh box of pencils from his teacher's desk back in freshman year of high school. For the record, he was framed.

"You might?" he stammers, feeling the heat in his neck creep all the way up to his ears now, collar impossibly snug. He tries to become one with the chair, and fails at it completely. "My name?"

Get it together, Rogers. His brow gathers, Adam's apple bobbing. He gets to his feet because it's the right thing to do, hand moving down his chest where a tie might be if he were in full dress. "Captain Steve Rogers, ma'am."

"Captain, huh? It's practically gettin' to be a barracks in here."

The poor fellow looks like a frog caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, and Zinda guesses she probably shouldn't find it endearing, but she'd be hard-pressed to say otherwise.

...A frog that stands about a full head taller than her, making her tip her head back to look him in the eye after she follows the track of his hand down his chest and stomach.

Well, can't blame a girl for looking, and he sure is nice to look at. Just watching him straighten his shoulders tosses her right back to the days of military-issue tents and officers' clubs that weren't much more than the abandoned shell of some unlucky public house. He makes her think of day dresses made out out of rationed fabric, and the Blackhawks, sitting around a campstove, trading jokes and laughing away the darkness that sat all around them, waiting.

That breezy, sunny grin flashes again, all amusement, and she sticks out her hand to shake. "Zinda Blake. I flew with the Blackhawks, resistance squadron. Which branch d'you hail from, Captain Steve Rogers?"

Edited 2014-07-23 15:24 (UTC)

He laughs good-humoredly in response to her joke, rubbing the back of his neck as an excuse to tug surreptitiously at his collar. He notices, maybe five seconds after the fact, the way her eyes wander, but he's still working out whether he imagined it or whether he should feel smug when she extends her hand, taking him a little off guard.

"Flew with? Not 86th Infantry?" he asks, taking her hand. He doesn't pussyfoot around with shaking her hand; the uniform is enough to merit his respect, but there's rarely a time where Steve will treat any lady differently than anyone else. "US Army, ma'am. Though my specific branch is, uh, complicated."

If she's a Blackhawks pilot, he might have pegged her for the wrong place and time. The likelihood she'll know Colonel Chester Philips is not that high, so he reaches for the more recognizable name. "Right now I'm working with S.H.I.E.L.D., you heard of it?"

"Sorry, soldier," she says, breezy, shaking his hand with a firm grip before releasing it to plant her own back on her hip. "Not ringin' any bells, but these days, that's no surprise. Hey --"

She nudges a chair at his table with the toe of her boot, and grins at him. "This seat going wanting? Never knew an Army man to keep a gal standing when they could be sitting down like civilized folk. But if you want to hear about the Blackhawks..."

That grin goes crooked and she reaches up to tug her hat down over one eye, winking cheerfully at him with the other. "Buy me a drink and I'll tell you all about 'em. Best damn squadron a gal could ask for, even if they were a buncha rowdy troublemakers still wet behind the ears."

Her slander is said with deep fondness, and it's an out and out lie, anyhow: Bart and the others were already battle-hardened warriors by the time she managed to fight her way into the group, and there's nothing and nobody she misses more.

Still. Treating them like the reverent dead would just have pissed those boys off, and war stories are better with a drink in hand and good company -- particularly if that company is a tall drink of all right and a vet who'll know where she's coming from.

Edited 2014-08-13 19:50 (UTC)

Jiminy Cricket, she could charm pictures off the wall. It's not just the way she tugs her cap and tosses him a wink, though that'll have his brain on hard reboot for the next ten minutes at least; it's the steel in her shake and the casual insults off her tongue, tempered with a familiar fondness that has Steve grinning dumbly without realizing it, caught in the moment and her sharp eyes.

...Until the knock of her boot against the chair leg registers, and he realizes he looks about as smart as a sack of potatoes. His Adam's apple bobs and he comes to attention, practically jumping away from his seat to help her into hers.

"Uh, no, the seat's free," he rushes, pulling it out for her, a shy smile tilted away from her face. Part of him is glad he doesn't have to stumble through inviting her to join him for a drink, and another part of him is a little lost for how to proceed now. He doesn't get much practice after the initial invitation. "You know, I do want to hear about the Blackhawks. Even if you are Air Force."

The jab is light and good-humored. "What are you drinking?"

"Not that, either," she grins, but she takes the seat while she does so, because he's been nice enough to pull it out for her, like a real, honest-to-goodness gentleman, and here she'd been thinking they were an extinct species. "'Less you count Wojska Lotnicze i Obrony Powietrznej, that is. That's where Bart started out, dog-fightin' Krauts -- 'scuse me, the Germans, old habits die kinda hard, don't they? -- 'til one day he took six of 'em down only to find they'd bombed the house his brother and sister were in."

Her shrug is a roll of shoulders and a twist to her mouth. "I bet you can imagine how well that went over with old Bart."

Whose name, she thinks, was never actually Bart, and certainly not Hawk, not with his background, not with the accent he carted around and his burning fury towards von Tepp. "Anyhow, he went and rounded himself up a squadron of his own to help out the Allies -- that's where we came in."

There's a second where she studies him, the way he holds himself, the cut of his hair and the straight slope of his shoulders, and despite his clothing, she could just as well be looking back at any one of those young Army men from a muddy, frozen field in Poland or a smoke-filled warzone in France. "As for that drink; whatever they've got that's got a kick to it -- though I warn you, most of the time, I kick right back."

She's a no-nonsense kind of gal, and Steve likes that. It reminds him of Peggy, those sharp instincts and a soldier's carriage; but there's another part of her that reminds him of Natasha, especially when she's done with her story about Bart. That cool, slick confidence, the way she fires off the information with hardly any remorse. He catches himself staring again, admiring and examining in the same breath, glancing down as he moves back to his seat.

"I wish I could say that's the first time I've heard a story like that," he says, with a slow, sad shake of his head. "The war took a lot of innocent lives. I'd like to tell you I remember the Blackhawks, but with the way this place is maybe you fought with a different set of Allies than I did. You've probably never heard of the Howling Commandos, have you?"

Drink. Right, he was getting her a drink. He jumps back up, shaking the cobwebs from his brain. This is downright embarrassing, Rogers. He forces a laugh, reaching again for the back of his neck. "Thanks for the warning. Sorry, I guess I just wasn't expecting to see a fellow vet this far out here. Let me see what they've got, I'll be right back."

He nods politely, and moves to the bar. Not much here has the kind of kick Zinda's probably used to. It all tastes good, but it won't leave you humming when you're done. At least, that's most of the selection here, not all. After a brief conversation with the barkeep, Steve comes back with two glasses of some ruby red liquor that smells like tequila and goes down as smooth as Tennessee whiskey.

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