A/N This is an modern-day AU with genderbending. It takes place in New York City.

Russia/fem!America, with very, very slight fem!Greece/Japan and Germany/fem!Italy.

Ivan was enjoying Crime and Punishment on his couch when someone knocked on his door. Mourning the loss of his peaceful afternoon, he placed a scrap of paper to mark his place in the book before he went to go open the door. The knocking hadn't stopped; in fact, it had only gotten louder. Ivan hurried to open it before whoever was there (and he had a pretty good idea of who it was) broke down his door. Immediately, his vision was filled with small pieces of paper being waved frantically in front of his eyes.

"Ivan, Ivan, guess what!" called out the familiar voice. He had been right when he had guessed who was behind the door.

"What?" he asked as he gently pushed Alison's hands away from his eyes before she could give him a paper cut. She pouted.

"You're supposed to guess, not just say 'what'!" she whined as she pushed past Ivan and let herself into the apartment.

"You found an alien in your house?" Ivan threw out, just to humor her. She laughed.

"No, silly, I found Tony weeks ago! Guess again!"

Ivan decided to ignore Alison's repeated insistence of the alien she had "found" and sighed.

"I have no idea, Ali."

"Well," she began, sitting on Ivan's couch. He anticipated a long story with several unnecessary tangents. "I was bored so I made Mattie take me to Coney Island and they have a bunch of games there, you really need to go sometime, I can't believe you've lived in New York a year and still haven't been to Coney Island yet! That's so wrong! Anyway, what was I saying?" She paused, screwing up her face as she tried to remember her story.

"Oh, yeah! So we went to Coney Island and I wanted to play one of the games there and they had this shooting game and the prize was Yankees tickets and that sounded awesome, 'cause I love the Yankees! But yeah, so I went up to the guy running the game and can you believe the guys there started laughing at me when I said I wanted to try?"

If Ivan didn't know first-hand how good a shot Alison was (he'd learned the hard way during an intense session of paintball) he probably would have laughed, too. Alison looked far more delicate than she actually was. She had shoulder-length blond hair, wore glasses, and had a thin frame, which looked even thinner due to the men's bomber jacket she wore constantly. She didn't look at all like the type who could take down a man three times her size when she had a rifle on her.

"So then I really had to prove those jerks wrong! But since I'm such so amazing with guns, I managed to hit all of the targets and I won the prize!" In her excitement, she jumped off of the couch, startling Ivan. The papers were once again shoved in his face. "Two free tickets to go see the Yankees play! And the first thing that came to mind was 'I should be my usual amazing self and share this extra ticket with my less-amazing-than-myself-but-still-pretty-damn-amazing boyfriend'! Isn't this great? We can see the Yankee's for free!"

Ivan blinked. She was beaming at him.

"Ali?"

"Yes, Ivan?"

"Who or what exactly is the Yankees?"

Alison looked horrified.

"Who are the Yankees!" she exclaimed. "Ivan! That's like asking who Superman is! How can you not know who the Yankees are? And you call yourself an American!"

Ivan was tempted to remind Alison that he was, in fact, Russian, and had only recently gained his American citizenship.

"They're a baseball team," she supplied after a moment.

"Oh."

And then the reality of the situation hit him. His girlfriend wanted him to go to a baseball game. He fought back a shudder. He despised baseball above all other sports. "No" was on the tip of his tongue, but Alison was smiling so cheerfully at the thought of going to a baseball game with him that the refusal died in his mouth and instead he found himself asking when the game was. She instantly brightened.

"It's Saturday! I can't wait!" she squealed.

She left soon after and Ivan was left alone, really wishing that Alison had lost that shooting game.

Saturday morning, Ivan awake to the disappointment that he was not ill. He'd been hoping to fall sick so that he could get out of taking Alison to that damned baseball game. However, he'd woken up feeling rather good and had reluctantly dragged himself to the apartment Alison shared with her twin brother to pick her up. She was all decked out in Yankee's gear and greeted him with a crushing hug before they set out for the game. She jabbered happily the entire time and Ivan tuned out most of what she was saying, opting for an occasional nod so that she would think he was listening to her.

They arrived at the stadium, which, Ivan was disappointed to find, had not burned down or collapsed spontaneously as he had hoped it would before the game started. Not were the tickets a clever forgery; they were accepted and Ivan and Alison entered the building.

Alison insisted on purchasing more Yankee's paraphernalia for Ivan and then forced him to wear it. Then, Alison decided that she was hungry and made Ivan wait in line for ten minutes to get her a greasy-looking cheeseburger and a large Coke. Finally, they went to find their seats. Ivan was extremely disappointed to find that their seats were in full sunlight. He could already feel himself starting to sweat. Perhaps he could fake a heat stroke midway through the game? Then they could leave early.

"Aren't these great seats?" Alison asked enthusiastically as they sat down. Ivan nodded weakly in response. Her smile was his one weak point. He knew that he would be staying until the very end of the game. "We're so close to the field! Maybe we'll even catch a foul ball!"

Soon after that the game began. Ivan wished he'd brought Crime and Punishment with him. In his opinion, baseball was the dullest sport ever invented. He would even go so far as to say that golf was more interesting. Curling, even, was more exciting. After several innings of the (in his mind) torture, there was a pause in the game.

"Ooh, they're bringing out the Kiss Cam!" Alison exclaimed in excitement, tugging on Ivan's sleeve.

"What is a 'kiss cam'?" he asked. Alison frowned.

"Man, Ivan, you must have been seriously depraved as a kid."

"Deprived," he corrected automatically. Alison ignored him.

"They point the Kiss Cam at couples and then they have to kiss!" She pointed at the huge screen, which had stopped on a busty brunette with a shy looking Asian boy, who was immediately kissed by his apparent girlfriend. Alison sighed, dreamily. "That's so cute." Ivan frowned.

"Being forced to kiss in front of a huge crowd of people is cute?" Alison nodded happily.

"I hope they point it at us!"

Ivan quickly prayed that the camera never pointed at them. Unfortunately, God seemed to be ignoring him recently.

"C'mon, Ivan, pucker up!" Alison insisted as he saw a larger version of himself on the screen. He swallowed nervously and saw Alison's blue eyes shining brightly at him from two different directions. Recognizing defeat when he saw it, he leaned down and kissed her.

"Maybe baseball wasn't all that bad," Ivan reflected after the camera left them alone to go bother a strict-looking blonde and his cheerful brunette.

After three overtime innings, Ivan had quickly changed his mind again. Baseball was indeed terrible.

(Do I do anything besides write AUs nowadays?)

This was actually written for a creative writing course I'm taking in college. We had to write about baseball and I was completely uninspired (as I share Ivan's views on baseball). Finally, I got this idea about a guy who hates baseball, but his girlfriend loves it and takes him to a game. I still had trouble writing it, so I thought, hey, I'll make it a fanfic, and then it'll be easier to write! And lo and behold, it was. Of course, I changed a few of the details before I turned it in. :)