Lilo Pelekai is a disciple of The King. (means_family) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-12-28 01:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, lilo pelekai, will graham |
Who: Lilo & Will.
What: Christmas dinner!
When: Christmas Day (12/25).
Where: Will's house.
Rating: PG.
Status: Complete!
Lilo had volunteered for most of the morning, so it had been the perfect time for Will to take all the food out of the storage shed and get it warm and ready. He’d had to cook it all beforehand except the turkey, but it was all right - he’d simply wanted to cook it while he still had the ability. He’d learned this place was notorious for giving and taking away. But now the meal was finished, and it looked amazing. Perfect. Hopefully she’d like it.
Coming in from the still cold air, Lilo stomped her boots of their snow and poked her head into the house. “Hello?” She had Daisy and Mareeba with her, and asked them to not jump up too much on anything as she let them off their leashes. “It smells crazy good in here.”
“Hello.” Will couldn’t hide the smile in his own voice. “Could you tell the dogs not to come in the dining room for a little while. There’s a little surprise for you.” Well. An enormous surprise that the dogs would probably get the leavings of, but still.
“Of course!” Lilo gave the word to the dogs who said they’d obey, but only because Lilo was easy to guilt trip into treats. She agreed to their blackmail, and then sat down on the sofa. “May I come in?”
“Absolutely. It’s for you, just not the dogs. Well. Not yet.” Will sounded almost jittery, and did his best to stop and calm down. “Remember the wishes everyone was talking about?”
“I do! I wished for you to be as happy as possible,” Lilo beamed, bouncing into the dining room. When confronted with the table, she stopped and felt her eyes tear over. “Oh, Will.”
Will just smiled, swallowing the lump in his throat. There was turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, steamed vegetables, and just for Lilo, some bacon. Slightly incongruous, but it was about making her happy. And there was cake for later, but he’d purchased that. “Surprise?”
She clapped her hands to her face before moving toward him, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him tightly. He’d made this place a home for her after living there for years. She’d moved to California after the death of her parents, yet it had never really felt like home until she’d met Will Graham. “Thank you,” she murmured. “Gosh, I love you so much I could explode and that’d be gross and get on the food.”
“I wished I could do something tangible for you,” he said right back, murmuring into her hair. “Something more than just being there.” He hadn’t even thought that he’d wished for something Hannibal could do, but he had, whatever that meant.
She was quietly crying into his shoulder, but she lifted her head after a moment. “Happy tears, sorry. I just - you’re my family, you know? It’s nice to have a holiday again.” She’d spent most Christmases eating a tin of beans and dreading the ‘you should come back to the island’ call from her sister.
He didn’t quite understand - how could he, he’d never had family to begin with - but he just knew that she was happy. “What about the dogs?”
“Of course they are too.” She stroked his cheeks, meeting his blue eyes with her dark brown ones. “We’re one huge, furry ohana.”
“Ohana?” Will echoed, smiling. “What’s that mean?”
“It’s Hawaiian for family,” she murmured. “And especially in Hawaii, everyone you care about is part of your ohana. We’ll call anyone we see more than once a week auntie or uncle,” she chuckled. Sometimes she missed that, but then one of Will’s dogs would call her ‘mommy’ or ‘Miss Lilo’ and she’d have to try not to randomly weep in front of her boyfriend.
“I like that.” He wondered if he’d have grown up somehow healthier if he’d done so in Hawaii. He’d certainly be more athletic. Will kissed her gently, letting go with a smile. “I just wanted to do something for you.”
“Me too,” she murmured. His intentions were pure, and she sniffled a little. “I brought your present too, do you want to open it now?” She’d gotten him two things - a book, and another more important gift, pressed within the book’s cover and front page.
“I will if you want me to. I did get you something as well, but it’s small.” He’d found her a picture book of wave photography - she might even already have it, but he liked it, and he thought she might.
“How about right after dinner? I don’t want it to get cold.” Her stomach rumbled audibly, as if it were agreeing with her.
“Agreed. I hope there’s enough.” Will smiled. “The dogs will be royally put out if they don’t get any.”
Lilo gave Will an incredulous look. “Will, I think you cooked for about ten people. The dogs will be fine.” She grinned broadly, sitting down by him and kissing his hand. “Have I told you you’re perfect for me yet today?”
“No.” He blushed every time she said something like that. He never knew how to respond except by smiling. It didn’t seem enough. “I’ll start to carve up the turkey, then?”
“All right.” She loved when he blushed, and she loved when he smiled. Instead of letting him carve the turkey right away, she leaned over for another kiss. He might not be ready for her to say she loved him as often as she wanted to, but she could show it.
Will enjoyed it when she was so vulnerable, so happy. It was how he felt all the time. He set to carving the turkey, enjoying the domesticity of the deed. He just hoped after all this that it worked out. That it was any good.
Lilo went into the kitchen to snag them both beers; the table was formal, but nothing was ever too formal for a beer, right? She opened them and sat back down, inhaling and ducking her head to pray silently before smiling back at Will. “Shall we?”
He was interested by the fact she'd prayed. "I didn't know you were religious at all." Will commented, beginning to hand out turkey.
“Casually, yeah.” She blushed a little, putting some mashed potatoes on his plate so he wouldn’t have to reach. “I’ve practiced voodoo since I was... heck, five?”
"Voodoo, really?" He hadn't actually known that about her. "Did your parents practice it? Or did you come to it on your own?"
“Found a library book about it!” She added some green beans and sweet potatoes to her plate, then offered to scoop them onto Will’s. “It just resonated. Mom and Dad always wanted we kids to find our own paths, and they were really supportive.”
"I'm glad. Really." Will smiled. "I never found any kind of religion, but if I did, I'd want it to be that way. Just ... happening across it." It seemed the most organic option.
“It’s the most pure way, I think. It means the person wanted that route, not that it was the one they just found themselves upon.” She chuckled at the suddenly heavy conversation. “This smells... amazing. You must’ve been working all day!”
"I did a lot of it before now, actually. I hid it in the shed." Will smiled. "I explained to Winston, and he apparently kept all the others from eating it all."
“Winston loves you so much. Did you know he calls you Daddy when he talks to me?” Lilo beamed, withholding the part where Winston called her Mommy.
"I ... really?" He blushed a little, but in truth he was touched. "I didn't know that, no. It's ... nice." He'd saved Winston from a life as a stray, but he could have been anyone. He'd just assumed he was a food source.
“He knows you saved him, you know.” Lilo beamed and shrugged. “He’s one of the smartest, most empathetic beings I’ve ever met, excluding you. It’s like you two were destined to be together.” She believed that animals found people they were meant to help, and Winston had surely helped Will feel less lonely.
"It makes me happy. He makes me happy." Winston understood him, of that he was sure. "People who don't like animals are incomprehensible to me. I was never permitted to have a pet growing up, and once I was old enough, I just gravitated to dogs."
“I don’t get how people don’t like animals either. Their motives are so much easier to understand. People are complicated,” Lilo murmured. She moved to put some cranberry sauce onto Will’s plate, beaming at him. “It’s why I try to always be clear with you, you know? Too many people make things needlessly complicated.”
“I’m ... very grateful. Very.” Will couldn’t articulate it enough. “Nobody’s clear. Except Kirsty and you.”
Lilo beamed. “I’m so glad you have her as a friend, you know? It’s important to have a big ohana. Keeps us connected.” Lilo didn’t have a jealous bone in her body for people who didn’t deserve it, and it was obvious Detective Cotton didn’t feel that way about Will.
“It seems so obvious, and yet I never thought about it. Family’s always been foreign to me.” He sat down with his food, waiting for her to do the same before beginning to eat. “I was the new boy, then I was the odd boy, then I was the lost cause.”
“You might have been the new boy, or maybe the odd boy, but lost cause is a stupid turn of phrase because it doesn’t apply to anyone.” Lilo beamed as she snuck a bite of mashed potatoes, her eyelids fluttering closed. They were amazing, and she sighed contentedly.
“I know that now. I didn’t then.” Will took a bite of the turkey and sat back, very pleased with himself. “It actually turned out.”
“Did you watch the Food Network for a month or something?” Lilo took his hand and squeezed it for a moment before properly tucking in.
“No. I just wished for it.” It sounded silly. “The Christmas wishes?” He blushed a little. As if somehow it wasn’t manly to wish to make your girlfriend Christmas dinner.
That made Lilo beam. “I wished that you’d be as happy as you could be.” Lilo didn’t usually wish for things for herself, memories excluded. “You know, in my dreams? I wished for something on a shooting star and it came true. It just made sense to do it again.”
“Did you really?” Will was curious. “When you were a little girl, in your dreams?”
She nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I was really lonely after my parents died, so I wished God would send me an angel to be friends with. The next day, Nani - the one in my dreams - took me to an animal shelter, and I adopted my dog. Well. I don’t know if he was really a dog, he was blue, but I loved him.”
“Blue?” Will echoed, amused, around a mouthful of food. “Are you sure? That’s a little odd.”
“And with six arms,” she added cheerfully.
“I don’t think that was a dog.” Will chuckled. “I wonder what it was.” The idea was interesting. Did she dream of aliens and other worlds? “Your dreams sound better than mine.” He didn’t want to talk about them, but it was a true statement nonetheless.
“Probably an alien. That would explain the huge shark guy and the spaceship,” she beamed. Instead of asking him about his dreams, she mentioned Commander Gantu, describing a two-story shark man in great detail.
Will listened, faintly stunned, amused and thrilled that this woman was here at his dinner table. “Your dreams sound very odd.” He corrected himself, smiling. “A shark guy?”
“Yeah, I don’t know the name of the species exactly, calling him that is probably really species-ist.” She wrinkled her nose and sighed. “But he kidnapped me, so I can’t really be too nice to him anyway.”
“Well, as long as he isn’t here. I don’t think I can keep you safe against a ‘shark guy’.” Will smiled across the table at her. He was just happy to have her here, and lifted a glass to her. “Merry Christmas, Lilo.”
“Just everything else,” Lilo smiled. She clinked her glass against Will’s, her cheeks pink with happiness. “Merry Christmas, Will. Thank you. So much.”