Kala Dandekar (faithandscience) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2019-01-22 18:43:00 |
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Entry tags: | !complete, kala dandekar, will gorski |
Who: Will Gorski and Kala Dandekar
What: Kala's first time at a boardwalk
Where: The boardwalk
When: Sometime last week (before the plot)
Rating/Warning: Low/none
Status: Complete
It had been a stressful week at work. Kala seemed to be getting assigned the most tedious tasks. She wasn’t exactly sure why, a lot of it she was over qualified for, but she bit her tongue and did the work. What else could she do? It wasn’t until she received a visit from Will that she realized how overworked and stressed out she was. If Will sensed what she was feeling it must have been pretty bad.
Reluctantly she agreed to take a break from work and meet him at the boardwalk. Kala had never been to a boardwalk before and she had to admit the prospect of it was rather exciting. She met Will in front of one of those games where you knocked down bottles to win a stuffed animal.
“So this is a boardwalk,” Kala commented a large smile on her face as she took in the sights, sounds, and smell around her.
Will wasn’t sure what it was that had been stressing him out so much. The paperwork had been simple enough, and certainly didn’t deserve to be sworn at. It wasn’t as though anything especially rough had cropped up at work lately, and it was only then that he thought of the others that he was connected to - Lito and Kala. Once he started thinking that, it became obvious to him who it was that was really stressed out.
Kala obviously needed a break to relax and have some fun, which is exactly what he told her when he’d appeared in her office. He’d even shut down her computer for her, after first making sure that everything had been properly saved. Then, he put away his own paperwork, told his partner that he was done, and went to meet her at the Boardwalk.
It wasn’t too difficult to find her, not with the bond that the two of them shared.
“Looks like,” he said, grinning. “You now, I’ve never been to one either. Not a real one, at least. Chicago has a Riverwalk, which is like a miniature version of this. But there’s definitely a lot more to do here. What do you want to do first? Laser tag? Ferris Wheel?”
There were so many possibilities. Kala wasn’t sure where to start. All the games looked fun. And the food! Part of her couldn’t imagine herself eating any of it, but there was also a part of her that wanted to try it all. However the second Will said Ferris wheel her eyes lit up. Now she knew exactly where to start.
“Ferris wheel,” Kala replied enthusiastically. “I bet we can see the whole boardwalk from there.”
“Ferris wheel it is,” Will said, grinning. It wasn’t hard to find said Ferris Wheel; it rose above the rest of the boardwalk, a bright, glowing wheel. When he thought about it, he couldn’t really remember the last time he’d been on a ferris wheel. Before he’d become a cop, that was for sure. Probably in his senior year of high school, when he and Patty Lynskey had made out at the top.
He’d invited Kala out, so it was only right that he paid for their tickets to get on the ferris wheel. “You go on many ferris wheels back home?” he asked.
Kala protested when Will paid for her ticket, but knew there wasn’t much point arguing with him. She gave up, thanked him and climbed onto their seat. She gasped in excitement once the wheel began to move.
“No,” Kala admitted. “This is my first time.” There was one in a park outside of Mumbai, but it was more for kids and Kala’s parents had never taken her. Not that Kala ever thought of asking to go in the first place. “What about you? A lot of Ferris Wheel rides back in Chicago?”
Will couldn’t help but smile watching Kala, feeling her excitement for her first ride on a Ferris Wheel. He was pretty sure now that he’d made the right choice in forcing her away from work. Kala needed some time to just unwind and have fun. Maybe after this he’d make her eat some cotton candy.
“A pretty famous one, actually, at Navy Pier,” he said, grinning. “I used to go a lot as a kid, and I took a couple dates there as a teenager. Didn’t have a chance to ride it again in the last few years though.”
“That’s so exciting!” Kala replied still quite excited herself. She knew how their connection worked, but it still didn’t occur to her that her excitement was rubbing off on Will. “What other kinds of things did you do as a teenager?”
“Trouble, mostly,” Will said, with a grin. “Petty shoplifting, graffiti. That sort of thing. My father was a cop, so I guess it was my way of rebelling,” he explained. “Though, look where that got me now.” Will was a cop, just like his father, even if his entire youth he had been convinced he’d never follow in his father’s footsteps.
“And yet you somehow ended up following in his footsteps,” Kala commented. She was well aware of the fact that Will was a cop. For one it was one of the first things he told her when they met. But then there were also the visits where he was either at the station or in a cop car, not to mention his uniform.
The ferris wheel ride came to an end. Kala was a little disappointed but there was so much else to see and do! Besides she could always come back to the ferris wheel later. “What do you recommend we do next?”
“Somehow,” Will said with a half-smile. Sometimes he still wasn’t sure if being a cop was the right career choice, but somehow it felt right. “Definitely the cotton candy,” Will said, already heading toward one of the cotton candy merchant’s booths. “After that… I’m not sure. What do you want to do? I think there’s an arcade somewhere around here if you wanted to play some games, or there’s other rides.”
“Cotton candy,” Kala repeated. “Sounds delicious,” she decided walking with Will to the cotton candy stand.
As for what was after that? Well Kala didn’t exactly know. This was all a new experience for her but she did want to see it all. And since she had alr
eady been on one ride… “Games! I want to try them all,” she told Will. Hopefully this wasn’t taking up too much of his day. She would feel guilty it some crime was going unsolved because of her. “And them maybe more rides? If there’s time.”
“Games it is. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll win yourself a teddy bear or something,” he said with a bit of a smile, heading to the cotton candy booth. “If you like that sort of thing, at least.” The connection between them was strange. He could tell when she was stressed from halfway across the county, but he couldn’t tell if she liked stuffed animals or not. Sometimes he almost wished this sort of thing came with an instruction manual.
“So, how are you dealing with… all of this?” he asked.
It wasn’t like Kala had a room full of stuffed animals. But she didn’t dislike them. And if she won one all on her own? You bet she’d like it. She’d even keep it in her room. “Or you will win yourself one,” Kala replied with a smile. All of her worries were temporarily left behind. Dreams included. That was until Will brought them up. Kala though decided to keep things light. “With the boardwalk? It is a bit overwhelming at first, but the perfect way to spend an afternoon.”
Will couldn’t help but smile a little. “Yeah,” he answered, as if that’s what he had meant all along. “I think so too. You know, if you ever need to get away from all of it again, you can just ask. Even if I can’t actually be here, I can still try to show you some good old-fashioned American stress relief.”
“Deal,” Kala replied with a smile. “And you know the same goes for you.” As alarming as it had been at first to have Lito and Will in her head, now she couldn’t imagine them not being there. She knew no matter what they would always be there for her. And that was the most comforting thought she had ever had.