lacey morris fixes things better than you (unlaces) wrote in casefile, @ 2018-08-22 20:14:00
WHO: Lochan & Lacey WHEN: Wednesday, August 15 WHERE: Lochan's shop SUMMARY: Lacey has decided it's time to just outright ask Lochan what he wants. But first a card reading, which just leads to more confusion. Poor poor Lochan. WARNINGS: A return of the eerily accurate Oracle cards.
It was ridiculous. Lacey never shied away from saying what was on her mind. Usually, it popped out of her mouth before she'd even thought it through. But this was different, for whatever reason. And Lochan was impossible to read. But she doubted he would say anything without being confronted about it, so that was exactly what she would do.
Well, confronted sounded too harsh. She was just going to talk to him and ask him what he wanted. And maybe then she could figure out what she wanted.
Which was how she found herself in front of his shop. The last time she had been here had ended extremely awkwardly. But hopefully not this time. After all, that disaster of lunch after the basket auction wasn't completely awkward. Filled with purpose, she walked up the steps to the porch and stepped inside the house. Blinking a few times to help her eyes adjust from coming in from the sunny outside, she glanced around, to see if she could figure out where Lochan was.
“I’ll be right down,” a voice answered from upstairs. No one had ever been allowed in the upstairs portion of the house-shop, besides Blaze, and Lochan rarely could be found up there himself. The day had been slow and without Blaze around any longer, Lochan did his own thing in between customers.
Descending the stairs shortly after calling down, a soft smile graced his lips when he saw Lacey. After the insane month of no fewer than 6 planets in retrograde and the impending lunar eclipse on the July full moon, he had not been surprised of the mess of a police investigation that had been happening in town and the panic Lacey had over the new information of her tools being used in the murder.
The ups and downs of the town with all of that information followed by the picnic auction felt strained. Lochan had not known what to do when the pb&j basket ended up being Lacey’s nor what Mrs. Cox was getting at pointing him toward it- and likely creating it to begin with.
“Needed to get out of the shop?”
Lacey smiled when she saw Lochan coming down the stairs. She shrugged good-naturedly, hooking her thumbs through the belt loops of her shorts. "It's my day off, so I thought I'd come by and see you." She paused briefly: she tended towards being very forward, but she also didn't want to scare Lochan off. "I was also thinking about getting a card reading."
“You didn’t bring any terrible food did you?” He managed to tease, though his tone came off dark and with a hint of melancholy that echoed to how he tended to talk before he really got to know Lacey.
“A card reading?” Lochan stopped mid-step at the suggestion. More and more of his friends had asked for card readings but with the rumour and information of Nathan Griggs coming to light, Lochan felt a bit apprehensive to read cards of those close to him. He had known too much from Nathan’s reading, even if he had not realized it at the time. What did that tell him about the other readings he did for Ian or Eva or Kavya?
"I do my very best to not inflict my lack of cooking skills on other people," Lacey teased back. She spread her hands to show they were empty, and it wasn't like she could be hiding anything in the shorts or gray t-shirt she wore.
Briefly wondering if there was a specific reason he didn't want to read her cards, she shrugged instead. "I was just thinking that you've seen me work, but I haven't seen you work. Besides, didn't you offer one when I was fixing Samson for you?" He had also offered to let her speak to someone who was dead, but she was not going to take him up on that part of the offer. "But if you don't want to, that's fine. We can just hang out until your next customer."
“No. No, it’s fine.” Lochan lead the way into the back of the shop where their other awkward incident with Kavya happened. “These last couple of months have been rather strange. Don’t take my questioning as a not wanting to. It just can be difficult, uh, with everything that’s going on. Take a seat, though, and I’ll get my cards.”
The cards were stored in a simple wooden box with no engraving, design, or even stain. Opening the lid, he pulled out the deck wrapped in a red cloth with the iconography of Ganesha on it. “Do you have a specific question or a general direction for the reading?”
Lacey followed Lochan into the back of the shop, taking a seat at the table where they had very awkwardly shared the snacks that Kavya had brought during that encounter that was only topped in awkwardness by their shared picnic lunch last weekend. Lacey didn't like awkward, so that was all the more reason for Lacey to figure out what Lochan wanted.
"Well, I was hoping for some insight into what to do about a situation I've found myself in."
“Okay.” Lochan placed the deck in front of Lacey. “Shuffle while focusing on your question and when you are done hand the deck back to me and chose how many cards you would like for the answer.”
Well, that was easy enough, right? After all, she had been thinking about that question for a while now. She picked up the deck and shuffled it a few times, then handed it back over to Lochan. "How about… three cards?" Lacey wasn't sure how many cards were normal, but three sounded good, since there were three of them involved.
Nodding, Lochan felt an anxiousness in his stomach that told him not to ask her what her question was. The first card revealed as the card of Change; pictured as a moon high on one end of the card following after the sun low at the other end. “Your first card is Change. This card represents just that, the transformation of a self or situation.”
Brown eyes glanced up at Lacey as he flipped the second card, an apple tree blossomed on the card with two apples side by side and the symbol of venus in the upper corner, and word Love scrolled on the bottom. He breathed in, trying to think if Kavya’s reading had similar cards. “A transformation of the heart or someone you love.”
Flipping the last card over, it revealed an image of an old key and the word Destiny at the bottom. Lochan kept his eyes down at the cards, blinking at them. “Change is linked to Destiny as Destiny is linked to change. One’s heart is free to love as it will but destiny steers the course in the end and the outcome is rarely what was expected from the beginning.”
Lacey had to remind herself to breathe as Lochan began flipping the cards over and explained them to her. She felt goosebumps prickle along her arms and fought the urge to scrub at them with her hands. Change. Love. Destiny. But which way was destiny steering the change? There was only one way to find out.
Looking up from the cards at Lochan, she reached one hand out for his, fingers hovering slightly over his before settling down, gently. "I like you, Lochan. As more than just a friend. But if you don't-- if you like Kavya, if she's the kind of girl you want, … I'll be ok." She had survived worse. But she needed to know. And she wondered if this was what the Destiny card meant, because this was not at all what she had expected that day in June when they were flirting while she worked on his car. Or maybe it meant that the outcome would be different from what she had expected today… though she hadn't known what to expect, really.
Brows raised in shock, Lochan expected bluntness from Lacey- It was how they got to where they were in the first place, due to Lochan being oblivious- but he did not expect her to pointedly tell him. Both Kavya and Lacey received the Love card in their readings. The memory clicked in his head enough that his fingers slide over to the deck and flipped the edges of the next set of cards to see what they were.
“Um…” He did not know how to respond. His mind going blank and feeling terrible that words were not coming to the surface. The issue was not that he did not like Lacey in that way- he did. The issue was that if he were true to himself he liked both girls in that way. Comparing the two always felt like comparing a rainbow and a thunderstorm- they were both beautiful in their own ways.
Chewing his lip, he finally spoke. His eyes lowered and blinking to organize his thoughts. “I… like both of you,” he said slowly. The Misfortune card a few cards down from the top, that was Lochan’s card, he thought to himself.
Lacey had spent enough time with Lochan to not expect an immediate response. Most people, really, thought about what they were going to say before they said it, so she had long since learned to be patient and wait for a response. When he finally did, though… well, she wasn't entirely happy with his response, but she also wasn't unhappy with it. As if things hadn't gotten awkward enough already. If Lochan had told her that he liked Kavya and not her, she would have stepped back; she wasn't the kind of girl who threw herself at someone who wasn't interested. But since he liked her, too… well, Lacey was also not the kind of girl who backed down from a fight.
So she smiled, standing up and walking around so she was behind him. Leaning down, she wrapped her arms around his shoulders, bringing her lips to his ear. "Maybe that's something we can work on, then," she whispered, then kissed the corner of his jaw beneath his ear.