Stanley Uris: He's the man. (stan_by_me) wrote in crownplazaic, @ 2021-01-07 12:40:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log/thread, richie tozier, stanley uris |
Who: Stanley Uris, Richie Tozier
What: A reading
Where: The Kitchen
When: [Backdated] After this
Status: Complete
Warnings: Minor anxiety.
Richie wasn’t sure what Stan needed an urgent reading about, but he figured it must be something big. He sounded twitchier than usual, even over the network - so, sure, of course he’d set something up for his best friend. No problemo. And in the kitchen? Even better. He was down there in a flash, tarot deck in its velvet drawstring bag (well, one of the decks - he liked that he had a few to choose from now) and in short order, had the space smelling like a café during the morning rush. He pulled out two mugs, setting them by the coffeemaker, and then picked a seat at the nearest table to do some card shuffling. Just idle shuffling, carefully, since he always made sure to treat the cards nicely. That was like, important - and yet not something he’d ever pictured himself being concerned about but stranger things had happened. Besides when there were clearly things trying to kill them all, being at the hotel was - fine? Nice, even? He didn’t hate it. The place moved locations enough to where he didn’t get restless and feel like he was trapped in only one space. Plus the fact that they had shit going on for familiar holidays was comforting too, though he wouldn’t mind learning things about holidays from other worlds. Maybe he should ask around. Because the next ‘major’ (most commercialized) one coming up was Valentine’s Day and he was going to shit a brick if they were rained on by candy hearts and cheap boxes of chocolate. --- Stan didn’t mind the library or anything, but he always seemed to prefer the kitchen as a meet up -- the coffee pot was something familiar and comforting to him even if he probably shouldn’t have been drinking the stuff while he was in a nervous or twitchy sort of mood since that only ever exacerbated things. Well. Even he couldn’t follow all the rules all the time. “Rich,” he greeted, noting the coffee maker still going, the two mugs sitting next to it and then the little table set up that his best friend had going. Maybe it spoke to his mood that he made sure the surface and the seat were free of dirt before he took a seat. “Thanks for meeting me. I know it was kind of short notice.” Not that that mattered much here, but Stan had once been of the belief that plans were made ahead of time or not at all. --- “It’s cool, Stanny,” Richie assured. Wasn’t like he was super high in demand or anything - he promised he’d meet someone to demonstrate the ol’ tarot after this, but the dude seemed easygoing enough and damn near nobody was in a rush to get anywhere. Where could they even go, was the question? They were at the whimsies of a traveling hotel, and back on the island before their next jaunt. He might do some peeking to see if he could discern anything but he’d been focusing more on like, the people. Answering their questions, giving them readings about their own lives - and it helped, actually. It benefited him too because then he wasn’t just sitting around waiting for visions to clobber him upside the skull. He didn’t wake up with creepy white eyes fogged over, trapped in a place where everything moved so fast, trying to grasp a glimpse of the future in his hands but it all slipped through too quick. That was good. Deadlights Seer was a bad look for him. “Lemme pour some coffee and you can think of what you want to ask.” Though it seemed like he already knew. --- It really just spoke to their friendship that Richie was willing to meet him at the drop of a hat though -- it was nice to know bonds like that still existed. Stan had once been skeptical of the fact -- had been sure that they’d all just drift apart and live their lives without each other, like most adults tended to do. And they had, he supposed, but they’d done it all wrong. “Thanks,” he said again anyway and watched in that still yet somehow kind of twitchy way of his as Richie poured the coffee, and pulled it closer to himself once Richie returned with two full mugs. The hotel was climate controlled very well and it was never too hot or too cold in any particular room, but he wrapped his fingers around his coffee like he was looking for warmth anyway. “I need a future reading. But like -- present future.” --- Strangely enough, Richie got what Stan meant by present future. The future for them back home was something else entirely - and they both knew how things ended up. No point in doing a reading there. “Three card spread for the future, then,” he said, and he employed the method of shuffling where you spread the cards on the table, facedown, in a messy pile and sweeping them up again and tapping them into a neater pile - there was no ‘wrong’ way to shuffle, and of course Richie liked the most chaotic kind best. Then he set down three cards, ready to be turned over. First he paused to take a sip of coffee, calming himself - it wouldn’t work if he was mentally bouncing all over the place; he had to stay focused. Funny that pretty much the only thing that he focused on was being a fucking psychic - but he guessed he had to, or else what was the point. “Okay, so, this card is where you are now - Nine of Swords. You’re worrying excessively about a situation, but when this card shows up it means it has the potential to turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The second card is...” He flipped it over. “The Devil.” --- Well, that card sounded quite a bit like him, didn’t it? It might as well have just had his name on it. Stanley Uris, worrying excessively about something pretty much always. But more so now. Even he’d admit that. Even if he wasn’t keen on the concept of a self fulfilling prophecy. “The Devil,” Stan repeated, but he didn’t need an explanation. He knew what that was, and he knew why it was something he worried about. He nodded a little, took a steadying drink from his own mug. “And the third?” he asked, because that was the one that mattered, right? --- “It’s not bad,” Richie assured, referring to The Devil card. “When it shows up like this, it means freedom - freedom’s what you aspire to or what you want for the future, like a release from something. It also means like, sexual freedom I guess.” Well, wink, that was interesting. He wasn’t sure if that directly applied but maybe it could. Overall, freedom was generally a positive thing. His fingers tapped the third card and he told Stan, “This one is how you get there - so how you achieve the freedom that you’re looking for, or the idea of freedom that you have in mind.” He flipped it over, letting it line up with the other cards he’d turned, a perfect little row on the table - this was the deck he’d colored himself, it was the one he’d spent the most time on and wasn’t already made; for Stan, he felt as if that was the best one to do his reading with since the cards were so personal to Richie. “This one’s Justice, it’s a card that means fairness and truth. So it’s basically saying that you need to let it go and just let it happen. If you let things unfold as they’re meant to, they’ll unfold in the best way for you.” But sometimes letting go was hard, wasn’t it? --- Yeah, Stan wasn’t really worried about sexual freedom. He was very good and fine on that topic and he said so by offering Richie his driest, least impressed expression. It might as well have been called The Tozier for how often it was solely reserved for his best friend. He took a drink from his coffee to reset his expression though. Sarcasm was his default but it wasn’t what he was going for this second. “So it’s saying -- basically just let things happen?” That felt like a big ask, considering the fact that Stanley very often felt like he needed to control every minute detail of his life -- and sometimes, on bad days, that also very much included aspects of Killian’s life. He was already itching for more details, had half a mind to go interrogate that other little wizard. Which probably wouldn’t help either of them any, but it felt like something he ought to do regardless. --- “Yeah, that’s what it’s saying,” Richie confirmed. Honestly, it was a big ask for pretty much anyone - people, in general, had a hard time giving up control. They didn’t like cognitive dissonance and they didn’t like big black holes of no answers. Like explaining how or why ‘guests’ ended up in the hotel - that was still one gigantic question mark and he was surprised no one had gone bugfuck insane trying to deduce the answers that just wouldn’t come. He gathered the cards again, doing another chaotic shuffle. “Let me flip another, just to see what the future in general holds,” he offered. Then he did it - one card for the future was just a quick and dirty kind of thing, and what he generally did every morning just to see what the day or the coming days might have in store. “Oh, this is good,” Richie hummed. “The Sun. It means success - achievement unlocked.” --- Achievement unlocked. Well. That was good. Also where Stan’s intuitions were leading him, but he was prone to worrying enough to trip himself up some days. He exhaled soft and took another drink of his coffee. “That’s actually reassuring,” he murmured from behind his cup. --- “Okay...” Richie exhaled too, and gathered the cards again, to collect them and organize them into a pile - where back in their bag they would go, and he could focus on his coffee. But mostly he was focused on Stan, because this was all super confusing. Still, if the reading helped then he was glad for it. That was why he did them - maybe to give people a little bit of direction, or warning, or peace of mind. May as well be useful with this shit if he was going to have walked out of Neibolt with weird-ass psychic powers. Though he guessed he’d had them all along. He and Mike already had this conversation. It was just odd to consider. He curled his fingers around the handle of the mug and sipped, eyebrows poking up curiously over the edge. “What’s this even about? What did you need reassurance for?” If Stan didn’t want to tell him he didn’t have to, but. Color him curious. Like, what the fuck, was Stan contemplating getting a nipple piercing or something? --- Stan considered the question for a moment before setting his mug down, looking at the mostly dwindling contents inside. “Killian has an evil curse which gives him basically unlimited magical powers but is slowly killing him and stealing his soul. And also kind of making him a dick to deal with some days.” Although that wasn’t fair, because that was also him trying. But that didn’t mean Stan had to like it. “Apparently there’s another magic user here who can take it away. But it involves a sword stabbing. I’m an accountant, Rich. This is messed up shit.” --- Oh. Well, that was definitely something - Richie hadn’t known about the curse, but it sounded like that shit needed to be taken care of post-haste. One just shouldn’t sit around and let a curse eat at their soul like Pac-Man chomping through a maze of fruit. “To be fair, pretty much everyone has their days of being a dick,” he said, and that was just Life Facts. Mike got crabby sometimes, and his manfriend knew when to leave him be - hell, even Richie sometimes wanted to just retreat into himself and would sit in the proverbial corner stewing. It happened when you put a crap ton of people into one hotel and didn’t let them leave until the ‘magic’ poofed you away - this was a whole fruit salad of personalities and abilities too. However, Richie knew one thing. “It’s gonna be okay, Staniel,” he promised. “I mean - yeah, a sword stabbing sounds weird as fuck but most of this shit is and you two really love each other so you’re gonna be okay.” He’d just seen it in the cards, hadn’t he? --- “I’m not sure that’s how love works,” Stan said, frowning a little before he finished off his coffee -- and then slid his cup across the table to Richie for a refill. It wasn’t that he didn’t like it in concept, of course, it was just a bit fairytale. Then again, so was Killian. “But thanks, Rich. It really does help.” It was, sort of like asking for a second opinion, considering he did have a good feeling -- but his own anxiety sometimes took driver’s seat. --- Love worked like that sometimes. Yeah, and sometimes it wasn’t enough but they had a lot going on more than just love anyway - it was the whole package, right? Richie was sure of it. He was happy that Stan had such a thing here, that he was happy and not exactly trying to replace Patty, but just making room in his heart for someone new - or a least, that was what some Hallmark movie message would convey. “Well, I’m glad it helped,” he said, taking Stan’s coffee mug and pouring it full of another round of dark brew. Richie might have another too, though he would add cream and sugar like usual - drinking it black was blah. Like drinking road tar. “Anytime, Stanny.” What good were psychic powers if you couldn’t use them to reassure your friends? |