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hirokazukoreeda

Julie Delpy in BUT I’M A CHEERLEADER, 1999 dir. Jamie Babbit.

#vis.#there's my tiny king

labellesaison

Tully (2018) dir. Jason Reitman

#vis.#bonnie.

weltenwellen

Anais Nin, Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin, 1939-1947

#muse material.#q

slowarc‌.

bonnie’s gaze, which has been trained on julie like their lives depend on it ( like if she blinks, this will all be gone ), shifts downward, refocuses on the table: her mug, her hands around the mug, what’s left of her nails, her chewed cuticles. you kept up with donna? “you weren’t there,” she says, and although her tone has a jagged edge, it isn’t accusatory. “she just didn’t want me to—” end up in the system. end up like you. she restarts, shrugging:

“maybe she bribed them, i don’t know. the hospital. the cops. she said she didn’t want me to wake up alone.” her lips purse the slightest bit in concentration, in excavation, and she raises the mug to drink. but first, and with a grim smile: “wouldn’t change my name, though. don’t think i made it easy. but mom never came around, and it was — good. for me.”

it’s strange, almost, how a story she’s told dozens of times can seem so new to her now; how bonnie can want to tell it at all, reinhabit the memory on purpose. she thinks — or she will, at any rate — that maybe the others were only practice, that this is the conversation she’s been warming up for. with the only person who might want to understand as much as she does.

“— but you could have been there, too. you had to have known that.” and she’s not angry; she’s not even disappointed, though she’s been both through the years, at points. she’s just so desperately sad for her, for the girls they were and the life they might have had, together. but there’s no point in imagining when julie’s here now, and that’s more than she’s grown to expect, to even wish for. “you didn’t do anything wrong.”

there are worse things, she thinks. she’s still breathing ( which is almost a fucking marvel, the last few nights taken into account ), bonnie’s pursued a path that sees her happy and thriving, as far as julie can tell. the house is warm, the pantry is full, their clothes are clean. there’s no one else dictating the course of their lives. the only thing bonnie seemed to be missing right up until this point was her, lingering in the periphery.

‘ you don’t have to. ’ a warm bed already feels like too much of an ask, even if it’s bonnie she’s requesting it from.

she can do apologies too. if they let themselves get swept up in it, they’ll never stop. i meant to come back sooner. i looked too, i really did, but there’s only so much you can do when the extent of your resources are internet cafes and newspapers she’s dug out of the trash. there was never a home for her with donna, never room for her even if it would have been carved out. what happened is what would always have happened, what she’d do again if she could go back.

it’s as though she hadn’t realised the time passing, just woke up one day and couldn’t believe how old she’d gotten.

‘ it was a long time ago. ’ as though it makes a difference. ‘ i’m just glad it worked out. ’

#slowarc

weltenwellen

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

#bonjulie.#there will be a real tag here when i finish whalitc and can look up quotes :3c

birdasaurus

Charlotte Lapalus

#muse material.

slowarc‌.

bonnie pulls her sweater tighter to ward against an imaginary draft, and she nods. in the almost-three days she’s been in bed, she’s seen her, of course — she’s made sure she’s eaten; she’s slept in julie’s bed to see that her breathing’s held steady, held her through the worst of it — but it’s the reality of her across the tiny table, how the warm mug doesn’t vanish when she wraps her hands around it, that’s hardest to bear.

( it’s nothing like she thought it would be, when she was still young enough to hope. )

“thanks.” please don’t leave me, is what she wants to say, but it’s not her place: whoever her sister’s become, she’s become without help from her, and if all bonnie is now is somewhere to weather a storm, a stop along the way to some actual home — that’s enough. that will have to be enough. “ how’d you know where i was? ” why now? she hasn’t asked her for anything, and if she’s that easy to track down online, they’re all bad at their fucking jobs, and if she’s that easy to track down online, then why — why only now? the tea burns her mouth, and bonnie’s glad.

she’s wearing one of frank’s sweaters, entirely too big around her. it had added several extra unusable inches to the length of her arms until she rolled back the sleeves. it feels so strange to have her wrists exposed, her knuckles; she wants to clutch the ends of the sleeves just to have something to grasp ahold of. all she has is her own cup of tea, so it’s that which she holds. there’s part of her that fears crushing the china between such a harsh grip, so she holds the handle in one hand and curls the first of her empty the hand with nothing in it, nails inadvertently digging into her palm.

they never mean to mimic each other. it’s never exact, but julie plays off of the way that bonnie moves, the way she holds herself. when she smiles, her back teeth clench. but she does smile, more because she wants bonnie to see her smiling, than because she means it.

it’s short lived.

she takes a long time to respond, thinking, trying to find her reflection in the murky brown tea. no dice. ‘ i looked you up. heard your--- ’ she can’t say mom, even if that’s how the obituary made it sound. if donna is bonnie’s mother, it’s some rift between her and julie, isn’t it? something they don’t have in common? her mind shuts off the moment she begins to think about it. instead, ‘ i heard about donna. ’

#slowarc

@slowarc

it’s been at least a day ( likely more ) since julie’s come out of --- it feels untrue to call it her room, even if that’s what it is, what it’s beginning to be --- the room bonnie’s made for her. in and out of terrifying fever dreams, never conscious long enough to do more than kick the covers off her sweating, trembling body, or pull them up to ward off the chills.

steam rises past the lip of the mug, the small cup of tea julie’s made for bonnie ( an unprompted peace offering, because she doesn’t know what she’s doing here, or how to take up space without first having decided she’s allowed to exist in it --- and she doesn’t know how the fuck to do that, either. ) gets nudged a little closer, across the kitchen table.