𝚂𝙰𝙻𝚃 𝙱𝚁𝙸𝙽𝙴

[tidelure]

#   𝘵𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘶𝘳𝘦  ㅤ  ,  ㅤ 𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗠𝗘𝗡 𝗙𝗔𝗟𝗟 𝗜𝗡𝗧𝗢 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗦𝗘𝗔, 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗗𝗥𝗢𝗪𝗡. 𝗪𝗛𝗘𝗡 𝗪𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗡 𝗠𝗘𝗘𝗧 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗪𝗔𝗧𝗘𝗥, 𝗧𝗛𝗘𝗬 𝗧𝗥𝗔𝗡𝗦𝗙𝗢𝗥𝗠. 𝗜𝗧 𝗕𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗦 𝗩𝗜𝗧𝗔𝗟 𝗧𝗢 𝗔𝗦𝗞: 𝗜𝗦 𝗧𝗛𝗜𝗦 𝗔 𝗠𝗘𝗧𝗔𝗠𝗢𝗥𝗣𝗛𝗢𝗦𝗜𝗦, 𝗢𝗥 𝗔 𝗛𝗢𝗠𝗘𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗚 ?  ㅤ  dependent muse blog associated with kilmerhq   ㅤ . 

⁰⁰¹            𝗦𝗔𝗛𝗜𝗡 - 𝗩𝗔𝗡 𝗡𝗘𝗦𝗦, 𝗩.       introㅤ musings ㅤ wanted ⁰⁰²            𝗠𝗘𝗟𝗩𝗜𝗟𝗟𝗘, 𝗠 .       introㅤ musings ㅤ wanted ⁰⁰³            𝗖𝗔𝗥𝗗𝗜𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗖 .       introㅤ musings ㅤ wanted

[tidelure]

THE WORLD IS SMALL, AND KILMER IS EVEN SMALLER: ALONG THE BOARDWALK, CHERISE SPOTS A FAMILIAR FACE ╱ feat. DEVON AVERESCU OF @skidemark

"do my eyes deceive me?" on the runway of a pert nose, tortoiseshell glasses are lowered. from behind them, bright eyes flash with surprise and affection. a mirrorball of emotion in the winter light. "am i truly looking at the absolute princess of park avenue, the countess of central park⸺ my favourite averescu?" a laugh of disbelief unrolls from cher, the sound of pure delight. if a flower could shout for the first touch of spring warmth, it would've sounded like that noise. the extensive lengths of her arms unfold, a showgirl wrapped in faux fur and the fragrance of iris and white musk: a scent expensive and unidentifiable, mystic. "dee ! i can't believe it."

[tidelure]

BELIEVING THE DRAKE ESTATE AS EMPTY AS IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN, VEDIA TALKS TO IT IN THE LONELY HOURS OF THE NIGHT ╱ feat. GALEN DRAKE of @seacurse

in the cluttered aftermath of a dinner party, vedia slips out the back door of her home, no more noticeable than a loved one's shadow. her body is restless lately, even in dreams; the bouts of her sleepwalking growing more frequent. and so, increasingly, she finds herself walking in the waking hours. she is trying to outpace it in some way, to move her little body through and past this disquiet that seems to grip whatever sits beneath her bones. though there's no real intent to her stroll, vedia finds herself at the crest of something once familiar ⸺ a home that she had visited, once upon a time. her eyes turn to a window on the uppermost floor, a shuttered thing she had once imagined to belong to a boy she'd cared for dearly, with the zeal that only a child's heart can hold. thoughtfully, she leans herself against the cool stripped bark of a tree, her limpid eyes sparkling in the starlight.

"i used to dream about you, you know." she announces to the empty house, a soft confession that the breeze catches and carries lovingly in its palm. the air is frosty with november chill, but amid the swaddle of inherited fur and hoarded champagne, vedia feels warm. in that warmth her tongue unfurls naturally, like the petals of a pointsetta in a hothouse. "when i was a little girl, i thought you were like a prince. i was so mad when daddy said you and your family were gone," laughter blooms, sweet and distant, as her gaze shuffles to the ground to toe an inconsequential pattern into the dirt. after a beat, vedia looks up once more, into the sweetness of the past. "but i told myself one day you'd come back."

[tidelure]

IN DELPHI'S DELIGHTS, CHERISE SPOTS A FAMILIAR SET OF OBJECTS IN ANOTHER SHOPPER'S ARMS ╱ feat. @lilllianlandry

"now that is a brilliant combination," she leans forward, inclining into the woman's eyeline and directly onto the platform of a sudden conversation. "my aunt used to use borage with sage and lavender for clarity." cherise returns her statuesque form to lean against the nearest shelf, creating an angular line not unlike that of a bernini heroine. despite this, her tone and expression is filled with a honey warmth: brush close enough and you'd come away sticky. "i nearly burned the house down with a dressing once. stole it and used too much because i wanted this new girl at school to like me so badly. ⸺ i thought if i used enough i'd know how to become her friend."

[scpsis]

cherise's temerity had been one of the many traits that attracted judge to her in the first place. she was bold face font, ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, in your face yet graceful in every way. he'd wanted to inhale her like the stupid fucking cigarette she had her lips wrapped around, but now ? the male was seething with an unfamiliar, misplaced anger.

anger was not a foreign concept to judge, but it was indisputably unwelcome in his bones. as a child, rage was ever-present within his family. his father's indignation shook the very walls of their home, booming like thunder. it leaked into his siblings and cousins, took hold of his mother, and, he suspected, would've sunken it's piercing teeth into him too, had he not left for kilmer cove in 2006. now a grown man, judge reserved those feelings for only the worthiest of occasions. except, this one didn't feel deserving at all.

it occurred to him that he was holding his breath, letting the oxygen cook inside his lungs like a hot oven. nostrils flared as he desperately gasped, hardened expression remaining cold. as the femme loomed closer, he began to feel hunted. ( their dynamic had always been playful in nature. like a cat and mouse. but he was the predator, and he'd fight to stay that way. )

" you can't smoke in here. " thick digits plucked the cigarette right out of her mouth, if only to show how serious he was. what he won't admit is how badly it burned to be that close to her again. the half-finished smoke sizzled — a final cry for help — as he drowned it a nearby cup of water left at the hostess stand. " what the hell are you doing here, cher ? " timbre croaked with despondency, followed with a grumble. years later and she still sparkled like a precious god damn gem.

[tidelure]

they'd played games like this before, back when there was everything to gain and something even bigger to lose: the kind where you keep moving towards collision at a rapid pace to see who swerves first. the problem, of course, had been that neither party had diverged. nobody had veered. instead they'd run headlong into impact, smashed together in a two body pile-up in the cabin of his boat ⸺ a crash that lasted months, and had taken at least one casualty. cherise tells herself it's no different now in the foyer of panhandle, even as her body shudders in the tender places, holding eye contact. they're playing a round of chicken, standing eye to eye to see who gives, and cherise is awful good at not giving. she'd made a life out of it.

judge plucks the cigarette from her mouth, and instead of leaning forward or away cher simply holds his gaze, something meaningful and baring a shadow crossing over her grey eyes. we used to do things a lot worse than smoke in here. she lets the vague amusement linger before shrugging, her browse rolling out through the window out onto the street, as if the sudden absence is of no importance to her.

i'm here because i'm needed, she could say, gesturing to the truth of her best friend's fresh-faced grief, but she doesn't. when cherise loves deeply, she knows how to hold something in her mouth. she smiles, teeth-out, and you can't even see the secret tucked in the corner. "i came to tell you i'm back in town." arms cross over her chest, and the remaining shoulder of her fur-lined coat falls down, a motion of such appealing dishevelment that it has the impact of making it seem she's always meant to be in a state of partial undress — or at least amidst the act of it. she paces another two languid steps, close enough now to smell his cologne, and the shiver comes back. she lets this one run down her spine, trilling like a thing of excitement: his anger is palpable, a blunt object, but she knows that means her effect on him is a knife. she's not cruel a cruel woman, not by a longshot, she is an easily intoxicated one. cherise cardinal is a lightweight when it comes to emotion. "don't know how long i'm staying," she never did. "but i thought i'd come down and.." up close her gaze plays elevator, drifting than rising up the whole of him. her lips stretch into a shape that, historically, tells her she is smiling. she cants her head. she purrs. she assembles herself, with easy liquidity, into the dazzling shape she knows is in her possession. "give you the news myself."

i thought i'd hand you the warning sign personally. she stays up there, close enough to touch, and it's for both defensive and offensive purpose: she wants to read which way he's going to overflow, to show him she's not afraid ⸺ or at least make him believe it. and then part of her, in some opportunistic third measure, wants to reconcile the reality of his eyes with the colour she remembers. with a small amount of distress, she realizes there's very little difference between. cherise lingers a moment longer then steps backwards, moving breezily to the bench her purse had been left on. that was her way: forward and back, back and forward, a motion with no definable rhythm that left her permanently out of reach. the moment you thought you had her pattern, she'd move sideways. just like her head now, the sharp angle of her chin turns over a shoulder, toward judge.

"i mean, i figured you'd rather shoot me than the messenger, right?"

[bob-belcher]

10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT YOU (1999)

[amphiitritte]

“You grow ravenous. You run fevers. You know exhilarations. You can’t sleep at night, because your beast-creature ideas want out and turn you in your bed. It is a grand way to live.”

— Ray Bradbury (via wordsnquotes)

[ofallingstar]

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)

[scpsis]

" yeah ... " wymon admitted in defeat, grimacing as he assessed the damage. he would've chosen to endure the stinging, written it off as a mild finger prick, if not for how she uses the wound to bridge the gap between them again. her hands are the same as they always were : delicate, fairy-like. though wymon was not a particularly large man, one of his hands could swallow both of hers, could pin each dainty wrist together effortlessly when the moment called for it. recollection tied a knot in his throat as her nail scraped against rounded, now puckered flesh.

he suckled on his lower lip, raking it between his teeth as a makeshift dam, fearful of what may spill out if he didn't. her inquiry proved to make that impossible. " i've been ... " the male trailed off, hypnotized by the repetitive grating of her fingernail, the oxytocin release that her grip inspired.

what he wants to say : i've been awful. i've been alone. i've been riddled with enough grief to drown an olympic swimmer. i am water-logged and always leaking, leaking, leaking. my body is a piece of broken driftwood. i'm haunted by mistakes and burdens that aren't mine. even more than that, there is not a day that i am not haunted by YOU.

but it came out as, " everything is different now. " he meant it.

[tidelure]

she wants to say : i don't understand. the most different i have ever felt was at your side, and since then i have returned to the thing i have always been. nowadays my feet don't even leave the floor when i am walking, just coast down a groove already worn into the world.

but instead she says, "mm," says, "it must be hard without your uncle," pointing out the only other difference in the room that she can identify without looking in a mirror. a clock is ticking somewhere around them, and vedia can feel the stacking metronome of her failure, pulling her hand away to stretch the half-thawed fingers before reapplying the lacquered nail to its work. it occurs to her as she pries at the little sliver of hurt that she should be aching too, that even though four years have passed and that is enough time to shed a whole layer of skin, for her things are the same while wymon says everything is different. as if to confirm she's not the only one still living in the same locked room, she adds, "but you're still at the docks." dissatisfaction raps along the cage of her ribs. she can't use her other hand to leverage the thing out, integral as it is to the upkeep of her towel. there's something wet knocking at her eyes. "my fingers are still too cold, i can't ⸺"

water and heat is supposed to heal a great many things. what it can't make well it can at least make better: it cleanses mud from a girl's blue-cold legs and restores her warmth. it flattens pain and allows for easier extraction. when vedia places wymon's thumb in her mouth and holds still, its with the intention of something curative. in her mouth the tip of his finger is thick. it tastes like salt and bitter. the fat of her tongue is pressed against the ridge of his nail, the living components of a pearl and the soft oyster stomach that keeps it safe. her breath snags, a hole ripping through it, and she tightens her hold on wymon's hand in response, the slim ends of her fingertips slipping into the valleyed ridge between thumb and pointer. her lips purse, sealing. gently, with all the softness of instinctual care, she sucks on that tenderized spot until she feels something dislodge itself, the offense something slim and brackish on her tongue.

"sorry." vedia clears her throat, swallows the thing that pained him. something burns in her throat and down the lining of her torso. it isn't the remnant of firewood. "⸺ it's... it's out."

[ycsterdays]

he waves his hand, grinning and announcing dramatically, "new york was a lifetime ago," a lifetime he can still repeat the history of over and over and will, "but cornelius... he was definitely a highlight." he finds few in this town that truly appreciate real art, so talking to vedia always feels like a breath of fresh air. plus, there are few things he loves more than a good ego stroke. "i'll tell you everything and then some," gus promises, "besides being the role of a lifetime, our dolly was dating our barnaby, but was sleeping with our horace the whole run of the show. it all came out during tech week. it was really quite the scandal... and almost more entertaining than the show itself. almost."

[tidelure]

"oh, wait, don't start yet — those are our coffees," she rises and flutters there and back, spilling neither the set of lattes nor her sense of anticipation. though impractical for most, vedia adored most of all to live in a state of suspense, locked to neither side of preface nor fulfilment, but instead in the dreamy middle. a lifetime ago, august had said, but vedia has no doubt that he has enough space for two of them in his frame. she had, after all, seen him transform into numerous different people on stage. "i can't believe it," her giggle is muffled into the sleeve of a sweater, drawn into a paw around a little hand. her tone seems to imply that she takes great joy in very much believing it. "what happened — how did everyone find out? could you see it on stage — how dolly was with horace?"

[gifsbyserena]

rabia soytürk as ekim güleryüz in duy beni.

[scpsis]

angled surface of his cheekbones grew warm at vedia's admittance, blooming with ruddy abashment akin to her own. they were two virgins, born-again — meek and mousey — fumbling and flustered. for a moment, he found himself wishing he'd wake up already. that this was some lewd fantasy cooked up in his wicked subconscious while his mortal body wept in it's sleep.

but her recoil is too tangible to be a work of delusional fiction. a cruel reminder that his romantic bygone was still not his to hold or behold. this tryst was a one-off, likely never to be repeated. pathetic for him to have hoped otherwise.

wymon didn't touch her again, even with her retrogression. there's reverence in how he kept his hands to himself, instead occupying his fingers with a new task : pulling the bathtub plug. the drain let out a guttural gurgle, sucking down the dirt, sucking away the evidence that he'd read her flesh like braille only moments ago. he stood up from the cobblestone floor, more sure-footed than he'd been all night.

" i know. " lament is weighted. a stone sinking at the bottom of a well. though he means no ill will, the words tasted sour, almost poisonous. an apology boiled at the back of his throat, but he swallowed it down with an audible gulp. wymon let out a sigh before speaking again. " come sit on the hearth. i'll start a fire. "

again, he's ornamented with chains around his ankles, each step out of the bathroom more impossible than the last. the fireplace was well-used, interior box coated in a layer of black ash. had he known she'd be coming over, he would've cleaned it. ( had he known she was coming over, he would've done many things — at the top of the list ? panicking. so perhaps it was for the better. ) the firewood was jagged and nubby against the pads of his fingers as he created a base for the flames to live. " fuck, " expletive elicits as quickly as the splinter that pierced the side of his thumb. a chastisement. wymon brought the injury to his lips as if the warmth of his mouth would ease the sting.

[tidelure]

wymon had said sit, but after the slow trail in following him from bathroom to the hearth — too nervous to make the trek on her own, too shaken to deviate from his path — vedia remains standing, shuffling her weight and the bulk of her thoughts from one foot to the next. the room itself is inviting enough, small and slanted in a way the exterior of the parsonage implied, but there's the lingering sense of being something unsuitable for this house. it's foreign, and therefore she has no measure with which to understand what is acceptable — if it would be terrible to stain that couch there with the wet of her hair, or worse still to sit in the armchair in the corner, which might have belonged to a stern man in a dark robe — but it's also familiar. cast in a noxious glow. you are not welcomed in this house or anywhere my nephew, miss sahin.

it's the expletive that breaks her reverie, and from behind him vedia shifts uncomfortably. she feels suddenly very small, condensed in size by all this water, stripped of her clothes and some of the buffering volume of her presence: little more than some tiny doll that wymon could fit in the curl of one palm. her heart, however, remains the same size. it throbs with discomfort at wymon's expression of pain, and the knowledge that she doesn't know what to do with it.

"is it a splinter?"

it takes several wary steps to close the distance between them, and several more turns of the mind to bring vedia to the conclusion that kindness is meant to beget kindness. "i can— i can help." a hand reaches from beneath the towel, eyes flitting meaningfully upward for a kind of permission before taking his wrist. she turns the hand gently palm-up, running the curve of a thumbnail over the pinked skin of his finger, searching for the intrusion. contact hadn't used to be so scarce, or so frightening. when they'd been together, vedia used to greet him the only way she knew how, the way she liked best, with all her body against all of his body, the same way school children show their love ⸺ throwing handfuls of glue and glitter onto a page, smearing as much as they can onto a the open space to prove how much feeling is inside them. now, despite the cold of her exposed body, vedia feels heat flush around her neck like a locked collar from the mere overlap of fingers. the nail drags repeatedly, firm and gentle, over the soft belly of his thumb. she does not look up as she attempts to fill the quiet. "have you... have you been alright?"

[kitsunetsuki-deactivated2026051]

Wayne Maser - Yasmin Le Bon Wearing a Bustier by Ligne Rien (Vogue 1987)

[scpsis]

he was a trained guard dog, sniffing out an abnormality, investigating his domain. premature in her adulthood, the hostess's voice barely graced his ears before judge was already bounding towards the restaurant's entryway. it's a fault of his — one of many, and so minor in comparison to others — that he often doesn't give his youngest staff members the time of day. his brain didn't have the capacity for their frivolities. as they say, he didn't have the spoons. spoons ... " is someone rolling silverware ? " he heedlessly barked out of the side of his mouth, nose still guiding him towards the unwelcome smell of cigarette smoke. " who the fuck is smoking in h— "

her presence was a gust of wind and he's an already rotting hovel.

silence, as it often did, took hold of judge's tongue like a creature he'd consumed, now making it's way back up his throat. he kept his jaw clenched, masseter muscles tense enough to create divots in his skin in the very places her manicured fingers had once perused. her stunning visage alone scorched crimson as the cherry end of her cigarette, and though he'd put her flame out against his own skin time and time again, he'd nearly forgotten about the splotchy burn scars that once littered him.

for when she disappeared so wordlessly, so carelessly, cherise had taken all the evidence of their affair with her. leaving him to pick up the pieces of a crime they'd committed together, but he bore the punishment of alone. judge had grown to enjoy that solitude. diminutive and peaceful, he lived in it comfortably, like his cottage on the beach. she would not threaten that again.

" we're not hiring, " he spoke firmly, deep intonation escaping from his mouth like a popped cork.

[tidelure]

you ever have that pop rocks candy as a kid? the real nostalgic stuff, the kind in paper packages already half-faded by sun exposure in the local bodega, designs purposefully rendered in stark black and bright neon colours, as if to signal to the child holding them what that they're about to put in their mouth could also be found exploding up in the sky on the fourth of july. the ones that stained your mouth for hours, coating your tongue and the inside of your lips so that each time you talked too avidly, somebody else caught the idea of what you'd been chewing. that's what judge waterhouse was like. like a man, only different. like a man, only not like one you've ever known before, and one that you won't know since. he fizzled. he left a mark. he was cautioned against by over-concerned mothers. and now she's looking at him, and he's looking at her, and four years after the fact cherise suddenly has the urge to stick out her tongue and stand in front of a mirror. i can still taste him. can i see him?

"oh, don't be like that," instead of baring her tongue cher drops her head backwards, the crown leaned gently against the dark plush of the booth, opening up her gaze to his full height. it has the terribly intimate impression of looking up at him from a pillow. when she stands it's sudden, fluid, one shoulder of her coat falling off a round shoulder. cherise takes another drag of her cigarette, trying to replace the sugary taste thats leaked in. she's very good at all this too, the performance of perpetual casualty, but there's a moth jumping from rib to rib that keeps cherise from straying too close. when she steps forward its in slow, sauntering steps, a pace at once asymmetrical and baring innate grace.

"at least get the jury and executioner out here before you make any final decisions." judge, of course, wouldn't call for either. he never had, and that's the joke, the punchline that bruised ⸺ he had no need for them or anyone else. or perhaps what she's remembering is he didn't need her. not enough to reevaluate an expired promise or to stay past dawn, to put out the fire he left raging in a rumpled bed. a thumbnail works its way between her teeth, the acrylic smooth and lacquered against cher's tongue. smoke smoulders near her face. she raises a brow. "⸺ is that really all the welcome i get?"

[dailyflicks]

PRACTICAL MAGIC — 1998, dir. Griffin Dunne

[observando]

“That’s the trouble with loving a wild thing: You’re always left watching the door.”

— Edith Pattou, East

[scpsis]

closed starter · for vedia @tidelure location · panhandle oyster co.

she was, without a doubt, lovely as ever, seated beneath the swirling chandelier made up of dozens of delicate individual paper lanterns, ( a fixture paid for by none other than adem sahin-van ness himself ) just as she was, without a doubt, always welcome in his establishment — to him, vedia was an extension of her father. namely, her father's money. judge observed at her in the same way he would an unguarded, crisp stack of cash : with criminally selfish intent. she was to be belauded, almost treasured. a delicate string of pearls hung around an aristocrat's bulging neck. the brunette was one of the very few whom judge dropped everything to attend to personally, listed high on a registry of prioritized customers that implied a direct phone call to him if he wasn't already working. tonight, he'd been out on his boat, immediately returning to shore at the mere mention of her patronage. the sun-bleached coveralls he adorned while approaching vedia's table seemed out of place compared to the polished restaurant's interior, but he moved with enough purpose that he may as well have wearing a three piece suit. " how's everything tasting ? " there's only a hint of a smile on his lips.

[tidelure]

vedia was best at being alone when she was not entirely alone ⸺ she exceeded in solitude, in particularly spectacular fashion, when buffed on all sides by the soft cushion of glances and the hedgerow of attention. it wasn't entirely her fault ⸺ girls who prefer the centre of the room rarely come to this partiality on their own. they learn the aptitude by first being pretty creatures pinned to a corkboard, a showcase drawn up and speared through by hovering parental hands. all that to say that by the time the owner of the dim-lit leather booth vedia finds herself sitting in makes his way over to her, she's enjoyed the night immensely ... as she does every night at his restaurant.

"judge," his name comes out warm and rolled in the careless warmth so characteristic of vedia's voice. she's wine-drunk and lighthearted for it, smiling, a pink silk balloon filled to the point of shining. "i was wondering if i'd see you tonight." her eye glance over the length of him, clad in the vaguely familiar look of what she assumes to be a true seaman. though there were too many years between them for vedia to register judge as anything tangible, he had the platonic charm of a well-timed sunset or a neatly assembled cabin: a view on the roadside you enjoyed simply because it was there. "i don't know how you do it..." vedia cants her head, little fingers curling against the line of her glass, nails milky and round and clinking against the stem. like set of pearls pried from oysters they kept in the back. "if this was any better it would be positively indecent."