#bluejayblueskies

[shadow0haven]

An icon done for @bluejayblueskies !!! This was done as a bit of a gift and I wanted to share it over here as well.

(ID under cut!)

[ID: A stylized painting of a blue jay bust. The background is gold and orange, with the blue jay at the center. The blue jay is soft blues, blacks, and whites and big charcoal eyes. In its beak, it's holding onto a large sewing needle used for binding books. The needle has a large green string flowing off of it. In the bottom corner is the artists logo "shadow0haven". /End ID]

[knifemartin]

💖🏡🥘 for the fanfic writers ask game!

hehehehe

I've just answered the 💖 but i'll give you the other two!

🏡What is your perfect writing environment?

definitely in the evening, just home from swimming lengths at the pool (hands-down the best place to plan the next chapter), showered and tucked up in bed with a cd playing & ideally with jerry there for company but not when she's watching over my shoulder as i type rain helps too!!!!! and also a cat. and low lighting. maybe chocolate alternate answer: at work when no one's in the office

🥘What wip are you most excited about?

heheheh definitely placeholder, and not just because it's my only wip!!! more specifically, since it's you who's asking & i wanna give you a better answer!! parts 11 & 14 (provided i don't accidentally add parts in between, or move things around)

[organchordsandlightning]

1, 12, and 25 for the end-of-year asks?

from the fanfic end of the year asks

favorite fic you wrote this year

probably a dead tie between The Catacomb Killer and the Lighthouse series! (jay I know you plan on playing DE at some point so I'm giving no spoilers)

For the former, Catacomb was a fun challenge because it was the first time in years that I wrote a proper case fic. it was also canon-compliant and extremely detail-oriented (i probably had a couple hundred screenshots saved from the game for lore tidbits). Alternating POV between [REDACTED PROTAGONIST NAME] and Kim in the style of the game - [REDACTED PROTAGONIST NAME] typically has 24 'Voices' or impulses (Logic, Authority, Encyclopedia, Volition etc) guiding him, which led to me creating Kim's own 24-Voice thought cabinet, writing an appendix for it, and providing a lore-appropriate reason for why Kim would be thinking in that way. I'm really proud of how it turned out, in the end.

Lighthouse series .... my baby. my love. my darling. typically I don't go for stories that erase grief and bring people back from the dead, but I really love playing with the concept of people being at the total mercy of gods ... but also, that the gods don't understand them in return, and sometimes these playtoys are more than they bargained for. also allows me to explore a ton of different headcanons for Arthur's ghosts, and delving into Arthur's feelings of guilt/responsibility and John's desire to live a mortal life again. the series in total is absolutely the longest thing I've written and I hold it near and dear to my heart.

12. favorite character to write about this year

tough question! I'm leaning towards John Doe from Malevolent, if only because exploring his how would a former god navigate humanity angle has been really interesting (also biasing, because he's the one I've written most recently!). Runners-up go to Herbert West (fundamentally a Bad Person) and Jon Sims (got to explore his grief a lot this year, that was fun)

25. a fic you read this year that you would recommend everyone read i asked tumblr and they said it was ok if I put a few @bluejayblueskies 's lovely Modern Jarthur AU, Whisky Old Fashioned Sour - an exceptionally fun modern AU that's wonderfully IC

(also in general, everyone's malevoween entries were great)

@magnetarmadda 's really fluffy JonMartin piece, And There's You - a lovely take on 'what if Martin was Jon's biro awakening' @fruitviking's The Practicalities of Vampirism in the 21st Century - a really fun and witty vampire!Jon Jmart!

Others whose tumblr usernames I do not know: Godlizza's The Couple Down The Street - a middleaged!Danbert AU that does some phenomenal storytelling work, reads like a fun mystery to pick apart.

Idiopathicsmile's Tables and Chairs - a Eugack oneshot from six years ago, brilliantly cute and in character.

and likely a lot more! alas, my brain rarely focuses on reading, but I do try and sit down and push through!

[theskywaslookingback]

5, 19, 48, 83, and 99 for spotify wrapped?

5. Bulletproof Love // Pierce The Veil

19. A Trophy Fathers Trophy Son // Sleeping With Sirens

48. Anniversary // Autoheart

83. The Catalyst // Linkin Park

99. Marbles // The Amazing Devil

ask me my top 100!

[sqwormywormy]

18, 21, and 26 for the fanfic asks?

End of the Year Fanfic Asks

18 current number of wips

15. Some of these likely will stay wips buried in my pile. I've got one big project I have my eyes on once I finish the main wip I'm working on now, although I am very intimidated LMAO. Quite a few of these are fluff and a few plot driven pieces. Unfortunately, I've been evil and keep adding wips to this collection, and most of the ones worked on most recently have been smut lolol.

21 most memorable comment/review

Yes I may sound cheesy saying it but I appreciate literally every comment I get on my fics cause it's just. Each time I get a new comment or even see a new kudos on my fics it's like a little "❗ people enjoy my writing!" And it makes me sooooo fuzzy.

If I had to choose one tho it'd be from @kahtiihma on Sanctity of Your Form: "This is LOVELY! the tone is maintained through the entire scene and having John pov was a great choice. The ending where they talked it over briefly is a good touch as well. I can see where the brainstorming left its mark and I'm glad you were able to finish bc this is TASTY!!"

Sanctity of Your Form was one of the first fics that I wrote that wasn't a quick drabble and it was difficult to keep the writing drive for it going, so hearing that it had a well maintained tone made me soooo happy.

It's also just great cause the whole time I was writing it I was like "is this hot.... Uh...." and I have the habit of running to get advice on discord and the like, so the comments I got outside of AO3 were wonderful too cause I get to hear people go a little bit feral over stuff I was worried about.

I also started collecting the comments I get on my fics and saving them to the priv writing server I made for myself as free dopamine so almost every comment I've gotten is there to make me feel bubbly.

26 number of favorites/bookmarks you made this year

59. Ironically, this year I cut down on bookmarks since I get self conscious bookmarking things even tho it's a baseless concern. Half my favorite fics are not bookmarked and simply found by me hunting for them again.

[loverboybrightsideghost]

so has anyone checked rusty quill's youtube lately

[thewrongshop]

tagged by @bluejayblueskies! thank you!! :))

Relationship status: happily single

Favorite color: kind of a bluish gray or forest green

Favorite food: I recently discovered tomato soup with red bell peppers.... heavenly

Song stuck in my head: Devil's Advocate by The Neighbourhood

Last thing i googled: does covid feel different the second time (I'm fine and covid-free, this was on behalf of my friend who briefly thought she might be sick and also turned out to be fine)

Dream trip: my one roommate recently mentioned the idea of us all going camping after we move out next summer and I can't stop thinking about it :')

Last book read/currently reading: currently reading Call Down the Hawk

Last book enjoyed: I am once again pitching And I Darken. I just reread books 1 and 2 and finally finished the trilogy and just. god. Please visualize me holding up a giant sign that says Ask Me About Fucked Up Relationships In The Ottoman Empire

Last book hated: I had to read a book for a class recently that felt like an incredibly drawn-out metaphor for the author's midlife crisis. Not a fan

Favorite thing to cook/bake: I always get to bake cakes for my roommates' birthdays and yesterday I baked one of them a black forest cake :) that was a very fun one!!

Most niche dislike: not very niche except in the sense that most people like it and I don't, but I'm not a fan of salsa (at least on its own or just with chips)

Opinions on the circus: It's fun! I've only been to one show that I can remember but I really enjoyed it

Sense of direction: If you blindfold me and spin me around in a familiar place I will probably be able to tell more or less which way I'm facing. If you ask me about place names or which street you need to take to get somewhere I'm terrible, I don't even really know my way around the city where I grew up

Some people I want to get to know better (tags): @crit20lesbian, @asexualzoro, @princess-of-purple-prose

[bluejayblueskies]

lol tumblr was like 'look how much you self-reblogged! 🥰' ahdjdksl

[shadow0haven]

"Tell me what we see--"

This is probably a favorite piece of mine right now that was done as a collab with bluejayblueskies as a journal cover and piece!

[You can also find it as a print here!]

[ID below cut!]

[ID: A painting of a depiction of John Doe and Arthur Lester from Malevolent. Arthur is a faired skinned man with freckles, russet hair with gray streaks, wearing a white button down shirt, looking defiant. He stands holding a silver lighter in his right hand that illuminates him and the figure behind him. John Doe is a large, masked figure cloaked in golden yellow and a large white mask with golden eyes and one broken horn on the mask. He has coal black skin and a monstrous hand grasping Arthur's shoulders and neck, claws poking against his shirt. Both of them are cloaked with black and gold smoke circling around them with colored shadows cast on them from the flame of the lighter. The logo of the artist is in the lower left hand corner. Finished March 6th, 2024. /End ID]

[physical-manifestation-of-spite]

do you have a favorite malevolent fic you've read?

Hey, Maple!! Oh boy, do I.

I'll throw in THREE of my favorites, but it's very difficult to choose only three. Malevolent has officially overtaken TMA in my Ao3 bookmarks, so you know it's bad.

Cold as the Rain that Falls in December - by captaincravatthecapricious

My very first Malevolent bookmark, though not the first Malevolent fanfic I ever read. It's set post-S3, which deals with the physical fallout of Arthur's body after being sewn back together with dirty shirt thread. It's an elaborate sickfic I read almost every month. It's such a comfort read. The rest of this writer's Malevolent fics are of similar cloth. Very tasty for those angst-inclined like myself, with a touch of that comfort at the end. It feels like a warm blanket during a rainy day.

and the pendulum swings - by bluejayblueskies

I remember craving a fic like this for many months, and when this was finally published, I was glued to my bed for hours because I kept reading and re-reading it. It's a timeloop fic centered on Ep 20, where Arthur keeps killing himself to prevent the King from winning, and John can't seem to stop it. The devolving madness John tumbles into is delightful. It's one of the best-written oneshots in this fandom, in my opinion.

formaldehyde (Or, The Case of the Missing Lilly) - by SupposedToBeWriting

Right, so, all cards on the table, SupposedToBeWriting is my favorite Malevolent writer. She has made multiple multi-chapter longfics that are COMPLETED and such high quality. But this one in particular gets me. It focuses on the Entity entering Arkham during a botched cult ritual and discovering a recently blinded Arthur Lester who is missing his partner Parker Yang. The Entity learns more about the world through Arthur, willingly or not, and develops into his own person, John Doe. He develops an affection for a singer, Lilly, at a local bar, who goes missing. He enlists in Arthur's help to find her, and a sort of enemy-turned-friendship forms between them. It can be sickening and beautiful. It's one of my favorites.

And just because I can, I'll throw in another SupposedToBeWriting fic that absolutely gutted me: the poem ends, softly as it began (I loved my friend). Arthur is dead. John is living in his dead friend's corpse. Are you sensing a theme with me? If so, keep it to yourself. (And don't worry. It ends happily.)

[organchordsandlightning]

7, 12, 17 (with lighthouse!), and 27 for the weird writer asks?

from the Weird Questions for Writers (aaaaa thank you for asking Jay and hope you're feeling better!)

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

There's always this point, especially during the climax of a longfic, where everything feels like it's reaching a breaking point? Like where all the little threads are coming together and a character realizes what the narrative has been pushing them towards this whole time (see also: the villain revealing their big evil plan , a tragic protagonist realizing there's no other way this can go, etc etc). I always love writing that scene the most because it's just me hopping up and down and shouting THIS IS IT THIS IS WHAT IT'S ALL BEEN ABOUT THIS IS WHY I'VE CALLED YOU ALL HERE TODAY (with 'You' also including myself'.

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

(1.) time oh god more time to write please just let me write i could do so much with more time

(2) would love, like, a Google catered specifically to fic writers. Like, it does me very little to know when the telephone was invented, I need to know when the majority of people had telephones in their homes/how having a telephone was considered socially/what the cultural zeitgeist around telephones were. preferably in pdf form

(3) I'd love, like, a 'finish chapter now' button. i wouldn't abuse it. i'd use it once per fic, max. but sometimes i've been through things SO MUCH in my own head that getting them on paper is THE WORST

27. Who is the most stressful character you’ve ever written? Why?

(Discounting every OC, who is stressful in the sense that I am looking them in their eyeballs and asking WHO ARE YOU --) I'd probably have to say Harrier Du Bois, from the Disco Elysium series.

In short, he's an amnesiac alcoholic (recovering?) drug addict (recovering?) cop (alas not recovering) whose train of thought has 24 distinct voices. His sense of humor is spontaneous and it's so easy to lurch forward into the pit of 'random' humor (and so easy to make him less than a garbage fire than he really is). That he's also part of a game that lets you take a lot of distinct personality pathways also makes it tricky.

(Second place goes to Data from Star Trek, who canonically cannot use contractions and had me magnifying-glass my WIP trying to look for lost 'can'ts' and 'won'ts'.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

JAY I AM SO GLAD YOU ASKED I RAMBLED FAR TOO LONG AS PER USUAL AND PUT ALL OF MY LIGHTHOUSE SERIES TRIVIA UNDER A CUT

hello everyone welcome to my playground. most of the trivia is character specific, so I've divided it by character and limited myself to MAX five bullet points Parker - I don't really have a specific sexuality in mind for most of the characters (Arthur + John are *handwaves* vaguely aspec but they're mostly just trying to get by, y'know) except for Parker being a gay man.

That does come up later, but there's some backstory stuff that I never found a good place to put in:

Parker never really had romantic feelings towards Arthur (though he does admit Arthur cleans up nice). Him becoming Arthur's BFF was as much a surprise to him as it was to Arthur. (I have a lot of feelings about gay men having very close platonic male friends)

Parker has had a few casual encounters up in Boston when casework takes him there. Occasionally he's tried for a more serious relationship, but (a) Boston's a little far, (b) the same casework woes that affect heterosexual detectives also affect homosexual ones, and (c) there's at least one very angry man in Boston who ardently believes Parker is an adulterer.

Arthur doesn't know and never knew. Parker's pretty sure he would be fine with it (though he wouldn't lie and say that bringing Arthur along to a gay club in Boston for case-stuff wasn't a litmus test), but anytime the conversation turned interpersonal and/or heavy, Arthur shut off like an unpaid electric bill.

Parker's family does know that he's gay (though they don't know he's alive, because he hasn't actually told them).

Parker never would have agreed to go up to Boston with Arthur and John during Lighthouse. He wasn't totally convinced that John wasn't some leech/vampire/demon until he saw John clutching Arthur's body in the 2nd fic, upon which he thought, oh shit, that's a whole-ass guy.

The most scared Parker has ever been was when he was on the boat after John jumped ship with Faroe. Parker can take danger and life/death situations; in a pinch, he can even take spooky occult shit, just don't make him take spooky occult shit alone.

John -

John uses a cane: partially for pain issues with his knees, mostly for balance. Trying to balance on his own causes more pain. John ignores this fact frequently.

The reason why John first felt terror when he looked at Faroe was because that was also Arthur's first feeling when he looked at Faroe, and John absorbed it during his time in Arthur's head.

John didn't totally believe that Parker was Parker when they first met until he came face-to-face with Kayne. He trusted Arthur was making the right decision.

Kayne -

Just. So much that I ended up cutting about the mechanics of the Dark World that will undoubtedly be rendered un-canon in a few months. In short - Kayne is the quote unquote "leader" of the Dark World, but it's not really fulfilling its intended purpose. He mostly uses it as a sandbox and lets the rest get overgrown. Everything he's built for the Scooby Gang is intentional.

Kayne can read everyone's thoughts while they're in the Dark World.

The only thing Kayne can't control are the black stars.

Kayne did control Arthur's body for a hot two weeks and went to Boston (he's always wanted to see!). Arthur is saved from police suspicion because Kayne took one look at Arthur's decimated body and went 'yuck' and fixed it up (only to be undone when he returned to the Dark World, for the same reason that Parker woke up in the office where he died and not Innsmouth).

I have a few askance thoughts for what Kayne did during those two weeks: Kayne had a nice steak dinner, Kayne stabbed someone to death in an alley, Kayne met a nice lady at a bar and had sex with her in the bathroom, Kayne got a suit fitted. There were other acts of incredible violence in Boston that week; however, due to how different they were, the police never put it together that it was One Guy.

Arthur -

Arthur will likely never know the two things that, if he discovered, would absolutely wreck him: that he unintentionally transformed a ship full of WWI sailors into cultists and led them to their deaths [after the events of the second fic, they'll crash their ship along a shallow reef] and Kayne's Sex/Violence Party While Wearing his Face.

Arthur's last conversation before he entered the Dark World was with the taxi driver he paid a fiver to guide him to his overgrown parents' house.

General/Themes -

Suffocation is a really strong through-line in the fic: by drowning [on blood or water], by strangling, by hanging. How much is too much is basically the subtitle of the series.

Artistry is also in question - people are constantly mistaking John for an artist, Kayne knows how to make clever chords but mocks the meaning of art, [REDACTED] is introduced through discordant flutes and drums, Parker can't technically play piano but jumps at the chance to murder the ivories with Arthur, Bella wanted to be a garment maker more than she wanted to be a mother, Faroe is first shown drawing shapes in flour on the boat.

Mayhaps the church with the glowing yellow stained glass window in the Dark World can be our lighthouse

[moofbat]

My piece for FTH this year for @bluejayblueskies ! this was so fun to do :)

ID: a digital drawing of sasha and zolf from rusty quill gaming stood back to back in combat. zolf is front and to the left facing the viewer, standing defensively with his left arm out in front of sasha as he casts a spell. sasha is behind and to the right with her back slightly to the audience, her head over her shoulder looking towards the viewer as she guards her front with her daggers. zolf has eye length curtains and his beard is planted in two plaits, he wears a jumper and plain trousers with a knee length overcoat. he has his trident and dolphin necklace, and his wooden leg leg from season 1, he looks irritated but unshaken as energy comes out of his raised and open hand. sasha is in her long black leather coat, tight trousers and mid calf boots with a thigh sheath for a knife on her left leg. she has eye length short black hair and a certain degree of nervousness to her expression. they are on a plain blue-grey background with a dark blue denoting the ground that they stand on, sasha and zolf themselves are a shade of light blue with more saturated blue shadows. end ID

[arthurtaylorlester]

Since you're apparently THE knows about Malevolent guy, do you have any favorite fics or series recommendations?

ok loving the new reputation as The Malevolent Man, but i haven't really had time to read that many new fics so here's some of the ✨classics✨

a universe that doesn't care and people who do by supposedtobwriting - a 3-part series rounding up to 230k words, with john/arthur (can be /platonic imo) in a s2 finale canon-divergence, the found family in this is amazing !!!

meowlevolent week by smallsies - the reason i made a really good friend, this is a lovely series about john and arthur bettering each other's live in a fluffy college professor modern au feat. pets and faroe being adorable !!!!

oh, i love you so much (it scares me half to death) by supposedtobwriting - ngl i love this author just read all their fics they're amazing, but this one in particular, written for the malevolent bang, is about jarthur as private eyes in separate bodies as the world around them starts to mysteriously fall apart

asunder by redcore - this isn't a classic at all lmao this is just self-promo, read this if you want short, sweet, extremely visceral angst

some i haven't read but would argue are fandom classics

whiskey old fashioned sour by bluejayblueskies

formaldehyde (or, the case of the missing lilly) by supposedtobewriting

and some more i haven't read but would like to read from the malevolent fic bang event !!

and the pendulum swings by bluejayblueskies

inheritance laws by maddoc05

i'm not giving up (just giving in) by thecarrionqueen

wait through the night for the dawn light to break by coffeecats

doe and lester in: the nitrate dogfight by dyedviolet

hope this helped x and everyone feel free to add on your own recs !!!

[livebloggingmydescentintomadness]

Hey man

this is the malevolent fic-starved anon.

You mentioned a Jarthur fic rec list

👁️👁️👁️

yo! i got you 👍

i haven't published the post yet because there are some more fics in my marked for later i want to get through first, but i'll go head and copy/paste the list i have so far for your enjoyment. putting it under a cut since it's long.

formaldehyde (or, The Case of the Missing Lilly) by SupposedToBeWriting 110k M

Half of the King in Yellow gets ejected through a portal on a failed ritual. To return, he must perform a human sacrifice - harder than it first seems, as the entity struggles to adapt to the peculiar ways of mortals. In a stroke of luck, he finds the perfect sacrifice in the form of one drunken, surly ex-PI: Arthur Lester.

In the meanwhile, Arkham is in the swing of Prohibition and everyone knows how things work around here. A chance meeting and an abrupt kidnapping put John and Arthur on a case: one where secrets lurk behind every mask and blood flows thicker than gin.

Surrogate: The Director's Cut by Kraiva, Somniate, Trin (ssjtrinity) 637k+ WIP M

The King in Yellow had a plan. It worked, and Arthur Lester broke.

Then it all went to hell.

A certain Outer God took issue with his favorite show's cancellation, and arrived with certain demands.

Hastur is furious. His adopted daughter is afraid. John wants to kill his other half; and Arthur has a lot of healing to do in rebuilt Carcosa, in the mystical Dreamlands.

Forced family is not, as it turns out, a good time for anyone.

(yes, this fic is absurdly long, and YES, it's absolutely worth it)

All that is mine to me, all that is yours to you by Stringgoblin 86k M

"We'll find you a nice cadaver, or something."

After everything, Arthur and John finally have time to figure out how to get John his own body. It isn't a pleasant process. It turns out that having a fragment of a god excised from your mind has some side-effects, and being a fragment of a god suddenly resident in a human ex-corpse isn't particularly straightforward either.

They'll help each other through it. They always do.

whiskey old fashioned sour by bluejayblueskies 80k E

Following the death of his daughter, famous film composer and pianist Arthur Lester drops out of the music scene and disappears from the public eye. Ten years later, Arthur now works as a private investigator and has no interest in performing or composing ever again.

John is intrigued by Arthur, who comes to his club to drink on the rare nights that there’s no music scheduled. As they meet again and again, they begin to grow closer. But Arthur isn’t the only one with a past he’s trying to run away from.

In a Yellow Wood by oprime 72k T

John is gone, and Arthur goes back about the business of living. Until he finds himself thrust back into the dark underbelly of the world and decides to find his best friend. Or die trying.

I Prefer My Heart to Be Broken by Trin (ssjtrinity) 140k M

(TMA/Malevolent crossover)

Somewhere Else isn't right, and they've never talked about what happened in the Panopticon, but so what? They're together. The Fears aren’t gone, no, but behind a curtain, subdued.

Martin actually loves the small-village life, farming and friends and found family. Jon is... managing. They're making it work.

But the universe they landed in is occupied, and its current rulers are very interested in the new kids. Entities made of Fear, attached to a damaged ex-human and his surprisingly sneaky lover? Who could resist playing with that?

Everyone has plans, and plans under those plans. What happens when a web grows too heavy to support its own weight?

"Tears and blood, blood and tears," says Kayne.

He is not wrong.

Oh, I Love You So Much (It Scares Me Half To Death) by SupposedToBeWriting 84k M

Arthur and John have become Doe & Lester, private detectives. Finally in his own body, John is eager to see what the rest of his mortal life holds -- Arthur, on the other hand, believes that John should spend his life without Arthur holding him back. Arthur is not the sort of man who can provide stability, warmth. A family.

On a case, they find a baby clutched in the arms of her dead father. John grows attached quickly, and together, the men discover that the baby is in fact Emily MacFarland from another timeline... and that the universe is much more breakable than they thought.

The sky falls around their ears, strange flesh monsters crawl from portals, and the world seems to be nearing its end. John begins to realize what exactly he wants out of life, as Arthur faces the constant enemy to his own happiness: himself.

A Night Out In Albany by SupposedToBeWriting 9k M

Arthur and John arrive in Albany after the last train to New York leaves. Stranding in Albany for the night, they take advantage of the opportunity and get Arthur a change of clothes and a shave -- and maybe even a movie, if time allows. After the horrors they encountered in Addison, and amidst Arthur's growing suspicion that his friend is hiding something, sometimes it's nice to have a night out on the town.

How Their Light Sets Me Dreaming by Artistic_Witch 12.6k M

After the confrontation with the King, John awakens to a beautiful vision of a life he and Arthur never had the chance to lead. Is this a manipulative trick meant to break him, or something else entirely?

Now That's What I Call Entangled! by Croik 58k E

On the way to the plateau, Arthur and John discover a spell in one of their books that will (hopefully) allow them to fight back against the King in Yellow. But when John ends up absorbed by the King, it's up to Arthur to free him.

tachycardia by bluejayblueskies 6.3k E

The thump-thump-thump increases until it’s all John can hear, and quite frankly, he’s had enough. “Just calm down!” he snarls, and he clenches his hand into a fist, and then—

And then, it stops.

John has a single moment of blissful silence.

Then, Arthur wheezes and crumples to the ground.

.

Or, John gains control of Arthur’s heart.

In Vino Veritas by SupposedToBeWriting 5k T

Taking advantage of relative safety, John and Arthur have a nice meal and a bottle of wine. It takes some time before they realize that certain god fragments are not immune to the effects of alcohol, and certain mortal men have recently lost a significant amount of blood. Confessions are made, plans are established, and a good rest is had by all.

Take My Skin and Wear It by PrettyArbitrary 3k E

Stripped to his skin, Arthur lays back on the mattress. “All right, John, I’m all yours.”

They share a body. John thinks it's about time he got more familiar with it.

It Would Be A Long Drive Home by Croik 20k T

The King in Yellow throws Arthur out of the Dreamlands, convinced that will be the end of his troubles. But he's miscalculated - Arthur and John are still deeply entangled, and the threat of Arthur's death and banishment to the Dark World hangs over them all. The King has no choice but to help Arthur survive this, for his own sake (aka Arthur Never Makes the Deal with Kayne AU).

Faroe's Waltz by Wildehack (tyleet) 10k M

Arthur dreams of pain and wakes to music: the opening strains of a melody, left incomplete.

Cold As the Rain That Falls in December by captaincravatthecapricious 41k M

There's no way Arthur just waltzes off to NY with a hole in his stomach sewed up by filthy thread and fishhooks, right?

Phagia by PrettyArbitrary 4k T

It's a holdover from his old body, his old identity. Sometimes his blunt little human teeth ache to bite. To rend, to tear into flesh and set his jaw and just rip.

a burden halved by Calamitatum 11k

Arthur's scars litter his skin like a roadmap of mistakes, the harrowing evidence of everything he's suffered to keep them both alive.

When John is injured on a case, he's startled to find that Arthur can't feel it. Determined, for once, to ease his friend's burden, John keeps the severity of the wound to himself. After all, he's seen Arthur bounce back from plenty worse, right?

Right?

From Roots to Tip by Croik 3.2k E

Breaktime in the Dreamlands, and Arthur promised that John would have his turn for a "hand job."

The Lightning In The Collied Night by Artistic_Witch 4k G

Arthur decides to help John acclimate to his new body by teaching him how to dance.

Sometimes all you can do is dance in the dark...

Embrace the World Ahead by SupposedToBeWriting 2k T

Taking a quiet moment, Arthur starts to nod off. John has a question he'd like to ask, and in return, Arthur receives the first hug he'd had in a very, very long while.

[skayafair]

Finally a human!John I see in my mind!

This particular image is inspired by "whisky old fashioned sour" by @bluejayblueskies

(Inspired by because I remember very few appearance details past the tattoes and facial expressions, so I mostly remember only the image that was playing out in my mind while reading when it was still being published. I think John was wearing mostly t-shirts there but a bartender outfit AND piercing? I couldn't resist)