#there is no extra arc

[olivia-anderson-fanfic]

Stale(mate)

Summary: A pact written in blood.

(Vampire!au Dickinette. Vampire!Mari says ACAB. As a cop, Dick thinks this is very concerning.)

It started, as all cases of serial killers do, with a single body.

It was a particularly alarming scene, one that haunted the few officers that had borne witness to it for the next several days. Not because of the murder itself, though that was frightening on its own. When the man’s head had been lifted to check for a pulse, they were given a perfect view of why his neck could no longer support it – for there wasn’t much neck left at all. Deep claw marks poked their way through his shirt, curling themselves in his skin, leaving gaping wounds in their wake. Gunpowder residue suggested that the man had shot at his attacker, but there was no bullet at the scene, and no blood. Not even his own. Despite the cruelty involved in the murder, it was clear that there was a method behind the madness, because he had been bled of every last drop, and said blood had been stolen away.

This wasn’t why the police had been so shaken, though.

It was because the man was one of their own.

It was because, in the officer’s hand, stiff with rigor mortis, was a slip of paper, with one simple sentence in curling, elegant script:

The police department has been dirty lately, but don’t worry, I will clean it up for you all.

Needless to say, the case quickly became a high priority.

Everyone on the force was called to inspect the scene. Invited to take pictures of evidence. Begged for theories.

Dick Grayson knelt in front of the body. His lips were pressed into a thin line, but not quite out of disgust or concern like his peers’.

No, his eyes found their way to the hand that had been clutching the note. It had been taken away for the sake of evidence, but the words were seared into his mind regardless.

The man in front of him had been a dirty cop. Dick had known that even before this had happened, but he had never been able to get any hard evidence. Nothing that couldn’t have been explained away, at least.

Now, it wasn’t necessary.

The words on the slip of paper echoed the ones he had told himself when he had joined the Bludhaven PD. The promise he had made to himself. That he would find evidence on all of the dirty cops, that he would clean up the force.

It seemed like someone was going to do all of the hard work for him.

He put the thought out of his mind. He might agree with the reasoning, at least on some level, but he figured that agreeing with a potential serial killer wasn’t exactly the way to go.

He shook his head. He would focus on this case, get this murderer off the streets, and then go back to his true goal.

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

How do you catch someone who leaves no clues behind?

The night it happened, Dick had been staying late, pondering this very question. More cops had been found dead, all drained of blood, all looking as if they had had a run-in with a wild animal, all with their throats torn out. He had stared at the many pictures of all of the different crime scenes that lay strewn across his desk, drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, trying to find any semblance of a clue. But there wasn’t any.

His attention had been stolen away.

Maybe this should have been the first sign.

It shouldn’t have been all that interesting, shouldn’t have held his gaze longer than a few seconds. A cop was bringing in a woman. Based on the gem-covered, short dress with a low v-cut, and the fact that she was clearly on at least one substance, Dick figured she had probably come from a bar. Nothing new. Not worth the ruckus that had started up the moment she had come in, and certainly not worth a second glance from him in particular.

“Drunk and disorderly,” the cop holding her hands behind her back announced to the too-curious room.

Her eyes were sharp when they swept over the room. This should have been the second sign.

The third sign came quickly, the moment she spoke. For there wasn’t nearly as much of a slur to her words as the strap of her dress hanging from her shoulder and the dazed look on her face might have suggested:

“C’mooooon,” she complained, leaning back against the officer, digging her heels in to make it harder for him to take her to one of the holding cells, her head turning to nuzzle into his neck. “Can’t we just keep this between you ‘n me? I’ll make it worth your while…”

The officer’s face flushed red. Her mouth came to press against his pulse point.

Her lips curled into a kind of grin. But not the kind of grin you might expect from someone who was about to get out of jail. Dick had seen that look before. That was full of relief, or sometimes smug, but this was different. No, there was something malevolent there.

She whispered something, and this was the final warning.

Because the officer’s eyes widened in abject terror.

Dick started to rise, his hand finding its way to the gun at his hip.

He never got the chance to even try.

She dug her teeth into his neck and pulled, yanking his artery right out into the open. Blood spurted, splashing everyone in the nearby vicinity in red.

Including her, but she didn’t seem all that concerned. She held the rapidly dying man close to her, her head still tipped back against his shoulder, her tongue poking out of her mouth as if she was concentrating hard on something.

Finally, he was allowed to fall to the ground, and she showed off freed hands. The handcuffs still hung from one of her wrists, but she was no longer limited to only her teeth.

A bullet slammed into her stomach, and she stumbled just slightly with the force of it, but didn’t seem all that affected. She reached down to pick the bullet out of her dress, and then presented it for all to see. There wasn’t a single speck of blood on it.

“Someone’s gonna be paying me back for this dress. I liked it.”

This wasn’t their main concern, though, because the woman launched herself at the cop who had dared to shoot her.

She didn’t even bother with her teeth this time. Instead, she slashed her throat with long claws, and the woman gave a silent scream as she went down, frantically trying to hold the blood in.

She didn’t pay her any mind, instead turning to her next victim.

Dick just… stared as she made quick work of the precinct.

He couldn’t quite bring himself to jump directly into a losing battle. He knew better than that. The only effect the constant gunfire seemed to have on her was annoyance. If she wasn’t concerned about a bullet, then there was little he could do to stop her. She was fast, invulnerable, and (if the desk she threw at the people running for the doors meant anything) stronger than a normal person could reasonably fight off. Fighting her was stupid, and so he didn’t.

And, beyond that… well, he had already admitted, even if just to himself, that he agreed with her goal, even if her methods were hard to agree with. He couldn’t quite bring himself to try and stop her when she was doing what he had been struggling with for months now.

She was efficient, if ruthlessly so.

Before long, he was the only person left alive.

She slowed to a stop. Her hair was a mess, her bun on its last legs, strands falling in her face messily. Somehow, this didn’t make her look like a mess at all. Somehow, even the blood spilling down her chin just added to the strange, unearthly beauty that he couldn’t seem to look away from.

Her lips pulled into an amused smile.

His eyes caught on her teeth, dripping red. On the long canines that might have poked out of her mouth even when her lips were closed, on the other sharp teeth that could tear him to shreds in a second. She ran a tongue over her teeth, her eyes gleaming with something that was distinctly inhuman. Something more.

“You didn’t shoot,” she said.

He swallowed thickly, and then mentally cursed himself when the motion drew her eyes to his neck. “I –... it wasn’t helping anyone else,” he said.

She hummed, pursing her lips in a way that was definitely mocking him. “Did you know your heart rate increases when you lie?”

“Well, my heartrate being fast isn’t all that surprising. I am a little scared of you.”

She laughed, and her teeth glinted in the light. “That, at least, is true.”

She walked towards him, her steps slow and languid, as if she had all the time in the world.

She did.

She came to stand in front of him, and he almost laughed aloud at the height difference between them. You would expect a serial killer to be tall, strong, imposing. She was strong, but if he hadn’t known any better he would have walked right past her on the street without being any the wiser. If not for the blood staining her front, he might have thought her pretty. Maybe he still did, but not in the way he usually found people pretty, but instead like a waterfall. A force of nature, a gorgeous thing you can’t quite tear your eyes away from, something that will pitch you off the side of a cliff, down hundreds of feet towards your doom.

Her gaze flicked downwards, to the gun pointed at her heart. It was useless, they both knew, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of it. Maybe it was because he was human, but he couldn’t give in, couldn’t lay down and die. Not entirely. He wanted to fight. He wanted to keep her from truly trying to fight him.

Too pale blue eyes (bloodless, he realized dully) zeroed in on the nameplate on his chest. Her gaze, briefly, flicked to the side, as if considering, but either she didn’t care enough to dwell on it or her thoughts raced faster than he could ever hope to comprehend, because she found her way back to his eyes within a second.

She leaned into his space. A hand came up to cup his chin, and he only just stopped himself from flinching.

If she wanted to kill him, he wouldn’t be able to stop her. If he couldn't hold onto his life then, at least, he would hold onto his pride.

A finger came to rest against his pulse point, and even he could feel just how fast his blood was pumping beneath it.

He didn’t have much pride left, but he could at least have this. The knowledge that he hadn’t screamed and cried and tried to run away like everyone else.

“Officer Grayson?” She said, and a faint accent hung onto her words as she sounded out the name, but he couldn’t quite care about figuring out where it was from when a fanged mouth was nearing him. “I’ve heard a lot of good things about you, so I’ll let you off for good behavior.”

“You’re pretty close for someone that’s going to be letting me go.”

She hummed, an impossibly low sound that almost reminded him of a purr, and then tilted his head to the side with her hand. “Well, something tells me that your shock might wear off soon, and I want to be able to clean up in peace.”

This was all the warning he got before her teeth sunk into his neck.

Have you ever been put under anesthesia?

A sudden rush, a buzzing in your head drowning out all thoughts you could have in just a second. No matter how hard you thrash, no matter the amount of panic making your heart race, your eyes droop against your will. Within seconds, you’re gone.

That was what it was like.

Not that Dick passed out, per say. No, he was very much awake. He just… couldn’t bring himself to do much of anything. Not even stand on his own two feet. If it were not for the arm wrapped around his waist, the hand cradling his chin, he would have collapsed instantly. The gun slipped from his fingers and somewhere, distantly, he recognized that it had gone off, but he didn’t really care.

Lips detached themselves from his skin, and she carefully lowered him to the ground.

She smiled, swiping away the stream of blood sliding down the side of her face with her thumb.

“Sweet,” she mused.

“Mm,” Dick said, though even he wasn’t sure what he had been trying to say. He felt… floaty. He had never been one for drugs and had never liked the taste of alcohol enough to get anywhere near blackout drunk, but he suddenly understood why people were so into them. There was something relaxing about not being able to hold a thought longer than a few seconds, freeing about the idea of all of his worries falling away into nothing. He was almost scared of how he would feel after the weird floatiness was gone, but he couldn’t even bring himself to care about that.

All he could think about was the pleasant little smile on the woman’s face, sharp teeth dripping with blood and something that had a deep purple tint.

He lifted a heavy hand towards her.

She snickered and batted the hand away with ease. “Mm indeed, Officer Grayson. How about you get some shut-eye, hm?”

That sounded like a good idea.

He thought about thanking her for it, but he drifted before he could.

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

Dick, obviously, had a lot of things to explain when he awoke, his head pounding and in desperate need of something to eat.

Luckily or unluckily, the footage of the incident had been wiped. As had the blood. He wasn’t sure how she did it, because the murders had been bloody and she’d made no attempts at all to try and mitigate that… but his concern was more with how he would have looked on camera. He hadn’t made any attempts to stop her, and had allowed her to put him to sleep without any hints of a struggle. It would not have looked good.

But it also didn’t look good to be the new-ish recruit who was inexplicably the only one left alive during a mass murder.

Thankfully, his blood tests exonerated him. His inability to react was attributed to high traces of a sedative that had gotten into his system. The two pinpricks in his neck were said to be the injection sight and, thanks to the awkward positioning that would require him to contort quite a bit to take it himself, they just assumed he was dosed by a rowdy criminal he had arrested earlier that day, and that it had kicked in at a bad time.

Within a few hours, he was let go to go and sleep off the last of the ‘drug’, given a few days' grace before he would need to give a witness statement…

But he didn’t sleep.

He couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Because it was his job. She was a case that he needed to solve, and it had suddenly become far more difficult. It would take careful planning to take her down. There was a very high chance that he would die trying.

And…

Because of the way she had made him feel. Even hours later, he couldn’t seem to stop craving the feeling of her teeth sinking into him. It hadn’t even hurt. The second she had broken the skin, he had been enveloped in a warm feeling that he couldn’t help but want to go back to. It was as if all of his problems had melted away in that second, and who wants to have problems? Wasn’t it only natural to get a taste of that kind of freedom and then crave it from then on?

As long as he didn’t let it affect his search for her, then it didn’t really matter.

He gripped his phone tighter, the veins in his arms bulging.

It might even help.

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

It had been three weeks, but there she was.

If he hadn’t seen it in person, he wouldn’t believe it.

A real-life vampire.

Standing in the sun. He supposed it wasn’t all that surprising to see that she didn’t die like in the stories. The idea of something as powerful as her crumbling away into ash over something so trivial seemed impossible.

If she had noticed him, she didn’t show it. Humming a playful little tune, her head bobbing to music playing in her earbuds, her sundress flowing in the wind, her mess of keychains clinking together as she locked up her apartment… she looked human, in that moment. Like any other person who was just going about their day. She had a job as a tailor. A couple of friends that she would meet up with later. A pet cat that was already meowing and scratching at the door, begging for her to go back in for ‘just a couple more’ pets. She was so… normal.

Maybe the reason they were seen as creatures of the night was less about that being their domain, and more about how difficult it was to see her as anything but human during the daytime. It was hard to conflate the image of her dripping in blood with the girl who looked so alive.

Dick’s breath caught in his throat.

She paused just slightly. She didn’t move, didn’t even stop humming, and yet the air around her changed. Her smile stretched wider, showing off the fangs that had been plaguing his mind for weeks.

But the sun softened even that edge. Glittery lipgloss glimmered on her lips. Sunspots decorated the bridge of her nose. Even the lifeless blue eyes he had noticed on that first night seemed bright when reflecting the sunlight.

She clapped her hands together by her face as if she was just so delighted to see him. “Officer Grayson, sweetheart, how have you been?” she greeted him, as if they were old friends, as if he hadn’t shown up at her house uninvited and she hadn’t killed a majority of his coworkers.

“Awful,” he hissed.

Which was true. His skin had taken on a pallor, sweat beaded his brow more often than not, and his hair hung limp around his face. Whenever the few coworkers he had left asked, he would say he was sick, but that wasn’t quite right. He just felt… antsy. Like something was crawling beneath his skin, trying to claw its way out. He needed to keep moving. If he didn’t, his mind would stray back to the floaty feeling that the vampire had given him, and how that might help calm him down.

“Yeah, you look it,” she teased, taking a few short strides in his direction. “That venom did a number on you. Maybe I used too much…?”

She reached a hand out, ready to grab him by the chin, looking so damn concerned that he almost believed it, but he caught her wrist before she could.

The handcuffs hanging from one of his belt loops were burning hot in the few places where they touched his leg. Which was to be expected on a day as hot as this, where he had to unbutton his shirt and roll up his sleeves for fear of heat stroke, metal does get hot… but it was more than that.

The handcuffs that his department used were plated with silver, or at least a pure enough alloy of it for the cuffs to give vampires pause. Back during her siege on the precinct, she had forgone the use of her superhuman strength when getting out of the cuffs, having to get out the old-fashioned way by stealing the key. If there was any chance of subduing her in a way that was still in line with his training as a police officer, it was through this.

He needed to arrest her.

And yet.

He needed answers more.

He knew where she lived, anyways, so it wasn’t like she could up and leave that easily.

He could spare a few moments to ask why he felt so terrible. Why all of his thoughts were plagued with thoughts of the purple venom that she had injected into him.

“What did you do to me?”

She inspected him for a minute, blue eyes boreing into his own, and he couldn’t help but look away.

She must have found whatever she was looking for regardless, because she answered him: “I used some venom – er, vampire venom, though I think you know that much at least – it was just to calm you down. It’s supposed to be used to subdue our…” she glanced to the side “food while we eat it – think like a rattlesnake or something, but a little more enjoyable for the food… less neurotoxin more vague high feeling… usually people like me tend to take more time when eating, I just tend to be on a bit of a time crunch, so I don’t really use it for that… it does make a good sedative for getaways, though, which is why I did that…”

He stared at her. It stood to good reason that she had never explained venom before, vampires were secretive in nature, but the explanation was so scattered, as if she was coming up with all of it on the fly.

How had he ever thought her a threat?

How was she?

“Now,” she said. “As fun as explaining that was, I do have to pay the bills, so –.”

“Why did you let me live?”

She sighed, rolling her eyes. “I’ve already told you. It’s because I’ve heard a lot of good things about you.” Her lips twitched. “You’re ‘one of the good ones’, if you want to explain it terribly.”

“Why should that matter? I’m still food.”

“You’re not food. And, just so you know, I’m not a monster, either.”

He went quiet.

She smiled.

“Ciao,” she said.

Her teeth sunk into his arm, and that was just about the last thing he remembered before he was back to floating. His skin felt like it was buzzing where she held him, dragging him back toward his car. His vision was a blur of bright skies and a brilliant smile.

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

Dick groaned when he came to properly. He was laid across the backseat of his own car, the hand she hadn’t bitten pillowing his head. Which meant both of his arms were numb, great. His eyes struggled to focus on the ceiling of the car. Possibly because there wasn’t much to focus on, but more likely because his vision was generally blurry. His head ached, and he realized that, fittingly, he could count out his racing pulse with every throb in his temples.

Okay, admittedly, he had been a little unprepared.

But he could prepare himself now. He knew about her safehouse and, even though it was very likely that she was abandoning it now, it should give him a good idea of the kinds of places she would stay in.

And, if he could get into one of her safehouses when she wasn’t there, then he could really prepare.

He moved to let himself out of the car so he could go in and inspect the place.

… it was a cop car. The backseat is reserved for criminals to be taken in, and couldn’t be unlocked from within for fear of a criminal jumping out during a red light. He kicked the door in frustration.

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

“How old are you?” Dick asked the next time he saw her at the precinct. It was a slow day, with only a few cops, none of whom were nearby, and only one ‘prisoner’, so no one paid any mind to their chatty coworker.

You could ask why he wasn’t trying to warn anyone, but he knew it wouldn’t do any good, and he still didn’t have anything that would stop her in her tracks, much less get rid of her for good.

As callous as it might have been, his current objective had shifted. He needed to make sure she didn’t go on a killing spree while he was on the job again. He couldn’t take her down if he was sitting behind bars for collusion.

So. Keep her talking.

“Why do you care? This isn’t Twilight, y’know, I’m not going to fight a werewolf for you,” she said, leaning against the bars.

“You know Twilight? You have to be young, then,” Dick said, a ghost of a smile dancing across his face at the small victory.

She gave a quiet laugh. “Every vampire knows Twilight, trust me. I swear, I may be killing people, but it’s just rude to ask if I sparkle in the sun when I’m trying to do it!”

He tried to imagine that, for just a moment, and a laugh bubbled out of him. “I see.”

“Ugh, if another edge lord tells me that they want me to turn them so they can be with their people or whatever, I’m going to step out into the sun.”

There was a moment of silence, and he could almost feel her hesitation, the words hanging in the air, waiting for her to acknowledge them.

“Twenty-six.”

“I mean, like… actually,” Dick groaned.

She snickered. “I’m serious. I was born twenty-six years ago, in Paris, to this lovely French couple. Humans, just so you don’t ask.”

He mulled this over. She was… twenty-six. At maximum, she had twenty-six years of being a vampire under her belt, and that was if she had been turned as a newborn. If her age of turning was her physical age, then he would guess that she had had maybe two or three years as a vampire.

She had been a human for… most of her life.

How would he feel if he had gone from human one day, to a bloodthirsty monster the next? How could he live, knowing that the only way to do so was to make a meal of other people?

He had the sinking feeling that he would react much the same as she had. Grab the worst people he could get access to, and chow down. Because the other option was to starve, and starving was one of the worst ways to go.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to think about that. “Humans?”

“Mhmm,” she said. “Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng. They were great.”

Dick didn’t miss the use of were.

“How would they feel about their little girl going around killing people?”

She scoffed. “Well, I’d like to imagine that they would be glad I’m not dead, too.”

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

The vampire hummed as the door swung open. She glanced behind herself, making sure that she wasn’t being followed, and then swept a leg out to catch her cat before he could sneak past. She scooped him up by the scruff of his neck, giving the cat a tired look.

“Really?”

The cat, being a cat, meowed.

She meowed back. As all cat owners must.

She closed the door behind herself without even bothering to glance back, instead concentrating on making sure her cat didn’t wriggle away. But, finally, the risk was gone, and she set him down. Immediately, he took off in the direction of his food and water bowls, meowing loudly for sustenance, and she laughed lightly, making a move to follow...

Only to stop cold.

Her welcome mat had been turned around while she was out.

Now, most people wouldn’t notice. And, if they did, this would make them immediately wary of who was there and why they would do such a thing.

But Marinette wasn’t a ‘people’ at all, and her expression immediately twisted. She looked back at her door, and found the doorknob had been turned upside down.

Dick’s heart pounded in his chest, and he had to hope that she would just assume it belonged to her cat.

Whether or not she was fooled, she seemed to have bigger problems.

For, you see, he had done some research on vampires and their houses, and found very little that he could use. But in the footnotes of an article about classic vampire mansions (which didn’t apply in this dingy little apartment), he found a strange detail: that, when someone you knew turned into a vampire, you were supposed to flip the doorknob upside down so they couldn’t get back in. Vampires were creatures of habit, the article claimed, and this would confuse them so much that they would have no choice but to leave.

She didn’t look like she was all that confused, admittedly, but she wasn’t making any moves to attack, nor leave. She stood perfectly in the center of the mat, trapped.

“Fuck,” she breathed.

He breathed out a sigh of relief.

Her head jerked to look at him and, for once, he got to see her when she had been thrown out of her element. There was no smile on her face, just pure terror.

It… didn’t feel as good as it probably should.

“The welcome mat?” she said, sounding genuinely offended.

“Well, you vampires aren’t supposed to be able to get inside without being invited,” he argued, coming out from behind the counter. “It’s only fair that I change the mat.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. “I was invited. This is my house. You are the one who showed up uninvited.”

He decidedly ignored her in favor of pulling out his phone. Trembling fingers scrolled through tab after tab on vampires, until he came upon the one he wanted:

An exorcism.

For just a moment, he hesitated. And not just because the video warned that you had to be a priest to perform an exorcism.

No, it was because she looked so human at the moment, her eyes wide and her fingers bunched in the fabric of her dress, anxiety rolling off of her in waves. Dick had killed people before, it was a part of his job, sometimes he had to make tough choices… but shooting someone was far faster than any of the methods for killing vampires that he had been able to find. Shooting someone was a split-second decision, something that could haunt you but ultimately didn’t give you enough time to regret, to have that horrible second thought.

This was more.

And, though he hated to admit it, there was another, less virtuous reason.

It was also because of that purple liquid she had injected into him. It was… nice. A horrible part of him was dangerously aware of the fact that she was trapped here, would starve without his help, and that she would likely do anything he asked once she got hungry enough. He could get a constant buzz, at the cost of a murderer’s freedom.

At least this jail was nicer than the one she would have gotten were she human.

He shook his head to clear it.

If he didn’t do this now, it would only be harder to quit later on.

He clicked play on the Youtube video, and then repeated after the kindly priest, chanting, a cross held out.

She pressed back against the door and started sliding down, but not in horror or because she was weakening. She looked… bored.

“Hey, an important thing to know about vampires: Christianity doesn’t mean shit to us. Christians are just liars who saw scared townsfolk and decided that they could capitalize. ‘Hey, look, we conveniently have all of the solutions to your vampire problems’.”

Dick… didn’t know what to do about that. Most of the solutions he had found were Christian-based.

But perhaps she was lying.

⋆♱✮☽🦇☽✮♰⋆

She was not. Dick had tried everything. Silver to weaken her. Garlic. Holy water…

He had even had time to feed her cat!

He sat on her counter, among aged wine bottles filled with blood (she had gleefully explained to him that the alcohol stopped the blood from coagulating, which he had not needed to know), scrolling through the internet frantically for something that might work.

She glared at him, her face half-buried in her cat’s fur. Like he had done something wrong. Sure, he had gone into this fully expecting the exorcism to send her crumbling into ash, but she had been trying to drain people of their blood, so he thought that this was kind of fair game.

Still, he bristled. Offended and defensive. “What, was I just supposed to let you go on killing people?!”

“They were going to die anyways, were they not?” she argued.

“Not for several years!”

“That’s the problem,” she said, rolling her eyes. She stroked her cat’s fur, scratching it behind the ear, and the cat purred as it leaned into her. “They would have used those ‘several years’ to cause harm. Wouldn’t it be better this way?”

“They have families! Those people were innocent, and now –!”

“Their victims were innocent, too. So were the victims’ families. But you never see people talk about them.”

Dick… didn’t quite have a retort for that one.

He sighed, running his hands through his hair. “They’re bad people, okay? I agree. But you can take them down using the system, you don’t have to kill them.”

“How’s that been going for you?” She said, raising an eyebrow skeptically.

Dick, once again, wasn’t sure.

“We have the same goal, sweetheart. I’m better at achieving it, obviously, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t work together. I can get all of the people you can’t get evidence on, you can get me schedules and stuff so I don’t accidentally incriminate you or anything. We could work.”

He shook his head. “I can’t let you do that.”

She sighed, tipping her head back to rest against the door. Her expression shuttered closed. “Then do me a favor and go through the actual process to kill me already.”

He perked up.

“Stab me through the heart with a wooden stake, use it to pin me to the earth until I stop moving, burn my body, and then scatter my ashes in a river so I can’t reform.”

“That’s…” Dick said, deflating.

“A lot. But still better than starving. So, prove you’re a good cop, do me a mercy.”

Dick hesitated, chewing on his bottom lip. He could tell she was manipulating him, but to what end? Was she really so scared of starving that she would advocate for her own murder? Or was this all just her version of reverse psychology?

Damn, his head hurt.

It was still hurting from the pseudo-hangover the vampire venom had given him, but this certainly wasn’t helping.

He combed his fingers through his hair, thinking hard. “I’m not going to let you starve...”

She raised an eyebrow.

“What? Going to start body snatching from the morgue or something?”

He snorted a little, shaking his head. “No.” He walked across the small apartment and held his arm out, wrist bared. “You need blood. I have blood. Problem solved.”

“I’m not going to be your pet, I hope you know.”

His lips twitched into something of a wry grin. “I know.”

“I could drug you out of your mind. You wouldn’t even know your own name, much less that you need to run. I may not be able to leave here, but it would not be difficult to make sure that you reach the same fate.”

“I thought you weren’t a monster.”

She grinned, sharp teeth flashing in the light. “Treat me like one, and I will deliver. When I get out of here, I will tear you to shreds. And I will make sure you feel every second of it.”

“I knew the risks when I got this job.”

“Funny. All of your coworkers used to say the same thing.”

He offered her his hand again, and this time she took it.

Teeth sunk into his wrist, and this time it hurt.

[vos0q]

“I’ll dice em up-de gozaru!”

[supernowa-art]

elbaf fits! they have good drip this arc!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[sproutastronaut]

MORE DOODLES!!

I'd actually be so down to make an aggie/magma with people,,,, i miss the riptide lots,,,

I ALSO STARTED WATCHING WONDERLUST‼️‼️ THIS ONE IS FOR THE WONDERLUSTERS

[dunmesh]

i was genuinely killed by the fact kabru's real name being "unknown" is due to him not being able to remember how his mother used to call him. and now i can't stop thinking about this child trying so hard to remember his loved ones only to have the most grotesque images come to mind. as we read the manga the only glimpses of his life in utaya we get to see are those tragic moments when he lost everything, and i find it interesting that the first time us readers get to know of his past at all is through him being triggered by food.

but then we get to chapters 61-62 and for the first time during the story, he mentions the memory of something other than the horrors- and in direct parallel to earlier in the manga, it's a dish his mother used to cook. the guy who is shown to have a hard time taking care of himself in his pursuit of his goals is forced to focus on someone else's wellbeing which also results in him making more effort for his own sake as well, and so in an attempt to care for and comfort someone else he ends up trying to recreate one of the few fond memories he has left. and it's so simple; the memory of a child and mother sharing a meal together. it's so incredibly sad but also comforting, hopeful in a way- her voice, her touch, her face, they're all out of reach now. he may never remember his mother lovingly calling his name. but there is one thing he can surely still feel even all these years later: the taste of the food she worked so hard to make and put on the table. and it's not just him. through senshi and marcille as well as other characters, we see it time and time again. how among many other things, food is also a way to preserve your home. to preserve your love.

[cautiouslyyyoptimistic]

My favorite shen jiu fun fact is that he gave a faulty cultivation manual to a bouncing baby boy binghe so that when binghe used it he would erupt and burst like a flesh balloon. And then had a little sulk moment in a cave being mad it didn't work. Like what the fuck. The most character of all time.

[darthkote]

[certaintylikelightning]

thinking about riz and how his mom and his weird romance partner both think the bad kids are bad friends to him… thinking about how riz took on every single stress token for his friends… thinking about how riz always puts his everything into helping his friends and being there for them. and the bad kids aren’t Bad Friends but sometimes they take/need a lot, and they’d be fine if he pushed back, but he never pushes back? thinking about fig’s one nice note made riz break down and send gorgug WALLS of text about how much it meant to him

[elderwisp]

ʏᴏᴜ ꜱᴀʏ ᴛᴏᴏ ʟᴀᴛᴇ ᴛᴏ ꜱᴛᴀʀᴛ ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʜᴇᴀʀᴛ ɪɴ ᴀ ʜᴇᴀᴅʟᴏᴄᴋ ʏᴏᴜ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ʏᴏᴜ'ʀᴇ ʙᴇᴛᴛᴇʀ ᴛʜᴀɴ ᴛʜɪꜱ

[egophiliac]

You think this will be THE last update for book 7.. or will there be more chapters q-q. (I'm totally not desperate for book 8 HAHHA)

I think we're gonna get at least one more chapter where we wrap back around to the Diasomnia boys (I have THEORIES!!!!), but I think 13 will probably be the last one! maybe also 14 as a short epilogue/setup for episode 8, depending on where they cut after we deal with Malleus. we are definitely approaching the endgame though! ᕙ( •̀ ᗜ •́ )ᕗ the party is almost assembled...the light is at the end of the tunnel...it is almost time to go throw pies into Tsunotarou's silly face until he comes to his senses...

(disclaimer since I don't think they've actually officially confirmed that there's going to be an episode 8, that this is of course just me assuming that Grim's arc/whatever's going on with Crowley probably/various other wrapups are going to be a separate episode, and aren't gonna be folded into the absolute beast that has been episode 7. BUT it does make for a nice break point and makes sense thematically with Ramshackle being, like, the semi-official 8th dorm and all, so I think it's a pretty safe bet at this point!)

[thatbeansblog]

I would love to discuss ladyfly and mikucore ladybug, this special truly had everything us Marinette stans needed.

[drawfee-quot3s]

anyone can become chilchuck

- karina

[everyryuujisuguro]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 4: Deranged Bedfellows

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.5)

[atmospheral]

marineford behind-the-scenes 2/?

(photo reference)

bonus: