♡ 𝙩𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙚 𝙤𝙛 𝙮𝙤𝙪 ♡
𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘵𝘦𝘳 seventy-eight

beautiful & bittersweet.

── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ──

JAMES GARCIA WAS A FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH.

Very few people in Beacon Hills expected that of him as he raised his daughter with delicate poise and compassion. He had to. Somebody had to file down the claws she was born with. 

But beneath all that, there was a fury burning inside him. A ferocity that he usually smothered with paperwork and cigarette ash. With the homey heart in his chest beating slower than usual, nothing else seemed to diminish the liquid thunder in his veins.

He rolled his shoulders back as Dallie slouched beside him. "Stealing other people's blood is a criminal offence." The toothpick between his teeth made it hard to speak. "Just so you know."

James Garcia was not a man who was easily forgotten. With his sharp features and piercing eyes, he was always the center of attention - even when he didn't want to be.

"It's not like they're going to need it." 

James Garcia narrowed his eyes at each passerby. He didn't trust any of them, not with the way they were looking at him. He wondered if they could see the hunger in his eyes, the thirst for blood in his breath.

He could smell it on them, too. The uneasiness.  With a look that could kill and hands that could aid him, the vampire shifted uneasily in his seat. His knuckles faded into white as they gripped the armrests. 

Dallas glanced towards him. "You feel it too?" She swallowed. "The shift in people when they notice you're suddenly.. different?"

His nails tugged at the fabric. "All I can hear are heartbeats." Jim felt his chest heave. "How much they raise when they look at me. Isn't it enough to bleed me dry? Now I'm blamed for my own mortality?"

Dallas listened intently. Those thoughts were her own. She too, backed in the same corner. Perhaps it was the tragic Garcia fate to be misunderstood by the world around you. To have everything just to lose it within moments.

Her head turned to meet his eyes. "I can make him pay for it." She let her eyes drift across the room. "Easily."

"You think that's what I want? Bloodshed and violence?" The vampire narrowed his gaze. "I've seen what that does to people. I lost you to the same reckless impulses. I can't let it myself be eaten away by it too."

Dallas scrunched up her nose until the wrinkles coated the bone.

"I think it's what you need." She scoffed bitterly. "Maybe he overlooked a small detail, though."

James clenched his jaw. His mortal coil rusted and halted beneath his chest. Vengeance was a slippery slope, perhaps, but sometimes the fall was worth it.

James Garcia was a walking corpse that refused to rot. He was a living dead. A supernatural being who could barely clutch to his mortality. A ghost that could not rest.

Anger was the only emotion he could feel and it was a deep burning rage that lit up his cold insides like wildfire. 

"I got my temper from you."

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

Marilyn Garcia felt the cold floor stick to her bare legs, feeling the immensity of the void around her force aches into her bones. Fleeing was easy. Flight, a favoured escape. It's how she survived the sinking of her parent's boat. How she saved herself from the island. How she discovered ignorance was bliss.

Sybil stood behind her. "We're still a couple of hours away from the next town." Her eyes settled on her map. "We could still turn back and go back to the house. Klaus and Elijah may have already gone back to Mystic Falls."

Marilyn shook her head. "I can still smell vampire."

 "Maybe that's just James." Seline snapped. Sybil and Seline both mindlessly followed Marilyn into the flock of trees after Jim's bite.

 In the spur of the moment, it seemed like a good idea to group together and prepare for Klaus Mikaelson's ferocity. The Siren didn't realise it at the time, but little by little, Marilyn Garcia's confident facade crumbled from within as she could no longer control the havoc left in her wake.

"He'll be coming for me." She spoke, almost crazed.

"I just told you, he's probably left already-"

"Not Klaus." Marilyn whipped her head backwards. "James."

Goosebumps littered her arms. Sybil crouched beside her and allowed a hand to soak up her shoulder. She had never seen Marilyn in such a state.

Eyes wide and breaths as shallow as the water they drowned in. "Marilyn, why would he do that?"

Her hands fumbled together as she sat against the concrete floor. "Doppel or not, he's a Mikaelson." Marilyn's breath hitched in her throat.

"And I left him for dead."

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

Dallas Garcia remembered how blood tasted unusually sweet, like melted toffee coating her tongue - slightly copper in taste - and squeezed her eyes shut at the warmth in her throat. 

"Is it bad?"

Her eyes opened at her father, wincing. "The opposite, actually." she inhaled sharply, forcing blinks so that the white dilation of her eyes faded away. "It's just.. hard to stop."

James Garcia spun his head around the blood drive. Hidden, as usual, but not hidden enough to look suspicious. Dallas wished she had someone who taught her how to feed and remain somewhat moral, although she struggled with the last part continuously. 

The newly-turned Vampire spared sorrowful glances at his cup before downing it like a shot of tequila. Veins poked out beneath his eyes, a sickly grey, while teeth sharpened into fangs. Once swallowed, his grip tightened on the cup until the metal squealed and crumpled beneath his fingers.

His eyes- now a feral red - met hers. She could see the hunger, the thirst for blood, burning behind his gaze. He was struggling to control himself, to not give in to the urges that coursed through his body. She could see the battle he was fighting - and knew he was losing.

She tutted silently, a knowing look plastering across her face. "I'll get you some water."

In spite of her father's strong transition, Dallas did not fear him. Not one bit. Honestly, it was relieving to see him face the same internal struggles as her. They shared a kindred bond, and their fates were intertwined.

As the two seemed to be cut from the same tree, their wood would always burn the same. 

Yet, the moment she stepped outside was the first moment Dallas felt like she could breathe properly. The world settled on her shoulders. Tensed, it seemed like the blades beneath had started to chip in the shape of a globe. 

A shadow appeared in the reflection of the swaying tank water. Her eyes instinctively rolled. 

"Do you always lurk around me, Theo?" Dallas turned her head to reveal the Chimera standing with pocketed hands. "Or is this just a new habit?"

He pressed his lips together momentarily. "Here."

Dallas quirked a brow at the brown paper bag he pushed towards her. The handle was creased and bottom-heavy like he'd arranged it in a rush. She wiped her hands against her jeans and plucked it from his own suspiciously. "What's this?"

Theo waited until she peeked inside. Thickly wrapped in a plastic donation bag and stained with a red hue, a blood bag stared back up at her. "Is this mine?"

"Same one the Dread Doctors took from you," Theo mumbled. "I thought if I wanted us to be friends again, keeping it defeats the whole point."

Dallas was unsure of what to say -- what to do, really. All movement included occasional glances from beneath her puzzled eyebrows and sharp inhales that sounded like the beginning of abandoned sentences. "What's the catch?" 

"No catch." He held his hands up in quick surrender. His face held inner turmoil. Thoughts, a muddled mess. "Truce. A real one this time." 

Dallas folded the tips of the bag, sliding her finger across the paper silently while she chose her next words with precision.

"Something tugged at those non-existent heartstrings of yours?"

He chuckled. "They exist. Deep down in my treacherous soul, Dallas."

Her eyes narrowed as her shoulder brushed against his. "Okay, great. I'll keep that in mind next time I find a good pair of scissors."

Theo cleared his throat she tried to walk away.

"We should talk."

Dallas really didn't want to talk. Not to him, not with him and certainly not about him. Her words were limited towards swears and threats, neither seemingly appropriate for a truce. 

Although, when Dallie turned, her gaze soaked up a flanneled back. 

"Oh, you think so?"

Stiles interjected them, stretching out his shoulders and towering above the Hybrid. His shadow cast over her smaller frame and blocked her from the Chimera's view. 

Theo scoffed dryly before greeting the human with the narrow of his eyes. "Stiles."

Dallas flickered her eyes to him and then to Stiles. Her brow raised and arms folded one over the other. Despite the smiling they both did, a good chunk of tension slotted into the air.

"Okay," he stepped back, holding his hands up. "Okay, tough guy."

Dallas noticed Stiles' fists clench. He had a quick temper recently - never with her, but with everything else? Patience wore thin. While the puffed shoulders and clenched jaw spoke to a rage she was familiar with, Dallas couldn't help but roll her eyes effortlessly. Testerone was her least favourite scent. 

"I'm a little busy Theo." Her hand pulled at Stiles' arm. "I'm sure whatever you want to talk about you can take up with Scott, right?"

Stiles kept his glare towards Theo but gradually took a few steps back. Dallas rolled her eyes at them. As per usual, they seemed to be stuck in another completely useless display of one-upping each other. 

"Yeah, I'm sure Scott wouldn't really care anyway," Stiles murmured, hands fiddling with the keys in his pocket. "Scott's moved on. Way on."

Theo narrowed his eyes momentarily. "Maybe Scott wants to hear what I've got to say." 

Dallas flickered her gaze between them curiously as Stiles spat back. "Scott doesn't need to. Scott hasn't even thought about you in the last three years. Maybe you're the one still hanging onto.. Scott."  

The Garcia nodded along suspiciously.

".. So why don't you two go have this conversation with him instead?"

There was a silence. A stare chipped from a block of ice and shared between the two. 

"I was going to." Theo slammed his own hands against Stiles' chest. "But someone's always in the way."

The Stilinski boy took the hit, clenching his jaw and avoiding his eyes to meet Theo's. Yet, in the seconds that passed by, Stiles forced his hands against his chest with thicker force.

"Then maybe you should shut up and take the hint."

Dallas furrowed her eyebrows and glanced between them. All this over Scott?

In one blink, a punch was thrown. It stemmed from Theo's fist and collided with Stiles' face. A splattering of blood busted through his nose and trickled across his lip before it was wiped with the edge of his sleeve. 

The Stilinski stood tall, smiling while blood seeped from his top lip and leaked between the crevices of his teeth. 

He didn't mind the droplets of red staining his flannel or the numb sensation coating his face. Stiles lifted his head back ever so slightly to cease the bleeding and swallowed hard enough that his adam's apple shifted in his throat.

"Don't make me feed you to her."

Theo took a daring step forward. "Wouldn't be the first time, would it?"

Stiles laughed. Truly laughed. For a moment, Dallas wondered if he actually found it funny.

However, with the icy look he mustered, something told her the conversation was never about Scott to begin with.

The long prolonged silence made her wonder if his own fury had burst his eardrums and left him deaf. Just when she was about to scold them both, though, her next words choked in her mouth as the floor became slippery beneath their feet.

Stiles had leaned forward, positioning his shoulder right into Theo's ribcage, and jolted himself forward hard enough to break more than a few.

Theo stumbled back, clutching his broken ribs and wheezing slightly, hard enough to split the water tank behind them. The whole ordeal happened between a few blinks. Stiles' knuckles wore blotches of blue and purple while Theo's face was painted a red hue. 

Stiles didn't bother about soaking the kneepads of his jeans or drenching the ends of his hair. He had a point to make - and it landed somewhere between the punches. 

Patience wore thin enough for Theo too. Pulling out his hand - ridden with claws - he aimed for Stiles' stomach. Dallas was sure he'd kill him.. and she'd kill him for it.

Dallas felt puddles splash beneath her boots as she approached the two. Pulling at the scruff of his neck, The Siren pulled Stiles to his feet hard enough to leave his back hitting the wall behind them roughly. She didn't care to look back at him, instead, standing before Theo with a narrow glint in her annoyed eyes.

 "Get up."

He did as he was told, which wasn't all that surprising as the words came out in a sharp tone that matched hypnotic white eyes. 

Theo brushed the water droplets from his leather jacket before spitting a mouthful of blood onto the floor before Stiles' feet. He had been in a lot of fights in his life, but he had never been hit like that. It was a lucky shot.

"What is wrong with you?" Her eyes were wide at the sight of them both before spitting venom at Theo. "You promised you'd leave him alone."

The Hybrid glanced over her shoulder as Stiles loomed behind it, sending a steady glare back.

"Just a bit of roughhousing, right Stiles?"

Stiles chuckled humorlessly. "Count yourself lucky we were already at the hospital." 

Dallas knitted her brows. The foreign feeling of acceptance made her uneasy. The two of them had always been at each other's throats, now though, they painted it as friendly competition.

"Go." she nodded to the door. He hesitated -- and Dallas stiffened. "Now."

She watched him leave seethingly. The last thing she needed was to be banned from the blood drive. If she couldn't feed there, it'd be their heads she'd have next. Seasoned and placed on a platter. 

Dallas turned to Stiles, fire stationed on her tongue and ready to breathe it through her words. Yet, there was nothing she could say. Not to the boy standing behind her. 

He was different. His eyes blackened round the core and although still human, held a chaos that brought goosebumps across her arms. Hands falling still and veins protruding like chipped mountain rock, the teenage boy watched Theo leave with a long steady breath - like calm waters before a storm. 

Dallas had seen that look before. God, she had worn it. That look of perfect fury, of pure adolescent rage that could set the soul ablaze and shake the town like a thousand detonated bombs at once. It was a look of defeat. It was a look of power. It was giving in to whatever the devil on your shoulder wanted you to do.

It was the same look of Void.

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

Dallas Garcia hadn't uttered the word in months. It was a dangerous word to think. Even more harmful to say. Void Stiles was the bloody hatchet Dallas swept under her rug and left to rust. 

Her hands fiddled with the rings on her fingers. A gentle breeze ruffled through her hair and pricked her cold cheeks. She closed her eyes and let it in, clutching desperately at the fencing outside of Scott's house. 

Stiles Stilinski would often bury himself in his own problems. He was ducking underneath his hood, fiddling with the insides of his engine and chipping the blue paint from the tip of his Jeep with his flannel buttons. Not once had he mentioned the shift in tone at the hospital - and Dallas was too stricken to do it for him. 

Void had become a state of mind these days. A flicker of a memory. An erratic impulse. Stiles tried to suppress it, sometimes burying it beneath the graves of things he'd never dare to mention, but it always clawed his way back out. 

Stiles wouldn't smother it anymore. 

A shadow overcast him - and a sudden a narrowed gaze burned into his back. "Hey baby," his voice echoed into the hood, not even needing to look behind him to know it was Dallie. "Can you pass me a wrench?"

His hand remained empty and tension thick. Thick enough that Stiles almost suffocated beneath the hood. Propping his head out from under it, he rubbed a stale rag between his fingers and met her gaze.

Dallas noticed how he was rough with it, like most things, and watched his grazed lips curl upwards into a grin. "You can help if you want, I don't bite." Stiles chuckled. "That's kinda your thing." 

Dallie cocked her head to the side, eyes narrowed. "What's going on with you? Why'd you treat Theo's face like a stress ball?"

Stiles shrugged innocently.  "Like he said. Roughhousing. Turns out I'm just a little rougher than he is."

"So you won't mind if I run it by Scott?" Dallas murmured sarcastically. "His name came up an awful lot."

Dallas watched his chest heave with a breathless chuckle. It echoed from beneath the hood, a rag placed between his teeth and hair falling before his eyes when he turned to her. "If you were gonna tell him, you would've done it by now."

Stiles flicked his eyes to her, burning them into her skin and leaning against his Jeep's headlights. 

"You came to see if he was right -- about Void still being in me."

She froze. Not for more than a millisecond, though. The regular eye would not be able to catch her sudden uneasiness. The way her breath barely hitched. But Stiles did. 

"Is he?"

Stiles ran his tongue across his teeth at her question. His sneakers gritted into the gravel and his belt buckled loudly as his hands buried deep into his pockets - each slow step growing closer to her. 

Towering over the Siren, his shadow soaked up her skin with its stygian tint and his stare remained steady on her eyes. Her own heartbeat drummed against her ears while his words riffed between the silence. 

"Would it be so bad if he was?" he spoke softly, hair ruffled wildly and tone starving. 

Dallas liked the way the low-hanging light lit up his features. How strands of hair fell across his forehead, curling to the right of his brow and casting shadows over his cheekbones. She liked how his black hair reflected the glow of the streetlights. She liked how the darkness of his eyes made his irises melt into a hazel brown.

She liked how his whispers made her body shake. How each sinful smile of bared teeth confessed another crime he was yet to commit.

Hands glided around her waist and guided her to press against his hip bones. Fingers slipped underneath her shirt, carving out her outline with his nails until the warmth of his skin melted her own like soft clay. 

Dallas tried to ignore the knotting in her stomach. Endlessly convincing herself that the goosebumps on her skin were from the cold. 

Sugarcoating her sharp teeth, the Siren felt them prick through her lips as she spoke. "Stiles-"

One moment Dallas was staring at honey-brown eyes, the next, his hands were on her jaw and lips on her mouth. It wasn't like their usual kisses, of which there were many, but something untamed and unpolished.

Maybe it was the way his teeth sank into her bottom lip - and the way his psyche breathed her in as if she were a patch of nicorette.

Suddenly, Dallas felt like the one who was being eaten alive.

A copper taste lingered on his lips from his grazes. He could taste it on hers too, although, not her own. Despite hands clutching around his neck like a string of roses, black and blue, she began to realise that one end of the relationship was always balanced with a heavy humanness. A forgiving slate. 

A too good for the world Stiles Stilinski. 

His grip on her waist tightened as he kissed her with a level of intensity that could be mistaken for an attempt at suffocation. 

Without that, nobody would draw the line at what was too far. 

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

James Garcia bowed his head between his shoulders, pale fingers resting atop his knees and a red tint staining his lips. Derek Hale stood before him; his arms crossed and eyebrow raised.

"You look like hell." 

"Feelin' it." James stood up from his slouched position on the couch and paced endlessly from one end of the room to the other. "Should it feel like this? Something tells me it shouldn't feel like this."

James Garcia wasn't making any sense. He had come back to the loft - drunk on liquor and B-positive - and mumbled obscenities about revenge. How a life lost to peace should be avenged through terror.

He was bitter, angry, and hurt. His clenched fists and snarked tone made him look a little too much like his daughter. 

He felt like he had been cheated by fate, that his life could have been so much more if only circumstances had been different.

Consumed by thoughts of vengeance and how he could make those who had wronged him suffer, he wanted to make them feel the pain that he felt - to make them know the suffering that he had endured.

James wanted to make them pay for what they had done to him, and he would stop at nothing for it.

"James, he'll kill you -- a second time." Derek shook his head in dismay. "Revenge is pointless."

The vampire scoffed. It was times like this he missed the ferocity of Derek Hale. The mysterious lurker who lived in the burnt house in the woods.

James felt the emotion clog up his insides and numb his brain. Red was all he could see, blurring city lights and faces into an amalgamation of the same shade. 

It made him feel alive like he could take on the world with nothing but shaky fists and snarled teeth. He didn't care about anything else. He couldn't. All he wanted was to feel the rapture coursing through his veins.

"Hey," Derek pulled at his arms and forced him to look forward. "Look at me. You don't have to prove anything. You can be happy."

His fingers gripped the fabric of his jacket while nails tore at the stitching.

 "I wish I could." James felt his eyes bore into his and sighed. "But there are some things I can't let go of, Derek."

Derek knew that to be true. As James Garcia stood before him, so unlike himself, with blood lingering on his breath. He knew that there were some things life couldn't change. Some you'd have to accept - others, deny yourself of for years. 

Derek Hale knew of resistance. He knew of sacrifice. He knew what it was like to fight the endless battle inside telling you what to do rather than what you want. 

That's why he pulled at his arms once more. "Neither can I."

James glanced in eyes of diluted blue. Shook a breath so unsteady it made his lungs quiver. In a moment no less than a second, Derek Hale pressed his lips against his own. 

His mind whirred with thoughts he couldn't control. The inhuman hunger, the anger, the uncontrollable need. The kiss only muddled the mind of James Garcia furthermore.

And yet, even as he fought it, he could not help but be drawn to it. The kiss from a vampire, the kiss of death.

Derek Hale was the first to break the silence. "James.. I-"

He took a moment to breathe. A millisecond to blink. Enough time that by the time his eyes opened once more, James Garcia was no longer there. "James?" He widened them. "James!"

James Garcia held an affinity with his life. He opted to leave when things became too complicated -- and when forced with choosing between love or vengeance, it was a pity he wished for both.

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

Dallas Garcia had her knees bunched up to her chest in the back of the Jeep. The rocks and potholes of the road made her sway to the side with each rusted clamber.

Her phone was stationed between her thighs, pixelated with a webpage of ancient myths and legends, with her finger cupping the edge of the vampire tab.

"What about garlic?" Her eyes met Stiles' through his rearview mirror. "Garlic could work, right?"

He split a grin. "Unless you're gonna beat it into his face, I don't think any of the main defences against vampires really work."

Stiles then gave her a wink. "What about sunlight?"

"He wears this stupid little ring everywhere he goes. Either it's a trashy heirloom or some magical sunlight dohickey."

The Garcia huffed, blowing the hair out of her face. "I could always eat him, I suppose."

Stiles reached his hand behind his chair and gripped her bare knee. "Exactly."

Scott sat in the passenger seat, eyes wide and head shaking in dismay.

"Not exactly. No killing vampires." He scolded Stiles before turning his head to Dallie. "And no eating boys. We're here for Kira, guys."

Dallas dropped her phone onto her lap. "Oh, please? I'm pretty sure nobody will miss a few campers."

Stiles chuckled in the front seat while Scott gave her a stern look. "Seriously?" He swallowed thickly as he turned back around his seat. "Man, is the Jeep overheating again?"

Stiles gripped the wheel tiredly. "Probably." 

"Should we pull over and put more antifreeze in it?" Scott suggested.

"No, we can just turn the heat on."

Scott pulled up a book of his own which made Dallas quirk a brow. It was a road trip, not a book club, it'd only ever come in handy if Dallas ever felt the urge to smack him with it for telling her what to do.

"Damnatio memoriae was a Roman practice, a government decree to destroy the images of the damned." He read aloud. "And they would scratch off their names from inscriptions, chisel their face from statues. The Romas believed it was a punishment worse than death."

"Being forgotten." Stiles muttered anxiously. 

"Listen to this. Damnatio Memoriae was later used on a serial killer in 1598, known as the Demon Tailor. He lured children into his shop in Paris where he would kill them and boil the flesh off their bones to eat."

"Sounds like another one of your uncles, Dallie."

Dallas narrowed her eyes at Stiles while Scott continued reading.

"The courts believed the crimes so horrible, they ordered all the documents destroyed. To this day, no one knows his real name."

The Siren leaned forward between the two front seats. "So.. the Dread Doctors resurrected a crazy psycho killer who was so bad he literally had completely erased from history?"

Scott turned to her before flickering his gaze to Stiles. "And that crazy psycho killer became a werewolf."

Dallas huffed. God, they really knew how to pick the worst people to bite. "Let's not forget that it probably made him an even better killer." Stiles gripped the steering-wheel harder as Dallas slouched back in her seat. "That's great. Just great."

⊱ ──────ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ────── ⊰

Dallas felt hours pass by in the Jeep - and not in the way they had previously. 

"Have you spoken to Malia?" Scott was now at the wheel and Stiles Stilinski had his hand in her lap this time, allowing her to trace the outline of his knuckles with her fingertip as she thought. 

"Who, me? No." she rose her head, disappointed. "She won't answer my calls."

Scott knitted his eyebrows and tightened his grip on the wheel. Dallas noticed it. She also noticed how he avoided looking at her through the rearview and tried to slow his heartbeat.

 "But you have, haven't you?" She leaned forward, gripping Stiles' hand slightly.

"I think she found her mother." 

Stiles widened his eyes. "Her mother, as in The Desert Wolf?"

"Yeah..." Scott noticed the shift in the air. "When I was at her house, I'm pretty sure Braeden was there too."

Dallas quirked a brow at him. He was unusually nervous. Almost as if he felt guilty about the fact he went to see Malia at all. "So you caught her scent?"

"Actually, it was her motorcycle. I smelled her exhaust."

Stiles butted in. "What the hell do you think they're gonna do?"

"Something that Malia doesn't want to tell us about." Scott glanced between his two friends. "So probably something bad." 

Dallas managed to catch a glimpse of Stiles, who seemed equally as suspicious as her, before speaking up. 

"Oh, my god. You already know, don't you?" He hissed. "It's like... it's the chemosignals, right?"

Scott let out a long-winded sigh before nodding.

"Aggression."

"How much?" She muttered. Although,  Dallas didn't need to ask. She had already read his mind. 

"I think she's gonna kill her." Scott swallowed. "She's gonna kill her mother."

Stiles blinked profusely before slouching in his seat. "Man, what is with you girls and mommy issues?"

Dallas scoffed loudly. His hand in her lap was shoved back to his chest and swatted against the buttons of his flannel.

If Dallas wasn't already overly protective of her own business, Malia Tate was a whole other different ballgame. 

Before she could chew Stiles up and spit him out, the engine spluttered loudly over her.

 "Stiles." Scott sat up. His eyes glazed over the hood of the engine while eyebrows knitted together with a string of panic. "Stiles, what's happening?"

Dallas Garcia pressed her lips together as she recalled exactly what she had distracted him from hours prior.

"Stiles, did you not fill the tank before we left?"

The teenager mumbled out a response. "Yeah!" A half-witted lie slipped past his lips before he gestured to her. "Okay, no. I was a little busy.. doing.. stuff." 

Scott watched as the car begin to halt with whined croaks and splutters.

"Stiles, it says we have half a tank." 

"Yeah," Stiles scratched the back of his neck. "Not necessarily."

Scott slouched in his seat. "You didn't fix the gas gauge, did you?"

"Not necessarily."

Feeling the car pull to the side of the road, Dallas snickered from the back seat. 

"I think I'm starting to rethink my whole 'no eating boys' promise."

 ☆ word count: 5,169. ☆

a/n: void stallas AND jerek in one chapter? spoiled.