It is impossible to describe the relationship between a boy and his car. Using any familial terms can't quite cover everything that happens. They are not siblings. There's a love that exists between a boy and his car that human siblings cannot replicate. They do not share the bond of lovers or the bond between a parent and child.
In the human language, the only term that can be used is 'friend,' yet the feeling goes even beyond that. The boy must trust his vehicle to take him safely to his destination and the vehicle must trust the boy has the proper know-how and reflexes to command the car's various functions.
When a car is given enough love, it will perform admirably. Take the love away from a car and the relationship quickly devolves into one of hate, mistrust, and eventually, abandonment.
Betty counted herself lucky to have found someone like Stiles.
The day Betty met Stiles, she was at her absolute worst. She'd been in the Stilinski family for a while, but up until Stiles' sixteenth birthday, she'd been left alone in the garage of the Sheriff's brother. She'd been bought fresh from the dealership, but after gasoline prices began to skyrocket, she was replaced by a pretentious Prius.
She hadn't had an oil change in years; her gears felt rusted; she was pretty sure her tires were growing flat, and she didn't even want to get started on the layer of dust and dirt that had accumulated on her hood. Some of Stiles' cousins had written obscene words and drawn pictures of penises all over her windows. No one had cleaned her interior in years and she still had fast food French fries in her seats that had solidified into rocks.
And yet, despite all of these setbacks, Stiles loved her.
When Stiles first lifted open the door to his Uncle's garage, Betty didn't know what to expect. She assumed the worst and braced herself for grimy fingers but instead she received an exclamation.
"She's beautiful! Is she really mine?"
Betty didn't know what to think at first. The speaker wasn't one of the brats that sat in her seats and honked her horn. This was a scrawny mess with a buzz cut and a smile too big for his face. Was this skinny kid talking to her? There was a myriad of junk stashed away in the garage—surely he couldn't be addressing her? It wasn't until he threw himself over her hood in an impromptu hug that she actually believed him.
"She's all yours," the familiar voice of the man who had abandoned her sounded out from the garage door. His voice sounded far away and unimportant. Someone was hugging her. That same someone had called her beautiful.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you! She's perfect!"
Betty beamed inwardly.
Stiles had spent the better part of the day scrubbing her down and vacuuming out the potato rocks from her passenger seat. Little by little, she began to feel loved again. The best part was that the entire time Stiles worked, he spoke. After years and years of silence, the nonstop babble was actually a blessing.
"A Jeep, man. I can't believe my uncle is actually letting me have his Jeep. We're gonna do so many awesome things together. Just you wait. We'll go camping and you'll help me pick up chicks and, well, mostly Lydia. She'll see me in a classic Jeep like you and forget about that Jackson douchebag with his fancy Porsche. Girls dig Jeeps. I read that somewhere."
Betty listened happily. Over the course of a few weeks, Stiles continued to fix her up. He named her Betty, and even though she had been nameless before then, she felt as though maybe her name had always been Betty. He got her that much needed oil change, new tires, a transmission flush, new filters, a heater coil, a fresh coat of paint and even seat covers. He still ate fast food and occasionally lost a French fry, but every Sunday he cleaned her out.
It wasn't just Betty that received a makeover, either. Stiles' life was improving as well. Even though Betty didn't know Stiles beforehand, he told her firsthand about everything that was happening to him. Girls started to notice him a little more. He'd gotten enough confidence to join the lacrosse team. He even installed a police scanner in her so he could listen in on his father. He wasn't lying when they said they would go on adventures together. The world was an exciting place for a Jeep in Beacon Hills—especially when Stiles was behind the wheel. Betty saw more flashing lights from the heavy duty cop cars to last her a lifetime.
Things didn't stop there, either. Betty was almost immediately introduced to Stiles' best friend: Scott McCall. Scott was much quieter than Stiles, but he was just as appreciative. He had no car of his own, and often had to borrow his mother's, so when Stiles picked Scott up for the first time, Betty had the pleasure of hearing Scott talk about how awesome she was for nearly an hour.
It didn't take long for things to turn sour, however. Betty often listened to the police scanner in the background when she was bored. If anything interesting came up, she'd turn it on to alert Stiles. He hadn't quite figured out how that happened, yet, and she liked to keep it that way. One night, she picked up chatter about a body in the woods and quickly turned the sound up to full blast to awaken a sleeping Stiles…
Nothing was the same after that. Suddenly, Betty became the host to a dozen different things she didn't particularly care for. Something had happened to Scott. Something terrible. Sometimes he lost control and dug his sharp claws into Betty's seats. Stiles would be out during all hours of the night and often drive tired. Betty had to save him from crashing on more than one occasion.
Then there came Derek Hale.
Derek bled and oozed all kinds of God-knows-what all over Betty's seats. He had zero respect for her and once stepped in front of her so abruptly that she didn't even wait for Stiles to hit the brakes before stopping. Derek abused Stiles by slamming his head on her steering column. His incessant demands ruined Stiles' sleep schedule. He was a good-for-nothing and Betty regretted not running him over.
But, for some reason, Stiles liked that wolfish asshole. He'd spend a few minutes after leaving the Hale house with his forehead pressed against the steering wheel and mutter things to himself. Betty hated listening in. She knew nothing good could come from it—especially since he sounded so frustrated.
Some nights he would speak out loud—just let out every unspoken thought about Derek, stroke her dashboard afterward, and thank her for listening.
Betty hated those nights because there was nothing she could do about them. She liked the fifteen year plan for Lydia much better.
Derek's Camaro never had a name. He'd never really bothered to give her one. To him, she'd always been his Camaro. She never needed anything else. He kept her well-maintained since the day he ordered her custom-made from the factory line. She had been made specifically for him. No one could handle her the way he could.
At some point, she began referring to herself as Cam, for short. When Derek lived on his own outside of California, she had no use for a name—but once Derek moved to Beacon Hills, it was time to reinvent herself.
Beacon Hills was by no means a podunk little town. It had a mall, after all. Yet Cam couldn't help but get the feeling that no other vehicle in the vicinity was as nice as she. Sure, she'd seen a Porsche skidding around town and a few expensive SUVs but no one shone the way she did. She was proud of her luster, and she was proud of Derek.
She watched Derek grow up. Derek, who had been a shut-in and drowned himself in self hatred, now had a family again. Cam didn't mind giving rides to the fresh beta werewolves. They always displayed a sense of awe when they sank into her plush leather seating. Her seat warmers never grew too hot. In the cold northern California air, they were always just right. Cam knew how to treat her guests properly.
Derek repaid her in kind with frequent waxings and he always, always kept an eye out for the weather. Never once did Cam need her windows scraped free of ice. Derek always found a way. She respected that.
Cam never thought of herself as spoiled or lucky. She was just Cam. She made sure Derek got to where he needed to go quickly and efficiently and Derek made sure Cam was in perfect condition. If he whispered sweet nothings to her as he changed her oil manually, she never told anyone.
No, Cam loved Derek, even if he occasionally became mixed up with a couple of humans. For a high class Camaro like Cam, all she had ever known were werewolves. To have someone like Stiles ride in her car, it was like taking a step backwards on the evolutionary scale. She didn't trust him. He wasn't the same kind of creature as Derek. That, and the way Stiles continued to make Derek's hackles rise made Cam's engines grow hot. Who did that kid think he was?
Someone who drove a beat up old Jeep shouldn't get close to Derek. Cam was overprotective of him.
So overprotective, in fact, that when Derek began following that awful Jeep home under the pretext that he was just making sure Stiles got home okay, Cam had half a mind to break down in the middle of the road. Derek didn't need to check up on Stiles. The kid's dad was the Sheriff, after all. He didn't need any help.
But Cam was powerless to stop him. She couldn't stop him from checking up on the kid any more than she could stop him from pounding on her steering wheel as he reprimanded himself over and over again.
"Don't do this, Derek. He's seventeen. What the hell is wrong with you?"
Yeah, Cam wanted to interject. What the hell was wrong with him? The kid drove an outdated car for heaven's sake.
She just wanted the excitement to start up again. She wanted to get into a race with someone. When would that start up again?
The only reason Betty knew Valentine's Day was approaching was because Stiles wouldn't shut up about it. She didn't mind, really, at least he was talking about something other than werewolves. The problem with Valentine's Day this year seemed to be that chocolate and flowers were turning into boring clichés of the past and if Stiles hoped to have a Valentine this year, he was going to have to be clever.
Personally, Betty didn't mind one way or the other. Chocolates had a tendency to melt all over her seats and flowers got pesky pollen everywhere. They smelled nice, at least, and they beat the awful foil balloons that obstructed Stiles' view and threatened to kill them both. Betty secretly hoped Stiles would stick with stuffed animals or some jewelry. He'd already driven her all over town and in and out of various stores. Her gas mileage was suffering.
Betty's wheels nearly screeched to a halt when Stiles pulled up to the last store. She'd never been to that particular place before, but that wasn't what stopped her.
Parked just outside the front door was a very familiar, and very stuck up black Camaro. Betty recognized the license plate immediately.
"Come on, Betty. Don't crap out on me, now. I just gave you a tune-up!" Stiles coaxed from his seat. Betty pulled forward carefully and came to a gentle stop just next to the Camaro. She thought about putting herself into neutral just to roll away. She could feel the Camaro leering at her.
Stiles killed her engine and stepped out of the vehicle. Betty instinctively locked her doors as he stepped into the store. The unusual store front was distracting enough that Betty didn't have to deal with the powerful presence of Derek's Camaro.
The front of the store looked like someone had forgotten about it for years and only just recently remembered to paint it. The colors didn't match and the job had been hasty so bits of the old coloring poked through the thin paint. Betty could just make out, "Mr. Hopewell's Hope Well," written in the kind of font ghost town general stores would be proud of. The front window of the shop sported an abundance of Valentine's Day décor and held so many different shades of red and sparkles that if Betty turned her headlights on, she'd probably blind every carbon based life form in a one mile radius.
Betty wished it were possible for her to communicate with other cars. Usually the driver did all the communicating. When cars were parked, they were stuck in a bubble of awkward silence. All Betty could take away from the Camaro was that her presence demanded she be heard.
Automobiles communicated a kind of personality to each other that proved to be their ultimate basis for expression. Once Betty found herself parked next to an old Cadillac covered in bumper stickers. It had been a well-traveled and well-cared for car and it had been through a lot—much more than Betty had, werewolves included. Another time, at the supermarket, Stiles parked Betty next to a dainty Volkswagen Beetle with a Hello Kitty steering wheel cover. It was so cute and Betty felt so giddy afterward her speedometer malfunctioned and Stiles almost received a speeding ticket on the way home.
Derek's Camaro didn't give Betty any of these wonderful, elated feelings. She only felt shabby and old by comparison. Her radio was out of date and her air conditioner probably didn't get quite as cold. Betty wanted nothing more than for Stiles to hurry out of the weird store and get them both the hell out of there.
Just what was that silly boy doing, anyway? Betty brought her attention to the interior of the shop to check up on her caretaker and immediately wanted to recoil on herself.
Stiles' hands were flapping around more than what was absolutely necessary. The shopkeeper, a stooped old man with glasses that magnified his eyes, watched Stiles with a kind of careful fear. There were a lot of breakable items in the shop and the owner no doubt assumed Stiles' enthusiasm would shatter many of the objects on the shelves.
Derek, of course, did not show as much enthusiasm. If anything, he looked absolutely mortified to have been caught in the same shop as Stiles. Both boys were taking extra care to hide their purchases from each other, which seemed a near impossible feat. The shopkeeper kept winking at them as he wrapped their individual items but the action must have been missed by both Derek and Stiles because they refused to look anywhere else but the ceiling. It would have been hilarious if it hadn't been so awkward.
When Stiles burst from the shop door, the bell overhead tinkling merrily, Betty was relieved. He wasted no time in reversing Betty from her parking spot and tearing down the street. Betty didn't even look behind her at the smooth Camaro in the parking lot. All she wanted to do was to put as much distance between the two of them as possible. Derek and Stiles may have had a strange relationship, but that didn't mean their vehicles had to, too.
"Ugh!" Stiles grunted, slamming the back of his head on the headrest the moment they came to a stoplight. "I knew the moment I saw that stupid car outside, I shouldn't have gone in. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Of course it wasn't Boyd or Isaac driving. Of course! Like Derek would ever let them drive his precious baby."
Stiles continued to drum his fingers on Betty's steering wheel as they waited for the light to turn green. The idle time caught all of Stiles' frustrations to come pouring out. His glance shifted momentarily to the bag sitting on the passenger seat and he swallowed, hard. "And now, I found the perfect present and I can't even give it to Derek because he knows where it came from. I shouldn't have bought anything. Good job, Stiles. Now I'll have to give it to someone else and everything will turn into a giant mess and why the hell does the world have to suck so hard?"
Betty wished she could answer, but the stoplight chose that time to turn green and Stiles' foot shifted to the accelerator. The rest of the ride home was relatively quiet, with the occasional embarrassed moan from Stiles. He didn't even turn the radio on.
When he went inside, he didn't even bring the bag from 'Mr. Hopewell's Hope Well' inside. He left it cold and alone on Betty's passenger seat.
Betty knew, even without Stiles saying so, that she needed to keep an eye on the present. He would change his mind eventually, and he apparently went through a lot to get it, even though it didn't seem like much to her. Betty locked her doors and kept an eye on the package through Stiles' absence. It would be there for him in the morning.
Even if, for some strange reason, it felt the need to vibrate with increasing intensity.
Cam had never been happier for Derek's apartment accommodations. When Derek lived in the ruins of the old Hale House, Cam had had to settle for leafy roads and shady overhangs. Derek soon moved to the even more desolate ruins of an old subway station, and Cam's resting place hadn't gotten much better. The dust and grime that accumulated on her frame clashed horribly with her paint job, thus increasing the amount of washes she required.
The actual washing itself wasn't a horrible thing—what made the process unbearable was the amount of time that happened in between baths. Derek was a busy wolf, especially under a full moon. He didn't have as much free time as Cam would have liked for him to give her the maintenance she so desperately wanted. Oh, he did enough—but not enough to sate her upped standards.
The covered garage for the building of flats seemed to change Cam's opinion of Derek's housing choices. Having an actual living quarters with an actual garage cheered Cam up to no end.
In fact, she was so happy to be in the covered garage that she didn't even mind Derek's level of broodiness seemed off the charts that day. He drove a little more aggressively, which she appreciated, and he'd tossed a bag into her backseat that seemed to radiate a very pleasant aura of warmth. Cam had become a host for a variety of mythical objects before, including aconite and some charms. She wasn't a stranger to magic, so the thought that Derek was transporting yet another trinket didn't register on her radar at all.
She was just looking forward to a slight nap in the garage while Derek muttered incoherent nonsense under his breath. She heard the name Stiles every so often but at this point, the name was so common while Derek was alone, that she'd learned to just ignore it.
So when Derek left her alone, she thought nothing of it. When he left the package from that awful store in her backseat, she didn't obnoxiously refuse to lock her doors to make sure he remembered it. She just let it sit in the backseat and warm her a little from the inside out. It was comforting in a strange way. Pulsating and inviting, as if he'd bought the present just for her…
She'd never felt so relaxed…
And then, rather abruptly, Cam woke up.
It was a strange feeling because there was darkness first, and then there was light. Something like that had never happened before. Cam's headlights were always open. She wasn't one of those models that involved motorized headlights that poked their eyes out over the hood. Her eyes were always open.
The ground floor of the garage was another sensation. It was generally cold under her tires, but now she could feel it on her underside as well, as if someone had removed her tires and set her entire frame on the floor itself. Startled, Cam jerked forward and tried honking her horn.
…except, the noise that she heard sounded nothing like her horn at all. It was high and melodic and throaty. It sounded a little too human for comfort. Had Derek replaced the short for her horn with something so sinister as the voice of a human girl?
Slowly, the rest of her body began to come into realization. Her proportions were off. There was something strange happening to her front grill. It was like she was tasting the world around her and it wasn't at all pleasant. The only thing that felt slightly familiar to her was a warm, pulsating beat in the middle of her body. The package. She still had it in her backseat.
Only now, there was no backseat for her to look into. She was smaller—much smaller, and distinctly not car shaped. She flexed her fingers and her shoulders, trying to propel herself forward but found that without the use of tires, she needed to find another way to move.
It was scary how much instinct kicked in. She could pick herself upward. The sensation was strange. As a Camaro, she could move only forward, backward or sideways—always running along the world at a plane. As a human, she could break that barrier and reach into the third dimension. She could raise or lower herself at will. So many joints and directions! And so graceful!
She would have been freaking out if she hadn't spent nearly her entire life around magic and werewolves. Being a girl was uncomfortable and cold. She had nothing on save for a necklace around her neck. The pendant rested nicely across her breasts and she glanced downward to catch it in the light.
It was a double headed wolf pendant made from what looked like stainless steel. The sweeping wolf heads made the shape of an 'S' and even though it radiated a welcoming kind of warmth, it still felt cool under her fingers. Why would Derek be transporting jewelry like this? It was, without a doubt, from the store they were at only hours ago.
Cam tugged at the cord around her neck, trying to pull the necklace off by breaking the line, but it held fast. She attempted to lift it up, over her head, but it wouldn't fit. It was stuck on her unless someone else cut it off, or burned it off or something. Cam let out a low grumble that used to happen when her engine idled, but now it came off as hopelessly less metallic. She was going to have to go to Derek and get his help in removing the charm.
No harm done. Easy fix. She'd be back as a Camaro in no time.
With shaking legs, but a strong resolve, Cam stood up carefully. How did humans walk with such tiny rims at the ends of their tire rods? She could hardly keep her balance and wound up shuffling to the nearest car just to hold herself up. Unfortunately, the owner of the car decided it was a good idea to install a car alarm and it went off, loudly.
Cam recoiled, quickly. She'd never touched another car before. For as long as she existed, she'd shared the roads and parking lots with cars of every shape, size and color, but never before had she touched one. To touch another car was the worst of signs. No one wanted a dent or their paint scraped. Accidents were to be avoided at all costs. Touching another car felt intimate and wrong and Cam allowed herself to be startled to the ground, again.
She heard footsteps—probably the owner of the car. Their heavy footsteps echoed loudly in the cement garage and forced Cam to look around desperately for a place to hide. She needed Derek, not some stranger. Only Derek would understand.
The car alarm shut off, leaving Cam's ears ringing. She placed both her hands to her head, annoyed with the pain that bounced around inside it. How did humans do it? The peace was quickly interrupted by a sudden, frantic voice.
"Oh my god, ma'am. Are you okay? Are you hurt? What are you doing out here?"
Cam squinted. Seeing with her new eyes was difficult, and with the ache in her head, it only made vision worse. She did not recognize the speaker. She hadn't quite figured out how to simulate speech, yet—just to make the strange guttural noises, so she backed up on the cold cement floor, keeping her distance.
"Woah," the man said. He had to have been a man. The scruffiness of his face reminded her of Derek, and he didn't posses the enlarged breasts like she had. Only humans would need two genders. "You must be tripping out. Can I… take you somewhere? The police station, maybe?"
No. She couldn't go to the Sheriff. Not him. He was not a fan of Derek. He would not understand. She opened her mouth and did her best to make a sound. All that came out was a wailing noise, but at least she figured out how to forcefully speak.
The man frowned. "Do you speak English?" He said, slowly, deliberately. Cam grew frustrated.
She formed the word with her mouth before she spoke it. She knew how language worked; she'd been living with Derek her whole life. She had a manual written in several human languages. She'd just never been given the opportunity to speak it herself. It wasn't something one could do instinctively. "Ewwrrik." She said, and then frowned. She'd missed a sound in there, somewhere. "Terrik."
"Terrik?" the man repeated.
Cam shook her head. "Derek," she tried again. There. That wasn't so hard. D's and T's were so strange and so close together, but once the difference was made, the human pallet was interesting.
"Derek?" The man asked, scratching the hair on his chin. "Oh, like, the dude that just moved in, right? Broody, sweet Camaro…" his expression changed, suddenly. "Did he hurt you? What did he do to you? I'll call the cops, don't think I won't."
"NO." The word came out so quickly and forcefully that Cam was a little surprised at herself. "Derek will help."
"Do you know where he lives? I've only seen him screech in here on that Camaro of his."
Cam nodded, trying not to glow a little in pride at the guy's obvious envy of her. If he only knew! He extended an arm to her and after a brief moment of hesitation, she took it. She'd always thought she was lucky. What if the first person she'd met had been hostile? What if he'd tried to take advantage of her? Cam knew what happened in darkened parking lots at night. She'd seen firsthand what men were capable of—
And suddenly the hand was ripped from hers and Cam's ears were filled with the sounds of car alarms, again. When she opened her eyes, the man was slammed up against his car, head rolling. Attached to his neck was a dark, familiar hand.
Derek Hale.
Thank god.
"What the hell did you do with my car?!" Derek shouted angrily at the dazed man. His eyes were threatening to flash red. Cam wondered briefly if she should warn him.
"Nothing man," the stranger gasped. "I just came to turn off my alarm and this chick was here."
Derek glanced briefly at her and sniffed in her general direction. Her apparent nakedness had no effect on him. Something in her scent must have startled him, because his grip on the stranger loosened. The car alarm stopped for a second time.
"Who are you?" he asked.
Cam swallowed, trying to figure out how to tell him. Words were difficult, still. How did one make the 'R' sound? And the 'TH' was still a mystery to her. Instead, she held her hand up to grip the pendant around her neck. Derek's eyes widened and he let go of the stranger immediately in favor of stalking over to Cam and tugging on the cord around her neck. It didn't break, much to her dismay. "Where did you get this?"
Once he was loosed, the stranger scrambled away, muttering something about that being the last time he acted like a good Samaritan. Cam ignored him in favor of Derek's hazel eyes. She'd never seen them this close, before. The world was getting heavy. Her head was pounding from the onslaught of car alarms and new sensations. Now that she had Derek again she felt safe. Derek would know what to do. He was smart. He could put two and two together.
The only thing she could do was say his name once more out loud before she let the darkness consume her again. Somehow, sleeping without headlights felt like actual rest.
Betty woke up to the sound of the garage door opening. The sensation was not new. The Sheriff must be coming home from another late night. The first streaks of dawn shone through the open garage door and Betty welcomed the cool morning air. She could hear the birds outside chirping after their morning breakfast and a wonderfully fresh scent filled her—her what.
Wait. What?
There was no patrol car waiting for her when the garage door opened. There was only Stiles.
"THE HELL IS THIS?"
What.
"THE HELL ARE YOU?"
What?
"WHERE THE HELL IS MY JEEP?"
What?
Betty took a chance to really bring herself into the present. The present currently consisted of her sitting in a pile of fast food wrappers in the middle of the garage floor, completely naked with a wolf figurine around her neck. Huh. Well.
Shit.