Still ▸ Teen Wolf [Book Two]

forty eight ; young love murder

my sincerest apologies, but this is the chapter that i am most proud of. it's awfully long, though, so i would just be prepared for that. im splitting the rest of this episode with the next one considering they're the only ones that are 'to be continued' and everything. i promise it will make sense- ish. on the bright side, i updated!

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FORTY EIGHT;

YOUNG LOVE MURDER

"So, what are you saying?"

The question fell from Melissa McCall's mouth when her ex-husband began to explain why he believed it was odd that Stiles had been smelling something so pungently, and how it could help them in trying to figure out where he went sleepwalking. The two adults were plenty aware of the distressed teenager in the back of the car, even more aware that she was running on a short fuse, and that if they didn't find Stiles then they would be dealing with more than just the Sheriff's missing son. Melissa tried her hardest to convert the conversation into delicate responses, and even Agent McCall, who has barely spoken a single word to Sage since she was a little girl— words that didn't consist of when he was dying — knew well enough that they were running out of time to find Stiles.

Agent McCall hesitated at Melissa's question, giving her glance to try and confirm that it was okay to speak about his hypothesis with the main victim's ex-girlfriend in the backseat. "I'm saying, the real question might be: how do we know he's not still asleep?"

"You mean, he's been asleep this whole time?" Melissa asked, her eyebrows shooting up in disbelief as she wondered if he was truly right about the possibility of Stiles having fled his house, winding up halfway across town with sleep still paralyzing his body.

Sage, who had been previously silent the entire time that they were driving around the perimeter of Beacon Hills, felt herself blinking back a sort of anesthetic feeling as she tried to wrap her head around the conversation that they were having right in front of her. Even the slightest possibility of Stiles being asleep this entire time could give them a hint to where he might have gone, but there were two things preventing her from finding out where that was; one, had been the fact that she was so unstable at the moment she barely knew her own name, and two was that, through the entire process of them losing their sanity, she hadn't been with Stiles. There was no way for her to know where his nightmares brought him every night.

She felt useless as she stared out the windshield, knuckles turning white the longer she grasped her hands tightly together. "People are unpredictable, even when they're sleeping."

"Exactly," Agent McCall agreed, nodding his head towards the blonde, somewhat grateful that she was actually responsive in the conversation. "One guy goes down to the kitchen and cooks an entire meal. Another guy is found mowing his lawn— naked."

Melissa didn't seem to understand where the man was leading them, or how Sage grasped what he was explaining without even tuning into all he said. "Why does any of that matter?"

"Remember that townhouse apartment we lived in?" the agent questioned, looking over at the curly-haired brunette for confirmation to try and better explain himself. "There was that one night I came home drunk—"

Melissa scoffed with an unamused sneer. "Oh, one night?"

The blonde pressed her lips tightly together from the back seat of the car, feeling as though she were intruding on something meant for the former couple only. She knew about all of the issues involving Scott's parents, and had she not talked with Melissa about it over the course of the summer, the memory back in fourth grade where Agent McCall walked into their classroom drunk, trying to find his son, remained branded into her head forever. He might be trying to clean himself up and redeem what little integrity he had left in this town, but that didn't mean he deserved to be forgiven for leaving Scott and Melissa alone without support.