Chapter Text
Stiles spends the first few weeks hanging out with Scott, playing video games, sleeping as late as he can and compiling a database of werewolf-isms he’s collected.
Then summer school starts and his days empty out. He gets a part time job scooping ice cream.
Missing Children posters start showing up around town. Boyd and Erica’s faces gaze back at him as he chews on his thumbnail in front of the Sugar Shack.
He brings his father a sugar cone to the office, and only feels a little guilty when he uses the distraction to look up Derek Hale’s new address on the witness list.
He parks in front of the apartment building, staring up at the weeping metal and old air conditioners jutting from windows. Derek’s floor number means he has the loft apartment, and he leans against the Jeep squinting at the windows for a few minutes before losing his nerve and driving away.
At the employee meeting, a tiny gathering in which the Boss endlessly demonstrates proper wrist technique for scooping and scowls when the boys snicker, someone pulls out the flyers and mentions that Erica was her partner for her English project. After his shift Stiles packs two pints of ice cream, chocolate and vanilla, and drives back out to the apartment.
This time he gets inside the building but the elevator is out of order. By the time he makes his way to the top floor the cardboard around the ice cream is sweating and so is he. He smells like an awkward combination of sugar and musk and warm vanilla cones. Derek has the door open and is leaning against the frame when he rounds the last curve and it makes him pause and fumble his grip on the cartons.
“One of those better be for me” he nods, before turning and leading the way into the apartment. Stiles doesn’t shut the door behind him.
“So I’ve seen the notices for Erica and Boyd. I guess I just thought… I don’t know, I wanted to make sure they were okay.”
Derek just looks at him, running a dish towel through his hands slowly.
“They left. I haven’t seen them since.”
“So they got out of Argent’s basement and bolted?”
Stiles tells him about how the Argent’s kidnapped Boyd and Erica, how they kept them electrified and terrified until Chris let them go. How he had felt guilty until he found out they were free, how the fliers made him wonder if Derek as keeping tabs on them.
Derek hadn’t known. Derek had assumed they’d run as far and fast as possible from their parents and the Hunters and from Derek, relying on their new skills to build a life.
That’s the first time Derek considers the Alphas might have them. He pushes it out of his mind.