Thinking about the bite incident again! I’m assuming the bite incident happens either midseason or a bit later than that, and the Scottsplosion is the season finale.
I figure in the immediate aftermath of the Scottsplosion, Drift talks Shelby into moving in with them (possibly by initially framing it as a sleepover and then bribing them with how much shorter the commute to campus is from Avid and Drift’s place and how much fun they’re all having and how much less tense Shelby feels without Scott around all the time and the other two actually doing their share of the chores instead of leaving Shelby to do all the housekeeping), and within like a week she’s gotten Shelby to bring a lot of her clothing and all their important paperwork over to their place. (Because Drift is practical and wants anything Shelby actually needs out of that apartment ASAP, and Shelby won’t argue if Drift says it’s just so Shelby has it on hand in case they need their birth certificate for something.)
In the meantime, I suspect Scott is trying to slowly move Pyro into the apartment, partially to parallel canon and partially because it’s an effective way to get Pyro away from Apo. This mostly manifests as Pyro never being “at home” because he’s always at Scott’s place and his clothing, toiletries and schoolbooks slowly migrating to Scott’s apartment. (Apo hates this for a myriad of reasons, including that they do kind of really need Pyro to keep paying his half of the rent.)
Post-Scottsplosion, Apo, Drift, Pyro, Shelby and possibly Avid all go to the apartment to collect Shelby and Pyro’s things. Shelby hasn’t actually returned her key yet, so they get in just fine. (Scott might have deactivated their FOB, so getting TO the apartment door might be a minor issue, but they can just tailgate somebody else.) Shelby immediately takes issue with the state of the apartment, because neither Scott nor Pyro can clean for shit. Shelby grabs like a couple of photo albums and some out-of-season clothes she didn’t pack and Apo starts helping Pyro collect his stuff from around the apartment. Drift awkwardly points out that it doesn’t look like anybody’s been home in days, and Shelby’s like “yeah Scott sometimes vanishes for a bit, not that weird”. (Apo: “Let’s just get this done before he comes back, I don’t think he can call the cops on us if Shelby’s here but I don’t want to deal with him either way.”)
Also, there’s a discussion of the fact that technically most if not all of the furniture in the apartment is Shelby’s, and does she want to take anything? Probably most of the furniture gets ditched, because let’s be real most of it is probably IKEA furniture and Shelby’s not petty enough to empty the apartment (Apo would be but it’s not her stuff), but I could see Shelby taking a couple pieces for Avid and Drift’s place. They grab pizza on the way home after debating whether this was enough of a move to fall under the “you have to get pizza after helping a friend move” (which ends in somebody going “literally who cares, I want pizza and I say we’ve earned it”.
All this to say, when Scott finally comes home, he comes back to an apartment that’s dusty as fuck, missing both Shelby and Pyro’s personal effects, also missing a couple pieces of furniture, has a spare key and FOB sitting on the countertop, and also he has to somehow come up with over a month of rent quick because he’s late on his half, Shelby isn’t covering her half anymore (because she moved out and she’s not even on the lease anymore), and he can’t mindwhammy the landlord anymore. Welcome back to the land of the living, Scott!
(Yes, this was partially inspired by my experience with stupid moves and DV.)
Shelby just brought over a few things at first! And then, well, it's not like Scott's in the apartment anyway and she's having a lot more fun at the cluehunters, so she may as well bring over some more just in case - Avid is incredibly good at collecting all her personal data because he spent the past week going on a bender about shapechangers and identity theft - and she doesn't actually know when it switches to "moved in" but it was probably before Drift decided to go collect a lot of her furniture (oh hey, none of Scott's things got broken when he and Apo fought, it was all Shelby's. Weird coincidence!)
Pyro's things are- well. They're never at the applespice apartment and they're not answering Apo's texts about roommate issues, but Scott doesn't actually want them to feel at home with him. He wants Pyro to always be that little bit on edge and desperate to please - keep it "my boyfriend's place" rather than "our place" in his head so he keeps working to make it up to Scott - and hey, maybe the Pyro-Shelby fight is because he trashed her room. (It's the one place in the apartment Scott doesn't really go. Pyro needs an outlet. It's not his, but nothing really is, and it's not like they'd take him back anyway. All he has is Scott, nobody else cares, they just want to control him, they just want to push him down. Scott's the only person that makes him feel powerful. Pyro has to pay that back, Pyro has to be grateful, Pyro has to thank him for making them strong but they just feel so fucking angry sometimes before Scott explains what really happened. They destroyed her room. They're just like everyone thinks they were. Scott really is the only person that'll love them.)
(I think they all realize when clearing the apartment that Pyro's things are also broken, in the carnage of Shelby's room. That doesn't mean he had any right to be there in the first place, but it does shift some perspectives.) (Mostly Avid's I'll be real. Avid is still terrified of Pyro at this point in the timeline; Abolish has JUST cured him and Pyro still looks Very Vampiric.)
Shelby looks at the ottoman Scott was so pleased about her buying, and realises it actually isn't to her tastes at all. She doesn't want so much of the stuff here, even though it's technically hers, because she didn't get it for herself. She, Drift, and Pyro are all sorting through to find what they want to keep or not. Apo and Avid are conscripted into carrying, and sorting the "leave" pile into "burn" or "otherwise destroy" categories. (Shelby isn't petty enough. Apo is, so is Avid, they came up with this plan wordlessly and they are going to carry it out. They're unscrewing every bolt in the shelves and leaving just the last two. They're emptying all the toilet paper. They're taking every battery in the house and all of the clean sheets. They're unstitching his beautifully tailored jacket at the seams so it still looks fine but will slowly disintegrate when he puts it on. They're putting a fish fillet covered in garlic under his bed. And so on and so forth.)
Scott comes back to a VERY UPSET landlord and has to spend basically all the cash he got (Scott can't open a bank account bc he doesn't have proof of identity. They take this shit REALLY SERIOUSLY.) instantly just to make this place Habitable again and then has to get a job or else live with Owen (on rooftops or in the doctor's clinic (not house, the doctor has one (1) survival instinct)) and frankly Scott's pride will kill him before a stake would if he has to hear Owen say "I told you so." He doesn't care what cattle think of him (he said, through grinding fangs) but if other vampires know how far he's fallen, that would be unsalvageable. He needs to get Apo, and then he can claim it was all part of the plan.
