Chapter Text
Stiles grunted as he tripped over the towel that he'd placed at his dorm room doorway when the snow had really started to fall. He wasn't used to snow, not in the beginning anyway, and it had taken a week or two to fully realize that no towel meant lots of dirt, slush, and wet grossness to deal with when he wanted to venture down the hall to the bathroom.
He nearly threw his backpack onto his desk chair as he fought for balance. The biggest drawback of the towel, however, was the way it always got crumpled up when he walked in and then proceeded to wrap itself around his feet.
“Why did you call, Stiles?” Derek sounded bored with only a hint of irritation.
“Because! Scott is M.I.A., either busy with classes or busy with Allison, and Lydia is busy studying and everyone here wants to go to a frat party but I'm actually getting sick of them. Last week, I went to this one that had nearly an inch, no joke, of beer on the ground. Actually, it might have been more than just beer now that I'm thinking about it. Now I'm even more grossed out.” He shuddered as he remembered. Luckily, he'd been wearing boots then, instead of his sneakers.
There was silence on the other end of the phone. Stiles grimaced as he untied his boots, which were soaking wet with the slush he'd walked through to get to his dorm.
“I miss California winters,” he whined. “There's just... white crap falling from the sky all the time. And they don't even cancel classes! If there was even half this back in Beacon Hills, it would be borderline state of emergency!”
“Don't you have studying to do?” Derek said, sighing.
“Of course I do,” Stiles said. “Midterms are next week. Oh god. Next week.” Then he shook his head. “But today is Friday and all I want is to curl up with some pizza and watch a movie.”
“I repeat, why did you call?”
“I don't know! I'm homesick or something. Whatever, Derek, if you have more important things to be doing, fine, I'll talk to you... I don't know, over Christmas break or something.”
He started to pull the phone away from his ear to hit the hang up button when he heard Derek growl. “I didn't say I have more important things to do.”
“You're not saying much of anything besides, 'why did you call' which can only be interpreted as annoyance for the phone call.”
He could hear Derek sigh on the other side of the line but it was calculated, as if Derek was trying to keep it quiet and unheard. “What movie are you going to watch?”
Stiles shrugged. “Haven't decided yet. It's almost November, maybe I should watch V for Vendetta. You know, 'Remember, remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder, treason, and plot.' But then again, it's Halloween soon, maybe I should watch a scary movie. I haven't seen Psycho in a while.”
“I've never seen V for Vendetta.”
“Are you kidding me?” Stiles moved around his room, kicking the dirty laundry away from his bed. He kept meaning to do the laundry but every time he remembered it, he was busy with something else. Like right now. Luckily, he'd somehow gotten blessed with a lack of a roommate. Well, he had a roommate in the beginning but they'd found a friend to room with on the second floor, put in some papers, and promptly moved out. “You got to watch it. Turn on your computer.”
During their senior year in high school, the pack had convinced Derek to move into an apartment. Then Stiles, with the help of Lydia and Jackson, and the hindrance of Scott and Isaac, had furnished the apartment with necessities, including an actual bed, a fridge with actual food, and a desktop computer with internet. Derek had glared and growled pretty much the entire time but he hadn't really put up a fight about it.
Stiles turned on his laptop, angling it on the desk so he could see it from his bed, and found the website with V for Vendetta on it. “Go to this website and then let it load for a few minutes,” he told Derek when he heard the Windows start-up tune.
He rubbed his stomach when it growled. He was fresh out of flex spending money and he'd used all his meal passes for the week. He had a few things of ramen in the drawer and some spaghettios but he was trying to save them for emergencies.
“Did you order your pizza already?” Derek asked. Stiles could hear clicking of the keyboard as Derek slowly entered in the website.
Stiles groaned. “I can't. I'm fresh out of money. It's either a ramen night or a starve night. I'm probably going to go with starve, to be honest. I've had ramen pretty much every other day this week and I'll probably need the rest next week when I'm studying between exams.”
Derek growled.
“What? It's not my fault! I'm still a growing boy.” Stiles heard a click and looked at the phone. Call ended. “Well, that was rude.” He spent the next few minutes checking his email, his facebook, and double checking the flex plan amount online, pouting at the $3.32 in the account balance section. No way three dollars would get him a pizza, or pretty much anything close to sufficient to sate his stomach.
His ringtone set for Derek started playing: “Asshole calling!” and Stiles grinned. It wasn't often that Derek actually called him instead of the other way around so he'd actually forgotten that he'd set that as his ringtone. He hoped Derek never found out.
“Did your finger slip or something?” he asked sarcastically when he picked up.
Derek huffed. “Your pizza will be there in thirty five minutes.”
Stiles froze. “What?”
“Pizza. And cheesy bread. You're going to have to find something to drink though, I didn't order you any soda.”
“What?”
“Did you fall on your head? Pizza. Cheese, sauce, sausage and bacon, all on flattened and rounded dough? Sound familiar?”
“Did you just call and order me pizza?”
“Don't worry about the money, it's paid for.”
“What?”
“Oh my god,” Derek said and the line went dead again.
Stiles nearly tossed his phone to the floor as he fumbled to call Derek back.
“What. Do you want.”
“You ordered me pizza.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“You're welcome,” Derek said stiffly. “What is this movie about, anyway?”
Sure enough, a little over half an hour later, there was a knock on his door. His mouth watered the instant he opened it.
“Hey,” he said into the phone after he'd thanked the delivery man. He hadn't felt right hanging up and Derek hadn't suggested it, so they'd ended up watching the first thirty minutes together. They'd both paused it at the same part when the pizza man knocked. “Thank you, again, for the pizza. How did you know what kind to get?”
“The pack has ordered pizza often enough, Stiles. And you're pretty vocal about what you want the toppings to be every time.
Stiles folded over the first slice and groaned in delight as he bit into it. He had to put the phone down for a minute to mop up the grease that dribbled down his chin but he didn't even mind. He was pretty sure even his pupils were dilated in happiness.
When he picked the phone back up, Derek spoke. “Did you need a moment with your pizza?”
“I did. We definitely had a moment. Pretty sure I'm going to marry this pizza.”
He could imagine Derek rolling his eyes. “Are you ready to watch the movie now?”
When the movie was over, and half the pizza gone, they stayed on the phone talking about the movie. Stiles had to give Derek a history lesson about Guy Fawkes and the actual story behind it. They talked about the metaphors and symbols in the movie and eventually moved on to talking about the guys who made the movie, going into discussions about The Matrix and comics. Before Stiles knew it, it was one in the morning and his eyes were drifting shut. He didn't want to hang up because it had been too long since he could chat with someone about comics and movies but he was pretty sure his words were slurring with sleep.
He woke up with a jump around two thirty. He was pretty sure he'd had a falling dream and he realized he was indeed treacherously close to the edge of the bed. Somehow, his phone was still near his ear and, when he picked it up, the seconds were still ticking by.
“Derek?” he whispered into the phone. Knowing Derek, he could be having creeper withdrawals and might actually still be on the line listening to the room and Stiles sleeping. Then again, maybe he'd fallen asleep just like Stiles and, if that were true, Stiles didn't really want to wake him up. “Derek?” he whispered again. When there was still no answer, Stiles grinned. “Goodnight, Derek.” Then he hung up and climbed into bed.