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Stiles blinked his eyes open, expecting bright sunlight and seeing nothing but blackness. Pushing himself to sit up, he glanced around, willing his eyes to adjust to the darkness so he could make out shapes or anything. When that didn’t happen, he had a brief, panicked thought that he might be blind, but when he held his hands up in front of his face, he could see them.
Once that fear was allayed, he reached out with his hands but felt nothing. Furrowing his brow, he put his hands down and touched the ground he sat on but nothing further than that as if he sat on the precipice of one of the stone formations in Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah. Carefully, he stretched his arms out, trying to find the edges, but it seemed to grow with his actions. Scooting to the left, he reached his hand further and still didn’t find the edge.
Risking rising to his feet, Stiles let out a scream and got nothing in return, not even an echo. The sound disappeared almost as soon as it left his mouth. “Damn,” he muttered, inching his feet along, waiting for the moment the ground beneath him gave way, but it didn’t.
Nothing around him changed. Complete and utter darkness and Stiles felt a swoop in his stomach as he thought about similar situations when the Nogitsune had possessed him. As he glanced around, he realized that the title of Void!Stiles was a legitimate one because this was what it was like inside of his own head.
He’d thought at first that it had started all over again, but the sense of dread and evil didn’t fill the space. In fact, the emotional space was as void as the physical. Turning his head side to side, he debated continuing his exploration or remaining where he stood and hoping that something changed. Sighing, he stared off into the abyss as his fingers began tapping against his thigh.
Having no way to judge the passing of time, he started counting his fingers as they tapped. When he got to a thousand, he froze. In front of him, at an unknown distance, something in the void shifted. Squinting and taking a few, slow steps forward, Stiles startled, falling backward when two pinpricks of red appeared.
“Holy hell!” Stiles shouted, scrambling backward on his hands and feet. His mind went over the Nietzsche quote about staring into the abyss until the abyss started back at you. He muttered the words under his breath, stopping when a familiar chuckle sounded in the distance. “Derek?!” he screamed. “What the fuck!?”
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you that it’s useless to scream into the Void?” he asked, the red dots growing larger but still the only thing that Stiles could see other than nothingness. Derek’s voice sounded distorted. Stiles hoped it really was the Alpha there with him and not something wearing his face. He immediately started counting his fingers again.
“It’s real. It’s all real,” Derek said, finally coming close enough that Stiles could feel the heat from his body but still could only see the glowing eyes. He reached out blindly in Derek’s direction, jumping when Derek gripped his arm without difficulty.
“You can see,” Stiles said. “I can only see your eyes and my own limbs.”
“We become aware of the void as we fill it,” Derek said.
“What the hell are you going on about?” Stiles asked, twisting his wrist out of Derek’s grip to twist their fingers together. “Do not let go.”
“Never,” Derek promised, his voice serious, and Stiles wished he could see his face.
As soon as the thought passed through his mind, the darkness surrounding him seemed to lighten. The air felt lighter, and he blinked a few times as Derek’s features came into focus, starting from his eyes and working outward. Derek’s brows were furrowed, but the smile on his face was soft, almost fond; a smile he’d seen aimed at Cora when she’d been visiting from South America and told Derek he was going to be an Uncle.
“There you are.” Stiles smiled and pushed at Derek’s face. “Any idea what’s going on?”
“None,” Derek responded. “The last thing I remember was sitting in my loft reading while you played around with that spellbook Deaton gave you.” His eyes narrowed even further. “Did you do this?”
Stiles pressed his lips together and tried to look innocent as he thought over the different spells he’d been flipping between in the book. He hadn’t been focused on the words, more on the other man. They had been spending a lot of time together just hanging out in Derek’s loft in relative silence, and Stiles had been trying to work up the nerve to ask him if he wanted to get dinner sometime and not just as friends.
Derek had glanced up, and Stiles started reading randomly from the book, and whatever he’d said must have transported them to this void. Sighing, he ran his free hand through his hair and tried to figure out a way home short of clicking his heels together three times and saying, “There’s no place like home.”
“Well, Dorothy, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Derek said.
“Isn’t it supposed to be ‘Toto’?” Stiles questioned as he moved his free hand from his hair to his face, rubbing at it, hoping to stimulate some kind of brilliant idea.
Derek shrugged, moving Stiles’ hand with the motion. “I figured I’d beat you to the dog joke.”
The comment caught Stiles off guard, and a laugh burst forth from him and, with it, a shower of sparks that cut through the void. Stiles glanced at the small pieces of light, and through a particularly close cluster, he recognized Derek’s loft. “We’re still in the loft,” he said, pointing.
Derek pulled Stiles closer, wrapping an arm around him as he leaned to get a closer look. “Your laugh did it,” Derek said. “Laugh again.”
“I can’t just laugh on command,” Stiles argued.
“Stiles, I once saw you sit in the corner of the room and laugh at a paint chip for an hour,” Derek said, his face pulled into his grumpy cat face.
“In my defense, I was a bit crossfaded,” Stiles argued, but he giggled, sending soft clouds of light that brightened bits of the void but didn’t destroy them as his laugh had done.
Derek reached a hand out and ran it through the brighter areas with no effect on them. Stiles watched him, trying to come up with something to make himself laugh. The warmth of Derek pressed against his side distracted him enough that nothing funny came to mind. He groaned and laid his head on Derek’s shoulder, surprised when Derek stiffened next to him. Stiles started to pull back, but Derek relaxed his stance while tightening the grip of the arm wrapped around Stiles.
Another giggle escaped Stiles as he imagined Derek’s actions as an indication of attraction to Stiles, an idea too ludicrous even to believe. Strong, handsome, damaged Derek Hale falling for 147 pounds of pale skin and fragile bones. The only thing that Stiles felt might be remotely attractive about himself was his sense of humor; he’d even succeeded in making Derek laugh a time or two.
“Does it have to be my laugh?” Stiles wondered aloud, and Derek shrugged again, dislodging Stiles from his shoulder. “Why don’t you laugh?”
“Nothing’s funny,” Derek said. “We’re trapped in a void.”
“At least we’re together,” Stiles said on reflex, something he’d always said to Scott whenever they’d ended up in detention together, usually for something Stiles had done.
Derek snorted, and a couple of tiny sparks shot out of his nose and flew through the void, revealing a little bit more of the loft. Stiles thought he spotted the couch, but it could also be one of Derek’s many leather jackets. It could theoretically be the black leather portfolio Stiles had given Derek for Christmas right after he’d finished his degree and gotten a job at an architecture firm.
“We should really discuss the amount of animal hide you have in your loft,” Stiles said. “I’m starting to think you’re an extraterrestrial, not a ‘wolf.”
Another snort and more sparks. Derek slapped a hand over his face, ducking to hide from Stiles. “Oh hell no,” Stiles said, reaching for Derek’s wrist and tugging on it. “Those dorky little snorts are going to help get us out of here.” He poked Derek in the side, not really thinking he was ticklish and nearly losing it when Derek tried to pull away from him.
Laughing, he ignored the sparks in favor of tickling Derek, the two of them falling to the ground. In his excitement, Stiles may have forgotten about Derek’s werewolf speed and strength until he found himself lying on his back, both hands pinned above his head by one of Derek’s hands. The other hand dug into Stiles’ side, causing him to twist and contort and laugh until he was practically screaming with laughter.
A bright flash filled the void, sending Derek backward and making Stiles’ head spin, and when he recovered, he found himself on the floor of Derek’s loft. Derek sat on the couch, looking stunned and red-faced. Pushing himself to sit up, Stiles’ hand fell on the book he’d been looking at before they’d gone to the void. Picking it up, he looked at the page it had fallen open to, chuckling as he read the words bolded in the middle of the page: None fills the void like the company of a true friend.
Looking up at Derek, he took a deep breath and closed the book. “Hey, Derek, do you want to grab dinner with me?” Derek opened his mouth and snapped it shut again before nodding just once. “Awesome!” Stiles said, turning his attention back to the book.
“Um, Stiles?” Stiles looked up at Derek, who had sat forward on the couch. “It’s dinnertime.”
Slamming the book closed, Stiles tossed it onto the closest cushion. “Yeah, absolutely, we should totally go get dinner now.” He got to his feet and reached for Derek’s hand to pull him to stand.
They ended up face-to-face, reminding Stiles of the good old days when Derek regularly slammed him up against walls. He swallowed hard as Derek studied his face, eyes going to Stiles’ lips where his teeth dug into the flesh. The ludicrous notion from earlier was becoming less unbelievable by the moment.
“So, is this a date?” Derek asked, straight to the point, but his gaze was guarded.
Stiles smirked. “I don’t know. Are you ticklish?” he asked, digging his fingers into Derek’s side and bursting into laughter when they ended up on the floor again.