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Scott throws the frisbee with a flick of his wrist and the blue disc soars through the air, high above Stiles' head, past the line of bushes behind them and far out of sight.
"Dude, no wolf powers!" Stiles laughs and immediately jogs to the bush line then tosses himself inside, fighting the brambles and twigs as they tug at his clothes and scratch his skin.
Next time, he's making Scott get it.
But the deeper in he moves, the more surprised he is by how far back the park goes. Especially when trees and bushes give way to flowering shrubs and a field of lush green grass.
The frisbee is a few dozen feet ahead, but as Stiles bends to pick it up, he's caught off guard by the sound of water off to his right. Abandoning the frisbee altogether, he follows the noise, shocked to find a gently flowing river not far ahead.
A river that...shouldn't be there?
"What the hell?" Stiles mumbles to himself and slowly steps forward, not quite believing his eyes. Beacon Hills has a river on the north side of the city, but the park they're at is miles away from it. Besides, nothing in the city is quite this...scenic.
It looks like an artist's interpretation of paradise, vibrant shades of blues and greens alternating between river and trees and sky, with vivid bursts of colour in the flowers, birds, and rocks scattered about.
He reaches the riverbank and crouches down, dipping his fingers into the flow of water as it tumbles and dances over the rocks that line the shore.
It feels real.
But it can't be.
He's just standing back up when a massive bang rings out behind him, startling him so hard he nearly falls back into the water.
"What the hell?" Stiles repeats, feeling like a broken record.
But now Peter is standing in front of him, having appeared out of literally nowhere, looking like pure sex in his painted-on white V-neck and dark wash jeans.
"Agreed," Peter says, scowling as he looks around, taking in the idyllic scenery before turning that gaze to Stiles. "What did you do?"
"Me?" Stiles sort of squeaks, though he'd die before admitting it. "I didn't do anything. I don't even know what's happening or how I got here or where here is!"
"So this has nothing to do with the magic you've been learning?"
"No!" Stiles says firmly. Then thinks about it a little more. "No?"
Well.
"Maybe?"
Peter looks less than impressed. "Maybe?"
"I did perform a spell last night. But nothing happened! It was a dud. Mostly."
Peter's arched eyebrow is probably meant to be intimidating, but Stiles just gets a little hot and bothered. "Mostly?"
"Well. The magic has been sort of...following me? Since then?" Stiles can't quite explain it, but there's been a shimmering glow surrounding him since he recited the words and mixed the ingredients.
And now that he's thinking about it, that glow seems to be everywhere here. Wherever here is.
That can't be a coincidence.
And judging by the way Peter looks around at the shimmer in the air and then back to Stiles like he's a few crayons short of a box, he's realized that, too.
"Let me get this straight. You, a new magic user with less than a year of experience, cast a spell on the night of a full moon that just so happened to coincide with the Summer Solstice?" Peter says it slowly, like speaking any faster will make it impossible for Stiles to follow along. It's condescending as hell but Stiles isn't exactly in a position to get pissy about it.
"Yes."
"Knowing full well that magic is amplified tenfold when a full moon occurs on the solstice?"
"...Yes." To be fair, that's the exact reason Stiles chose to do a complicated spell last night in the first place.
He's still honing his abilities, learning how to control his Spark. As a general rule, the more complicated spells are so far beyond his current skill level that he might as well not have magic at all. But once every twenty years or so, when a full moon rises on the eve of the Summer Solstice, enough ambient magic fills the air that even a newbie like himself can play in the big leagues, even if it's just for a few hours.
Besides, Deaton left his grimoire just sitting on his desk after their lesson. What was Stiles supposed to do, not snap a picture of a few of the spells and try one out?
That's just madness.
But as justified as Stiles feels, Peter is looking at him expectantly, leaning towards him just a little like it'll pull some sort of response from Stiles. Stiles, however, doesn't really know what he wants him to say.
After a solid minute of just staring at each other, Peter lets out what must be the most long-suffering sigh Stiles has ever heard. "What was the spell, you nitwit?"
Stiles opens his mouth to answer but then freezes, eyes wide, as he realizes what this all means.
"Uh. Nothing."
"Stiles..."
"You know what, it would probably be best if we could just...forget about this altogether." Stiles can feel the blush creeping up his neck and over his cheeks.
"Stiles," Peter practically growls. He looks about three seconds from pouncing.
For a moment, Stiles honestly debates the merits of keeping his mouth shut and just letting Peter eviscerate him for it. It might be less painful in the long run. Because really, how the hell is he supposed to admit that he'd been working a spell to locate his goddamn soulmate?
Maybe it's his racing heart or the thousand shades of red that must be painted across his cheeks, but Peter seems to take pity on Stiles, uncrossing his arms from over his broad, impressively sculpted chest and sounding far less murderous when he speaks again. "Stiles. You may be the only human I don't consider a complete and utter waste of skin. Don't make me kill you."
And, well, maybe it's not a lot less murderous, but it seems like the best Stiles is going to get and he's pretty sure he can't exactly lie his way out of this one. Especially not if the spell actually worked.
So with a Grand Canyon-sized pit in his stomach, Stiles sucks in a breath and spits out an answer so quickly that the words all bleed together in an almost unintelligible sentence.
"I did a spell to locate my soulmate and I didn't actually think it would do anything but now you're here and I'm here and I'm pretty sure this is a sort of in-between dream world where souls are supposed to meet off of the mortal plane but I think I fucked something up and transported us both here by mistake but I can totally find a way out if you could just, like, refrain from killing me for a little while."
Time sort of stalls as Peter blinks at him, and all Stiles can do is hold his breath, waiting for either a response or his sudden and likely painful death.
But once Peter processes the words, his gaze travels to the space around them, expression shifting with a clear understanding of something Stiles hasn't quite worked out. "The liminal space between the conscious and unconscious worlds. Between perception and true reality."
It seems like Peter is murmuring the words to himself, not to Stiles, but Stiles still answers back, more than a little surprised that Peter seems to grasp exactly where they are. His own voice matches the quiet reverence of Peter's. "You know what this place is?"
Peter nods, his gaze floating back to Stiles with an intensity that steals his breath away. "You're not the only one that can read."
Which, fair.
"You read about magic?" Stiles steps closer without even meaning to, his embarrassment fizzling away now that Peter isn't mocking or threatening to disembowel him.
And when Peter smirks, it's like a current ripping through Stiles, zinging up his spine and dancing through his veins. "I read about power."
"Of course." Stiles almost smiles. He likes that about Peter. He always has. "So what do you know about this place?"
Because if Stiles is honest, he didn't really look into it much. He gathered that the gist of it was a safe space for souls to connect outside of the body, to find one another before seeking a connection in the waking world. He didn't think he needed to know more than that.
"I know it's not supposed to exist in the physical realm. That it would take exceptionally powerful magic to bring us here." Peter steps closer, until they're only inches apart and the sound of the nearby water is abruptly drown out by Stiles' own racing heart.
"What else?" Stiles breathes.
"I know I'm less surprised about this whole soulmate revelation than you might expect."
Stiles' gaze bounces between Peter's lips and eyes — that icy blue that he wants to dive into and never resurface — undecided where to focus. Then his brain short-circuits as Peter's tongue darts out to wet his lower lip. All he can manage is a feeble, "Oh?"
"Yes. Oh." Peter says, then he kindly keeps Stiles from having to formulate any additional response by leaning in to close the distance between them and kissing him like it's the answer to all their problems.
And holy shit does Peter know how to kiss.
Stiles isn't really sure where his own hands end up as they wander Peter's arms and back and shoulders and sides, but Peter's hands land warm and steady, one on Stiles' hip and the other wrapped around the back of his neck, and Stiles melts into it like marshmallows in a cup of the most decadent hot chocolate and he decides then and there that he never wants it to end.
Except suddenly there are dogs barking and children laughing and the faint strains of the same shitty pop song floating through the air from someone's Bluetooth speaker as before Stiles disappeared into that liminal space. And above all that, Scott's voice, completely shocked as he says, "Peter? Where the hell did you come from? And why are you kissing Stiles? And where's the frisbee?"
With a reluctance that scratches at his soul, Stiles pulls back and opens his eyes. Sure enough, he's in the park once again, in a tangle of bushes not far from where Scott had thrown the frisbee.
From what he can tell, no time at all has passed since he left.
"Well that was...something," Stiles murmurs.
Peter just smirks, his grip still firm and weirdly comforting on Stiles' body.
"We should probably talk about the whole...soulmate thing."
"Mmhmm." The agreement seems half-hearted as Peter's gaze drops to Stiles' lips.
And while Stiles may still be incredibly confused and maybe a little in shock, he's not about to let an opportunity pass him by. "Maybe we could kiss about it a little more first?"
Every nerve ending in Stiles' body lights up like fireworks as Peter smiles. "I knew there was a reason I liked you."
"I'm very likeable," Stiles grins.
"Clearly."
"Soulmate material, apparently. I guess we're gonna need to look into how that works and what exactly it means and—"
Turns out being kissed into silence might just be Stiles' new favourite thing. So much so that, as their lips move together like they were always meant to, Stiles is already planning how to make Peter shut him up more often.
He can't wait.
And as they leave the park hand-in-hand and with a very confused Scott in tow, he also thanks his lucky stars — or rather the sun and the full moon — for letting the spell work and bringing a whole new kind of magic into his life.
Best. Solstice. Ever.