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There are all sorts of cultural norms for when someone saves a life. Indebtedness, gratitude, responsibility, lifelong ties.
But those things matter more when you’ve put something of yourself at risk in the lifesaving attempt, Derek thinks. They don’t count when you probably weren’t going to die anyway. Then it’s more like helping an elderly woman carry her groceries across the road. A nice thing to do, but no big deal.
So when Chris doesn’t call him, doesn’t pledge eternal allegiance or ask to be blood brothers, he doesn’t let himself be disappointed, because he doesn’t want or need that anyway.
He lets Peter pull the shards of glass out of his back, despite the fact he’d rather not turn his back to Peter, despite the fact that he’s pretty sure the process wouldn’t be so painful if anyone else were doing it.
There's no one else to ask who's not dealing with their own wounds, caught up in their own problems.
Chris Argent shows up a day later than Derek expected him to, but he says exactly what Derek expects: “I owe you one.”
It’s true.
Derek has no plans of calling in the favor, though, unless there’s no other choice. And in the circumstances where Derek would be desperate enough to call in a favor, Chris would probably be equally desperate. Somehow, their circles have overlapped, an overly compressed Venn diagram of people who matter.
“Why are you here?” Derek asks. There has to be something. Argent thanked him at the station before Derek fled to avoid potentially suspicious paramedics; the debt was acknowledged then, even if Chris never said it outright.
“I don’t know.” Chris looks at him like Derek has an answer. “I just—I don’t like owing people.”
“Everyone ends up owing people,” Derek says. “Some more than others. If I need you, I’ll let you know. Just—you can leave.”
Chris looks at him, like there’s a contradiction to be seen in Derek’s face, but Derek knows there’s not. His face is set. It’s not a particularly open face, at the best of times, but right now, he’s pretty sure it’s backing up his words 100%.
“Fine,” Chris says, without moving. “I’ll leave.”
Derek waits, but he’s not the hunter here; he doesn’t have the patience to wait out someone who’s waiting for the acknowledgment of something they won’t say.
“Whatever,” Derek sighs. “I’m going to bed.” He strips off his shirt as he walks away, and he hears the intake of breath behind him.
“Your back—“ Chris says.
“Yeah, it’s not healing the way it should. God knows why. It’ll be fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Chris says. “This happened because of me.”
“If you’re the demon possessing Stiles that set the bomb, then yes, it did.”
“For me, then.”
“Whatever,” Derek says again. “You were there. I’d have done it for anyone I was handcuffed to a bench with.” He doesn’t turn around; can’t look at Chris for this conversation. He’s the werewolf, the one who can hear the stutter in a liar’s heartbeat. But Chris is the hunter, the one who can see it in his prey’s eyes.
“You might have,” Chris says speculatively. “For Scott, for Stiles, for Isaac, for Melissa, for Cora, for Peter, for Allison, for Lydia. But for a stranger? I don’t know.”
“You’re not a stranger,” Derek says.
Derek can hear Argent moving forward, but Derek’s got nowhere further to go that isn’t into the bed, and that’s a step too far for the current scenario. Probably.
“No,” Argent acknowledges. “All the more reason why you should have wanted to let me die.”
“Enough people are dead,” Derek says, and his words are even, despite the fact that he can feel Chris’s breath upon the back of his neck.
“But we’re alive, aren’t we? We’re alive, and here, and why?”
“Because we haven’t died yet.” Derek is too tired for this. Too tired for the desperation in Chris’s voice; too tired for everything.
When he feels Chris’s hands on his shoulders, he lets himself be turned around, resists the urge to lash out. Lets himself look into Chris’s face and the questions in his eyes and say, “Go home, Chris.”
“But we’re alive,” Chris repeats, like it means something, but Derek has ended up alive enough times now that he knows it doesn’t. People die and he lives, and it doesn’t mean anything, except that he’s a dangerous person to be around, and death doesn’t want him yet.
Chris’s hands are still on him, and Derek thinks it’s just because he’s forgotten that they’re there, but then they start moving, rubbing against the scars on Derek’s back that should be healing faster than they are, the seventy-four shiny scratches that hurt as much being emptied as they did being made.
(And, oh—yes—Peter did make them worse, and that’s why they’re still there, and Derek is going to kill him, again, as soon as Argent stops his weirdly groping guilt trip and leaves.)
Chris hasn’t stopped looking at Derek, and it’s disconcerting. There are things Argent shouldn’t see, and the closeness and the rubbing are bringing them too close to the surface, too close to sight. Too close, like Argent’s face is too close, his mouth is too close, his body’s too close.
“We’re alive,” Chris says, but it’s more definite now, a statement and not a question, and even if Derek wanted to there’s no chance for him to answer before Argent’s erasing the rest of the space between them, biting at his lips in something that resembles a kiss but seems too violent to really count as one. There are hands at his jeans, and Derek can’t even find it in himself to be surprised that this is what’s been at the heart of the weird tension between them. There are other things too, he’s sure, but guilt isn’t sexy, and this is. He returns the kiss, returns the fumbling, lets himself fall back onto the bed and arch so the jeans can slide all the way off, so the hands can get closer, touch more.
He lets himself shiver into a grip that’s just on the side of too-rough, though Derek might be reevaluating that scale. And when the grip jerks, dry and all friction, until it picks up the pre-cum and begins to slide, faster, Derek just lets go.
He doesn’t want to open his eyes, after, so he leaves them closed as he lies there, breath evening out. He’ll return the favor, as soon as he figures out what kind of favor this was. Celebratory we’re-alive-let’s-jerk-each-other-off, obligatory you-saved-my-life-let-me-jerk-you-off, angry you’re-a-jerk-I-don’t-want-to-be-in-debt-to-jerking-off. Or—at the bounce of another person falling onto the bed beside him, Derek looks over to see Argent taking care of himself, which solves that dilemma, except Derek had just about decided he was actually looking forward to getting his hands on Argent’s cock. Seeing it there, so close and so hard and so red against the tanned skin of Argent’s hands, Derek’s even more sure of it, so he knocks Chris’s hands aside and replaces them with his own, slides onto his knees in front of the bed because it’s easier that way, not because of the way Chris’s eyes darken looking at him there.
It’s not a place Derek’s been before, in a lot of ways, and as he pulls himself back up later, still swirling an unfamiliar taste in his mouth, he’s not sure he wants to go back again. He looks down at the man on his bed, who looks wrecked, but still somehow attractive, in a way Derek hadn’t ever let himself consider. He kicks Chris’s foot, says again, “Go home.”
Chris opens his eyes, looks up, and Derek’s pretty sure that look in them, beneath the satisfaction, is amusement.
“I’m going,” Chris says, and this time he suits his actions to the words, lazily pulls his clothes back on in a way that’s more sensual than it ought to be, considering the circumstances. Clothes going back on aren’t supposed to be as appealing as clothes coming off. Derek catches himself watching Chris’s hands, and makes himself turn away.
“I still owe you,” Chris says with a slow smile. “Let me know when you need anything.” He brushes a hand across Derek’s back as he slides past, and it’s a goodbye, an apology, a promise. It’s a touch Derek feels the ghost of that night, and the next, and even once the last of the scars have finally faded. Derek lives with enough ghosts that one more is no great struggle, except that this one haunts the good dreams, not the nightmares; this one bothers him in waking, when he should be focusing on the newest plan, on his legal defense, on his bigger-than-Chris problems. He tells himself that it’s just closure he’s seeking when he shows up at the Argents’ doorstep, when he angrily tells Chris he doesn’t need him.
“No,” Chris agrees, “you don’t, do you? You don’t need anyone. But let yourself have this, anyway.”
So Derek does.