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They went slow.
They dated for some time before admitting that they were going on dates. At first, to reassure themselves and each other, it was just spending more time together. Derek was “just coming to look over some stuff”. Or Chris was just “heading out for a few drinks”. By the time they felt comfortable saying, out loud, that yes, they were seeing each other, they had been seeing each other for a month.
The delay gave them time. It gave them time to reinforce themselves against what people would say and did say.
I thought you were straight. I thought you hated him. What’s the age difference between you two? Don’t you think he might be manipulating you? What about your daughter? Aren’t you worried that he’s a werewolf? Aren’t you worried that he’s a hunter? Didn’t he bite your wife? Didn’t his sister murder your whole family?
Kate had messed Derek up, as had just about everyone else Derek had ever fallen in love with, so by the time Chris got to him there wasn’t much worse he could do. So he went slow. He wanted to ensure Derek had a chance to initiate, and to trust. He could see how badly Derek wanted to trust, and just as easily that Derek was preparing himself for betrayal. And Chris sort of resented that, because he had personally tried always to be honest, but his own sister had set the precedent for Derek’s disastrous relationships and it was hard to blame the man for trying to shield himself.
Chris had lost the woman who was meant to be his life partner, and shortly after had begun discovering her secrets. Not affairs or stolen money. No, she was too refined and brutal for anything so bourgeois. All the skeletons in her closet were literal skeletons. In short, she had, with her power as the Argent matriarch, carried out killings without her husband’s knowledge or consent. Without searching for evidence of innocence. Just another leader with the terrible conviction that genocide was a valid solution to her cause.
The problem for Chris was knowing how to feel. He knew how to feel about murderers. He knew how to feel about his wife feeling so outraged by the thought of being a werewolf that she would gladly kill herself rather than continue living. But trying to reconcile them in his mind, the two women – his beloved wife, his rock, and this apparent serial killer – crushed him.
Maybe he and Derek were just settling automatically for the person most guaranteed to fuck them up. After all, it was easier to be fucked up by somebody if you saw it coming. If they weren’t hiding behind the face of a loving, loyal girlfriend or wife. They had the benefit of knowing each other as enemies before knowing each other as – dates? Other halves? Things? – and that aside, Derek’s flaws were open to viewing, and so were Chris’s.
What they had wasn’t casual, and it wasn’t ordinary or easy, but it was stable, which was more than they’d hoped for.
So to maintain their miraculous stability, they went slow. They didn’t hold hands, because that would have felt too romantic and given the relationship a sheen of disbelief, and much as they were cautious, they were both doing this for a reason and they wanted to believe. They both wanted a significant other. They had matching holes in their hearts and they wanted proof that those holes could be patched up. So, in a roundabout way, no hand-holding was tolerated.
But there did eventually come a time that constituted romance, and that was the one and only time Chris ever showed blind panic in Derek’s presence. Derek was gushing blood from a side wound which would, in a few minutes, probably be fine. But he was still gushing blood. And in a brief moment of histrionics which Chris tried and failed to justify, because all his brain could process was that the person he loves is losing massive amounts of blood, Chris took Derek’s face in his wet red hands and kissed him with all the repressed passion of a man who has spent a lifetime trying to shut down his own natural, staggeringly instinctive sentimentality.
They didn’t kiss for another fortnight, until Chris brought some groceries to Derek’s loft because Derek was incapable of doing his own shopping, and Derek showed his appreciation with an unexpectedly gentle, nuzzling peck on the cheek.
After that, on the rare occasions that they stayed the night at each other’s homes, they started sleeping together. Just sleeping, because slow means slow, but it was a huge step. For Derek, because physical intimacy had always, for him, been preceded by sex, and to platonically sleep next to his Thing was kind of a first. For Chris, because it was the first time he’d slept next to someone since Victoria, and it was the first time he’d dated a guy, and it was the first time he’d slept in someone else’s bed without at least his gun under the pillow.
That vulnerability, the unexpected sweetness of waking up with their arms around each other, was catharsis. It was the calm after the storm. Chris felt steady again, a boat adrift that has finally found a dock to tie to, and Derek felt like maybe, maybe finally, here was a safe place to curl up and give in.
But not yet. Slow.
They knew the worst of each other. They had also observed each other’s turnaround, the point where resentment and bitterness had become hope. And before they knew it, they were learning the best of each other.
There was something thoughtlessly giving about Derek, the way he was generous with his time and energy, something that Chris had always shallowly assumed was a werewolf thing, an instinct to look out for the pack. He began to suspect that it was just a Derek thing. Derek’s social instinct was so strong that, despite his antisocial attitude, he could not survive without contact and relationships. And one of the only ways he had of maintaining relationships was offering his life and his protection. To Scott, to Scott’s pack. To the two remaining Argents.
And Chris had a similar need. He wanted his legacy to be positive, to make the world a safer place. Derek could respect that. Chris had always had good intentions. His obsessive attachment to the code proved that, more or less. But his road of good intentions had led him into the heart of hell before he’d realized where he was and turned back, and by then he had already helped further the name of Argent as one of violence and murder. But Derek knew what it was like to be misled. And anyway, he was getting better at this whole “forgiving” thing, and he was a bit in love, and it hadn’t gone sour yet, so he could afford to practice forgiving on Chris.
And what started as noticing each other’s penchant for being providers and nurturers, turned into noticing each other’s other virtues. Like the way Chris didn’t snore. Like the way Derek pulled faces at babies in the supermarket to make them giggle. Chris didn’t yell when he got angry. Derek yelled, but he communicated too. Chris liked to cuddle. Derek let Chris be the big spoon.
Derek was halfway through shaving Chris one morning when he realized what was happening. It was telling, how deep into this relationship they’d fallen, that he could hold a razor to Chris’s throat and Chris’s only response was to smile up at him absently, sometimes dropping his gaze sideways as he thought about whatever it was Chris thought about in the morning (if there were enough eggs in the fridge, if he remembered to take the trash out, if he remembered to replace the clip in his favourite Glock).
The moment had crept up on him. Not the ways lies crept up, or betrayal. The truth of the moment crept up like a cat, before gently settling its weight on his chest.
He was in love, and he was loved.
He trusted, and he was being trusted.
For one flabbergasted moment, Derek was utterly unsure of where to go with this epiphany. He stood still, with the hand holding the razor hanging by his side. Chris caught Derek’s gaze, his expression one of concern. Are you alright? Do you hear something? And when did they reach the milestone of nonverbal communication?
Derek let a ghost of a smile cross his features. He lifted the razor and finished sliding it up from Chris’s jawline to his cheek, removing the last of the shaving cream and even cleaned away the remaining traces with a tamp face towel.
And then he kissed Chris, slowly, surely and sincerely. He leaned over him, listening to his heartbeat and ignoring the chemical aftertaste of shaving cream, trying to put into the gesture what it was too hard to put into words.
Chris kissed back and guessed with vague accuracy at the reason for Derek’s sudden personality twitch. He stood without breaking the kiss, and wrapped his arms tight around Derek’s waist.
It had been several months now since they first officially started dating. How long had they waited, just to stand in the bathroom in the morning and kiss?
People commented, and said things, and shot looks, and waited for the whole thing to come crashing down. It didn’t. The foundation had been laid thoroughly. They had gone slow. They had made sure. And they weren’t going to fuck each other up. Not anymore.