He’s not certain who Chris is calling, but it doesn’t matter. Choices: down to pretty much one.
Chris says, “Hey, Scott? I know you know more coven gossip than I do, yeah I admitted that, yes I know you’re never gonna let me forget saying you know more about anything, but shut up about it for now, listen, have you heard about anyone missing a—” and proceeds to wander around the living room, out to the kitchen, around the sofa: Chris Evans paces when he talks, Sebastian observes. In motion. Like the rain: constantly pouring, chattering, drenching the world in cool silken patter.
Chris meanders back to the kitchen again. Sebastian gathers kitten-legs, and bolts. Soundless. Down the hall to the open door which leads to—he’s guessing but he’s right—Chris’s bedroom.
Chris’s bedroom’s a mess, in the way created by someone raised with good tidiness habits but single thirty-something male artist tendencies. Navy-plaid sheets dangle from a half-made bed; some socks and a pair of jeans haven’t made their way fully into the hamper; a stack of books has overflowed from the nightstand to the floor; but on the whole, not bad. Sebastian notices the authors. Tolle, Hawking, Kerouac. Neil deGrasse Tyson. Chris likes space exploration and philosophy and the outdoors. Something tugs at his heart, unfamiliar and fond.
Trading shapes feels like the combination of a full-body sneeze and the exhilaration of an intense brief workout and the release right after a good orgasm: he’s never been able to properly describe it. A ripple and a switch and a snap into another shape that feels right, and a quick shudder of pleasure as sensations ebb and spill and rush in. He moans in ecstasy, but only quietly. He’s in a hurry. He’s decidedly naked.
Chris is an inch or so taller and a tiny bit broader in the shoulders but not much. Sebastian grabs a soft-looking long-sleeved blue shirt—sensation does matter; he’s disconcertingly sensitive everywhere for about an hour after shapeshifting either direction—and manages to discover clean boxer-briefs in the top drawer, but apparently Chris owns no clean pants or keeps them somewhere else, and he’s not going to rummage through all of Chris’s clothes, and he’s running out of time.
Fuck it. He can seduce Chris if he needs to. Then he can stay here, at least for tonight, safe behind these intricately built artistic wards.
He throws on the shirt, nearly trips himself pulling on boxer-briefs—heather-grey and simple, bought by someone who likes comfort and a lack of bulky fabric but isn’t dressing to show off, and Sebastian briefly misses his one-time collection of decadent scarlet and sapphire and ivory scraps—and rumples up his hair and checks himself in the tall freestanding mirror.
Long bare legs, bare feet, shirt with marginally too-long sleeves over underwear, big eyes, slightly cold. Harmless. Not any kind of threat. Hopefully appealing to Chris’s kindness. Maybe appealing to Chris’s interest, assuming Chris likes guys. Sebastian’s been known to coax a few supposedly straight warlocks and witches across that line, too.
He runs out of Chris’s bedroom and down the hall right as Chris bends back up from quizzically peering under the coffee table.
Chris turns.
Lightning flashes dramatically outside.
Sebastian strikes a nonchalant kitten-pose, leaning against the wall, framed by Chris’s hallway, playing up coltish legs and sweetness. “Hi,” he says. “For the record, not Oliver. Berlioz might work. I like musicians. But it’s Sebastian, actually, so, yes, hi.”
“Um,” Chris says into the speaker, “Scott, I’m gonna…call you back…” and drops his phone, thankfully on the couch and not the floorboards.
“I’m sorry I ate all your pastrami,” Sebastian offers helpfully.
“What the fuck,” Chris says.
“And I borrowed your clothes. I don’t have any. And I’m a little cold.”
Chris stares at him. Makes an absentminded gesture. The room gets warmer.
“Thank you.”
“No problem…that was you. Fixing my headache.”
“Yes. I thought—you were so kind and I—” He fumbles, slips over words, finds himself at a loss. He’s better than this, he’s good at being precocious and charming, dammit. Somehow he can’t be anything other than honest. “I wanted to help.”
“You’re a…you actually are a…you’re not just a…”
“Not an enchanted familiar, or a witch who fucked up a temporary borrowing spell and got stuck? No and no.”
“Wait.” Chris has carried on staring at him. “I know you.”
“No you don’t.” As much as he wants that, and doesn’t want that: twin arrows of mortification and excitement thump goldenly into his heart. “You wouldn’t.” He hasn’t slept with Chris Evans, has he? No. No, he’d remember. He’s ninety-nine percent confident about this.
“I totally fuckin’ do. I mean, we never formally met. But you were at the last…no, not the last coven gathering, the one before that…you’re Sebastian Stan.” Chris is blushing furiously. “You, um…you were a little bit, okay, a lot drunk and kinda…preoccupied with the warlock twins…and their hands…I knew you were one of the only natural therianthropes around, of course, and I’d heard…”
“Whatever you heard was likely true. By the way, I was at the last gathering too. You just didn’t recognize me.”
“Cat-form,” Chris says, catching up. “Right. But…what happened? There were rumors, there’re always rumors, and people said they’d seen you, but no one ever knew for sure…some people thought you just got tired of everyone using you and said fuck it and quit going out, and some people said you ran off with a billionaire Italian sorcerer, and some people even said you’d let someone use you up, bleed you dry, and you were dead, and I thought, no, that couldn’t be right…”
“I rather like the billionaire Italian sorcerer one. Which one did you like?” He doesn’t know why he wants to know so badly. But he does.
Standing in Chris Evans’ living room, they gaze at each other. The moment extends, tremulous and newborn and poised amid all sorts of possibilities.
Sebastian shivers. Again. Because his legs’re naked and his skin’s prickling from the storm and even the softness of Chris’s shirt combined with the hardness of the wall is making his body wobble, processing through aftermath.
“Oh, fuck,” Chris says, grabbing a blanket, running over. In motion again. Instinctive. Running to help. “Are you all right? Jesus, come here, sit down, I can—I don’t know anything about what you need—would, like, tea or something be—or food—or sugar, I might have orange juice—”
“I’m fine, it’s only the reaction, everything’s sort of magnified for a while—”
“—god, and I keep it cold in here.” Chris grabs a pen. Scribbles. The fireplace leaps to roaring life. Chris shakes out fingertips; sparks scatter. “Better?”
“Was that regular ink? You used your own power? Not anything pre-infused?”
“You’re cold!”
“Well, yes, but I could’ve waited two minutes!”
“Maybe I couldn’t!”
They gaze at each other some more. Chris is wearing jeans and a vintage-style green-and-blue plaid shirt—he must like plaid and blue, Sebastian concludes—and looks like the definition of cuddly, which Sebastian knows for a fact to be true, having been on that lap earlier.
Chris Evans is blushing more, being looked at.
They sit on the sofa together under the clamor of ceaseless rain and start and stop sentences at the same time, awkward; Chris laughs and glances away, and Sebastian breathes out and tugs his blanket more closely around himself and says, “You first.”
“What did happen?” Chris asks, tone cautious as if comprehending potential minefields. “If you want.”
“Short version, I got impressively drunk at a party, slept with the most wrong person in the history of ever, and woke up naked, sore, hungover, and wearing a warlock’s collar.” He waves a hand. Maybe they can move past this quickly. “So that’s my last eight months. How was yours?”
“You were wearing a collar.” Trust Chris Evans to jump right past the preamble and to the spot that hurts the most, a dull throb of cold fright even now. “Compulsion, binding-spells—are you in danger? Are you hurt?”