ocean eyes || c.evans

v.

You should've known he was home.

All the signs were there, but you'd gotten so used to living alone in the spacious L.A. residence by yourself - aside from Dodger - that it seemed almost absurd now to think of it as a shared space.

You had been watching something - one of those home invasion slashers - when Dodger had sudden perked his head, ears erect and alert. He had heard something you hadn't just yet, and suddenly, he was leaping off the couch and headed straight for the front door, whining and howling. That was the first sign.

The second sign came after you had paused the film to better hear what was transpiring in the foyer. Dodger was pawing frantically at the base of the door, crying out. In the sudden hush of the apartment, you could hear the scrape of something metallic in the keyhole. The doorknob jostled, and a muffled slew of profanities reached your ears, even through the thick door.

You didn't stick around for the third sign - you had already bounded to your room and retrieved the hefty wooden baseball bat you had bought when you first moved into that dingy flat by yourself downtown in one of the more seedier areas. You held it aloft with as much confidence as you could muster - poised and ready. You would later admit to maybe being a bit paranoid, given the film you had selected that night. But not right now. Right now you were in full attack mode, fight or flight.

"Who's that, Dodge?" You whispered, heart rate spiking and forcing adrenaline through your veins. You didn't expect a reply from the overexcited pup, but you got one in a long drawn out yowl. "Who's that?"

The bat was beginning to feel slippery in your sweat slicked hands, but you merely adjusted your grip and clutched it tighter. Then, a click - the door opening.

With a shrieking wail of a battle cry, you swung wildly in the dark, the shadowed silhouette easily evading your clumsy attack and grabbing the bat before its inevitable collision with his face.

Suddenly, at the click of a switch, light flooded the foyer, briefly blinding you.

"What the hell?!" A Boston accent, the musky scent of something indescribable. Your heart flipped.

Allowing your eyes to adjust, you found yourself staring into the stunning - if not wide in mild panic - blue eyes of Chris Evans. He was fresh off his flight, dishevelled slightly from his drive home. His dirty blonde hair was tousled and messy, his shirt rumpled but clinging effortlessly to his muscular frame. He still held the one side of the bat in a large and rather beautiful hand, his lips twisted in a small but no less beautiful - and also incredibly confused - smile.

"Oh, thank God it's you," you sighed in relief when your senses returned to you, slackening your death grip on the handle. He gently - if not a bit quickly - took the bat and placed it on a tabletop nearby, before bending down and greeting a frenzied Dodger who immediately pounced on Chris and slathered him in kisses, tail wagging at a mile a minute. "I honestly thought you were a burglar."

"Did you-" Chris was cut off by a wet lick to the face, and he struggled to reign his laughter in to complete his thought. "Did you not hear my key in the door?"

He rose to his feet, grinning, just as happy to see Dodger again as the pup did his owner.

"I heard someone fucking up a key in the door. Figured it was a lock pick in the end and decided that if I was going to die, I was gonna go down swingin'."

You were feeling somewhat defensive - even if you almost attacked the poor man.

"Remind me to text next time, then," Chris chuckled.

And as if the confirmation of your safety spurred it, you fell into his arms, clinging to him in a bone crushing bear hug. You deeply inhaled his scent - a scent that still sometimes lingered in the house but had overall faded into just a ghostly reminder. "You have no idea how happy I am it's you and not Hannibal Lecter."

Your voice was muffled in the fabric of his t-shirt clad chest as he patted you on the back reassuringly. "I think I have some idea..."

------

The thing about having lived by yourself for so long is that you grow accustomed to a certain level of naturally granted - and overall assumed - privacy. And although it was beginning to become the case for you, it was and already had been the case for Chris.

So that was why, when morning came, you, in all your drowsiness, found yourself in the position you currently were in.

See, the mistake was almost entirely forgivable. It was an honest one. Just people being human and forgetting specific things - like the fact that other people had use of certain communal amenities, and that locking doors was the ultimate guarantee of privacy.

When you would both tell the tale - having found the humour in it not long later - you would both admit to entirely forgetting the other lived there too.

In Chris' case, he had been a little jetlagged. In your case, it had just slipped your mind.

For this to make sense, we would have to take a close look at the layout of the house. See, both yours and Chris' rooms were connected by one specific point in the house: an en suite conjoining bathroom that both of you had access to.

Chris, having been a bachelor for most of his time living on that property, had never really dwelled much on the second door.

And you, having moved in a month prior, never once gave much thought to where the other door - his door - led. In all honesty, you had never even bothered to check.

And so, in the late hours of the morning, you found your eyes dragging open and your sleep ridden body stumbling out of bed.

How you hadn't heard him was baffling - because, as you would later discover, Chris Evans did not merely sing in the shower, no. He goddamn performed; held a live concert for all the toiletries that were simply too inanimate to escape - but as you sluggishly hauled yourself to your bathroom door (always shut, thanks to the numerous horror films you had consumed during your lazy days), the last thing you were expecting was-

"Oh my God!"

"What the fuck?!"

Both of you simultaneously leapt at the shock of finding someone you wouldn't expect.

"Fuck, holy shit, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry-"

"{Your name}," he chuckled, glistening shoulders bouncing with mirth. "It's okay."

You had walked in on Chris fucking Evans, mercifully (for your part) clad in a white towel wrapped snugly around his waist. If the steam thick air was an indication, he had stepped out of the shower moments before your intrusion, and had been in the midst of combing the wet hair away from his face when you'd come in.

"I'm sorry, I thought the bathroom would be free, I..." you trailed off as you finally looked at him.

You had seen him shirtless before, obviously. Everyone had if they had seen almost any film he'd been in. But this was somehow... different.

You were mesmerised by the water droplets running down and getting caught on the ridges of his rippling muscles. And the tattoos...

You never would've guessed he had so many, some obscured by the damp hair that covered his chest, others in stark contrast of black on tan, smooth skin.

This was what he looked like, no makeup, no special effects, no airbrush. 100% him, real, in front of you, and a little naked.

"My eyes are up here." He grinned teasingly. "See something you like?"

You swallowed thickly and finally looked him in his ocean eyes. "We never speak of this again."