Chapter Text
Shane Hollander never imagined he’d be a public transit commuter. In high school, he dreamed of having his own car, driving with the windows down, his favorite playlist blasting as he cruised along the highway. All the space in the cab of the vehicle belonging to only himself, unshared, the smooth drive of the tires cushioning his ride on the open road. A place to mentally prepare for the workday ahead, and decompress at day’s end.
Yet here he sat, with a stranger’s elbow digging into his ribcage on the Millennium Line on his way to work. The train carriage is packed but quiet in the early hours. Fellow sleepy commuters are still waking up, likely checking work emails on their phones, and blowing into their too-hot travel coffee cups before taking a sip. The Vancouver skyline loomed ahead outside the train windows as they hurtled toward the wide patch of concrete and pavement and skyscrapers, universally symbolic of a playground for commerce and corporations no matter the city or country. Vancouver was no different, though its hundred-story structures had long been strongly overshadowed by nature with the coastal mountains that towered around them across the harbor. When the train got close enough, it dipped down into the underground and the city swallowed them.
This trip has been a key part of Shane’s daily schedule for the last year. He moved to the city to take over as the Human Resource Manager for the Vancouver Canucks business operations sector. City traffic turned out to be no joke and he started spending more time in the car sitting in stop-and-go rush hour jams than at home every evening. Fed up with it, he sold his car and purchased an annual metro pass for the SkyTrain. No more highway congestion, no more car payments, gas, insurance, maintenance. It was turning out to be a bigger benefit than he anticipated.
Despite the cramped interior of the train car, the ride was nice, the trains kept relatively clean and for the most part on time. People generally minded themselves, although the evening ride was usually more alive with chatter as other riders made phone calls or complimented someone’s outfit or accessory, or started a raucous chant for the Canucks if it was a game night. The train made Shane feel like less of a stranger in this new city, to be surrounded by people, woven into the vast tapestry of the community. He often found the same commuters sitting around him every day and even started offering a small smile and nod to them as they boarded and took their seats.
Occasionally if Shane worked a half-day, he was treated to a mostly empty train car on his way back home to Brentwood. Sometimes there were some interesting characters at the far end of the carriage, but mostly the other passengers at that time were college students heading to class at one of the local campuses. The weirdest spectacle he ever witnessed on his mid-day commute were a couple of apparent film students filming a project—one of the students in front of the camera wore little clothing apart from skin-tight leopard print shorts and a ship captain’s hat. He was grinding on the rider grip poles like it was a strip club to some provocative sounding song. Shane had rolled his eyes in amusement and went back to scrolling for a dinner recipe on his phone until he reached his stop.
On this particular day, nothing was out of the ordinary. It was a typical Monday morning commute to Rogers Arena. Shane stood from his seat in preparation to hop off at the Stadium-Chinatown stop, putting his AirPods back into the case. Once he was through the terminal and above-ground again, he crossed the winter-damp street toward the Costco (the closest Costco location to an NHL stadium according to a Reddit thread Shane stumbled upon long ago) and up the sidewalk to the staff entrance. A giant banner of Brock Boeser fluttered in the March breeze above him as he scanned his badge to unlock the door.
Upstairs in the part of the arena that housed the business offices, his coworkers were gathered around the break room table discussing their weekend and nursing their morning caffeine. Rose had accompanied the players to a local hospital visit, part of their community outreach, and posted a synopsis of the day on the team Instagram. She had more pictures and videos to edit this morning and compile into a video for the website. So, not so much of a weekend off for her. Luca had a couple friends arrive from Switzerland, and he picked them up from the airport. They would be his guests for the next two home games while they were in town. Apparently they got up to some shenanigans together at the local dive bar in his neighborhood, but then, isn’t that what dive bars are for? Hayden and JJ stayed in their respective apartments and played an unserious session of GTA V online against each other, and PUBG later when they got tired of GTA. Typical, for them.
Shane didn’t have much to share of his own weekend happenings. He meal prepped as he always did, watched a few out of market NHL games as well as the Canucks previous home game, did laundry and cleaned his condo. He always seemed to stay stuck inside his home like trapped royalty, hidden away in the tall tower. Hayden quipped a smart remark about Shane’s commitment to being a hermit, which wasn’t bright because Shane gave it right back to him for sitting inside playing video games all day. It was basically the same thing in Shane’s eyes, regardless of whether Hayden was talking to JJ through a headset or not.
After shoving his prepped lunch into the fridge, Shane trudged to his office. He flicked on the lights and powered his Keurig, filling the basin with a water thermos he brought from home. His laptop lit up at the nudge of a button and he plugged it into the docking station to work from the extended display. The calendar under his keyboard was littered with handwritten notes of upcoming appointments and team statistics for the push to the playoffs. While he didn’t work in hockey operations, he had a hockey brain. And working for an NHL team was a dream come true, to immerse himself in a pool of professionals working for the common goal of a successful hockey franchise.
He had an interview scheduled that day for a young woman who had applied to work in ticket sales. Jacqueline Szymanski. Or, “Jackie”, as she had noted. She had an impressive sales record on her resume after starting in hotels and Shane was eager to fill the position, hoping she was the right candidate based on the paper introduction alone. Arena security popped into Shane’s office a few hours later to let him know she had arrived and was waiting. She was fifteen minutes early—a green flag for sure.
Shane buzzed down to the ticket office after a few minutes to grab the head of ticketing, Miles, to sit in on the interview since the position was in his department. They each greeted Jackie with a friendly handshake, and dove in to the standard interview questions. She spoke of her sales performance, managing accounts and group sales, and how she makes personal connections with her clients which she finds helpful in upselling. How she manages conflict, or deescalates a frustrated customer interaction. Overall, both Shane and Miles were impressed and were ready to offer her the position on the spot. Not to seem like they were desperate, they told her they would be in contact before the end of the week. As she left the conference room and was led out to the main concourse, Hayden passed by in the hallway.
“Who is that?” he asked. His eyes popped out of his head in heart shapes like an old cartoon character.
“A hopeful for the ticket sales job,” Shane provided. He looked away from Hayden to the resume in his hand, and back up when he noticed Hayden was stuck like a statue, staring at the door she had walked out of.
“Well did she get the job?”
“Probably, yeah. Miles is calling her in a day or two to offer.”
“God, she’s so hot, man,” Hayden loudly sighed, mostly to himself.
“Don’t do anything that makes me have to fill out any paperwork, dude.” Shane gave him an amusingly stern look. He made a mental note to put Jackie in a training room far away from the merchandising office where Hayden sat. Maybe in another building altogether.
“Buddy, if I didn’t give you paperwork to fill out, you’d be out of a job,” Hayden jokingly contested. Shane chuckled and shook his head and retreated to the calm of his office.
The remainder of the day was uneventful, just as Shane liked it. No issues arose, he took his lunch break at the same time as always, and completed some boring clerical documents and reports for the upcoming month end. He locked up and fled the cold back to the Chinatown metro station for his evening ride. The saloon-style passenger gates swung open when he scanned his pass, and down the corridor he went to his usual waiting point for the train to pull up.
There was a good crowd already on his usual carriage when the doors slid open. Only two people got off at this stop. Shane craned his head to the next car down and there were a few more open seats, so he quickly made his way over before he missed the threshold for boarding. Scanning the available seats, he picked one between a frazzled looking young man and an older corporate woman with a too-tight bun in her hair, and threw his work bag into his lap before pulling out his glasses and jumping on his phone to scroll. The man on his left shifted and tapped his foot rapidly on the floor, making his knee graze against Shane’s leg in an obnoxious way. Shane pulled tighter into himself. If this guy wants personal space he should get a car, Shane thought.
Thankfully, the guy got off two stations later, and Shane only had a few left himself until he was home. Shane watched him with a dramatic sneer on his face as he disembarked. When he brought his eyes back to his phone he caught the gaze of another man across from him near the doors, about his age, grinning toward him after noticing Shane’s reaction to his rude seat neighbor. The man locked eyes with Shane and motioned to the departed passenger with his thumb and an exaggerated look of disbelief. Shane scoffed in agreement and they both returned their attention to their phones. The train jostled them as it took off again.
Shane’s eyes naturally drifted back up to the other man. He was striking; sharp jaw, sandy curls spilling over his forehead, full lips with a prominent cupid’s bow. Dark freckles peppered his face, one larger mole adorning his cheek. The way he held his face was distinctly not North American, his features were harder at rest than the softness he had displayed with his prior grin. Broad shoulders descended into long arms thick with muscle. Shane could tell even through the man’s sweater that he was chiseled, sculpted like marble. He was, by all accounts, beautiful.
Signs had been pointing, louder and stronger recently with Vegas-style neon flashers, that Shane was not straight. He’d been dating girls as long as it had become the “cool thing” to do in high school and beyond, but none of them had ever given him that feeling he’d read about or seen in movies, or heard his college buddies talking about when they moved past purely sex and settled into something more serious. He’d chalked it up to simply not finding the right girl yet. How could he feel that feeling if the girl wasn’t his soulmate?
Luca at work was queer, and Shane had only just begun to dive into the possibility that girls weren’t for him. It shouldn’t be a big deal, there are plenty of queer people in the world. But finding the courage to admit the truth not only out loud, but even just to himself, was scarier than anything he’d ever done. Hell, he picked up and moved across the country for a job, trading friends and family and trees and air and pavement that knew him by name for a city where he knew no one, on unfamiliar streets and rail lines, mountains and trails where the soles of his sneakers had not yet left an imprint in the soil to prove he’d been there. And that was a thousand percent less scary than this self discovery journey.
It was crazy to him to be ogling a strange man across the train car, but he was starting to become a new Shane here after a year in. Vancouver extended its welcoming hand with a chance to hold up a part of him that always existed in hockey while leading him to unearth the pieces of him that had long been buried.
Just a couple stops later at Renfrew the mystery man stood up to exit. Shane retracted his gaze to his phone in case the man looked back, not wanting to give away that he had been staring. The doors whirred open and closed just as fast and he was gone.
Maybe in another life, Shane would have been brave enough to move across the train and strike up a conversation with the beautiful stranger. Maybe he would have to switch here from his usual train car to have the opportunity to see him again.
Shane made it home within the next twenty minutes and the man’s face flashed in front of his eyes the entire evening. He didn’t even know which hockey game he had turned on during dinner. He couldn’t see anything except those piercing eyes and heart shaped lips.
—
Jackie started at the ticket office two Mondays later. Shane set her up with onboarding paperwork in the morning. Miles gave her the tour of the business offices and support offices in the afternoon to get the lay of the land and meet the team. Well, not the hockey team, but the business and operations team that she would be working closely with. JJ gave her his card with a phone extension in case she needed technical support during her day to day. Hayden bristled and complained to Shane about his lack of business cards. Shane had not received a request for them on his last check-in for office collateral replenishment, and he made sure to let him know this.
Shane went a step further and personally introduced Jackie to Hayden, laughing on the inside when Hayden froze up and inevitably forgot how to speak coherent words in a basic sentence. It was important that they knew each other professionally though, because ticketing often did surprise giveaways and collaborated with merchandising for lucky ticket buyers and season ticket members. He felt a little bad for the poor girl, because he knew Hayden. He would definitely be trying his hardest to win her over if she was single. Mentally, Shane prepared for some form of a workplace conduct complaint. Best case scenario was that he just witnessed their meet cute and they’d be married within a year.
Shane bought her lunch that day as a silent apology for Hayden’s loud crush on her.
Not only for that, but the Canucks were riding close to a playoff berth and there would be mayhem in the ticket office for playoff seats if they did make it. This girl was about to be put through the wringer if it worked out that way.
The train home began like any other commute. Shane waited on the platform and loaded himself and his work bag on as soon as the doors sprung open. Seconds before the door closed, the curly haired mystery man from a couple weeks prior burst through the needle-thin space in the nick of time and collapsed onto the nearest seat with a huff. The commotion made Shane look up, and the man was side-eyeing him with yet another grin as his chest heaved and he caught his breath. He must have missed his stop or was in a different part of town and scrambled here to make the departure.
It looked like he’d been running quite a bit. His curls were damp on the ends and plastered to his shiny sweaty forehead. Shane thought he came from the gym, but when he looked down and saw him in business casual, that didn’t seem right.
For a split second, Shane imagined the man breathing heavily like that on top of him in bed, pinning him down after a round of passionate, rough se- he rid that quickly from his mind with a hard shake of his head and furrowed his brow, returning attention to his phone. It didn’t stop the goosebumps from traveling down his limbs.
When had anyone ever made Shane freaky like that? Pull yourself together, dude.
The man left the train at Renfrew again and once again Shane did not find it in himself to talk to him.
—
One Wednesday morning, the curly haired angel burst onto the train in a similar rapid fashion at Renfrew with an iced coffee just about sloshing through the mouth of the lid. Some liquid still weaseled its way out and wetted his sweater sleeve. He wiped it away on his pants and sipped the excess off the top.
More often than not, the man seemed to be running behind, just barely making the train schedule. Once he was on the carriage, he stole glance after glance at Shane as he settled into his seat. It became a little game between them; looking at the other and averting as soon as they felt the heavy gaze land, blushes warming their cheeks from the obvious attention.
This also made Shane distance himself further and further from the idea of ever breaking the ice with him. It had been going on for so long now, he felt like something should have already happened if it was meant to. Now he was just a creep who only stared at the insanely attractive train commuter and ashamedly went home with the image of him burned into his memory.
🚈🚈🚈🚈
Vancouver was turning out to be a joy and a nightmare simultaneously for Ilya Rozanov. His childhood friend Svetlana had moved to the States several years before to study structural engineering. She’d always been a tough cookie, a complete badass that could hold her own against the boys. She accepted a job as a site manager for new construction at a property management company in British Columbia after graduation, and begged Ilya to come work with her in their marketing department where an entry-level position opened. So not really the same world—or in the same universe—as Sveta’s new job, but he was looking for an out from Moscow and this was his best prospect for a start.
So, a joy because he was free of the motherland’s and his father’s cold controlling hands, but a nightmare because he didn’t understand what the hell was going on in this new city. In this new country. His alarms were set wrong and he couldn’t get out the door on time. The coffee place down the block botched his order 6 times out of 10 and had to remake them. He was brand new to marketing despite always gravitating toward creative ventures and he felt like a fish out of water. Sveta promised him that the other managers there were chill and would support him. They were and they did, but he maintained a certain amount of imposter syndrome at his lack of education and experience.
Sveta had been driving him to work in the city for his first few months. Then, a new job site was announced and she was out near the airport every day for the ground-breaking and to manage the site contractors and building plans. She bought Ilya a metro pass to help him get to the office since she wouldn’t make it to both places on time every day and he didn’t have a drivers license. It was always a challenge getting Ilya to be on time as it was.
The one thing that seemingly could save Ilya from dropping into a full breakdown was a shy, handsome black-haired man that started riding on his train car. Ilya had eyed him up from afar one day, watching him peek into another carriage that was apparently full before moseying into Ilya’s car. He looked on with both amusement and sympathy as the man took his seat next to a known nuisance commuter, never keeping still or respecting the space of other riders in the tight quarters.
Okay, so it was pure amusement at first until his jaw almost dropped at how attractive the man was up closer. And his freckles. Speckled like paint splatter across his cheeks and nose in the most beautiful constellation. He decided he never needed to look into the night sky again because no arrangement of stars would ever compare to the masterpiece in front of him. And then… and then he put on a pair of glasses. That’s when the amusement really steered into full sympathy. This incredibly hot person was being subjected to this fellow riders’ nonsense. Ilya didn’t have an empty seat next to him to offer, otherwise….
He knew from experience that the nuisance commuter would be getting off the train shortly, and when he did, Ilya gestured to the gorgeous man, pointing behind him like “some people, am I right?”. The man blew out a puff of frustrated air and went back on his phone. Soon it was time for Ilya’s stop, and he reluctantly exited the train to head home.
God, that day Ilya hoped he’d be on the train again.
Troy was juggling a fat stack of lease applications when Ilya went to the office later that week, on a Thursday. The firm had purchased a half-finished luxury apartment building where the previous developers had gone bankrupt and needed a quick sale to get out of hemorrhaging more money they didn’t have. There was not much that Centaur Group needed to complete; the structure itself was finished and half of the electrical lines threaded throughout the building. All they needed was to finish electrical and plumbing, and then drywall, paint, and install the included furnishings. The company opened up applications to lease the units that would be available at the start of July. That’s when they anticipated to be fully done with the project, to lock in tenants and guarantee the revenue stream once the building was open. There was such a high demand for housing that applicants started flooding their inbox as soon as the link went live. Unfortunately a few handfuls were pranks applicants, or people who were oblivious to the fact they would never be considered because they didn’t meet the income requirements. It was Troy’s job to sift through them all and further vet the ones with larger potential, while continuing to schedule and attend in-person site visits for available units at their other properties.
The printed applications landed on the community table with a hefty thunk when Troy set them down. Ilya didn’t understand why they needed to print all that when the applications were already done digitally and loaded in a database, but asking questions like that was above his pay grade.
Cliff and Zane (or Bood as the latter was usually called around the office) strolled through the entry together moments later, jingling their key rings around their fingers and discussing something to do with a new commerce tenant in a strip mall. Wyatt sat quietly on his computer in the back corner likely reviewing new maintenance requests and delegating the projects to his team. He spoke the tickets aloud to himself while dragging his fingers through his mustache and made notes on his grid before assigning the tasks. Evan occupied his own walled office, feet kicked up on the desk, browsing a supply catalogue that no one ever signed up for and was all too frequently showing up in their mail deliveries. He should be narrowing down and ordering the cabinetry needed for the luxury apartment kitchens, but sure, comparing the different varieties of adhesive tape was interesting too.
“What’s up, Roz,” Cliff greeted with a handshake and half-hug. “I gotta say, you’ve been looking real dreamy this week for a guy who’s always running around in a frenzy. Anything new? Oh! You finally meet a girl?”
“Fuck off, Marlow,” Ilya shrugged him off, biting back a smile. The beautiful man from the train flashed through his mind. No sense in disclosing this to his colleague when he didn’t know anything more than a face. “Just sleeping better.”
“Yeah, sleep,” Cliff embellished, wagging his eyebrows. “I know when someone’s getting good sleep.” He used air quotations around the words good sleep. Ilya brushed him off again and ventured to his own desk and computer to pick up his latest project: designing full-window decals to advertise available rental space in the development Svetlana was overseeing. Super exciting stuff.
The hours dragged on. Once in a while the phone rang in the otherwise quiet office. Troy manned the phones and transferred a few of the calls. Some lady had rang them to complain about maintenance work that had not yet been taken care of. Ilya could hear her yelling through the receiver across the office and Troy winced at the shrill volume of her tirade, holding the phone away from his ear. She had reported the issue two days ago, and it wasn’t even in her unit. It was in the hallway, where a movers’ dolly had scraped away part of the baseboard and scratched the paint on the wall. It wasn’t exactly life or death, it didn’t diminish the quality of living within her own walls, and was definitely not high on the priority list. Troy did his best assuring it would be taken care of and got her off the line.
Ilya needed to finish up the last bit of his window banner template. The hands on his watch ticked closer to the arrival time of the train he needed to catch, otherwise he’d have to wait another thirty minutes if he missed it. By some miracle his design software didn’t crash out today and he saved the file before putting his computer on sleep mode for the night. He pulled the sleeves of his sweater down to brace for the spring chill. The sky was a crisp blue and sunny, which was deceiving compared to the actual air temperature. He jaywalked just about every street to get over to the train station and for once, boarded comfortably and settled into his seat.
At the Chinatown station, the onyx-haired, freckled cutie stepped into the car and assumed a free seat not too far from Ilya. Still across the aisle though, still a good vantage point to sit and melt in the sight of him. Butterflies tickled Ilya’s stomach every time the man would catch his gaze and he felt the heat rise to his cheeks. This was new.
Ilya wasn’t even aware the train was at his stop. The recorded station announcements and the other passengers around him had all been drowned out by his tunnel vision, focused only on his train crush. The high-pitched beep of the doors finally passed through his eardrum and the digital marquee was starting to change over to the next stop at Rupert. Oh shit. He hoisted himself out of his goopy mushy brain and ran out the doors before they closed.
He hadn’t even known he was holding in a breath until he closed his apartment door behind him and the exhale shot out of him like a cannon. It was almost a leisurely day, until his brain pulled that little stunt and got trapped in the quicksand of the person that was the new subject of his dreams.
He yanked a kitchen chair out to deposit his work bag and began emptying his pockets to go and change into his sweats. Phone, keys, AirPods, and….
Fuck. Where was his wallet?
Oh fuck. Oh shit.
Urgently, he tore open his work bag in case he had tossed it in there for some reason. He always kept his wallet in his back pocket whenever he took the train to access his metro pass. Did he throw it in the bag after he sat down in the car subconsciously, too severely distracted by the beautiful stranger he was infatuated with? Oh god. His whole life was in that wallet.
Panic seeped up into his head and it started throbbing. Someone was going to have a field day with his credit cards. Some teenager was going to use his ID at the liquor store or dispensary or something more illicit and the cops would trace his real identity back to him, his work visa would crumble by association and he’d be sent back to Russia.
Fuck his life.
English failed him when he dialed Svetlana on the phone, moments away from tears spilling over. He hurled out an unintelligible string of Russian words, broken and disorganized in his frenzy. She answered with a “Woah, woah, Ilyusha, slow down. What happened?”
“I lost my wallet, Sveta! I got home from the train station and it’s gone.”
“Okay, calm down. We will fix this. Did you have it on the train?”
“I did, yes. I had my metro card in it.” Ilya paced the room, scrubbing his face and the tears that threatened to fall. His breath was rigid and uneven, pushing down the panic attack.
“Go back to the station and look. Actually, I am nearby, I didn’t make it home from work yet. You want me to come get you? We can look together.”
She was at his door within ten minutes, which was already too long to wait. Anything could have happened to the wallet as each additional second passed without recovery.
Ilya swiped them into the concourse of the metro and they scoured every surface that Ilya walked - or, well, ran - past after he hurriedly left the train between closing doors. They visited the security desk to see if anyone had turned in a wallet that evening. Nothing had been handed over, but the clerk took both of their information in case they happened upon anything during the night when the cleaning crews would be working.
At a loss, Ilya sank down on a bench outside the station with his head in his hands. Svetlana sat gingerly beside him and rubbed a hand up and down his spine, her burgundy coil curls falling into Ilya’s peripheral.
“What the fuck am I going to do?” Ilya sobbed into his palms.
“My angel, we will figure it out. You should call the police and file a report to start. And they still have to clean all the trains overnight, it might be found by tomorrow morning. I will help cancel your credit cards just to be safe.” She wiped a patch of wetness away from his lower eyelid with her thumb. “Call the police while we are still here and then we will go get something to eat.”
“I’m not hungry.” She gave him a stern look. “Okay, okay.”
🚈🚈🚈🚈
The mystery man watched Shane board the train car late on Thursday evening, already plopped in his usual seat by the far doors. Maybe it turned out to be a good day for him for once, because to Shane he looked less out of sorts than usual. Shane had gotten accustomed to seeing him in a rush, getting on the train with moments to spare, curls gone wild from running to the platform. The game of exchanging looks started up as the train rolled onward. The man was extra distracted by the end of it, because the doors opened at Renfrew and he didn’t move until the warning dings sounded for the doors to close. He up and fled suddenly without another glance in Shane’s direction.
At the Brentwood station, Shane slung his bag over his shoulder and stood, holding onto the rider grip on the ceiling, and scrolled a couple more times down his Facebook feed until the train came to a stop. When he locked his phone and reached to put it in his pocket, he noticed a tan leather square sitting on the floor of the carriage. It looked an awful lot like a wallet. He bent over and picked it up.
The leather opened into what was obviously a bi-fold wallet, holding a few cards in the slots. Mostly credit cards, but there was a stack of about a handful of old train ticket stubs from… Moscow? At least that’s what it looked like. The letters were all Cyrillic, some looking like backwards E’s and the number 3 and a weird X that also looked like a fancy asterisk. Behind the interior flap there was a mesh window slot with a British Columbia ID card. The mesh skewed the photo of the ID holder and Shane pulled the plastic card out. A work visa slid out with it and Shane fumbled with paper to make sure it didn’t fall away and get lost. It belonged to an “Ilya Rozanov”, Shane almost looked around the remaining train passengers to see if anyone looked like the person on the ID.
The owner wasn’t on the train anymore, because it was the hot man that always got off at Renfrew. The one Shane couldn’t shake from his mind. The one who bolted in a flash when he almost missed his stop.
The unmistakable curls, the stoney face (he recognized then as the Slavic stare), the enchanting heart shape of his lips. The photo is recent, identical to the person that’s wormed his way into Shane’s brain, and there is absolutely no doubt that this Ilya is the mystery many on his train route.