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“You’re the second person to say that to me today!”
Ilya frowned at Mike Stamford, the man who had once been a classmate of his and was now staring him down across a table at a Tim Horton’s that was equidistant between his house and Ilya’s…hostel.
“I’m the second person to say ‘I need somewhere to stay because the government is not giving me an apartment anymore’?”
Mike flushed. “Well, uh, not the last bit…but, uh, the bit about needing somewhere to stay, yeah?”
“Who was the first person to say this?”
That question didn’t seem to settle him at all, in fact, he only grew more flustered. “Well, he’s a…friend of mine-”
“You don’t sound sure,” Ilya pointed out.
“He doesn’t really have friends.”
He snorted. Neither did he. “Ok, and?”
“And, he said he also needed somewhere to stay. Or, actually, he’d said that he had found somewhere, but he needed someone to split the rent with.”
“Sounds perfect,” Ilya admitted. “Can you give him my number?”
Mike smirked. “I can do better than that…”
And so that was how Ilya found himself going to somewhere Mike called ‘The Vic’. ‘The Vic’ turned out to be The Royal Victoria Hospital, one of the premier hospitals in Montreal. Ilya had done a rotation there during his training - that felt like a lifetime ago now. It was close enough for him to have memories around every corner, but far enough away that he needed Stamford to direct him to the path lab.
Ilya could hear it even before they got through the door. Angry mutterings at a volume that made him not want to go in at all. Mike seemed utterly unbothered by it, though, pushing through the door and beckoning him to follow.
“-aboslutely ridiculous that they didn’t check for this, fucking idiots!”
The man had his back to Ilya, but he could easily make out that he was bent over a microscope, his shoulders tense. His hair was black and sticking out in every direction like he had simply rolled out of bed and into the lab, or perhaps like he hadn’t slept at all.
“Shane, it's Mike Stamford,” he said tentatively.
“I know,” came the annoyed reply, not turning from his intense scrutiny of the microscope.
“How?” he asked in a way that spoke of it being far from the first time that he had asked that particular question.
“You have a very obvious step.”
Mike gave Ilya a speaking look, rolling his eyes slight.
“And,” Shane continued before Mike could open his mouth to reply again, “who do you have with you…?”
Shane finally turned and Ilya was able to get a good look at his face. He was exceptionally handsome. Handsome enough to look inconspicuous against the drab backdrop of a hospital laboratory.
Ilya felt very…appraised. Like perhaps he was some suspect piece of jewellery being evaluated by a suspicious jeweller for faults.
“Not been in Canada for long, perhaps a month at the most. But where you came from was also cold,” he said with narrowed eyes. “Latvia, perhaps. Belarus? No…Russia, definitely Russia. But you left in a hurry, and not for vacation. Why would that be? Political dissident? You’re no politician though, so what…? Oh,” he said, his face seeming to clear, “you’re a homosexual.”
Ilya smirked, that certainly was a fun party trick, if not completely accurate…
Mike coughed. “Shane, can we-”
“No, bisexual.”
“I’m sorry about him,” Mike continued, resting a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I did say he didn’t have any friends, and now you see why, I guess.”
“Not really,” Ilya replied.
“Huh?” Mike frowned at him even as Shane echoed his confusion.
“People don’t like when I analyse them generally.”
Ilya couldn’t help but laugh. “I thought it was brilliant!”
“You did?” Shane asked intently.
“Yes obviously,” Ilya replied. “I mean…how?”
Shane looked over to Mike, one eyebrow raised. Mike huffed. “Go on, Shane.”
“Well,” he said, twisting from side to side on his stool, his fingers drumming absentmindedly on his well built thighs, “I could see from your outfit that the clothes were too warm for the current climate, so wherever you had come from was colder than it is here. That doesn’t narrow things down much, but your necklace does.”
Ilya reached down to run his thumb across the one thing he had left of his mother in this world.
“A three bar cross. Not too common around here as it is associated with Orthodox Christianity. But it is associated with Russia specifically. You could have been ethnically Russian and living elsewhere, or you could have not been Russian at all and just been Orthodox.”
“But I’m not because…?” Ilya prompted, hating for him to stop speaking when he was so engaging to listen to.
“Because you wouldn’t have left in such a hurry. Your shoes are very nice, but they have had a lot of use as of late, and you haven’t bought more shoes. Why would a man who was wealthy enough to afford such nice shoes ever be in a position where those were the only shoes that he owned? Either he was a profligate who bought things far out of his budget, but that did not strike me as accurate. Or…”
“Or I left without chance to pack, and I have no money for new shoes now,” he finished for him.
“Exactly! And why would a successful Russian man with no wife or children wish to leave in a hurry? His safety was compromised. Given your connection to Stamford, medical school, am I right?” Shane said, clearly on a roll and Ilya could only nod, spellbound. “Well why would a Russian doctor’s safety be compromised? Perhaps you upset the wrong person, or said the wrong thing online.”
Ilya chuckled. “You act like you don’t already know.”
“I can tell from your clothes that you are either homosexual or bisexual, and your reaction when I ventured that you were homosexual allowed me to narrow it down.”
“Wow! That’s…fucking amazing,” Ilya breathed.
Shane seemed to preen under the praise. “I also knew that you had only recently arrived here as you have been carrying a large and heavy suitcase around with you, I can see the slight bruising to the proximal phalanges of your right hand.”
Ilya looked down at his hand, he hadn’t even noticed it.
“One thing you didn’t figure out,” he said, smirking.
Shane frowned. “What was that?”
“Why am I here?”
“Actually, Shane, I brought him to see you,” Mike said, eager to jump back into the conversation which had quickly become something of a tennis match between the two of them.
“Oh!” he exclaimed, as if that explained everything, and perhaps, to a mind like Shane’s, it did. “The apartment. Good! I have a viewing in an hour…um, I didn’t catch your name.”
Ilya smiled. “You didn’t ask.”
His face fell a little. “Sorry. I’m not good with-”
“Ilya. Ilya Rozanov.”
“Doctor Ilya Rozanov,” Shane corrected.
He coughed. “Yeah, that’s true. Though I’m not one right now.”
“You may not be working as one, but you still are a doctor Ilya,” Shane said kindly.
Ilya swallowed. “Yes, I suppose so.”
Shane immediately turned back to his work. “Give me fifteen minutes, and we shall go to the viewing."
He wanted to point out the Shane hadn’t asked him, but thought better of it. Shane felt like something completely larger than life, and finally in a good way.
“Am I ok to leave you here to wait?” Mike asked.
Ilya nodded. “Of course. I’m sure a big fancy Canadian doctor like you has many things to do.”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
So Ilya was left alone with his thoughts. Though he swiftly found looking at Shane Hollander far more interesting than anything he could occupy his mind with. He was simply the most beautiful and interesting person that he had ever met. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew that this was going to be far from the last time that he saw this man.