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Shane had never really had a hobby before. He’d had hockey, of course, but he didn’t really consider it a hobby so much as his reason for existing. And when there had been no more hockey… well, what had Shane had then? Nothing. He’d been eighteen years old and cancelling the hotel room he’d booked to stay in for the NHL draft, and he’d had nothing.
Other people, he thought, would have back up plans. They’d have college educations on the side and hobbies that gave them certain skills, and they’d be fine. They wouldn’t make it the NHL but they’d still been able to make something of themselves. Shane had not had a back up plan. Shane had not done well at school, because he had been busy thinking about hockey, and he had assumed, when he had left school, that he would have no use for trigonometry or the subliminal messaging of whatever the fuck the blue curtains meant. Shane had skipped careers fairs and the meetings with guidance counsellors. Shane had been fielding calls from the NHL. Shane had not, of course, expected that one dirty hit and several corrective surgeries would wash any chance of the NHL down the drain, in only a few seconds of ice time that he would run around and around in his brain, as if thinking of them like a play would give him the ability to go back in time and change it all. If he’d been faster, smarter… If he’d moved out of the way…
His dad had given him the vegetable patch in the back garden to stop Shane from driving himself mad with all the what ifs. Shane had not given a flying fuck about vegetables. His dad liked gardening. Shane liked hockey. Shane was determined to never like anything again, if he could not have hockey. But then he’d remembered an article he’d read about the chemicals and pesticides and nasty stuff that got dumped on the vegetables you bought in the supermarket, and something in his brain had gone maybe if you’d been eating better, you’d have been better and Shane had accepted the little plot that his dad had offered him with a fervour that clearly made his parents question if giving him this had been the right call.
At some point, Shane had stopped thinking about hockey when he gardened. It was soothing to him - the routine, the planning, the care, the endless hours that he could invest to eventually see the literal growth of his gains. He thought about hockey other times - like, pretty much whenever he wasn’t thinking about gardening - but he thought about his career in a way that made him feel like he was pressing his hands against a thick pane of fogged up glass. He was entirely removed from it, distant and untouched. The Shane on the other side of the glass was a wholly different person; he didn’t recognise him, sometimes.
The farmers market had been the next natural progression. Shane’s produce had grown beyond the singular planter to invade his parents’ entire garden, which was now commonly known as his, and their neighbours - once grateful - were now sick of receiving crates of vegetables. There were not casseroles enough to use up the amount of vegetables that Shane was producing. It got worse when he started his herb garden.
It had been Yuna who had suggested he start to sell. So, Shane was twenty-four now, and he was not a hockey player. He worked mostly as a youth coach for a local under-12s hockey team and spent his weekends selling fresh goods at a local farmers market a twenty minute drive from his house.
This was where he met Ilya Rozanov for the first time. Later, Shane would catalogue this as being almost as significant as the hit that had stolen his life from him, because he didn’t know how else he was supposed to think about it.
His first impression of the man was of a head of blond curls bowed over the crate in which he had arranged his potatoes, carefully weighting and examining each one in turn. He was taller - a few inches taller than Shane, at least - and broad, with shoulders wide enough that Shane could imagine draping himself across them and - And, well, he supposed that the man would make a could firefighter or something. Clearly he was eagle eyed - if the way that he was staring at Shane’s produce was any indication. Shane frowned.
The man looked up, with sparkling hazel eyes that mostly looked amused to see Shane’s scrutiny, and smirked - and Shane really shouldn’t have been thinking so intently about the cupid’s bow shape of the man’s perfect mouth, blush and red and chapped by the coldness of the morning.
“Do not worry,” he said, as he set a potato in one of the brown paper bags that Shane left on the side for his customers, with a broad Eastern European accent. “I will not steal, chelovek-ovoshch.”
Shane flushed and ducked his head. “Course not,” he muttered. “Just - let me know if you need any help or anything, yeah?”
Shane told himself that he would not watch the man as he perused the rest of Shane’s goods, lest he still assume that Shane thought he was about to sprint away with Shane’s root vegetables tucked up the sleeves of his coat, but he found that he could not help but notice the man. The easy way that he moved, or the deftness of his fingers as he handled the produce, or the lean lines of his body. Heat stirred in the pit of Shane’s stomach, in spite of the cool temperatures, and he pressed his fist against it, as if the pressure would help dispel it.
Eventually, the man - carrying over several brown paper bags of potatoes, carrots, onions and beets - set them down in front of Shane. Shane scrambled to begin tallying up the price, trying to tamp down the flush that knew was burning on his cheeks. He was hyperaware of the weight of the man’s staring, burning a hole into the top of Shane’s head as he stooped over the produce that he was bagging.
Shane tried not to think about what the man’s hands would look like in motion, cooking - how they would hold a knife as the diced Shane’s produce into manageable chunks, how they might prepare everything - and found that was failing
He aimed for casual as he asked, “what are you planning on making?”
“Why?” said the man. “You are seeing if it is good enough for your vegetables.”
“What? No!”
The man laughed. “Is joke, is joke! I am not making anything - my mama, she wants to cook. She makes borscht - is soup her mama makes her at home. She misses it very much.”
“Borscht,” Shane repeated. “That’s, like, beets and stuff, yeah?”
The man looked at the beets that Shane was holding that very moment, raising an eyebrow. “Yes. Beets, beef, onions, carrots, potatoes, cabbage and dill. Is served with sour cream. Very good,” he added, when he saw Shane wrinkle his nose at the addition of sour cream.
“Sure,” agreed Shane, and did not mean for it to sound as sceptical as it did.
The man levelled an accusing finger at him. “Nyet. I cannot accept this. Is slander on my good mama’s borscht. I will have to prove to you…?”
“Hollander,” supplied Shane. “Shane Hollander.”
“I, Ilya Rozanov,” the man declared, “will prove to you, Shane Hollander, that borscht is in fact fucking delicious. You will be here next week, yes?”
“I’m here every week,” said Shane, dryly. “That’s how a business works.”
“I will be here,” Ilya promised, “and I will bring you borscht and you will see that is better than all your gross American soups.”
“Canadian,” Shane corrected.
Ilya took no heed. He was already walking away, wagging his finger accusingly at Shane. His carrier bag of goods - paid for with a handful of crumpled bills left in front of Shane - swung at his side.
“I will be back!” he called, and Shane could not tell if Ilya knew how much of a Bond villain he sounded like.
The thing was that Shane knew that Ilya was joking. He understood humour, though most people treated him as though he was incapable of it because of the flatter intonation of his voice and the deadpan, bitchy delivery of most of his jokes. And it helped that he had been the punchline of this joke before - the offered hand of friendship, of company, rescinded without a word. The joke being that Shane was meant to be alone; the joke being that Shane would never be the sort of person people wanted to be friends with. Ilya Rozanov, at least, had been kind about it. He had smiled instead of smirking when setting the joke up. He had said it politely, like he intended it to be one of those vague social niceties - vacant and meaningless - that Shane didn’t understand, though he could ape them as well as the next person.
All of this meant that he did not ever expect to see Ilya Rozanov again, or to see him only at a distance, and certainly never to speak to him.
This should have stopped Shane from thinking about him borderline obsessively in the week before the next Sunday market. It did not.
He thought about Ilya at the strangest times, like when he was taking the bins to the curb or when he was lathering shampoo into his hair or when he was elbow deep in compost, which was distressing for the simple fact of gardening being Shane’s one escape from thinking. Now, everything had been consumed by Ilya Rozanov and his clever hands and clever smirk and the way that he had looked at Shane like he knew him, understood him. He thought about Ilya when setting up his stall the next Sunday, adjusting crates to display his produces as attractively as he could and setting out his price labels.
At first, he thought it was the obsessive spiralling of his thoughts that had summoned Ilya Rozanov, walking past the rows of stalls and towards him. Shane blinked. Ilya did not vanish. Instead, he saw Shane’s attention, raised his hand, and waved. Shane, with nothing else to do, waved back - and Ilya lit up. That was the only way that Shane could describe it. Ilya looked happy to see that Shane was there. Looked like he’d been looking for Shane.
“I come with borscht!” Ilya declared, when he was closer. He hefted up a large metal flask and waggled it enticingly. “My mama, yes, she is very happy when I tell her that there is someone else to share her cooking -”
“You came back,” Shane said, dumbly.
Ilya paused. He frowned. For the first time in their (very brief) acquaintance, Shane thought that he looked unsure. “Was I not supposed to?”
“No,” Shane hastened to assure him. “It’s just - you came back.”
Ilya’s lips twitched. “I did. I made promise, which I always keep.”
Shane had to duck his head against the dizzy amusement that rose up in him, seizing him by the throat. “And you brought borscht.”
“I think that you sell all of these things,” said Ilya, “and you never get to taste what is made with them. Shame.”
“My expectations are very high now, you know?”
Ilya paused and looked almost nervous, clutching the container of borscht closer to his chest, like he was planning on snatching it back and running away with it. Something in his expression shifted and mellowed a moment later, and Shane beckoned him around to the back of his stall, where he sat in the seat that he kept for himself and Ilya sat in the one beside it, usually reserved for things that Shane was moving or setting down - a bag, a pen, a notepad. Mostly, it was a transitory space. Shane kicked it with his foot before Ilya sat down, shifting it so that it was slightly angled towards him.
Ilya unscrewed the lid of the thermos, then handed it over Shane with a spoon. “Borscht,” he announced, grandiosely, “from my mama’s good kitchen.”
Shane inhaled the scent of it - warm and hearty and comforting - and then dipped his spoon it. He hesitated momentarily, still thrown at the thought of sour cream, which he had never been much of a fan of, before bringing it up to his lips. He blew softly on it, watching as steam curled up from the spoon and feeling the heat of it against his mouth. Ilya watched every movement he made - the pursing of his lips, the flicker of his tongue as he wetted them absently, the bob of his throat as he swallowed past a swell of nervousness - with an avidness that made Shane feel exposed. He wondered if he should try and eat the borscht in a way that was appealing or something.
He put the spoon in his mouth. Paused. Swallowed.
“Mm,” he said. “It’s - it’s tasty.”
“You hate it, yes?” observed Ilya, astutely.
Shane took another mouthful. It was harder to swallow. He forced himself to smile around it, and hoped like it looked like less of a grimace than it felt.
“Yum,” he said, and knew that his voice was flat and unconvincing even for him.
Fuck. Fuck, he was going to offend Ilya. Fuck, Ilya’s mom had made this from a family recipe and Shane couldn’t stomach it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Ilya’s shoulders shook.
“Are you… laughing?” Shane asked.
Ilya shook his head, but it was a clear lie. “Oh, Hollander,” he sighed, amusement biting deep into the words. “My mama is terrible cook. We eat borscht to humour her but is bleurgh. Horrid.”
“And you gave it to me?” Shane asked, bewildered.
Ilya paused. “Look,” he said, leaning forward, “is not - I -” He scrubbed a frustrated hand through his curls. “I was not expecting you to have this much. Was only meant to be - what is called, er, ice breaker. I bring borscht, you say is horrible, and I say is nice Russian place a few streets away and we should go sometimes, and you say is date and -”
“Date?” Shane asked.
“If you want,” Ilya correctly weakly. His eyes were wide, as if he had been caught out doing something he wasn’t supposed to, as if he had not meant to tell Shane everything that he had.
Shane leaned forward, suddenly bolder than he had ever felt before, and rested his hand on Ilya’s knee. “I would like that,” he said, and watched as the smile spread across Ilya’s face, feeling it mirrored on his own. “Just promise me that it is your mom’s cooking, because I that might affect my answer.”
Ilya laughed. “I promise,” he assured Shane, and moved his hand to rest atop Shane’s squeezing it lightly.