Work Text:
Shane wishes, sometimes, that he could be as laissez-faire as his co-workers are.
He sees his co-worker, Hayden, punch his employee code into the register and select the ‘PAUSE’ option before punching his code in again. He knows Hayden’s usual break routine — he leaves out the front exit while shucking on a down-coat to walk through Alexis Nihon, and gets out on Sainte-Catherine to smoke a doobie fat enough to keep him glazed for the rest of his shift.
He’d invited Shane, once, and it had gone poorly, to say the least.
He’d been dazed and paranoid the whole time, to the point where some of the students from Dawson who were clearly on break and looking to kill time by browsing the padlocks and bicycle accessories, had asked if he needed medical attention. The experience had been embarrassing enough — and induced enough stress in him to panic about being fired, even if this is just a part-time gig — that he had never tried it again.
He nods to Hayden anyway when they make eye contact, polite enough not to say anything. He’s Shane’s best coworker, frankly, and he’s not about to make lunch breaks they have together awkward by being weird about it. He thinks it’s fine, anyway. The days are dull for the most part, and other than the odd customer here and there who gets mad that their location doesn’t have any garage service, it’s relatively quiet.
He is abruptly brought back to the present when he sees a customer walking up to his register.
He looks about the same age as Shane is, with a Bruins baseball cap on (blasphemous, really, to have the audacity to wear something so shameless out in public) and the shifty eyes of someone who doesn’t want to be asked too many questions and is doing a poor job of hiding it. Shane knows the type — ever since the Party City™ section opened and all of a sudden a lot of teenagers were trying to buy helium tanks without getting carded.
The items he deposits on the counter are relatively normal, though — a space heater (normal, winter), work gloves (fine, nothing particularly noticeable other than the massive size of them), and a ceramic butter crock from the kitchen section (admittedly not a product he scans frequently).
He makes eye contact with the customer, and says, “Bonjour, hi.”
“Hello.”
He stands for a half-second, unmoving from the… lack of anything from the customer, and then moves to scan the items.
“You recommend?” the customer asks. He’s vaguely familiar, Shane thinks, like maybe they might have been at the same bar during his frosh week before he’d started at Concordia but wasn’t talkative enough to be committed to memory.
“Do I recommend?” Shane asks, looking at the products on the conveyor belt.
“Work gloves,” Mister Customer says. He has an accent, but his grand total of five words hasn’t made it clear which region the accent comes from.
“Oh,” Shane says. He doesn’t know that he’s ever actually been asked for his opinion on any of their products, let alone the men’s workwear. “The gloves look like they will fit well,” he says finally, because he’s still caught a little with looking at how long and thick this man’s hands are. They look like a workman’s hands, with the calluses he sees sometimes on the overnight restock crew.
“Yes, they are my size,” Mister Customer says, and it’s not at all the kind of answer Shane had been expecting. So this customer is a bit snarky, it’s hardly his first time having to deal with a jerk.
“I figured.” Shane smiles a little falsely, more a bearing of teeth than anything Customer Service Ready.
“You recommend? You seem strong. Knowledgeable.” The customer gestures again to the gloves, and Shane realises that this customer really does seem to want his opinion. He hears it now, too — Russian accent. It suits him, Shane thinks. Suits his pushiness, too, if stereotypes are anything to go by.
“Yes, uh, yeah,” Shane says, looking down at the gloves. “They’re good gloves.”
“Hm, yes,” Mister Customer says, then stays silent as he looks at Shane.
“Did you find everything you needed, then?”
“Yes. Debit,” Mister Customer says. He flashes a debit card fast enough that Shane can’t read the name embossed across the front of it. Shane punches the ‘DEBIT’ button on his touch screen and waits for the customer to finish off his transaction. He realises, a moment too late, that he forgot to ask if there was a need to purchase a reusable bag. Oh well, he thinks, there’s nothing to be done for it now.
“Your total is eighty and forty-five,” Shane says a bit dismissively. The man already has his card ready to tap on the reader, and he doesn’t say anything back or make a sign like he’s heard the total.
Mister Client doesn’t ask for a bag, he just grabs everything and holds it, one arm wrapped tightly around the space heater. The way he’s carrying the small, uninsulated box holding the butter crock makes him think of the risks of accidentally dropping everything, but that’s hardly Shane’s problem.
Shane sees Mister Customer again the following week.
He walks in around the same time that Shane is getting back from his quick sprint to Tim Horton’s and back, double-double in one hand and a bag with sea-salt wedges and a sandwich in the other. He gives no indication that he sees Shane, and that’s perfectly fine because he’s just some guy, why would he at all care about the cashier from Canadian Tire? Shane certainly doesn’t care about a random customer.
He scarfs down his sandwich and wedges as quickly as he can in the limited time he has left on his break, then gets back to his register. His manager eyes the coffee in his hand with disapproval, but it’s slow season, and it’s cold enough that he can pretend like he’s chilly and needs the pick me up. It’s a bid to get in the good graces of the employees, too, he knows. Whatever beef the managers of the store have with each other is beyond him.
He’s at his register for a solid thirty minutes before Mister Customer comes back to his register, even though the other counter his co-worker Arthur is working at is both open and more in the direct path for him.
This time, he shows up with one single item.
“Do you play?” Shane asks as he rings up the hockey stick. It sits idly on the conveyor, as he waits for an answer.
“Yes,” Mister Customer says. “Centre.”
“No way,” Shane says. “Me too!”
“Doesn’t show,” Mister Customer says.
“Pardon me?” Shane says back, because he’s not sure that he heard right that this customer just… borderline insulted him?
“It’s debit,” the customer says. It’s not the same thing he’d just said, that much is clear, but also who is Shane to contest that?
“Three-hundred-forty-four and ninety-one cents,” Shane recites.
This time, the debit card has to be inserted for the payment to be completed. It’s blue, with the RBC lion logo in the corner. He sees the name embossed — Ilya. Rest is covered by the man’s thumb as he pushes the card into the slot with force.
The card reader beeps with a successful purchase less than a minute later, and they’re both silent as Shane hands over the receipt.
The customer — Ilya — nods his head at Shane as he leaves the store. “We could play sometime,” he says as he leaves. By the time the words have registered in Shane’s head, Mister Customer is already too far away to answer at a normal volume, and shouting across the floor doesn’t seem like the most clever of ideas.
His heart is already beating faster before he takes another sip of his coffee, and he pretends like it has nothing to do with the interaction he’s just had. He’s just another customer.
Mister Customer — Ilya, he should think, rather — comes to his Canadian Tire again a week later.
Shane sees him enter right at the point where his day begins to feel like it’s dragging on way too long. He never takes up his manager on the offer to clock out early, even on days like today. He’s sure that he could benefit from some extra time studying, but doesn’t dwell on it too much. Plus, Hayden is always eager to leave a little early and chat up the new girl he’s been seeing, and Shane is too much of a softie to say no when their manager asks if he’d like to go home early instead.
This time, the contents dumped onto his conveyor make the corners of his lips crook a little bit, like he wants to laugh. He holds it in as best as he can at the items: a suction beer bottle holder for showers (alcoholic or average uni student, a question for the ages), a hot-dog toaster (Shane is shocked that they sell these, frankly), a cast iron press, and bin bags.
He’s used to seeing Frank™ products, but the names always give him pause. The box reads ‘Frank™ gets ‘er done’. Okay. That’s perfectly reasonable, even as the little drawing of a bin bag with a moustache stares back at him as he runs the box along the scanner. Shane definitely isn’t having thoughts of this work-glove wearing, hockey-playing man with pretty blue eyes in front of him doing anything other than paying for his purchases.
He can only assume, based on the products in front of him, that this man is a bachelor.
He can’t imagine any man in a committed relationship buying a hot-dog toaster, unless he’s in his sixties and is looking for the novelty of getting a toasté instead of a steamy without having to pay a dollar surcharge. It seems a bit extra to get a whole toaster for it when realistically it’s easy as hell to grill hot-dogs on a standard kitchen pan, but he also might live in student housing, so who knows?
“Did you need a bag?” Shane remembers to ask this time around.
“A bag, yes,” Mister Customer — Ilya — says.
“Total is one-thirty-nine and seventy-five.”
“Debit.”
“Sure.” Shane gestures at the card reader. The debit card is tapped on the top of the card reader, the man’s thumb once again hiding the family name embossed with the digit.
“You are not supposed to look at a customer’s debit card.”
“Oh, uh, sorry, Ilya, I zoned out for a second there.” Shane realises a moment too late what he’s said, and the fact that he can claw back the words makes his skin crawl.
“Watch where your eyes stray, Shane,” Mister Customer — he knew it was risky to call the guy by first name in his mind — says to him. Then he winks. Winks!! The audacity!
The customer grabs his bag from where Shane had deposited it on the belt, then walks off. He makes it only two metres before Shane asks, “How’d you know my name?”
Ilya looks down at Shane’s chest, at where his built pecs protrude a bit in his red polo shirt. “Nametag,” he says simply. Then he has the nerve to raise an eyebrow like that’s something normal people do, and asks, “How’d you know mine?”
When Shane sputters for a suitable answer, Ilya just winks again and walks out of the store.
“The blonde guy someone you know?” Hayden asks.
His break lines up with Shane’s today, through the grace of the Canadian Tire overlords. He likes to have someone to chat with while on his breaks. It makes the guilt of not studying lessen because it would be rude to ignore a conversation partner. It also, in most times, keeps his mind off of Ilya, because there’s no way that he should be thinking about a customer this much.
“Blonde guy?” he asks. He knows exactly who Hayden is speaking about, but he doesn’t want to give himself away.
“Yeah. Hot blonde guy, tall, only ever speaks to you. He waits until you’re back if you’re not at your register, bro.” Hayden says this all like it’s completely normal, and maybe from an outside perspective they do seem like friends. He hasn’t noticed himself dedicating more time to one customer over another, but maybe he’s not as good at acting as he thinks he is.
“He’s just a regular,” Shane says instead of acknowledging what Hayden’s said. The less obvious he makes his developing crush then the better.
“Mhm, I totally believe that.” Hayden gives him a look as they both use Shane’s register to clock back in from their break. Hayden goes first, then walks a small distance away while Shane types in his code.
When he looks up from his register, he sees Hayden in front of him, holding up a plastic container filled with gummy candies. On the label, he clearly reads ‘Frank™ is sweet on you’, and Hayden’s face slightly behind the candies looks at him with wide, intent eyes. The message he’s trying to convey is clear as day.
“Put that away,” Shane says, no heat behind the irritation in his voice.
“I’m just saying, man,” Hayden puts up his hands and shrugs. “I’d be happy for you.”
Shane thinks about it, and then refuses to dig any deeper.
“Shane,” Ilya says, walking up to Shane’s register with the swagger of someone who knows that he looks effortlessly cool.
“Hi.”
“No more ‘bonjour’?” Ilya asks as he deposits his items. He continues, “Fine by me.”
The items this week are… out of season to say the least. A rotisserie spit for campfires (not inherently odd, but with the recent huge snowfall a bit strange), waterproof playing cards (to each their own, he supposes, maybe he’s going to be spending time in a hottub), and a child-sized inflatable pool. Definitely, without a doubt, not appropriate for the current season. They’d gotten thirteen centimetres of snow only a few days ago, only a week after a four-day-long downfall of soft snow they’d had.
“Camping?” Shane asks, passing the products through the scanner.
“With child’s pool?”
“With the spit,” Shane says. He barely holds back the eye roll he feels coming upon him.
“Hm,” Ilya hums. His voice is deep and warm, and Shane can’t help but look at his Adam’s Apple. It bobs in his throat as he swallows, and Shane has to tear his eyes away forcibly.
“Total is one-ninety-seven and seventy-two. Debit?”
“You learn quickly,” Ilya says. There’s something about the way that he’s said it that makes Shane feel his skin heat with embarrassment. He doesn’t say anything, but tucks his chin to his neck. He looks at Ilya’s face a few times but ultimately can’t bring himself to look for too long.
Ilya shows up again less than a week later. It’s a change from his usual once-a-week appearance, and it shocks Shane into standing straighter, at full height.
It’s only two products this time around.
“‘Talking barbecue thermometer?” Shane asks, reading the box as he scans the barcode. He asks, “You’re sure you’re not going camping?”
“Not camping,” Ilya says. “Trying to improve my accent.”
Shane processes for a second. “You’re going to have a thermometer read to you and that will help with an accent?”
“Why not? It speaks, I repeat.”
“You’ve got to have a better way.”
“Are you offering?” Ilya raises his eyebrow again, and it’s still something that Shane is impressed he can do. Ilya has good eyebrows, too. Strong, thick. He likes them.
Shane looks down at the next item to scan. It’s a bag of sour cherry candies. Across the top of the bag, he reads, ‘Frank™ cherry-picked you to pucker up’. When he looks up at Ilya, he watches as his eyes flicker down to the candy before looking right back up into Shane’s eyes and staring him down.
Blushing, Shane coughs out instead, “Eighty-three-fifty-four.” He gestures toward the card reader. Ilya keeps eye contact with him the entire time that he’s tapping his card on the reader, and it makes Shane feel both intimidation and vague arousal. He’s never once in his life been kind of turned on at work, and he hates that he’s broken that lifelong record.
“Until next time,” Ilya says. He salutes as he grabs the box and carries it with his unoccupied hand.
Shane doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t hold back his smile this time.
It’s a handful of weeks of complete absence from Ilya’s presence at Shane’s Canadian Tire.
He’s not upset, per se. He is a little disappointed, because he’s come to enjoy the silly conversations they had, the banter between them.
When he sees Ilya only a few days later, he’s glad that he’s not hooked up to a heart rate monitor with how fast it’s beating in his chest.
He tells absolutely no one that he’s been pining, of course, because that would just reinforce the fact that he feels something other than just benign interest in this one recurring customer. It’s weird, really. There’s not a single good reason that he should be missing someone that he, by all means, knows nothing about other than his name and that he banks with RBC.
Ilya comes up to the counter with a cocky grin on his face, like he’s anticipating something when he drops his items. A bear bell (not needed in the city, but solidifying the Camping Trip Conspiracy), a single folding chair (maybe he’s going ice fishing?), and an insect vacuum. The last item has him contemplating for a minute, because they’re still knee-deep in snow outside and winter is nowhere near finished.
“You’re sure you’re not going camping?” Shane asks, looking at the items before him.
“Positive.”
“I’m having a hard time believing that.”
“Is not for you to believe or not, no?” Ilya says it like it’s something snarky, but the look on his face tells Shane anything but. There’s a deepness to the look in his eyes, something like he’s trying to convey meaning without words. The subtext is a little lost on Shane — mostly because he refuses to look for a deeper meaning that probably isn’t there.
He looks at the last item plonked down on his counter. It’s K-cups, with a little illustration of a coffee cup in a very conspicuous private detective costume. Across the front of the box it reads, ‘Frank™ has a dark side’.
There’s lots of things having a dark side can mean, Shane thinks, but there’s only one context in which he’d like to think of this customer’s potential hidden darkness, and it’s definitely not appropriate for work. He’s glad he’s past the point in his life where teenage hormones ran amok in his body and he’d gotten hard from just thinking taboo thoughts. Nowadays he’s got himself more under control, and yet the thoughts that run through his mind make his face warm anyway.
“Dark side, then?” Shane asks, holding up the box of coffee pods before putting it back down on the belt.
“Yes,” Ilya says. His eyes scan over Shane in a way that seems both predatory and flirtatious. “Strong tastes.”
“I bet.”
“Would you like to try?” Ilya asks, and Shane sputters. He’s — what? Would he like to try the coffee or… something else? Is this an invite somewhere? He’s not even sure if it’s a proposition or a threat, and he’s not sure he can draw any conclusions from the look in Ilya’s eyes.
“A hundred-and-sixteen and sixty-three,” Shane says finally once he gathers his running thoughts, and gestures toward the card reader. He feels like he doesn’t even have to anymore, but it’s become something of a habit. Plus, it gives a reason for Ilya to say something back, even if he doesn’t always take the opportunity.
There are no more words shared between them, and Ilya leaves with a look of concentration on his face that Shane isn’t sure he knows what to do with. There’s a furrow to his brows that speaks of anything but inner peace, and the thought that maybe, just maybe, he should have been reading more into this the whole time gives him pause.
He can’t help but think of the odd purchases that Ilya has made when he sees him next and sees the alarming set of items this time.
The patio chair for the cooking, the campfire spit for cooking the meat. The kiddie pool to retain most of the mess, the bear bell because the scent may draw in predators. A cast iron press to — he doesn't know, make bacon or something — and now…
Chainsaw chaps (no one needs these, who in the city needs a chainsaw???), twelve identical buckets (to drain out blood and transport parts of a kill, perhaps), and latex gloves. The box, featuring a latex glove blowing kisses, reads, ‘Frank™ gives good glovin’’. He can feel his jaw unhinge just a bit, the shock of the purchases all finally coming together in his mind. This man is about to kill his ex or something, and Shane has sold all sorts of things to help him in his cannibalistic ritual and he’s going to be summoned as an accessory.
“If you’re going to kill someone at your chalet just know that I’m going to call the RCMP, eh.”
The words tumble out of his mouth before he can process that it’s actually himself speaking, and he feels immediately horrified. It’s one thing to keep his insane theory in his mind, it’s another to accuse a customer of something.
“You think I plan to kill someone?” Ilya asks. He doesn’t look paranoid at all, none of the sweat and franticness of someone who is getting caught out. He doesn’t look like any of the actors in Law and Order reruns he sees at the gym.
“I — Your purchases — I mean —” Shane stutters out. The words abandon him, going AWOL while he sputters foolishly in front of the hot, strong, potential murderer in front of him. He’s had shameful late night-time thoughts about Ilya using his big hands to grab him by the neck and make it a little hard to breathe, but it’s all fantasy — he’s not supposed to be able to use his hands for murder.
“This is not for murder,” Ilya says. It’s something a murderer would say, Shane thinks. “This is flirting,” he continues, and that throws Shane for a complete look.
“Pardon me?”
“For flirting.”
“What is?”
“The purchases. I also give good loving,” Ilya gestures at the box of latex gloves sitting between them on the unmoving conveyor, and Shane feels like he’s short circuiting.
“You also give…” Shane trails off, and realises that he’s definitely not been reading too much into anything. The words on his tongue fail him and instead he says, “One-fifty and forty-six.”
Ilya presses his card against the reader and smirks at him. He winks one time before grabbing his things and leaving, not saying a word more.
Shane doesn’t see Ilya for another week.
He spends the whole time wondering if he’d royally screwed everything up the week prior but he doesn’t really have any recourse for it anyway. He has no way of contacting the man — for their months of what has apparently been flirting, they’ve never even officially exchanged names, let alone phone numbers.
He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but there’s something in his body language that has customers being particularly nice to him this week. It’s not like he is trying to be pitiful, but his failure to read on the flirtatious cues haunts him.
Ilya comes to his counter with products that are completely normal.
Lightbulbs, microfibre cloths, and a bag of kettle corn. Across the front of the package he reads, ‘Frank™ pops the question’. He looks up at Ilya, waiting for some kind of comment.
“Go on a date with me,” he says. His eyes are intense as he makes eye contact with Shane, and it makes Shane’s heart beat like mad in his chest.
“Is it you asking, or Frank™?”
“Frank cannot do the things that I want to do to you.” This time, as Ilya speaks, Shane has no trouble at all figuring out what undertone there is to the words. He can’t help but smile a bit.
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I’m sure you will.”
“It’s forty-five-thirty-eight,” Shane says.
“Hm,” Ilya says. He taps his card on the reader, then holds his hand out for Shane to put something into. Shane slaps the receipt into Ilya’s open palm and just stares at him. “No,” Ilya says. “Phone.”
“My phone?”
“It is not in a locker. Give it to me.”
“You want my phone.”
“To give you my number. How else can I take you on a date?”
A few minutes later, after exchanging numbers, Ilya looks him over once more, head to toe. “I’ll call you,” he says.
“Store closes at five,” Shane says.
“Eager, aren’t you?” Ilya winks at him once more and walks away. For the first time since he’s started seeing Ilya as a regular customer, he doesn’t feel any guilt as he checks out Ilya’s ass while he walks away.