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Garak was not used to a feeling of such warmth when he awoke, the heat blissful, a welcome contrast to the usual icy chill of the station’s environment. It was this fact that he blamed for the lack of paranoia that accompanied his waking, such a sense of comfort, and a slow lazy thought that he could stay there all day. When his eyes finally blinked open he jolted, muscles coiled tight at the presence of the intruder laying in his bed, albeit on top of the numerous covers. His first thought was defence, hand inching to the knife he kept under his pillow, sharpened to a fatal point. But then the intruder smiled, all wide eyes and straight teeth, shallow dimples melting into creases around his mouth and all thoughts of potential murder left Garak’s head.
Foolish boy, his mind chided, harsh and taking on a cadence that startlingly resembled Tain’s, I always knew your sentimentality would be your downfall. Sobered, he righted himself, sitting up and looking down coolly at the body on his bed.
“Doctor,” Garak greeted, suspicion clouding his tone, “I don’t remember ever letting you in.” Julian’s grin widened, a blush spreading across his cheeks and Oh, Garak thought, wasn’t that a lovely sight.
“Well, no, not exactly,” Julian replied, ducking his head slightly, “but I was stopping by to give you the book I’d forgotten to lend you, and well, you looked so peaceful I couldn’t bring myself to wake you.” Garak blinked, curious and more than a little alarmed as to just how Julian had gotten past his ‘upgraded’ door lock, even with medical command codes, and, more importantly, why the computer hadn’t alerted him to the intrusion.
“I appreciate the gesture, doctor, but I really must ask why this couldn’t wait.” The blush across Julian’s face deepened, prickling down his neck and Garak found himself following the movement as Julian swallowed thickly, smile suddenly shy.
“I just really wanted to see you.” Julian sat up beside him, a warm hand placed on the exposed skin of Garak’s wrist, his body close enough for Garak to feel the waves of heat radiating off of him.
Before Garak could open his mouth to respond, a pair of lips pressed against his own, tentative, cautious, and not even recollecting the harsh words of Tain could draw Garak out of the reverie he found himself in, hands reaching forward, pulling Julian closer. The soft drag of lips made Garak feel lighter than he had in years, the weight all but falling off of his shoulders, and when he felt a delightfully warm tongue running against the seam of his mouth, it was all he could do to swallow the pleased moan threatening to rise up. Garak lost track of the minutes passing as they kissed, but the nagging doubt in his head grew stronger with every gasped breath that left Julian’s mouth, as did the throbbing pleasure coiled low in his stomach.
It took much more control than Garak would care to admit to break away from the warm, wet mouth, and the sight that greeted him did nothing for the arousal pooling in his abdomen. Julian stared up at him with wide glassy eyes, lips red and slick, cheeks flushed as he struggled to regain his breath, and Garak momentarily closed his eyes against the sight, worryingly off guard.
“My dear, I must admit what a surprise this is,” Garak breathed, some semblance of control coming back to him, and, with his head now somewhat cleared from Julian’s intoxicating presence, the deeper hints of suspicion took root in his mind, reaching out with branched fingers as an entirely unpleasant thought rolled through him. “Last I was aware, you were still chasing after the affections of a certain lieutenant.”
“I guess I finally thought to stop chasing dead ends and find a certain somebody who I seem unable to get out of my mind,” Julian replied, voice suggestive as he surged forward once more, stopped only by Garak leaning back, a fond smile playing across his lips.
“And what makes you sure this certain somebody believes your no doubt noble intentions, Doctor? Or, for that matter, returns them?”
“My profession has certain…advantages, Garak,” Julian murmured, face startlingly close to Garak’s own, breath fanning across his cool skin. “By the flushed colour of these,” Julian’s hand reached up to lightly squeeze the scales lining Garak’s neck, and Garak clenched his jaw as a bolt of pleasure ran through him, eyes fluttering shut, “I’d say you’re very interested. As for your other concern, I assure you I’m more than willing to show how far from noble my intentions are.”
“So, doctor,” Garak began, swallowing as Julian’s fingers continued their deft ministrations at his neck, “you expect me to believe you’ve finally abandoned your relentless pursuit of the lovely Lieutenant Dax, and have instead turned your affections towards the station’s resident Cardassian?” Julian’s fingers paused, and Garak took the brief moment of clarity to straighten out his thoughts, blink away the lust clouding his judgement.
“Garak,” Julian breathed, hand reaching to cup his cheek, thumb brushing over the ridges by his ear, “I’ve wanted you since the moment you approached me. It may have taken me an embarrassingly long time to admit that, but I have. I want you, in whatever way you’ll have me.”
“I’m still sceptical over your very sudden change of heart, doctor,” Garak replied, pulling slightly out of Julian’s reach, and Julian groaned, brow tugging down into a frown.
“Then let me show you, Garak! I’ve wanted you for so long, please.” His voice was pitched and breathy, the last word leaving his mouth in something akin to a whine, desperate and pleading, and the last of Garak’s control slipped, a hand reaching up to grab Julian’s wrist, pushing him down into the covers, hissing when he met no resistance.
“You have one hour, doctor,” Garak relented, and a flash of something hungry flittered across Julian’s eyes, face determined as he arched into his grip, the firm swell of his arousal pressing into Garak’s hip, and Well, Garak thought, isn’t that new?
The hour came and went, as did the several that followed, and Garak’s shop remained shut for the remainder of the day, Julian only leaving when his shift required him to later that night, albeit half an hour late. His skin was flushed as he left Garak’s quarters, hair mussed, and Garak, after checking the hallway was empty couldn’t resist catching him in the doorway and pressing a kiss to his lips, delighted at the way Julian’s hands curled around his shoulders, held him fast and firm.
“Stop,” Julian whispered, pulling back, and Garak did with no small amount of control, “or I’m really going to be late for my shift.” He went, and Garak watched his retreating form, feeling sated and content for the first time in his recollection.
***
The next few days passed far too quickly, and the doubts in Garak’s mind diminished with every press of Julian’s hands to his body, every kiss and gasped moan. The warmth pouring off of his skin was terribly addicting, and Garak had taken to laying in it afterwards, an arm around Julian’s waist, face tucked into the brown curls, mussed and damp from exertion.
“I’ve wanted this since the first time I saw you,” Julian confessed, tone hushed in the afterglow, and Garak’s hand stilled where it was running up his side.
“Even when you showed not the slightest bit of interest in my advances?” Garak replied, a small, private smile gracing his lips as Julian huffed, rolling over against Garak’s chest.
“Even then.” Garak hummed, somewhat disbelieving and a pout formed over Julian’s features, legs moving to tangle between Garak’s ankles, the sheet slipping low, exposing the small of his back, caramel skin providing a striking contrast. “I could always show you again just how interested I am,” he finished, a grin spreading across his face and Garak heaved a sigh, reaching to interlace their fingers, content to bask in the warmth radiating from Julian’s embrace.
“My dear, may I remind you that we cannot all be as young and insatiable as you are, after all, I am but an ageing tailor.” The remark earned Garak a grin, and Julian shifted to rest his head in the crook of Garak’s neck, breath fanning across the ridges there.
“And I wouldn’t have you any other way, Garak,” Julian replied, earnest and with such intent that Garak momentarily found himself winded, something deeper than affection taking root in his chest. The feeling of being wanted, of being used for whatever task he was to accomplish next, was far from a new development in Garak’s life, but he could scarcely recall the last time he had felt cared for, and what a small, hopeful thing it was.
***
A week since Julian had first broken into his quarters and the bed was cold, lacking both the usual heat that lingered and the body that produced it. Garak’s mouth tugged down, a frown working across his features as his arm spread across the mattress, seeking any hint of lingering warmth, of caramel skin, or soft, brown curls.
At the failed search for any of these things, Garak’s eyes opened, alert and on guard, and a heavy, uneasy feeling settled in his gut as he scanned the room before daring to move, to shift his body to an upright position. There was no note pending on the computer, and the distinct lack of any residual warmth suggested that Julian had been gone a very long time indeed. Garak stood, hissing lightly as the cold air reached his skin. A quick search through his security logs showed no unusual behaviour, except the fact that Julian hadn’t left his room, not since he had entered last night.
“Computer, locate Doctor Bashir,” Garak asked, tone neutral despite the growing unease, the worry constricting his throat.
Panic will get you nowhere, Elim, focus.
“Doctor Bashir is in the infirmary,” the computer replied, and Garak blinked, exhaling slowly as he formulated the quickest route to get there. His clothing was folded on the table at the end of his bed, three small piles, shoes tucked underneath, and there, next to the bed was a flash of blue, a jumpsuit thrown haphazardly across his floor.
Garak smiled, a gentle tug of his lips, and bent down to pick it up, the scent of soap, something clinical, something Julian still lingering on the fabric and he folded it, placing it carefully on the pillow Julian had slept on for the past week, a gift of sorts for when he came back.
The walk to the infirmary was brief, made shorter by the early hour and the general lack of people on the way from the habitat ring to the promenade. He smiled politely at a few shop owners that offered him a small wave, faces tired and eyes bleary from sleep, the station just starting to wake up. A small glance through the glass into the infirmary showed Julian to be at his desk, hand covering his mouth as his eyes drooped, hair mussed, and Garak smiled at the picture he made, changing course to pass by the replicators.
When he returned it was with a raktajino in hand, sweet the way he knew Julian liked. He’d barely made it through the door when Julian all but stumbled into him and Garak’s steady grip on the cup was the only thing that kept it from spilling. He looked up from underneath his eyelashes, gaze sheepish and apologetic as Garak tilted his head in acceptance.
“For you,” he stated, pushing the cup into Julian’s hand, warmth fluttering in his chest as Julian’s eyes fluttered closed at the smell alone and the taste it promised.
“You’re a saint, Garak,” Julian beamed, smile wide and Garak chided himself for the way his heart jumped. “The influx of patients has kept me on my feet all night and I doubt it’ll ease up anytime soon.” Garak frowned, a brief lapse of his control before he smoothed out his features, glancing around the infirmary and indeed finding it full of patients on biobeds in no doubt varying states of treatments.
“You say you’ve been here all night?” Garak asked, the words sticking to his throat, and he swallowed, clearing his voice of any suspicion and ignoring the growing dread in his stomach, the sense that something was very, very wrong.
“My shift started at twenty-two hundred and was meant to finish three hours ago. Except what kind of CMO would I be if I left when the infirmary is close to overflowing?” A joke, Garak noted, the words falling flat as he focused on the former sentence, mentally running the times and noting the discrepancies. It should be impossible, it was impossible for Julian to have started at twenty-two hundred hours, not when he had fallen asleep besides Garak, curled into the bigger bulk of his body at twenty-three hundred hours.
“If you don’t mind me asking, Doctor, why are you so busy?” He asked, struggling to fill in the inconsistencies with the information he had, finally relenting to the nagging feeling that something was not right.
“I’m sure you’ve seen all the strange things on the station over the past week,” Julian started and Garak blinked, running over the last seven days mentally, and found nothing particularly noteworthy, although he supposed that could be accounted for by the fact he’d hardly left his quarters. He nodded anyway. “Apparently all the fantasies people had been having were nothing more than a species of telepathic aliens who fashioned themselves after our desires.” The final piece fell into place and Garak was left winded as he took in the picture, left reeling in the repercussions of his carelessness, his weakness for the man in front of him.
“Let’s just say some of those…fantasies were a lot more interesting than others.” He was aware of Julian’s eyes on his and scrambled to find something to say through the hoards of thoughts clouding his mind, the feeling of his heart stilling in his chest.
“I don’t suppose you had any of these fantasies, Doctor?” He teased, stilling the tremor threatening to shake through his hands. Julian grinned, a blush spreading across his cheeks and Garak felt the uncontrollable urge to turn tail and leave because he knew that blush, he had seen it every day for the last week. Except he hadn’t. What he thought had been Julian, his Julian, the one who had held him, trusted him, and, dare he say loved him was gone. It was never real, he was never real, nothing more than a figment of his own imagination, a culmination of his desires.
“Actually,” Julian drawled and Garak raised an eye ridge when Julian didn’t continue, a small, destructive part of himself wanting to draw out the details, to crush and kill whatever had dared to bloom in his chest over the past week. “Without further embarrassing myself, I will say reporting to Ops is a lot more awkward when you have a perfect replica of one of the Lieutenants hanging off of your arm.” Jadzia. Of course. Calling her image to mind it was too easy to see the ways in which he paled in comparison, not only on a physical basis. Where she was kind and warm he was analytical and cold, always too eager to run circles around people, spill lies quicker than blinking. A heavy thought struck him, pressing down on his chest. He had been with her at the same time I had been with him. The full impact of the situation hit at full force and his mouth found the words automatically, mind struggling to right itself, to correct its numerous wrongs, to undo the damage Julian, no, not Julian, had managed to do.
“I’ll have to take your word for it, Doctor.” He tried desperately not to picture the version of Julian that had lain besides him, curled against Garak’s body, hands splayed across his chest. No. It might as well have been a dream.
The infirmary was too bright, too loud all of a sudden, and he was acutely aware of the crowds of people around them, cramped into biobeds, the shuffling of nurses and various medical staff around him, the occasional brush against his shoulder. He knew the available exits and they called to him like beacons. An all too familiar panic coiled tight inside of him, the urge to run becoming harder to ignore as the space felt smaller and smaller. He stopped, counted backwards from three, allowed himself no more than those precious few seconds of fear before forcing his breathing to become even and controlled, already beginning to slowly rebuild the walls he had allowed Julian, the other Julian to knockdown.
“What about you, Garak? Any of your fantasies come to life?” There was a glint in Julian’s eyes, and Garak recalled something familiar about it, akin to the one present when Julian had held his face and pressed gentle kisses to his skin, taken the time to memorise his body and hold him close. The nausea roiled through Garak’s stomach as he thought of all the ways he had left himself exposed, vulnerable, how he had let himself believe that Julian, kind, compassionate Julian, could actually love him, would lay next to a man who had been an accomplice to more crimes than he could recall before Julian was even born. No. He didn’t deserve happy endings, and he certainly didn’t deserve Julian.
“Well, I’m afraid I’ve experienced nothing quite as exciting as your little adventure, my dear, but I must admit my profits do appear to have climbed by a small amount this week. Owing largely, I suspect, to the extra shipment of materials that appeared overnight in my shop.” It was a weaker lie, perhaps, but Garak took pride in the way his voice remained unwavering throughout, the words spilling seamlessly off his lips. Of course, Julian could easily call his fabrication out into the open had he walked past his shop at all over the past week and seen it firmly shut. Garak, with a sense of nausea, hoped that he had been too preoccupied with Jadzia to notice. Julian smiled, eyes creasing slightly, and Garak knew that his lie had been convincing enough for it to pass.
“I won’t tell if you won’t,” Julian replied, voice light and Garak’s chest ached at the tone. He fought with an uncontrollable urge to reach forward, to touch him, to hold him once more. He settled for resting a hand on Julian’s arm, fingers memorising the warmth of his skin, the feel of his uniform, the soft, smooth expanse below the fabric, an action he had performed countless times before now carrying a new weight, a new depth.
“Thank you, Doctor. I’d hate for Quark to hear of such an event.” He let his hand drop from Julian’s bicep, falling heavily back down his side, palm already missing the brief moment of contact. He turned to leave, stilling as Julian’s hand caught his wrist, a loose grip, one Garak could easily slip away from if he wanted to. He didn’t.
“I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow?” There was something akin to worry in Julian’s voice and Garak loathed the way his heart fluttered in his chest at the show of concern, of care.
No more, Elim. You’ve had your fun. End this.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to reschedule, Doctor,” Garak replied, ignoring the way he had to force the words from his throat, desperate for any opportunity to see Julian, to be close to him again. “After all, I do have all those extra materials to put to good use.” Julian arched a brow, a minute movement and Garak swallowed under the scrutiny, smoothing his face into an impenetrable mask and watched as Julian’s raised brow morphed into a frown of frustration, fingers briefly tightening around his wrist.
“Garak—” he started, and Garak’s jaw twitched, the need for escape once again building, and he reluctantly pulled his wrist from Julian’s grasp, the cool air hitting it immediately.
“I really must take my leave, Doctor. I’ll contact you regarding next week’s lunch.” With a final tilt of his head and a smile that that felt just as brittle as he did, Garak turned, feet carrying him out of the infirmary in sure, quick strides, pointedly not looking behind him, too afraid of what expression he might find on Julian’s face. No. He continued walking, stride not faltering until he came to rest outside his quarters, unlocking the doors and re-locking them behind him.
The air in Garak’s quarters was wrong, somehow, colder in a way far greater than just the temperature and he clenched his jaw, allowed his eyes to close, gave in for a single moment of weakness, of vulnerability. His shop had been closed for a week, and he could hardly see the harm in keeping it that way for an extra day. Besides, he mused, I can sketch up further designers. He discarded his shoes by the door and sat down at the table to work, smoothing out the paper, real paper, and set to work.
*****
The work occupied his hands and mind long into the night, and when he finally found the courage to stop he had drawn more plans than he had in the last three months combined. There was something restless that lingered in his chest, and the itch to do something, to keep busy, hounded him long after his eyelids felt too heavy to stay open. It was 0300 before Garak relented to the fatigue washing through him and reluctantly set aside his work, standing and stretching before crossing the threshold into his bedroom, the room too big and too empty.
You survived before him, Elim, you can do so again.
He kept the lights off, unwilling to see the evidence of what he’d lost, not yet. Instead, he felt his way around the room, aided in part by the low-light capabilities of his eyes, discerning shapes well enough to make it to the bed efficiently. The sheets were cold, somehow colder than they were before and before he could stop himself his arm was stretching across the bed, reaching for a ghost, a remnant of something. His fingers found fabric, rough with wear, no doubt made with some federation standard-issue material, and Garak cleared his head of the thoughts of what he would dress Julian in, the finest silks and materials money could buy.
Hesitantly he tugged the material closer to him, feeling it unfold and drape around his wrists, a poor imitation of the warmth Julian himself provided. The scent reached his nose before he could prepare himself, and a flood of memories from the last week rolled over him until he was sure he was drowning, floundering and gasping for breath in the quiet coldness of his quarters, alone once again. He wondered, ruefully, whether Tain, in all his infinite wisdom, had known how this would play out, if he had doomed him to suffer a fate far worse than any exile could bring him. With a final, shuddered exhale he brought the fabric to his chest, allowing the lingering scent of warmth, of comfort, to wash over him, and indulged himself in one final act of sentimentality. He would dispose of the uniform in the morning, but tonight it served as a reminder.