Chapter Text
Looking back, Garak knew that he should have realized he was in trouble when he’d faced the smooth-faced young man across a table laid for a late-night supper and —
No. It had begun even earlier than that. It had begun as soon as he’d been forced by circumstance to spend most of each day in the company of Lieutenant Julian Subatoi Bashir. Previously the danger hidden in his acquaintance with the good Doctor had been unable to fully manifest; now, strengthened by continuous association, it began to stalk him… and he, the hunter, had unwittingly become the hunted.
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1-4
Being stranded on a remote and cold Cardassian colony world with pre-combustion engine tech levels was not something Garak found particularly enjoyable, but it did have its compensations. One of them was his companion: Bashir was intelligent, quick-witted and eloquent, and quite physically attractive besides. Garak had been aware of his beauty from the instant he’d first seen the Human walking down the crowded Promenade on Deep Space Nine about two and a half years ago, and he certainly appreciated the way Bashir was oh, so easy on the eyes. It gave him something to look forward to during their weekly lunches, sitting across a Replimat table from those earnest dark eyes and charming features. That the Human could hold his own in the cut-and-thrust of debate was an unexpected and delightful bonus.
But that had been once a week. Here on this benighted planet they were in each other’s company hour after hour, and... well, the Humans had a saying that “absence makes the heart grow fonder”, but as usual they’d gotten things exactly transposed. Garak should have foreseen that the situation was going to become dangerous when he’d realized that they would be engaged in days of constant interaction. As an agent of the Order he had been conditioned from childhood to live and work alone, and further conditioning had been designed to prevent him from forming interpersonal attachments beyond the superficial levels needed to accomplish any given mission. Now, knowing that he found Bashir attractive, he had counted on that training to protect him. He’d believed that his ability to feel warmth and a sincere desire to connect with another sentient being had been stripped from his personality.
How wrong he had been!
He already regarded the Doctor with affection, and that was hazardous. It seemed that his long years in exile had made him weak. The man had saved his life, true, but that was no excuse for sentimentality... yet during the last few months on Deep Space Nine he’d repeatedly brushed off the faint internal alarms at the glow of pleasure he felt when the young Human smiled at him. With the implant deactivated, why should he deny himself a little enjoyment on occasion? Where was the harm?
And then they’d crash-landed on this icy world and the stakes had been raised to a level that Garak shouldn’t have even dreamed of trying to afford. His downfall approached almost silently, and every time he heard a stealthy footfall he convinced himself that he was imagining the danger.
It was almost as if he wanted to be brought down, his heart's-blood spilled for a cause that had nothing to do with his Oaths to the planet he loved more than life itself.
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5.1
After midnight, in Zio Tevar’in. Bashir stumbled out of a bedroom at the inn, half-awake, to be insulted by Yolin Aslel — and the anger that Garak felt, almost as if he had himself been slighted, was a surprise… more so, because the verbal attacks of others slid off him effortlessly, inconsequential, while those same words, directed at Bashir, seemed to matter.
The empathy was unexpected. Anomalous. But it quickly passed and he did not permit it to trouble him.
After the yolinli took their leave Bashir tried his best to have a glass of kanar while listening to Garak recount his adventures in surveillance the previous evening. The boy kept falling asleep over his drink, jerking awake almost guiltily. Keeping up a smooth flow of monologue and watching him, Garak felt the usual glow of pleasure at the Human’s presence become a warmth that filled his entire body. When was the last time he’d felt this heat over his heart, this joy that was keyed to one face, one drowsy smile, one set of sleepy eyes?
Never. Not to this degree, like a sokka tree awakening with sap and setting forth leaves in its proper season. Not with this sense of fondness that was both oddly paternal and subtly carnal. Not with this desire to reach out and catch hold of those golden fingers and draw such beauty even closer, into his lap, and —
Instead he reached out and plucked the glass from the Bashir’s hands and told him to go to bed, allowing himself a smile as he did so. Watching the Human walk away, he observed the way that strong smooth back moved under its linen shirt and thought about how it would feel under his own hands instead.
The internal whisper of warning briefly ramped up to a shriek of alarm. He was getting too close, but he silenced the warnings and insisted to himself that he could keep things under control. So he was experiencing a little more enjoyment that usual in the presence of the Doctor — was that necessarily a bad thing, especially under the present (and perilous) circumstances? Of course not. He was a trained agent of the Order: nothing could touch him, not really. A momentary interval of lust for a friend, however emotionally poignant, was not a sign of complete disintegration of the system.
Friend. It was a word that had always sat uneasily with him when applied to Bashir. Emotional entanglements are a serpent waiting to strike, Tain himself had instructed: To indulge in friendship is to indulge in a lethal drug. And Garak had always been an exemplary student, absorbing each lesson and applying it assiduously.
Besides, saved life or not, they did only see each other once a week for lunch... but now, after only two days stranded, friend was a word that was already beginning to fit. Every moment with the Doctor felt as smooth and natural as Allarian silk against the skin, as pleasant as cool water in a parched throat. Setting off from the downed shuttle, Garak had reflected that the coming days would probably reveal rough edges in the fit between them that might damage their acquaintance in the future, and a part of him had regretted it. Instead they’d moved together and locked into a nearly seamless configuration, like two parts of a gun perfectly tailored for each other.
Sitting at the table, alone, he snorted silently and took a sip of his kanar, turning his mind to the journey they’d be undertaking the following day...
... and then Bashir called out from his bedroom, asking Garak to take his Starfleet undershirt and pack it away in the saddlebags. Garak rose and went to take the article of clothing from Bashir’s hand, extended through the barely-opened door, and headed at once to secure it as requested.
On the way across the room, he found himself bringing it to his nose and taking its scent. The faint musky odour lit up his spine and went straight to his groin: alien, with no right to be so arousing, but he felt his sheath stir and his ridges flush with instinctive anticipation of —
— of something that could never be. He’d never seen Bashir show the slightest interest in anything male, and besides, it would be beyond idiotic to get involved with a member of an enemy government’s military, however enchanting the individual officer in question might be.
Garak packed away the shirt, finished his drink, and went to bed, only to have that scent chase him through his dreams until dawn.
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5.2
A cry in the night awoke him. He rolled onto his back and sat up, instantly alert — ready to fight and to kill.
But his combat calculations told him that no one else was in the pitch-black room with him. Another exclamation: a gasp of indrawn breath from the bedroom across the apartment. Bashir. It was Bashir who had uttered that desperate and frightened sound, almost as if weeping.
"Doctor?" He kept his voice low but sharp, still processing incoming data. He'd just come to the conclusion that they were alone in the apartment as a whole when Bashir replied in an equally quiet voice:
"I'm fine, Garak. Just… a bad dream. Go back to sleep."
For a moment he pondered disregarding that request. He…
… he wanted to know what was disturbing his friend. He wanted to do something to ease whatever distress had made him cry out.
None of this should have mattered.
Something moved in the darkness near him. Something bared sharp teeth, gathering itself to spring.
Garak turned his face back to the pillow and returned to his troubled dreams.
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6.1
Then, the following day, Bashir ended up having to ride behind him on his o’wn, body-length pressed against body-length, those strong slender arms locked around his waist. The crack opened by the scent of the undershirt and the night-borne cry, which normally would have been closed by Garak’s emotional conditioning in the course of time, was not only propped open: it widened.
Garak ignored it. He was used to putting aside inconvenient physical and emotional responses. But all day long he was acutely aware of Bashir’s proximity, and not only because his subconscious combat calculations kept sending up messages that an enemy soldier was not only less than a centimeter away, but also at his back. No, he was getting persistent messages from other quarters as well, parts of himself he’d thought long dead, euthanized by personal choice as well as by training: he couldn't deny that the boy felt so warm, he felt so good... even the sound of his breathing was somehow soothing... inviting...
Garak set it all firmly aside. He turned his face away from the predator stalking ever nearer. Instead he meditated as he rode, seeking a point of internal stillness while remaining alert to any external threat. And he succeeded, although when they reached Cheldar Nor’iv he found himself angry — actually angry — that he hadn’t thought to call for a halt during the day’s ride to allow Bashir to stretch his long legs. Seeing the Human stumble upon dismounting filled him with sudden keen protectiveness. This time the internal alarms seemed dim and distant.
Helping Bashir into the inn, that slender arm draped over his shoulders, he told himself that it was only friendship talking — a friendship that an Order agent shouldn’t be indulging in at all, but he'd already decided that was beside the point. Friendship was a minor enough sin and could be dealt with once they were off this hostile world and returned to their usual weekly acquaintance. Renewed distance would solve the problem in itself.
He’d gotten Bashir into a chair, watched him eat, kept an eye on the crowd in case one of the other Cardassian patrons decided to get aggressive with the stranger in their midst. All things one friend would do for another. Nothing remarkable in the least.
Or so he kept telling himself. And so he'd believed, until a pilgrim threatened to pull a knife on his Doctor and everything went straight to Hell.
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6.2
Behaviourally intact Cardassian males — those not subjected to the Order’s ruthless indoctrination — had a strong natural drive to protect their mates. Even more so in the case of the n'sar'arah, a man's instinctively chosen and perfectly attuned companion-for-life, a rare blessing and the greatest treasure he could possess. Whole epics had been written concerning the necessity of sacrificing one's great love for the good of the State, the propriety of such selfless action, and the disaster that could befall if attachment to the n'sar'arah was given priority over duty.
Garak knew this on a purely theoretical level and had used it to his advantage several times in the course of his career, manipulating the vulnerability in others to extract confessions or throw his enemies into confusion. He’d done so secure in the knowledge that it was a Achille’s heel that he himself did not suffer. His great love was Cardassia herself, and love for her could never be a weakness.
He knew what it was to act out of passion for his homeworld. He knew the feeling of righteous determination it imparted, the sense of virtuous triumph. He had felt his inner dragon rise in service to Cardassia time and time again, and each time he had rejoiced in his heart because his love was true and pure. It was all he had ever needed. It was all he was designed to require.
Seeing the pilgrim’s hard hand grip Bashir’s shoulder, he had felt a new dragon awaken in his core — savage, hissing, fire kindling in its throat. He had risen to his feet and ordered the man to let go, his voice still calm, his training holding to that extent at least, but knowing that if the man did not let go he would act to protect what was his, this golden Human, this dark-eyed jewel beyond price.
His. The intensity of the emotion was as staggering as its existence. Looking up into the pilgrim’s drunken face, feeling sharp teeth sink inexorably into his soul, Garak found himself wondering briefly if it was the primitive environment that was bringing out this primal response in him, a reaction that should have been quite impossible. But there it stood, as natural as breathing, and when the pilgrim looked down at Bashir and moved his hand toward his belt knife Garak broke his arm without a second’s hesitation, maintaining just enough control to calculate that if he killed the miserable fool it might lead to formal charges and a delay they couldn’t afford.
But for threatening his Doctor, death was exactly the correct penalty. Ancient instinct dictated as much.
His Doctor. His friend.
His n'sar'arah, his mate.
When had this happened? All such instincts should have been killed by the Order’s merciless conditioning. Yet here he was, engaged in combat for a Human who had no idea what was actually going on.
In his life Garak had sometimes had occasion to reflect that if any of his ancestral Gods existed, they were fundamentally cruel. Now he knew for certain — and he knew that Bashir must never know. He might never be able to have more than the Starfleet officer's friendship, but even that was something he now knew he valued too dearly to risk.
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6.3
Bashir was far more beautiful with the glow of battle on his golden skin than anyone had the right to be.
The fangs of Garak's downfall sank deeper into his flesh, filling him with lustful fire. He was fairly sure that the heat did not make it into his eyes for more than an instant, and that the flash of surprise on Bashir's face reflected an equal failure to understand what he had seen.
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8.1
He lay with his oblivious n'sar'arah and did not permit himself a sigh of contentment. The poor child had almost jumped out of his skin when Garak moved in behind him and laid an arm lightly over his waist. A few quick words, a little jesting, and Bashir had begun to relax. Really, he was so very easy to manipulate; the fact that Garak had so much more to lie about now was a matter of no concern whatsoever. The Human was often incapable of seeing what was right before his eyes, much less what was being actively concealed.
So innocent. Nuzzling into the dark tousled hair, drawing a surreptitious breath of its scent, Garak wondered when he'd started to find callowness so attractive.
He lay awake for long minutes, listening to Bashir breathe and beginning the task of teaching himself to sideline the combat calculations to the back of his mind. When he at last allowed sleep to claim him he was warm and as close to contented as he'd been in a very long time. It was no wonder, he thought drowsily, that the untrained sought this sort of thing out: really, it was rather pleasant in a simple physical sense. Perhaps Bashir, as uneasy as he had been, was finding some comfort in it as well.
That he found this prospect pleasing as well seemed relatively unimportant.
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8.2
When Bashir began to thrash and cry out in the night Garak pulled him closer without hesitation. He was surprised when the Human clung to him in turn and pressed his face to his neckridge, gasping some nonsense about seeing him die. He let the pitch darkness conceal his smile at the good Doctor's foolishness and spun out a soothing murmur to quiet him, ignoring the almost shocking intimacy of the Human's innocent touch.
The word slipped free — a'latli — before he realized it was in play. But the instant he heard himself say it he knew that it was one of the truest words he'd ever spoken. All the associations of the term cascaded through his mind — twinned blades striking sparks from each other, a gaze like a dagger sheathed in the heart, two men joined by the ties of battle and mutual devotion, the entirety of Ballad Forty-Seven of The Fall From Shadows — stirring emotions as strange to him as the deep surge of physical desire Bashir's touch was evoking. Amazed, he realized that this fragile creature had unwittingly attacked him on yet another front and struck another mortal blow. None of this reached his voice or his body, of course, but it certainly penetrated his otherwise cold and impervious heart.
Garak was not accustomed to surprising himself. So many shocks in one night was a most unwelcome phenomenon. But neither was he in the habit of lying to himself, and although he revealed nothing to the man in his arms he silently acknowledged the depths of his own wounds. Yet still he was determined that he could stand against this enemy that already had him wrapped in its coils, and he locked away his doubts even as he spoke the dangerous word again, a personal act of defiance. He revealed nothing, even when Bashir unexpectedly seized on the reference to The Fall From Shadows and tried to pursue it. He pretended that it had all been a clever ploy to distract his friend from the spectre of his nightmare (and certainly Bashir was not thinking about his dream anymore, another case of the lie being as good as the truth). It looked as if he'd succeeding in misdirecting the Doctor's attention and provoking annoyance that would divert their conversation down a totally different track.
Then Bashir touched him again in a way that made time itself stop and the easy flow of words die in his throat, unspoken.
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8.3
In the Order it was taught that sex was a matter of hygiene, that it was healthy to grant the basic physical urges release from time to time. An agent with frustrated passions could not cultivate the clarity of mind necessary to be fully effective. Consequently Garak had enjoyed his share of sexual partners over the decades, but never with any true depth of feeling beyond varying degrees of emotionally detached lust.
Bashir's mouth on his neckridge changed all that, those sharp teeth casting him into confusion with a single bite. The boy couldn't know what he was doing, surely not! He was not Cardassian. He hadn't been taught the rites. He did not know the primal signals.
Yet still he asked: "Doctor… do you know what it means, to —?"
And Bashir answered with quiet determination: "Yes."
That word, like the touch that had preceded it, slipped into Garak and opened him as instinctively as a sokka blossom responding to the light of the sun. He tried not to pull Bashir closer. He tried to keep his voice even: "I don't think you do." When was the last time his heart had pounded like this, driven by anticipation and dread? Surely it was audible even through the armor of his breastplate?
But he knew. Even before Bashir's arm tightened around him, even before that melodiously accented voice whispered a sweet confession against his skin — "I want to be sexually intimate with you." — he knew that the terrain between them had just changed forever. They were engaged in a different battle now, one where even defeat could be counted as a victory.
Breathing in the scent of Bashir's silky skin, he sensed the delicious tension in his friend's body and almost laughed aloud. The Human was stammering a qualification, something about Garak being free to refuse him. Oh, my dearest, he thought with dark humor, how little you understand!
He took hold of Bashir's slender waist with both hands. Experience had already proven that the boy could be taught.
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8.4, 9
He could not afford this entanglement. But when his Doctor made the overture he had answered. Really, how could he not? He had fought for the Human as if the boy were his mate, after all; it seemed churlish not to accept the fruits of such a relationship when freely offered.
With Julian it was more than the simple mechanics of tension and release. Garak set out to give him pleasure, and was both surprised and gratified to receive so much in return. He’d always been under the impression that Human males were on the whole rather selfish lovers; certainly he’d heard female customers complain about them more than once.
It was really quite endearing, the way Julian tried so hard to please him. Endearing and highly effective: each touch seared his skin in the icy darkness, leaving him sheathed in heat, and each touch went deeper, warming places that had never before felt alive. He had relished the act of driving Julian half-mad, mastering the younger man with pleasure rather than with pain. How strange, to find himself wanting to surrender to an alien's touch in his turn!
It was sheer insanity, but oh, such a compelling form of madness…
Finding release in that hot earnest mouth, losing himself, he had cried out as if stricken, thinking:
Ah, Julian! Possession goes both ways, it seems.
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10
He'd had his doubts that his friend would want to pursue a physical relationship in the cold light of day. Human males were also renowned for their hit-and-run approach to sexual encounters.
The warm light in those sly dark eyes over breakfast and the subtle (for Julian) flirting set him straight on that score. He smiled back, letting some of the carnal heat that still lingered in his cold reptilian bones flash into his gaze, and had the pleasure of seeing a heated blush stain his n'sar'arah's smooth cheeks.
Briefly he considered letting Julian know what he was in for. He decided against it. The boy would learn soon enough, and it was in his nature to preserve as much mystery as possible in any case. It would only make the chase and the eventual capture that much more exciting — and satisfying.
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13.1
Garak stood absolutely still, his gaze fixed on the almost certainly poisoned tip of the arrow being levelled at him by an alien bowman standing 5.27 meters in front of him. 3.25 meters to his left Borik fidgeted, trying not to move too much; 0.42 meters beyond the shorter guide, Aslel glared at their captors with a defiance that did not extend as far as provoking them.
He was fairly sure that he could overcome a single Naievirl soldier in hand-to-hand combat, but there were six potential combatants facing him, all of them with weapons drawn and most of those weapons probably envenomed. Outnumbered and outgunned, all he could do was wait — and try not to wonder what might be happening to Julian.
The two groups had been staring at each other for a little less than an hour and a half by Garak's internal reckoning, and every minute of it he had been fighting a silent war within himself. His a'latli, the idealistic trusting child, had gone with a Naievirl warrior for a typically heroic reason: to protect his fellow travellers, although Garak was certain that he'd also been called by the prospect of someone needing a healer. He'd tried to warn the Doctor, only to be brushed off with a typical reassuring platitude. Now he maintained a resolutely mild expression in the face of the enemy, but beneath it he struggled with periodic impulses to grab Julian by the shoulders and shake the boy senseless the next time he saw him…
… if there was a next time. That prospect generated some profoundly unpleasant emotions, most of them more difficult to deal with for being unfamiliar. Garak was not accustomed to being concerned for anyone's welfare but his own. It was most distracting, and yet again he recognized the wisdom of the Order's conditioning, which supposedly rendered its agents impervious to interpersonal attachments.
Emotional entanglements are a serpent waiting to strike. And he was paying the price now for letting that snake into his heart, wasn't he? It was difficult to concentrate fully on the circumstances in front of him when images of Julian injured, beaten and bleeding — or lying in the moonlit snow with a knife in his chest — kept rising before his mind's eye. Picturing the fragility of the Human's hands and face and shoulders, he could clearly imagine how easily they might be broken. Each time he fought the obsessive thoughts back they prowled away only to flank him and attack again. And again. And again.
Each pleasure in life, he reflected, tended to have a corresponding pain. This situation was a case in point.
Worse yet, there was absolutely nothing he could do. He wasn't sure which was worse: the thought of his lover walking into a trap, or the fact that he was powerless to use his various hard-won skills to protect him from harm.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Borik cast him an anxious glance. The little yolin appeared to genuinely care for Julian; perhaps that look was trying to communicate as much. Garak glanced back and flashed him a brief reassuring smile, communicating optimism he did not feel.
Behind the mask of assurance he turned to face his own fear as it circled and moved in once more, baring teeth as sharp and pitiless as a r’sarrn's. When they tore into him he smiled a little more widely. His natural talent for deception, at least, still served him well.
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13.2
His first thought, seeing the Human's slim body slumped across the Naievirl warrior's saddle, was: I knew it. They've killed him. The rage was expected; the surge of almost blinding grief was not.
Oddly enough, his second thought was not: Starfleet has no incentive to rescue me from this miserable planet now. Nor was it: The little fool has thrown his life away for nothing.
His second thought was: I am alone.
Ridiculous, of course. He had always been alone. An agent of the Order did not have the luxury of the social bonds that other Cardassians took for granted. Yet the last — and only — time he'd felt such despair was when word had come down that he was to be exiled from Cardassia, never to return. In Julian's gaze he'd found a place to come to rest, something like home. And now that was lost forever.
The combat calculations were merciless: he had no hope of taking vengeance against this enemy. He'd be shot full of nilliea before he got —
He braced himself to move anyway, to step smoothly forward and negotiate. The corpse at least would be his. There were rites of farewell that he would not deny his friend and his mate, even on this isolated ball of rock and snow.
Then Julian stirred, and the freezing blackness in Garak's heart was instantly transmuted to heat and light.
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13.3
Every twenty minutes he entered the tent to check. Each time Julian was still unconscious. It had been almost six hours since the Naievirl had dropped the Human's limp body into his arms and issued enigmatic instructions to "let him sleep it off" when Garak slipped through the flap again and knelt beside the sleeping furs that he'd wrapped warmly around his lover, carrying a cup of meat broth freshly brewed up by Aslel from a small animal shot by the ever-dependable Borik.
“Wake up, Doctor.” He pitched his voice to be low but penetrating and was relieved to see Julian crack open his eyelids. His dark eyes seemed to have trouble focusing until they came to rest on Garak's face; he looked up at his friend with drowsy solemnity as Garak slipped an arm under his shoulders and lifted him into a half-sitting position, but he didn't seem inclined to speak.
Garak put the cup to his lips. "Drink this," he instructed, and Julian took a cautious mouthful, then gratefully drank the rest. The action seemed to exhaust him all over again. His dark lashes were already drooping when Garak set the cup aside and laid him back on the pillow, cradling the nape of his neck in one hand.
Looking down at the delicate Human face and throat, Garak reflected that it would certainly be best to kill the alien now. The past several hours had done nothing but prove that Bashir was a liability to him. His feelings for this man were compromising his operational integrity. It was his duty to eliminate the threat.
It would be so easy, from a physical perspective, to snap his neck while he lay defenseless. His fingers lingered on Bashir's nape, tracing the vulnerable bones as he automatically calculated the precise amount of force necessary to accomplish the murder. Or perhaps he would apply pressure to the arteries in his throat, letting him slip away quietly into eternal darkness. He could easily convince the guides that his friend had died of whatever the Naievirl had done to him, and then it would be merely a matter of granting Bashir the appropriate rites before moving on with his life.
Simple and expedient. All he had to do was —
Then the Human stirred restlessly, turning toward him with an expression so plaintive that no words were necessary, and Garak's cold heart broke open like a cliff face sundered by lightning. Instead of offering violence he used his hand to brush the fall of tousled hair from Julian's forehead, then slid it down to touch that warm smooth cheek.
"Sleep now," he commanded softly, and watched as Julian obeyed, silently acknowledging that he'd reached a point where it would take more than mere duty to make him violate the trust his n'sar'arah offered without a single question.
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13.4
Julian was trying to lie.
To lie — to him. Or perhaps merely to Aslel and Borik. In any case, he could certainly use some more practice in the craft.
Garak maintained a polite expression throughout Julian's tale, marking each point of doubt with coded references and looking forward to treating the good Doctor to a stern rebuke that would make it clear that any attempt to mislead him — him, who had learned lying in the cradle — was a very, very bad idea.
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13.5
Once they were alone Julian opened his heart utterly, to Garak's great satisfaction.
He was not so fond of the way the Human's obvious distress made him feel: disturbed on the younger man's behalf and filled with a restless longing to alleviate Julian's emotional pain, which stemmed once again from his unrealistic Federation ideals. How could he not see that he had made the only realistic choice, and be comforted by the knowledge? Instead he was quite miserable.
Garak let him cuddle close and wrapped him in an embrace that pulled him even closer. That seemed to help, although at one point Julian looked up at him as if he'd been stunned by a personal revelation. Garak suspected the nature of that moment of gnosis -- after all, he'd built a career upon accurately reading and manipulating the emotional states of others -- although he pretended complete ignorance. Sometimes the skill of an interrogator lay in knowing precisely what not to say.
But within, he rejoiced to know that he was not the only one becoming entangled in ways he had not anticipated.