Work Text:
"There."
Garak slips the last knot closed and snips off the thread, inspecting his work. It's been a while since he wore this proverbial hat, and the only person he'd wear it again for is the man sitting across from him, hands folded placidly as he watches his partner work.
"Do try not to tear the hem out again, won't you, jah'at?" Garak says and hands the trousers over, satisfied that from a reasonable distance, the invisible hem stitches are reduced to little more than pinpricks against the black twill background.
Julian rises to take his pants back, and presses a kiss to Garak's temple which causes something small and waifish to flutter inside him, just as the gesture has each time since the first. At one time, the weakness would have disgusted him, but he is not the same Elim Garak he was ten years prior. He savors this weakness, allows it to cripple him, revels in its destruction. It is the only indulgence of its kind that he allows, after all.
"I'll be more careful, I promise," Julian says, and Garak gives him an appraising look, though he can't conceal his smile completely.
"And I'll believe that when I see it."
Garak sets aside his sewing things, salvaged from his shop on Terok Nor at Julian's request. Nearly everything of theirs is salvaged these days: the tools, the technology, the house. He'd been reluctant to expand Tolan’s shed, to rebuild on the broken foundation of Enabran Tain's former estate, but Garak had to admit that the act had a certain perverse irony about it. And, after living out of a cramped workshop for the better part of several years, he couldn't deny his longing for proper living quarters, particularly now that he had someone sharing his bed.
Nothing quite killed sensuality like one partner toppling sideways off of a narrow makeshift mattress, after all.
The sun has begun to creep toward the eastern horizon, sky a clear and cloudless gold, and Garak allows himself a moment of contentment to watch. He'd found a space to hold, like Calyx had told him, doubtful, so long before. It was small and innocuous, maybe, but for the first time in his life it belonged to Elim Garak. His space, willingly shared with the man who made it all possible in the first place.
He hears the kettle begin to whistle above the hot stones in their makeshift kitchen. It’s little more than a hollowed-out granite enclosure for heating and a basin to wash at, complete with a jug they take turns filling each morning and evening when the sun is at its least brutal. Compared to what they’d had in the former shed, now comfortably rebuilt into something for them both, it was life lived hand in hand with luxury once more. Gone were the days of replicators and tailor’s shops, but everything, every deception and misdirection that spoke of comfort on Terok Nor fell away when faced with the simple, common truth of their life together now.
It was complete, Garak felt, and he was content. Sometimes it made him want to laugh, and riotously so. If he’d told the Elim Garak from ten years before where he’d be at the end of a long and miserable decade, that the man in the other room would be responsible for keeping his head above the metaphorical quagmire of it all, his past self would have laughed, too.
“Tea?” Julian asks, striding past him to busy himself with removing the potbellied kettle from its nest of glowing rocks.
“Please,” Garak says, and accepts the cup with thanks when it is offered.
Julian had learned since coming to Cardassia two years before, and he had learned a lot. While his Kardasi hadn’t improved in the leaps and bounds they’d hoped for, his red leaf tea certainly had, Garak thinks as he allows the sweetness and spice to settle on his tongue. They’d both had to adjust to the scarcity of supplies, but Julian’s (now voided) Federation status had had its perks, including the transport and replication of previously un-acquireable items. Not that they’d kept much for themselves; the fair distribution of rations and necessities was one of their mutual chiefest concerns, even three years into the recovery effort. Still, the tea didn’t hurt.
Julian settles himself by the window to admire the sundown, a gradient of pinks and oranges streaking across the sky. Letau and Jeha, the Blind Moon, dance together toward the east, but Garak hardly notices, too preoccupied with the play of light across Julian’s golden skin, the upward curve of his lips, the slant of his brow as he studies the lingering dusk.
“Anything interesting?”
“See for yourself,” Julian says, extending an arm in invitation, which he curls about Garak’s waist as he crosses the room to join his partner. A familiar thrill runs through him as the doctor’s hand settles above his hip, and Garak wonders, like he does each time, if simple touch will ever cease to be a marvel to him.
They stand, wrapped in the gentle summer quiet for a long while, occasionally exchanging a few words about the day before falling back into silence to listen to the shebak chirping their dusk salutations outside. The crisp desert air wafts up to greet them, still pleasantly warm in the face of the rapidly cooling evening. They revel in the quiet intimacy that surrounds them, watching the twinkle of Cardassia I as it glitters above the distant mountains, a bright splotch against the purpling canvas of twilight.
At last, Garak breaks the spell to collect their mugs, setting them by the wash basin with the promise of cleaning up later. They still have the evening meal to scrape together, anyhow, he knows, and collects the burner to light the wall sconces around the room. Electricity wouldn’t be long now, but was still reserved for public spaces and State offices, where it could benefit the greatest part of society.
Garak has long since learned to make peace with this society, still crumbling and broken, but fundamentally Cardassian. It is changing, evolving with the continued push for democracy, but often he fears it is still metamorphosing too slowly for the progress that needed to be made. Behind the sparkling newness and polish of Federation ideals projected there, he can still make out the vestiges of the culture that birthed him, molded him into what he is.
He is grateful, in a way; these spectres prevent him from harboring too much hope.
He returns from their makeshift kitchen and moves to sit down when he catches sight of his partner, and there is a certain mood, a kind of intensity about him that keeps Garak fixed in place, watching.
"Say, Elim," Julian says, still turned away from Garak, looking out the small sitting room window. There's some unreadable quality to the tension in his spine, the stiffness of his posture, the slight tilt of his head as he regards their burgeoning garden. He's considering something, deeply. The rare thing is that Garak doesn't know what, and he aims to find out.
"Julian?" he prompts, frowning, and takes a step toward him.
The doctor exhales slowly.
"Would you ever consider getting married?"
The question comes out of nowhere, but before Garak has the chance to take it all in, to understand the impossible implication, Julian interrupts him.
"To me, that is! I— would you ever— with me—? Oh, damn it all," he says, punctuating the half-query with a sigh. "I've made a right mess of this, haven't I?"
Garak feels the blood drain from his face, a prickling intensity, something powerful creeping over him. Surely he can't be implying – no, he couldn't.
But he is.
"Elim," Julian says finally, turning to face him, and he's radiant, splendid like the sun, an impossible luminescence which blots out the murky shadow of Elim Garak's life. "Would you marry me?"
And something inside Garak shatters. He feels it break, piece by piece, a spidery web of internalized rawness which he'd never known was there yet remembers vividly, as clearly as the day he'd first recognized the facts of life. Elim Garak, illegitimate son of Enabran Tain, dedicated to the path predetermined for him. No family. No status. No chance at a typical Cardassian life. His mere situation alone would have guaranteed that, even if his preference for men – and married women – hadn't. What use is a marriage, after all, if there are no heirs to contribute to the good of the society which produced the union?
And yet here he is, being asked for his hand by the most wonderful creature to ever set foot in his life. The thought is dizzying.
Of course Garak is well aware of Julian's affection, in every sense of the word. His love, even; of course Julian loves him, and he Julian. He'd expected to live out the rest of his life a content, blissful companion, not daring to upset the balance of the world by asking for more when he’d finally achieved stability after so long.
But for Julian to ask for marriage, for a complete melding of the souls, a devotion to each other that outstrips everything but the all-encompassing passion for the State?
And perhaps with him, it exceeds that unbreachable boundary. The thought is quiet and intrusive, and tells Garak what he’s known all along.
He does what any sane man would do and promptly sits down on the nearest surface.
“Elim?” Julian says, alarmed, and rushes forward to kneel by him, one hand instinctively reaching to take his pulse, the other for his tricorder. Garak waves his attentions away, a tacit assurance that he’s in no mortal danger. Well, physically, perhaps, but emotionally? He can’t deny he’s received a shock.
The doctor knows him well enough after a decade-long friendship that he understands not to press, not to pry until Garak is ready. So he sits on the rickety chest, too, allows their thighs to brush and holds out his palm for Garak to take, which he does.
“You never cease to amaze, my dear,” Garak hears himself say after a long while, grounded by the warm press of Julian’s palm to his. He feels delicate human fingers tighten about his, the squeeze a silent reassurance that he’s real, and he’s there.
“You had to know I’d ask eventually...didn’t you?” Julian studies him, and Garak looks up to meet his gaze, warm and understanding.
He laughs, a quiet, bitter sound in the gathering dusk.
“Julian, I had no reason to expect any such thing,” Garak says softly, lacing their fingers together. “I was made to understand from the moment I discovered my true parentage that I would never be a suitable candidate for marriage. Or perhaps that was merely the final nail in the coffin, and I’d known it all along.” The honesty burns his throat, words scalding on his tongue, but he presses onward. “People such as myself simply do not marry. Were I of traditional bearing, were I not attracted to men, were I not of the Obsidian Order – perhaps things would be different.” He sighs, brushing a scaled thumb across his partner’s smooth hand. "This is not a reflection on you, but on the values with which I have lived my entire life."
He can feel himself beginning to close off and withdraw into that silent headspace which has become his intimate companion over a lifetime of looking over his shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop. It is the place he retreated to as a boy, shut away in some dark cupboard or another, willing his weakness gone. It is the place he returned to at Bamarren, hunted by his peers, and later as an adult, unwilling and unable to stomach life in exile aboard Terok Nor without the artificial placidity of the Wire.
And Julian Bashir knows him so well, has seen this messy and terrified part of him that will never go away, so he brings his free hand up to cradle Garak's face with a gentleness that speaks volumes of the love he holds in his heart. A love that Garak, for all his practicality and logic, still cannot believe belongs to him. He feels the soft brush of Julian’s thumb across his ridges, and cannot stifle the choked gasp that escapes his throat, where tightness has already begun to clutch and wrest at his emotional control.
“Elim,” Julian says quietly, eyes never leaving his. “You’re so terribly clever, but I do feel that sometimes you forget I’m not Cardassian. I’m not bound by the same values you, or Parmak, or anyone else is.” He’s wearing a slight smile now, innocence dancing across his face the same way it had that very first day in the Replimat on Terok Nor. “In fact, I think it’s downright idiotic anyone as spectacularly attractive and marvelous as you wouldn’t be considered marriageable.”
Garak feels that weakness again inside him, and it clutches at his heart with a grasping fist as Julian’s words sink in.
He leans forward, and Garak does the same, unable to resist the pull from this impossibly magnetic man, and the kiss says everything for them both. Julian’s lips are soft against his, his hands warm and sure as they slide down to cradle his jaw, and all Garak can do is clutch at him for dear life, this impermeable, perpetual part of his soul who holds him close.
The last shreds of sunlight have begun to drape their way across them, tangling in their intermingled breaths, their intertwined limbs as they rest their foreheads against one another. Garak dares to open his eyes only after he is sure he can contain the rawness that still aches sweetly inside him, and finds Julian’s gaze fixed on him, hazel eyes curious among long lashes.
“You still haven’t given me an answer,” Julian reminds him softly. “I love you, Elim. But I won’t be too broken up if you—”
“Yes,” he interrupts before the word scrambles away in his desperation to get it out. “Yes, Julian, yes.”
The blooming of hope and delight across his partner’s face is almost too much to witness, and Garak feels a slow, feverish sort of happiness overtake him, the kind that he is reluctant to believe because more often than not, it is too good to be true.
It was the kind of thing he’d felt with Palandine, the day she’d pulled him to his senses, helped him laugh at the cruelty of Bamarren. The kind of happiness that he’d shoved aside during all those many lunches, aware that he was chasing some senseless fantasy or another. It was the happiness he’d felt seeing Julian step onto his homeworld, perhaps a little older, a little wiser, but still the same man he’d longed so desperately for, finally back within reach.
Garak feels that same fickle happiness tugging at him now, his soul spoken for at long last. Only this time, as he tastes Julian’s lips upon his, he knows it is not too good to be true. It simply is.