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His tongue is pink. His teeth are white. His skin is brown, eyes gold, hair black, and that is the end of it.
Clear, sharp, alchemical, as blatant and precise as how the angle of his jaw is mirrored in the winglike shoulders swooping out from his narrow neck. You could have traced the man with a mapmaker's compass. Garak nearly drops his tray on his foot.
He takes a moment, milling around the plate return, to compose himself. Garak hides his face in the last of his tea, stealing glances at the vision in black and green in between swigs.
Sweet fate. Had Terrans always looked like that? Only a doodle of cartilage away from Bajorans or Romulans or any number of mammaloids scattered over the galaxy like weeds, but - surely he’d remember if they all looked like that. Surely he'd have noticed. There is, in fact, a Terran elbowing him out of the queue right now.
Garak putters out of the way without a single glimpse. He is too enamored of the youth, who is now engaged in batting the fronds of some blue triple-spear-shaped flower out of his face like a bored hara kitten.
Oh, chaos. Who is he? What is that flower? Must be fresh off the ship that day, Garak’s never seen him before—
He's out of tea. Garak elects to queue for another cup while he fervently clicks through the Fleet duty roster on his padd. He profoundly regrets neglecting even basic forethought in favor of feeling sorry for himself today; his nerves are on fire, heartbeat skidding along as it does when things are going precisely not according to plan. His tongue has cloven to the roof of his mouth, and he's going to need the tea if only to get it unstuck again. But Garak is certain if he so much as opens his mouth to get a word in edgewise, it's going to come spilling out of his mouth like a racing hound's.
He's hungry. He sucks his teeth and — barely — keeps his own counsel.
This is not the place or the time Garak expected to find himself tipping irrevocably into the deviant lechery Tain accused him of. But apparently stranger things have happened. Apparently stranger things are going to happen right now.
Garak stops scrolling abruptly, too abruptly for his padd's clunky back-alley OS to hold up to. He has to flick back several screens, highly irritated, thank you, that such an arresting face cannot stop cheap technology in its tracks too. But there he is.
He looks good from the front, too. It's not just his profile.
Oh, dear, Garak thinks.
...And he's CMO.
"Oh, no," Garak breathes out loud.
Garak opens his mouth and pants shallowly. His tongue stays where it belongs, perhaps encouraged by the absolute morass of smells in the Replimat — the mass of bodies in species both known and unknown, the smoke-and-ore stench that is never going to come out of the pylons, the tang of clashing foreign cuisines, and the perfume of the florist shop trying valiantly to exert a unifying influence. He couldn't smell the beautiful human from here if he tried.
And oh, he is trying.
Garak drums his fingers against the side of his mug and drifts towards a flashing signboard on a column, behind one of the Terran shrubberies that have sprouted up overnight. Garak has learned it's called a 'potted ficus.' It's not very much good as cover.
He notices the human officer also has a glass of tea. Garak wonders how he takes it. And — and a padd, which he is regarding with too leisurely an interest to be reports. Perhaps literature-? Garak's heart leaps within him, a bit too eager even for himself. What is he becoming, after all? An attention-starved hound?
He scowls, and peruses the message board. Nothing of interest, and the flash is giving him a headache. Garak looks back to his padd, at the Federation CMO's personnel file. How does one even pronounce his name? Garak flicks off his translator for an instant, activates the screen reader, and presses the stripped-down Federation scribbles that, just a moment ago, had spelled Dr. Julian Bashir.
The padd reads the name for him. Garak hears it, subaudible, vibrating through his implant to his very bones. He tries to match the pronunciation.
Zhulen. No.
Chu—Churyen. No.
Zhu-ri-en. Closer.
Zhu, zhu, chu, du. What is that damn sound? Maybe try the family name. That's simpler.
Basir, like Pasir. Easy to remember. But - no, not quite a rhyme. Try the middle sound again.
Bassir. Bas Shir. Bassir. He can do it separately, why can't he do it at the same time? And who thought it was a good idea to put an SH in the middle of a word?
Some Terran, he thinks crossly. And one of HIS ancestors, at that.
Churien Bas'shir's ancestors. Chaos take him. Garak shapes the name carefully, memorizing the position of his lips.
Heroes, give me courage. And don't look too closely at what I am about to do.
If he's going to go, he'd better go soon. Now, if possible. Garak runs through a few opening phrases and is gratified that his lips will still form the words. He pockets his padd. Switches his translator back on.
His tongue is very dry. My, my. How did that happen? Garak finishes his tea, and chucks the mug into a recycler unit. And by then, he's already moving. It's like stepping into an undertow: one moment of trepidation, and then it has you.
Garak circles in toward the pretty doctor's table, feeling less like a prowling sea beast and more like a boat going giddily down the drain. He glances around at the crowd, and in so doing, puts his foot down just too loudly. The human starts and looks up wildly, right into his face.
Ears as sharp as a Bajoran's, he thinks weakly, and launches into conversation before he can think better of it.
"...It's Doctor Bas'shir, isn't it? Of course it is."
Bashir looks at him like he certainly thinks Garak is a prowling sea beast. He stammers at him, absolutely gawps; his short pink tongue dances behind his short white teeth, and his eyes get — if you could actually believe it — even rounder and golder.
"May I introduce myself?" Garak beams, feeling quite flattered. Maybe he has still got it.
Bashir gasps like a very appealing beached fish.
"Er, yes. Yes, yes of course," he blurts, and he clears the blue flowers away to make a place for Garak so swiftly he knocks the vase over.
Bashir fumbles to catch it just milliseconds before Garak actually does, and the grey fingers come down on the brown ones on top of the vase. He is so, impossibly, warm. Water sloshes out of the vase directly into Bashir's tea, who doesn't even notice.
"Houh," he says, and shuts his mouth with a click.
Oh, I like this, Garak thinks, and he 'steadies' himself on the young man's shoulder as he sits down. There's about sixteen of Bashir's heartbeats, and a single held breath between them. It holds, stretches out exquisitely. Spins in the air. Threatens to break.
Now!
He opens his mouth, spreads his palms winningly, and begins.
"My name is Garak..."