Work Text:
In the morning he woke up first and noticed there were no sounds in the house, no scent of spices-curling-around-fish-sauce from the kitchen. The pressure-sensitive floor in the hallway was polished and still. Eventually, all other senses exhausted, he sat up and looked over to the last place left in the room. In the far corner the other half of the separated family-bed was unmade and there seemed to be a shape under the puffy white comforter. Barely daring to breathe he crept over, bare feet quiet on the carpeted stone.
Garak was asleep. His head was tucked into a fold in the blanket, hair trailing behind on the pillow, some of it making a daring escape to drape across the left eyeridge. Julian let the smile stretch helplessly across his face. That was all-right, at least smiling didn't make any noise. He couldn't help noticing how even like this the chin was tucked in to protect the throat and one arm was underneath the little pile of head-pillows, all the better to reach some kind of unpleasant surprise. But that was just his old friend all over. Meanwhile his eyes traced the tender curve of an exposed ear, the lips relaxed and slightly parted, for once completely truthful if only by virtue of being still.
So Garak did sleep in now and then. That was good to know. He was finding out more little everyday things about Garak in the past seven weeks than the past seven years and still felt greedy for more even as his mind was tenderly filing the way he curled his legs to lie down on a heat-rock or how he liked to press a hot cup of tea to his cheek as it was brewing. Then again Julian had always suspected his mental ‘things I want to know about Garak’ drawer might be bottomless. He took a calculated risk and leaned over the bed.
Was there a standard happiness increase index from watching your torturer/tailor/revolutionary-rebuilding-a-world-and-civilization friend sleep? Whatever it was, Julian knew his own uptick in joy was disproportionate. He’d lost track of his breathing, his zygomaticus major was beginning to hurt.
Once again he was forced to acknowledge that his Great Post-War Plan - to throw himself headlong into another frontier (Cardassia), track down the friend who had almost slipped through his fingers and have one of those platonic Boston-marriage type arrangements where he got to live, work beside, and have lunch with probably the only person who acknowledged and accepted all parts of him - might have a bit of a flaw.
As he felt the smile on his face get smaller, softer, his thoughts insisted that it was ridiculous how his first mentor in realpolitik could inspire the type of feelings commonly found in nesting-novels. Pity this was exactly the thing he wasn’t quite ready to confess to. Garak was a connoisseur of contradictions and he would, at the very least, objectively appreciate this one.
“Julian Bashir’s Tangled Quest For True Companionship” was certainly long enough for a book. The beginning even had a hint at the twist, didn’t it? He had just moved to Deep Space Nine; the setting was in place, the plot was taking off and he’d been naively tapping his foot and looking around for ‘the Love Interest’ when Garak had put his hands on his shoulders. The ending was not something he could have predicted (and that in itself made it wonderful), but the ending was here.
Of course the Dominion had stripped them all of the illusion of infinite time and Julian absolutely was going to say something, just not yet. Something this significant deserved a little more care, more planning, had to be buttressed against his bungling. Garak, whose life had been so spare and harsh since his return to the Homeland, who had only recently had enough filtered water and time to grow flowers, deserved the right moment.
Anyway tea (Julian's smile turned rueful) was much more useful than half-baked confessions and would have to do for now.
He was just about to plan a graceful retreat when Garak's eyelids fluttered open. When he spoke he sounded deeply amused but not particularly concerned to find Julian standing over him, as if this was perfectly within the parameters of their cohabitation.
"Really my dear, is this payback for that time I woke you up and dragged you off to Bajor?" His normally mellow voice had a touch of purring growl, the Cardassian equivalent of morning roughness.
"That was a long time ago." His own voice didn't sound much better.
"Then I must commend your patience!"
Garak flashed him a pleased smile, then yawned - shielding his mouth delicately with one hand but not before Julian could see a row of ripping teeth that curved towards the back.
"Thought I must ask that you give me a moment. It was a warm night, after all."
Garak sat up, keeping the blanket toga-like over one shoulder. The other was bare; a clean line of scales down the neck ridge, over the heavy deltoid. Following the sweep of the cloth Julian could see the exposed polished edge of his hip.
Ex-Lieutenant Commander Bashir made a tactical decision and fled, dressed only in thin pajama pants himself, in the direction of the kitchen.
---
It was an ordinary day from then on. They rode the old two-seater hover into town, signed in at the Civic Center, went to work.
Rather, State Healer First Class ( a whole new set of exam stories there) Bashir went off to the next small town on his regular circuit and Garak was left to haunt the top floor of the designated headquarters of the Reconstruction Ministry. Doubtless he would spend the day cajoling, bribing, and terrifying the fledgling government into doing the most efficient thing for the welfare of the State, and incidentally the citizen-units it was composed of.
Julian was late coming home. The flow of patients had been light but the experiment he'd left to cook in Tiporet yielded promising results in his efforts to hurry along the slow rattling death of Kerik’s Malady. As a result he’d spent the evening unsuccessfully dodging delicate sipping shots of kanar from the local doctors and then skirmishing lightly at the edges of a five-way argument about what disease to set their sights on next while he sobered up enough to fly back.
As he crossed the threshold of the bedroom, in the dark that was no match for an Augment's night vision, he could see that the two halves of the family-bed had been joined together. There was a familiar body under the covers on the left. On the other half, his own thinner blanket was turned back invitingly.
He stood very still for a number of breaths and got in.
~