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Garak looked up from the Galipotan brocade jacket he was stitching to see Lieutenant Dax and Rom escorting a pale and swaying Dr. Bashir through the doors of his shop.
“Hey Garak, we need your back room,” Dax said, keeping a firm grip on the arm of the doctor, who was suspiciously silent.
The trio stumbled their way to the rear of the store and behind the curtain.
Intrigued but not overly concerned, Garak followed them back. He watched as the Trill and Ferengi set his blank-eyed human onto a wide bench and sat on each side of him. “Don’t tell me he tried another Black Temple again. It’s a little early in the day to be drinking alcohol, isn’t it, my dear?” The last time he’d tried the Black Hole/Prophet’s Temple mixed drink, the poor doctor had wound up a patient in his own infirmary.
“Uhhh… he’s not sick,” Rom replied.
“No… he’s more… stunned,” Jadzia added.
Garak pulled up a spare seat to perch himself in front of his guests. “Forgive me for saying this, Doctor, but you look a little--and normally I’d be loath to say this-- gray.”
Bashir ran his hand over his face, pausing while it still covered his mouth. “Um go’ig da be a fobber,” he mumbled.
“Pardon?”
The hand dropped away. “I’m going to be a father.”
Garak steeled himself. He’d always known in the back of his mind that something like this could happen. He frowned at Rom. “Leeta?”
“Leeta what?” the Ferengi asked.
“Is she the mother?”
“Of who?”
Jadzia jumped in. “No. Um, so… Garak.” She scooted forward on the bench, leaning her elbows on her knees. “Remember that secret agent program that Julian used to play back before the incident with the Defiant?”
Caught off guard by the apparent non-sequitur, he answered easily. “Yes.”
“Well, I might have messed around a little bit with the code.”
As a former but still-practicing spy, he knew that opened hundreds of possibilities. “Do go on.”
Looking increasingly sheepish, the Trill continued. “I wanted to play a little prank on him, especially after he made out with me and Kira’s likenesses. So…” She sat up and splayed her hands out before dropping them again. “I made every one of his Bond girls pregnant. They’re all carrying his child. Children.”
Garak blinked several times. His thoughts spun in several circles before running into walls and dropping to the floor. The warp core was running but no one was in the captain’s seat. He booted up the emergency subsystems. “Wait.” He held a hand up. “Holosuite characters aren’t real . They’re photons and energy. Surely you could just reset the program or something?”
“Uhhh….” Rom started to weave back and forth. “There was a malfunction. Holosuite One keeps having problems with the axial core processor, but Quark won’t buy a new one, so I--I linked it up with the one next door. Vic’s holosuite. But I didn’t have the parts, because… Quark. So… I, uh borrowed some wires from engineering and the bellows from Kaga’s concertina--”
“ That’s what happened to it!” Jadzia exclaimed. “He’s been looking for that thing everywhere .”
Rom paused, thrown off.
“The concertina,” Garak prompted.
“Oh, right. So, I used them to rig the two holosuites together.”
“But then there was that power surge earlier,” Jadzia stated.
Garak remembered the lights flaring painfully in his shop, and he’d had to reset all of his consoles.
“It--It fried the bellows and fused a bunch of the wires together and the signals got all mixed up,” Rom explained. “Some of Vic’s program parameters got mixed in with Dr. Bashir’s secret agent program. So now there’s, uh, two Vics and two Las Vegas lounges and all of the characters in the spy program are… uh, I can’t remember the word.” He looked to Jadzia.
“Sentient,” she supplied.
Dr. Bashir lifted his head for a moment. “They. All. Became. Sentient.”
Jadzia rubbed his back soothingly as she turned back to Garak. “The good news is that Julian has already taken care of the bad guys.”
The doctor shot up, eyes blazing. “Jadzia, I murdered Falcon and Dr. Noah. And Duchamps may end up coming back and kidnapping one of my girls!” He began pacing nervously around the room.
“Your… girls?” Garak asked, trying and failing to fight off a twinge of jealousy.
“Caprice, Mona Luvsitt, Colonel Anastasia Komananov, and Professor Honey Bare.”
Garak’s jaw dropped. “There are four of them?” He’d forgotten.
Dax and Bashir nodded.
“And they’re pregnant?”
Nods.
“And now they’re… aware of it?”
Bashir slumped again.
“At least they’re all extremely attractive, intelligent, and talented,” Jadzia quipped with a shit-eating grin. “Well, three of them anyway. I don’t know anything about Caprice. Do you , Julian?”
He glared at her.
Immune to his ire, she tutted. “An unwed father of four. What are we going to do with you? Have you ever thought of making an honest man out of him, Garak?”
“To what do you refer, Lieutenant Dax? I was under the impression that he’s plenty honest already , to a fault.”
“It’s a human expression. It means getting married.” She nudged Bashir with her shoulder. “Just think of all the baby clothes Garak could make.” He looked at her as if Dax had just leapt out and danced a jig.
“Rom?! Are you in here? Quark’s lookin’ for ya!” O’Brien’s voice echoed from the front room.
“Uh… coming!” The Ferengi sprang up and ran out without even saying goodbye.
The chief engineer peeked in. “Oi, there you are. I’ve been lookin’ for ya, Julian. Quark’s natterin’ on about something goin’ on in the holosuite that I’ve gotta fix, but Leeta told me I need to talk to ya right away.”
Not eager to spend additional time in O’Brien’s company, Garak excused himself. It certainly didn’t have anything to do with him being immensely relieved that the previous topic had been interrupted. “I’ll let you explain this, dear. I have a few commissions to return to.” He steadfastly ignored the beseeching expression that followed him out of the room.
Bashir and Dax provided an abbreviated version of what happened to an increasingly incredulous Miles. When they finished, he gaped at them for a minute, face blank except for an eye twitch.
He squinted. “Wait. What--how--?”
Jadzia placed her hand on his knee. “Well, you see Chief, when a sperm-bearing humanoid and an egg-bearing humanoid love each other very much…”
“Bah!” He clapped his hands over his ears. “Stop! Y’know what I mean. Git outta here, you menace. Don’t you have some sciencing to do or somethin?”
“I do, actually.” She stood up, brushing out the wrinkles in her uniform. “I’ll talk to you two later,” she said, patting Bashir on the shoulder as she left.
O’Brien stood up. Put a hand on his hip. Sat back down. Grimaced.
“Chief, you’re not doing my anxiety a whole lot of good, here.”
The Irishman wrinkled his brow. “So, yer anxious about this? Yer really, y’know, takin this seriously?”
“You spent time with Data. You know as well as I do that you don’t have to be organic to be… well, real. What about Moriarity? And Vic?”
“I know. It’s jus… The secret agent thing was fer fun. And now yer talkin about being a father. ”
“Well, honestly, Miles, I never really thought I’d have kids. What with my genetic status and all, I always planned on not having any, or maybe adopting, if I met someone who really wanted children. And now…” He shrugged. “Didn’t you tell me once that parenting is one of the greatest adventures a man can embark on? I might be the first humanoid with holographic offspring! Think of the papers I could write!”
“Yeh, but Julian . Bein’ a parent is more than jus… tellin people about yer kids. It’s changing diapers and feedin’ em and teachin’ em.”
Bashir sat in thought. But his pensive look turned resolute. “I don’t think I have a choice. I’m going to have 4 children, so now I’m going to learn how to take care of them. If I can cure a plague and survive imprisonment by the Dominion, then I can…” He trailed off.
O’Brien recognized the look. A million things passed by behind the hazel eyes to be processed in that augmented brain. He prepared for something completely unexpected to emerge, and wasn’t disappointed.
“Miles, would there be a way to link the holosuite cameras to the infirmary consoles?”
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“So you see, because they live in 3 different time zones, visiting all 4 babies would be fairly manageable.” Bashir stabbed his pasta decisively, proud that he’d already worked out so many details. He looked across the table at Garak, who was absently staring at a mostly-untouched plate of hevrit in yamok sauce. “Garak?”
The Cardassian shook himself. “Yes, dear?”
“Did you hear what I said? Is everything alright?”
“Oh yes, fine. Just fine.” He picked up his fork, poking listlessly at the fish.
“What’s wrong, love?”
“Nothing, Doctor. I just remembered that I need to do my quarterly inventory tomorrow.”
“You did that last week.” He reached out, taking Garak’s hand. “Is all this bothering you?”
“You must admit, it is all rather sudden. I was aware, with your history, that some day a past lover may appear, bearing an offspring of yours. But 4 at once? And you’re leaping right in! Do you have any idea how much time and commitment this might entail?”
“A lot, I’m sure.”
Garak withdrew his hand to fold his napkin before standing up and leaving the table.
Concerned, Bashir followed him to the couch. He sat down, leaving some space between them so he could turn sideways, with one knee up. “Garak… Elim. Are you--” he stopped himself from saying ‘jealous,’ “ worried about how much time I’ll be spending in the holosuites? That between work and being a parent, I won’t have time for you?”
Garak scoffed. “That’s ridiculous. I’m not some lovesick Dabo girl. I have plenty of things to keep me occupied when you’re gallivanting all around a photonic representation of Earth. While you’re swaddling and cooing and getting better acquainted with the mothers of your hatchlings, I will have my enigma tales and tailor shop to keep me occupied.”
Bashir smiled softly. “Well, you know… I was thinking about getting my own loft over there. Somewhere central, like the Middle East. Hot, lots of sand, the occasional oasis. I thought, maybe… you’d like to visit with me sometimes?”
“Why would you want me to visit with you?”
“You--you’re my partner! You’re an important part of my life. I’d like for my children to get to know you, too.”
“You’d want your sons and daughters to be in the company of a Cardassian exile?”
“I’d want them to meet the man who accepts all my flaws and weaknesses--”
Garak snorted. “Except your fashion sense.”
“...who discusses literature and philosophy and politics with me, who is witty and sarcastic and endearingly protective… Shall I go on?” Bashir scooted closer.
“It’s not every day that someone extolls my virtues so extensively. Feel free to continue.”
The human kissed him on the cheek. “You’re smart.” On the ear. “You’re sexy. I saw that,” he warned, catching an eye roll. On the nose. “You’re amazingly talented.” On the lips. “And I love you.”
Giving in for a moment, Garak pulled him onto his lap. They melted together, Bashir’s arms curling around his shoulders as their mouths opened to each other. “Julian,” Garak murmured.
At the sound of his name, Bashir leaned back.
“You’d really want me to be a part of your children’s lives?”
“I’d ask you to be a co-parent if I thought you’d accept.”
Garak nodded. “It’d be wiser for you not to ask. I’d probably be the better father and make you look bad. They’re going to walk all over you. I’d at least set up rules and expectations.”
Stunned at the unexpected change in course, Bashir studied the Cardassian. Garak smiled smugly. Until the reply. “But they’d like me better, because I won’t subject them to repetitive epics.”
“No, just awful Shakespearean sonnets. I dread to think what you would read to them at bedtime.”
“Whatever they want. And I’d cuddle them, too.” Bashir scooted off to the side, nestling up against Garak as if to show how masterful his snuggle skills were. “And if you were especially good that day, I’d cuddle you, too.”
Garak leaned back, wrapping an arm around his human. “I suppose that’s acceptable. But I get to dress them.”
“Elim?”
“Mmm?”
“Will you marry me?”
The response was immediate. “Yes, because you’re going to have your hands full and are obviously in need of my help. Not because of any undue sentimentality toward you.”
“Oh, well, you can forget about it then. I only want my kids raised to witness a loving, caring relationship based on mutual respect, cooperation, and unlimited adoration.”
“Did you just withdraw your proposal? You can’t do that.”
“I can and I did.”
“Forget our children. You’re a handful.”
“Did you just say ‘our’ children? Okay, I forgive you. Marry me.”
Alarmed at the silence in response to his statement, Bashir sat back up.
Garak raised his eyeridges. “I’m afraid to reply. You may reject me again.”
Huffing, Bashir settled back into place. “Elim Garak, what am I going to do with you?”
“Marry me.”
“I accept.” He smiled as Garak’s chest shook under him with a soft chuckle.
“But Julian, my love… no more holoprograms.”
“What about educational ones? For the kids?”
“Fine. For the kids. First, though, I want to have a nice, long… talk... with Quark.”