Chapter Text
Julian was fully awake the instant he heard the door chime of his cabin aboard the Defiant. That was one of many curious perks of his genetic enhancements: no sleep inertia. Zero to sixty in no time flat, as they might have said in the old automobile days.
Nonetheless, he had to pretend that it took him a few seconds to rouse himself from slumber. “Just a moment,” he called, affecting grogginess. “Computer, lights to twenty percent,” he said. He checked the time on the screen of the PADD he had left tucked halfway under his pillow after reading until he felt drowsy enough to sleep; it was 0104, just two hours since he’d gone to bed. He spent another moment or two sitting on the edge of the bunk before he stood up to answer the door.
He wasn’t entirely surprised to see Garak when the door slid open, but he still felt his stomach do an anxious little flip (an anatomical impossibility, of course, but the colloquial description was still a remarkably accurate account of the phenomenology). He didn’t have to pretend to be inarticulate from lingering sleepiness; his nerves were sufficiently tying his tongue on their own. Despite the late hour, Garak was fully dressed; either he had disdained to replicate Starfleet-issue sleepwear, or he had changed back into his own clothes because he refused to be seen in it, even if only by Julian (who was hardly a fashion connoisseur). Julian suddenly felt very silly, standing barefoot in his baggy blue pajamas. (Of course, he reminded himself with another little stomach-flip, Garak had seen him in them before…)
“I’m terribly sorry to disturb you in the middle of the night, Doctor,” Garak said with his usual crisp politeness. “But I find myself with an irritating headache. Nothing worrisome, I’m sure, but it’s been making it quite impossible to sleep. I’ve replicated the usual mild analgesics, but I still can’t manage to shake it.”
That was worrisome, if true. “Please, come in,” Julian said with a concerned frown. He stepped back from the doorway, inviting Garak inside. “Computer, raise temperature to twenty-seven degrees Celsius,” he said; the cold couldn’t be doing anything for Garak’s comfort, headache or no headache.
“You’ve just suffered a fairly severe concussion,” he said, crouching to retrieve his medical tricorder from the medkit he kept beside his bed. Garak, after stepping through the doorway, pressed a button on the console and the door slid closed again. “I’ve done what I could to repair the neural damage, bring down the swelling, and restore normal blood flow, but there might still be damage that I didn’t catch,” Julian continued as he stood up and adjusted the settings on the tricorder. “You were right to come to me.”
It occurred to Julian, of course, that he could have gone to the nurse on duty in Sick Bay, but he also knew that Garak hated infirmaries… and wouldn’t trust just anyone with his pain and weakness.
Julian scanned methodically over every centimeter of Garak’s head, scrutinizing the results for any indication of renewed swelling, bruising at the impact site (“That looks painful,” he recalled saying, probing at the bruised eye-ridge with gentle fingers), reduced blood flow, or abnormally high concentrations of metabolic waste products… but everything looked normal—at least, as normal as could be expected for someone who had been knocked unconscious by a blow to the head several hours before.
“Well, Doctor?” Garak prompted him mildly, after he’d been frowning silently at the tricorder for a few seconds.
“I’m not seeing anything out of the ordinary,” he said.
“That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure why you’re having a headache that doesn’t respond to NSAIDs.”
“You don’t think I’m merely imagining it, do you?” Garak asked, his tone subtly hovering between fretful and reproachful. He’s a magnificent actor, Julian thought. It’s too bad he hates Shakespeare…
“You can’t really be imagining pain,” Julian said. “Even if it’s not coming from where you think it’s coming from, pain is inherently subjective. If you feel it, then it’s real.”
Lying about pain, on the other hand…, Julian didn’t say. It was uncharacteristic of Garak to seek medical help if he wasn’t at death’s door; in fact, he hadn’t sought help even when he was at death’s door. That made Julian suspect that he was here for some reason other than a headache.
“What can be done about it, then?” Garak asked, letting the fretfulness come to the fore.
“Well, I wouldn’t recommend triptacederine in your current condition.” Not that having a concussion actually made a difference—but Garak wouldn’t know that (unless he was a man of even more talents than Julian was aware), and given his susceptibility to addiction, Julian wouldn’t be entirely surprised if he was using his injury as a pretext to get a fix. The faintly suspicious way Garak narrowed his eyes, ever so slightly, made Julian think that he probably guessed at Julian’s suspicions. “But a dose of hydrocortilene couldn’t hurt… assuming it’s effective for Cardassians, and there are no contraindications?”
“We do use it,” Garak confirmed. He didn’t look or sound at all disappointed; either he was concealing it impeccably, or triptacederine wasn’t what he was after. Maybe there really was something wrong that Julian had missed? Or maybe he was experiencing psychosomatic pain—not precisely ‘imagining it,’ as he had put it, but processing some psychological stress as physical pain?
Julian knelt again to get the hypospray components out of his medkit: he flipped open a box full of little vials, inserted the correct one into the applicator, and stood up again. His knee cracked loudly as he did.
“The signs of aging,” he said wryly, recalling their disagreement about the significance of his thirtieth birthday. Garak graced him with a small close-lipped smile.
He raised his hand to place the hypospray against Garak’s neck, then paused and lowered it again, holding it out for his hand instead. “Would you rather do it yourself?” he asked, recalling that Garak had been self-administering painkillers while his implant was breaking down: he not only knew how to use a hypospray, but given his general attitude of mistrust, might prefer to control it himself.
Garak raised his eye-ridges. “You think I don’t trust a doctor of your caliber to administer a hypospray?”
“You didn’t trust Odo to protect you without staging your own attempted assassination,” Julian pointed out dryly.
If not for his enhanced senses, Julian wouldn’t have been able to perceive Garak’s minute flinch. He wondered what that was about.
Garak deftly covered his momentary discomfiture. He raised his head slowly, pointedly exposing his throat. “Here—is this not the epitome of trust?” he asked archly. Beneath his light tone, Julian thought he heard another message: I want to trust you.
Without his enhanced senses, Julian wasn’t even sure he would have been able to perceive the slight trembling of his own hand as he raised the hypospray again. He pressed the applicator to the skin of Garak’s neck, just in front of the beautifully scaled ridge. An impertinent part of his mind chose that moment to wonder what those scales would feel like under his fingers, the texture of the hard keratinous shields layered over the ridges of raised cartilage, and how they would contrast with the soft, vulnerable skin of his throat.
Julian forcefully pushed that thought aside and thumbed the button to release the dose of hydrocortilene. The hissing sigh of the hypospray was echoed by a light sigh of relief from Garak, and the impertinent thought elbowed back to the front of Julian’s mind, this time wondering whether Garak would sigh like that if Julian were to finger his neck ridges—and then, while it had the floor, what the texture of the scales might feel like under his tongue, what they would taste like.
Fucking hell, Bashir, he castigated himself. He’s your patient, you ass. But that hadn’t stopped him with Melora Pazlar, had it?
That was a conversation he’d have with himself later. “Are you feeling better?” he asked Garak, all professionally warm bedside manner.
“Somewhat,” Garak replied, tilting his head in thanks.
Julian frowned. “Only somewhat?”
Garak shrugged, and Julian found himself shamefully distracted again by the graceful ripple of the ridges that arced down along his shoulders from his neck.
Even if the pain was psychosomatic, the placebo effect of the hypospray should have helped… but maybe it still wasn’t enough to overcome the psychological distress that had caused it. And no wonder: Julian didn’t know exactly what Garak been through in the past few days, but he did know from Odo’s debriefing (Garak, as usual, had told them nothing useful) that Enabran Tain was dead—the man who had been Garak’s mentor, almost as close to him as a father; “They called us the Sons of Tain,” he’d said in his deathbed ‘confession.’ Julian also knew that Garak had tried and failed to save Tain, had been begging him to leave the burning Romulan warbird until the moment when Odo had to knock him out and carry him bodily to the runabout to save his life. Garak would have stayed and died with him rather than save himself and leave Tain to die. That level of devotion from someone as self-sufficient and emotionally guarded as Garak… the pain of that loss must be staggering. It was a wonder that Garak was still managing to maintain his good-humored composure…
Suddenly a realization hit him, jarring in its belated obviousness. Maybe Garak wasn’t feeling physical pain at all. Maybe he was here because he was in psychological pain so immense that he couldn’t bear to be alone with it.
With brisk decisiveness, Julian said, “I’m worried there’s still something wrong that the tricorder isn’t detecting.”
“I do hope this won’t end with another forced march to the infirmary…”
“That wouldn’t make anyone happy,” Julian said in a wry deadpan. “No, I think it would be best if you stayed here. That way, if you wake up during the night and the pain has gotten worse, you can alert me immediately. If there’s a torn or blocked blood vessel, it might be a matter of seconds to prevent death or permanent impairment.”
“Doctor, I couldn’t possibly ask that of you,” Garak demurred, raising an elegant hand in protest.
“You’re not asking; I’m ordering,” Julian said firmly. “You should take the lower bunk—that way I can get to you easily if there’s a problem.” He grabbed the PADD lying beside the pillow and tossed it onto the upper bunk. Then an embarrassing thought occurred to him. “Unfortunately, I’ve been sleeping in that one, so the sheets probably smell like me… you can replicate clean ones, if you’d like.”
“If I minded your smell, dear Doctor,” Garak said with a tiny sly smile, “would I still be eating meals with you once a week after two years, and then some?”
That remark made Julian’s stomach do something very strange indeed… and apparently his groin had decided it had an opinion, too. Fabulous. He breathed in slowly through his nose and pictured Captain Boday’s transparent skull—that seldom failed to kill his libido.
“You’re also welcome to replicate some pajamas, extra blankets, whatever you need.”
“I certainly hope that the replicator has patterns for pajamas other than those…”
Julian sighed. “You come into my quarters, you insult my pajamas…”
“I beg their pardon,” Garak said with a slight bow, aiming his remark at Julian’s chest.
“Feel free to explore the replicator’s fashion selection. I’m going back to bed.” Julian stepped on the edge of the lower bunk to hoist himself into the upper one.
“Computer, lights to ten percent,” said Garak. Julian peered out from the bunk questioningly, and he explained, “Cardassians can see quite well in dim light. I don’t want to keep you up, my dear.”
Julian’s stomach gave another little jump. Not “my dear Doctor,” just “my dear”—Garak had never addressed him that way before. What did it mean…? Probably nothing; it was probably just a signal of friendly affection.
“It’s all right; I’ll read for a little while before I go back to sleep. Something deadly dull that’ll send me right off—like a journal article on treatments for hair loss.”
“Or a Cardassian repetitive epic?” Garak said dryly, already paging through options on the replicator screen.
“You said it, not me.”
“I am sorry for having disrupted your sleep, Doctor.”
“Garak. I’d rather have you wake me up with a slight headache than with a stroke or an aneurysm.”
“That’s kind of you to say.”
“‘Kind of me’?” Julian echoed, leaning out from the bunk again to look at him. He considered remarking that it was his job to minimize harm and that catching problems early simply made his job easier… but he decided instead on something that felt more to the point: “You’re my friend, Garak. I care about you.”
“Little though I may deserve it,” Garak said softly. It should have been a joke, but it didn’t sound like one.
“It doesn’t matter what you think you deserve,” Julian said gently. He remembered Garak, in crippling pain from the deteriorating implant, asking, “Has it ever occurred to you that I might be getting exactly what I deserve?”, and answering unflinchingly: “No one deserves this.”
“I care about you whether you like it or not,” he said lightly. “Get used to it.”
Garak stared up at him with a complicated look in his piercing ice-blue eyes. Julian thought he detected disbelief and alarm, perhaps even a hint of fear, and a sadness that seemed tinged with regret… but there was too much going on in that look, and Garak was too practiced at obfuscating his real emotions, to be able to tell exactly what his reaction was.
After a few moments, he turned back toward the replicator screen. “And here I’d thought there might still be some hope for you,” he said in a tone of idle regret. He pressed a few buttons and a bundle of folded fabric appeared, in what looked like a dark burgundy.
“I see you found something relatively inoffensive?”
“Relatively being the key term, yes.”
He disappeared into the refresher to change. Julian went back to reading on his PADD for a few minutes—or trying to, anyway; he might have been processing one word out of three—until Garak re-emerged wearing his “relatively inoffensive” burgundy pajamas. Julian was no judge of fashion, of course, but he thought his “plain and simple” friend looked as striking and dignified as ever.
Garak set his own (somewhat singed and battered) clothing, neatly folded, at the foot of his bunk and went back to the replicator to obtain a blanket (standard Starfleet gray)—then, after a short reflective pause, a second blanket.
“Should I raise the temperature some more?” Julian asked.
“No, no, I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable in your own quarters. I will be quite all right.” He started laying the two blankets over the bunk.
“Nonsense. Computer, raise temperature to twenty-nine degrees Celsius.”
“Doctor…”
“It’s fine. I can sleep without covers. I’ll take off my shirt if I get too hot.”
Garak chuckled, turning down the sheets and blankets to get into bed. “Doctor Bashir, are you trying to seduce me?”
Julian stopped breathing for a few seconds and his heartbeat stuttered before accelerating to half again its usual rate. Possible replies proliferated in his mind, from “Don’t be ridiculous” to “People can be nice without ulterior motives, you know” to “What if I were?” to “Oh, you’ve finally noticed, have you?” Finally he settled, entirely truthfully, on “I don’t even know what to say to that.”
“The loquacious Julian Bashir, rendered speechless? Mark down the stardate!”
Julian realized that he had never heard Garak use his first name—not the real Garak, anyway; he had only heard it in Garak’s voice when the Lethean, borrowing his likeness, had mockingly sung “Happy Birthday.” (Nor had he ever dared to use Garak’s given name: having learned it only indirectly, from Tain, he did not feel that he had been given permission.)
“Why don’t you call me by my first name?” he asked, careful not to sound reproachful or accusing.
“Is that a question or an invitation?” Garak asked from the bunk below.
“Both.”
There was a pause, then Garak said carefully, “For Cardassian men, in particular, the use of personal rather than family names is a mark of profound intimacy, reserved for family members, lovers, and the very closest of friends.”
“It’s not like that for most Humans these days; we tend to allow a wider circle of friends to use our given names… though of course how wide a circle is a matter of personal preference.”
“And you consider me to be within that preferred circle?”
“Well within it. In fact… you’re one of my closest friends on the station.” One of my closest friends in the world, he decided not to add.
“I’m flattered, my dear Do— Julian.” Julian felt warmth bloom in his chest hearing his name in Garak’s hypnotic voice… or maybe it was just the cabin coming up to the temperature he’d set. He threw back the covers on his bed; it was getting a little warm.
“It doesn’t come naturally to me, I’m afraid,” Garak said, mildly apologetic.
“I won’t ask you to if it makes you uncomfortable,” Julian said quickly, trying to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“Not uncomfortable,” Garak assured him. “Just… unaccustomed.”
“Well. No pressure. Good night, Garak. Computer, lights off.” The soft glow of his PADD screen would be sufficient to read by.
“Good night… Julian.”
Still savoring how the Cardassian’s silver tongue curled around the syllables of his name, Julian turned back to the article he’d been reading when he went to bed for the first time tonight. He’d been overstating how boring it was; a method to prevent or reverse hair loss, whether due to aging or disease, still evaded medical science despite the extraordinary pace of its progress over the past three centuries, and it presented a perplexing challenge. He interrupted his reading only briefly to remove his pajama shirt; he was getting uncomfortably sweaty in the Cardassian-friendly heat. (“Doctor Bashir, are you trying to seduce me?” he heard again and shivered, despite the heat… or perhaps it was just the effect of the air moving over sweat-damp skin.)
He was not so engrossed in his reading, however, that he didn’t hear Garak moving restlessly in the bunk below him, turning over or otherwise readjusting his position every ten minutes or so. “Garak, are you still awake?” he murmured, almost an hour after he’d turned out the lights.
“I apologize—am I keeping you awake with all the tossing around?”
“Not at all,” Julian lied. “But I am concerned that your headache is still preventing you from sleeping.”
“Oh, it’s not so bad,” Garak said lightly. “It’s only that these Starfleet mattresses are so soft. I feel as though I’m about to fall through it onto the floor.”
Julian chuckled. “Of course. On DS-9, we’re always complaining that the Cardassian mattresses are too hard. But it’s easier to add some padding when a bed is too hard than to make it harder when it’s too soft.”
“Indeed.”
After a pause, Julian asked softly, “Is there anything that might help you get to sleep more easily? I could put on some music, for example…”
“I doubt that any music you could find in your Federation databases would be soothing to me, Doctor.”
It was back to ‘Doctor’ now, was it? Julian supposed he had been asking too much; Cardassian conventions of politeness were rigid and deeply inculcated.
“I could read to you, if you’d like,” he offered, feeling very daring.
Garak was silent for a moment, and Julian wondered if his offer had been too forward. Then he said, “Yes, I think that might help.”
Julian’s stomach was back to its old antics. “What would you like me to read?”
“Poetry, perhaps—so I won’t be tempted to stay awake following a plot.”
“Cardassian poetry?” Garak had shared, or rather, inflicted some of it on him—aside from the ancient repetitive epics in verse, it was mostly odes to the State, or to the natural beauty of Cardassia itself (usually as a symbol or metonym for the Cardassian State).
“Heavens, no—you don’t read Kardasi, and it would be terribly mangled coming through two layers of computerized translation. No, something Terran.” He paused, then added, “Don’t look for something similar to a Cardassian style, either; I want something as Human as possible… short of being offensive to good taste.”
Julian scoffed at his characteristically flagrant show of xenophobia, clearly put on for the express purpose of needling his Human companion… but in his provocatively worded request not even to be reminded of the home from which he had been exiled, he had allowed Julian to glimpse the surface of a well of sadness at whose depth he could scarcely guess.
What would Garak find ‘offensive to good taste,’ he wondered? Most Human love poetry, probably; anything protesting societal injustice, condemning the horrors of war, or exalting the sacred uniqueness of the individual. That did cut down the available subject matter quite a bit.
“How do you feel about descriptive poetry?”
“Descriptive of what, precisely?”
“Just… ordinary things, usually. Things you wouldn’t normally pay much attention to.”
“An odd conceit,” said Garak, and Julian could just see him at the Replimat table, tilting his head at a quizzical angle, the movement precise, elegant, perfectly calculated. “But not, in principle, repugnant.”
“Here’s one by a twentieth-century Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda. It was originally written in another Terran language, Spanish, but it’s been translated into Federation Standard. I thought you might appreciate it, given your profession…”
“Please don’t tell me it’s a poem about spycraft.”
“Ha! Are you admitting you’re a spy, then?”
“No, but you think I am one.”
“Well, it isn’t. It’s called ‘Ode to My Socks.’”
“Intriguing.”
Julian chuckled at Garak’s dubious intonation, then read:
“Mara Mori brought me
a pair of socks
which she knitted herself
with her sheepherder’s hands,
two socks as soft as rabbits.
I slipped my feet into them
as if they were two cases
knitted with threads of twilight and goatskin,
Violent socks,
my feet were two fish made of wool,
two long sharks
sea blue, shot through
by one golden thread,
two immense blackbirds,
two cannons,
my feet were honored in this way
by these heavenly socks.
They were so handsome for the first time
my feet seemed to me unacceptable
like two decrepit firemen,
firemen unworthy of that woven fire,
of those glowing socks.
“Nevertheless, I resisted the sharp temptation
to save them somewhere as schoolboys
keep fireflies,
as learned men collect
sacred texts,
I resisted the mad impulse to put them
in a golden cage and each day give them
birdseed and pieces of pink melon.
Like explorers in the jungle
who hand over the very rare green deer
to the spit and eat it with remorse,
I stretched out my feet and pulled on
the magnificent socks and then my shoes.
“The moral of my ode is this:
beauty is twice beauty
and what is good is doubly good
when it is a matter of two socks
made of wool in winter.”
There was a short silence, and Julian wondered whether Garak had already fallen asleep… but then he remarked mildly, “What a very strange poem.”
Selfishly, Julian relished the opportunity for a literary debate, even now, in the middle of the (artificial) night, on a ship returning from a perilous mission in the Gamma Quadrant; he had missed it in Garak’s absence (much to poor Miles’s misfortune). “Ah, but it’s meant to be strange, don’t you see? It’s meant to make you look at things in a new way, to see ordinary objects as things of great and precious beauty, but then to make you see that their true beauty lies in their ordinary usefulness. It makes you think about how we take the things we use for granted, when each has an inimitable existence of its own… but the best gratitude we can show them is not to set them aside and admire them, but to let them serve us.”
“You don’t have to tell me that beautiful things are made to be used, not just admired.”
“Beautiful clothes, anyway,” Julian said, feeling daring again—almost reckless.
“You’re hardly one to talk about appreciating the ‘inimitable existence’ of ordinary objects,” Garak rejoined. Had he missed the implication of Julian’s words, or was he simply ignoring it? “Do you ever launder your clothing, or just recycle it and replicate new ones?”
“I replicate new uniforms, because they’re all the same.”
“No wonder they all fit you so abominably…”
“But anything you made, of course, I take the most diligent care of.”
Like the artfully asymmetrical tunic he had bought for the Bajoran Gratitude Festival—now unfortunately associated in his mind with the humiliating episode of Lwaxana Troi’s affliction with Zanthi fever… but also more fondly connected with the appraising scrutiny of sharp blue eyes when he had tried it on in the tailor’s shop, and Garak’s pronouncement of approval: “Most becoming on you, Doctor. Just the slightest glimpse of collarbone—‘if you have it, flaunt it,’ as they say; but tastefully.” Oh, how Julian had hoped that comment was a hint at more than sartorial interest; how tempted he had been to reply, “You’re welcome to taste it…” But as ever, neither of them pulled on that thread; Julian had paid for the tunic, thanked Garak for his advice and unparalleled craftsmanship, and told him he’d see him for lunch in a few days.
“Well, then, I’m flattered,” Garak said in response to Julian’s assurance, his tone still gently mocking.
Julian frowned, looking back over the text of the poem. “The trouble with descriptive poetry is that there tend to be a lot of references to specific Terran animals, plants, foods, and so on. Did those translate all right?”
“The UT seems to have looked for the closest Cardassian equivalents. I assumed the twentieth-century Terran poet did not, in fact, say that his socks were as soft as wompats.”
“No… but close enough. Let’s see… there’s also an ancient tradition of descriptive poetry, called waṣf, in Arabic, the language of my ancestors. Let me try to find something that doesn’t depend too much on knowledge of Terran zoology or botany…”
“Can you read those in the original language, Doctor?”
Julian winced, though of course Garak couldn’t see it. “Unfortunately not. I spoke the language as a child, but I never learned to read it… and I’ve forgotten most of the spoken language I knew as well.” He hadn’t spoken Arabic since before Adigeon Prime. He sometimes thought he’d like to relearn it—he could do it quickly and easily now, he knew—but in his mind it was Jules’s language, not his. A part of him felt that learning to speak it, as Julian, would be stealing something else from Jules after having stolen his whole life—or perhaps like disturbing his grave after killing him to take his place. (What sealed-away memories might he unlock if he learned the language in which Jules had first thought? Would he become a grave-robber, too?)
“Ah. Too bad. Poetry in particular does tend to lose something in translation.”
Julian could hardly argue with that, so he just agreed with a distracted “Mmm” as he scrolled through a collection of ancient qaṣā’id, looking for something that would translate reasonably well. “Do you have anything like bees on Cardassia?” he asked.
“Not on Cardassia—the UT gave the name of a Bajoran insect. A pollinator that makes a sweet substance out of what they gather from flowers; the Bajorans call it honey.”
“Ah, the UT translated that back as the name of the sweet substance that Terran bees make; I’d have to turn it off to find out what the Bajoran word is… Do the Bajoran insects sting?”
“They bite, and the bites itch terribly if they get to a patch of skin unprotected by scales—which they inevitably do, because they can smell blood. Many Cardassians are allergic to whatever they leave behind in their bites, some even fatally so. We always left it to the Bajorans to gather the honey; they seem to know ways to do it without getting bitten half to death.”
Julian decided not to touch the political hornets’ nest (to choose an apposite metaphor) that lay under that statement and instead just said, “This poem—from the seventh century, by a man named Sā’idah ibn Ju’ayyah, from Earth’s Arabian Peninsula—uses a detailed description of honey and honey-gathering to describe the sweetness of his beloved’s kisses and the difficulty of obtaining them… but it was also just conventional to use the frame of a love poem as an excuse to show off the poet’s ability to describe something in exquisite detail.”
“Kisses are… sweet?” Garak asked, sounding puzzled and doubtful.
Julian blushed, fortunately out of Garak’s view. “Sort of? They can be; liking the taste of your partner’s mouth can be a sign of… sexual compatibility.”
“Oh.” Garak sounded mildly disgusted, and Julian’s heart sank a little; he had often wondered what Garak’s mouth tasted like, and had cherished fond hopes of someday finding out.
“Cardassians don’t kiss, do they?”
“Not… that way. But of course we know that other humanoid species do—including Bajorans. Some Cardassians who took Bajoran lovers found the custom agreeable, but it is still considered… outré on Cardassia itself.”
Julian skirted the hornets’ nest again and said, “Well, it’s important for understanding this poem to know that Humans do find it agreeable:
“Ghaḍūb has departed and though you still loved her passionately,
yet obstacles came between you and separated you.
Among the things that came between you were the fear of you
that the jealous and hateful instilled in her, and those that spied on you.
The black raven has turned white and still your heart does not leave off
the memory of Ghaḍūb, nor can your reproaches be reversed.
As if there appeared to you, the day you met her,
a tent-reared fawn from the wild herds of Wajrah,
An awkward fawn with languid gaze and dark eyes;
its back dark-striped, new to the grazing-lands, deep-hued…
She came to us with jet black hair, not too short,
nor thinning at the part, nor gray,
Like tufts of soft reeds covered with flowing water
with moss spread on its two sides,
And with even front teeth like chamomile blossoms,
white and gleaming, her side teeth glistening with cool saliva.
Her mouth is like choice wine of pressed grapes
mixed with aloe, cinnamon, and reddish-brown musk,
Cool as if its saliva, when you taste it after a sleep,
when the stars have risen high in the sky, were
The honey of bees on a lofty mountain peak where the vultures live
like a group of men wrapped in their coats,
Honey from each steep ridge and bend of the valley
from which after rainfall pure water gushes forth.
Among them are pollen-gathering bees in the mountain-ridge,
and they produce honey like the streams of the bottom of the valley, when they flow.
They revealed streaks of honey as white as linen,
with no honey-combs empty or broken,
As if the collected pollen on their hind legs,
when they flew up the mountain paths, were kernels of wild cherry,
Until there was preordained for them, when they were slow in returning,
a man of endurance in walking, rough-fingered, short.
With him are a water-skin, which he carries wherever he goes,
a leather tool-bag, shining wood sticks, and a huge leather bag.
The poor wretch let down the ropes to it from a precipice
too steep for the eagle, as if he were lowering a veil,
As if when he lowered himself to the ridge below their cave
he were a ragged cloak fluttering in the wind…
He separated the pure honey by mixing it with the water of a clear pool
filled by streams from mountain cliffs where the Ta’lab tree grows…
As if her mouth tasted like this when it was strained—
by God, or even more delicious and sweeter…”
The poem continued from there, telling of how the protagonist had to part from his beloved because she belonged to a different clan and his own clan moved on to launch a raid on another—perhaps even hers; the poem did not say. But Julian wanted to leave it with the description of the sweetness of her mouth, not to invoke the pitfalls and heartache of loving a member of a foreign people, with whom one’s own people have and might well again find themselves at war.
When he left off reading, there was no reply from the bunk below—just the sound of steady breathing. “Garak?” he whispered, softly enough not to wake him if he were sleeping, not allowing his tongue to release the hard plosive at the end of his name. Still there was no answer.
He breathed out a sigh of relief; he could tell Garak desperately needed the rest. “Good night, Elim,” he murmured, and turned off the illuminated screen of his PADD.
Julian’s alarm sounded barely three hours later, the computer announcing in its serene voice: “The time is 0630.” He was still tired, after a night of brief and interrupted sleep, but as ever, not actually groggy.
Garak, unsurprisingly, seemed to have come to wakefulness almost as quickly—no doubt a necessary ability for a covert agent in unfriendly surroundings. “Your work beckons, it seems,” he said, his enunciation as crisp and cadence as lively as ever.
“So it does.” Julian groaned, theatrical but not entirely feigned, and lowered himself from the top bunk, using the edge of the lower bunk as a ladder rung again. Garak had sat up and was watching him, his eyes heavy-lidded but alert.
Suddenly Julian became very self-consciously aware of his lack of a shirt. Not just a tastefully tantalizing glimpse of collarbone now; half of the goods were openly on display. Should he apologize for his immodesty, he wondered, or act as if nothing was out of the ordinary? A shirtless man was no occasion for scandal among Humans, but in the Cardassian novels Garak had been giving him to read, the flash of a man’s wrist amounted to an attempt at seduction. (Of course, a few centuries before, in some Human cultures, the same was true of a flash of a woman’s ankle.)
Julian retrieved yesterday’s uniform from where it hung in the tiny closet—a quick sniff assured him that it would be fine to wear again today—and went into the refresher to wash up.
When he emerged, Garak was sitting on the edge of his bunk, the blankets wrapped around him like a cape, examining a scorch mark on the tunic he’d been wearing, no doubt waiting for his turn in the refresher. He still looked tired, too; the skin under his eyes had a dark, bruised cast to it, and his usually regal posture seemed to sag—though perhaps that was just the effect of the blanket-cape.
Garak stood, clutching his cape around himself with one hand, when he saw Julian approaching. “I cannot thank you enough for your exceptional hospitality, Doctor,” he said, ducking his head in a gesture of humble appreciation.
“You can thank me by getting some more sleep—you look like you could use it,” said Julian. “You’re welcome to stay here as long as you’d like.”
“That’s incredibly kind of you, but—”
“No ‘buts.’ You’re already set up here; it’ll be easier to get back to sleep if you just stay put.” Sleeping on sheets that smelled like Julian; leaving his own traces of the faintly herbal-smelling oils he used on his hair and scales, and the earthy, flinty petrichor scent underneath.
“Thank you again, dear Doc… Julian.” He flashed a brief smile, not as sanguine and polished as usual, but weary, strained, and genuinely grateful, with the faint shadow of that profound sadness hovering around its edges.
That rare glimpse of Garak’s vulnerability had Julian feeling very daring again and, well, there was some expression about daring greatly that was escaping him at the moment. “You also look like you could use a hug,” he said, letting his sympathetic smile take on a faintly humorous quirk. “Do Cardassians hug?”
Garak looked taken aback; his eyes widened and his mouth opened to take in a surprised inhale. “For us, it is a very intimate gesture—far more so than the use of first names. Lovers and immediate family will do it, but only in private; friends may embrace, but only if they are so close as to be more like siblings.”
“Oh,” said Julian, trying not to look too deflated. “What would be a more appropriate gesture of comfort from a friend?”
Garak hesitated, then raised his right hand, fingers together, palm facing forward. “You would put your palm against mine—the opposite hand, so that they are mirrored.”
His heart rate quickening, his breath coming shallow, Julian put his left palm against Garak’s right. The skin of his palm was cool and dry (thank God Julian’s wasn’t sweating, despite his nerves) and strewn with calluses, on all the raised parts of his palm, on the pads of his thumb and his first two fingers—the evidence of all the work he’d done with his hands, whether holding needle and thread, a fabric cutter, a knife, a disruptor, or God knew what else.
But this touching of palms still felt strange and distant to Julian, too much like a stationary high-five. Seeking a more familiar communication of affection, he started to slip his fingers in between Garak’s—and Garak gasped, eyes widening in shock, and abruptly pulled his hand away.
“Oh shit, I’m sorry—what did I do?” Julian blurted out, curling the offending hand against his mouth.
“That is a much more intimate gesture, appropriate only to…”
“Immediate family, lovers, and friends who might as well be siblings?” Julian guessed.
“Only to lovers,” Garak corrected.
“Oh,” said Julian. His face felt uncomfortably hot; he must have been flushing a deep red. “So… if the palm-touching thing is like a kiss on the cheek, for Humans… I just tried to kiss you on the lips?”
Cardassians didn’t blush the way Humans and Bajorans did; instead of pinking or purpling their cheeks, the rush of blood turned their neck and shoulder ridges a darker charcoal gray. It was beautiful, Julian thought, especially on a man usually as impeccably composed as Garak. “If I understand the Human custom correctly,” he said delicately, “you not only moved the kiss to my lips, but also attempted to insert your tongue into my mouth.”
Oh God. Julian’s face felt hotter than ever, and his groin chose this very inopportune moment to start expressing its opinions again. He covered his face with his hands and intently visualized transparent skulls. “I’m so sorry, Garak,” he said from between his palms. “You’ve every right to be mortally offended.”
“You haven’t offended me,” Garak assured him with an indulgent smile. Julian expected his next words to be something like “You didn’t know any better,” but instead he said: “I didn’t mind.”
Julian slowly lowered his hands away from his face. “You… didn’t mind?” he echoed, disbelieving.
“Did you?” Garak asked hesitantly. “Once I told you…”
Julian’s heart was thundering in his ears, and the fluttering in his stomach really did feel like a lot of butterflies. “No,” he said, and his voice came out embarrassingly breathy. He cleared his throat and added, more firmly, “Not at all.”
He held out his left hand again, palm forward, trembling ever so slightly. After two seconds’ pause, which seemed to last forever, Garak stretched out his right hand to meet it. At first they both kept their fingers together, the pads of each touching lightly (Garak’s palm was larger than Julian’s, but Julian’s fingers were longer). Then Garak slowly slid his fingers in between Julian’s, savoring the glide of skin and the friction of knuckles catching, until they were locked together at the base, the little webs of skin in between touching. Garak’s eyes fell closed as he curled his fingers over the back of Julian’s hand. Julian, following his lead, folded his fingers over the back of Garak’s hand in turn, and ran them in slow widening circles over the pebbling of scales, clustered in subtly raised ridges along the bones of the hand, the even texture disrupted here and there by nicks and puckered scars—apparently his bare hands were among the many weapons with which Garak was proficient.
Julian stepped closer, admiring how Garak’s neck ridges continued to darken, the darker stippling at the center of each scale turning a deep slate-gray with a bluish undertone. The teardrop-shaped divot in the middle of his forehead was darkening to the same slate-gray. Julian was sorely tempted to touch it, but he was quite certain there were strict rules about that in Cardassian culture, as there apparently were about every other kind of personal contact. (What had it meant when Garak put his hands on Julian’s shoulders the first time they’d met? Was that, in fact, the overt signal of desire that Julian had been looking for all this time? Had he wasted two and a half years waiting for what was already his?)
“Elim,” he said softly, and Garak’s eyes snapped open, widened once more in surprise. “May I call you Elim?”
The surprise did not last long; Garak’s eyes quickly narrowed, and he said simply—a statement, not a question, with no hint of reproach or resentment—“Tain told you.”
“Yes.”
Garak nodded. “I wouldn’t have spoken the name if I hadn’t meant for you to know.”
“But knowing your first name and using it are two different things.”
“Considering the way you learned it, I’d say you’ve more than earned the right.” His grip on Julian’s hand had loosened, but now he tightened it again, almost possessively.
Julian smiled, and he knew very well that his heart wasn’t swelling—it would be extraordinarily bad if it was—but it really did feel that way. “Elim,” he said again, letting the word roll over his lips and tongue, soft and silken, unlike the harsh consonants and broad flat vowels of his family name. “Do you want to— would it be all right if we tried kissing in the Human way?”
Garak—Elim tilted his head, looking apprehensive, and said, “I doubt that my mouth will taste much like honey, first thing in the morning.”
“Mine will probably just taste like toothpaste,” said Julian. “But I don’t mind. Not minding the taste of someone’s morning mouth is the surest sign of compatibility.”
“Then you have me at a disadvantage.”
“Not necessarily. How does my hand feel?” He flexed his fingers, lifting them away from the back of Elim’s hand and then pressing them down again one by one, letting the sides of their fingers slide together.
Elim’s mouth opened slightly for a silent indrawn breath. “Exquisite, my dear,” he breathed out.
“Well, then,” said Julian. He stepped even closer and put his right hand on the side of Elim’s face, fingers framing the ridge that ran down from the base of his ear to his jaw. Its texture was smooth, but with a complex topology of bumps and grooves, like a tortoise’s shell. Elim made a soft hissing noise that seemed to come from his chest rather than his mouth; his eyelids lowered and he tilted his head, pressing into Julian’s touch. Taking that as a sign of approval, Julian bent his head and brought their lips together.
Julian’s heart was pounding so hard that he felt sure Garak must be able to hear it, inferior Cardassian hearing or no. He had been waiting for this moment for two years, dreaming of it, picturing how it might happen. Sometimes it was gentle and cautious, like this; sometimes it was hard and desperate, one of them shoved against a bulkhead in the heat of an especially infuriating argument. In all his daydreams, it was deliriously wonderful—the release of that tension, finally, finally.
Elim’s lips were smooth and cool, and not as soft as a Human’s. Julian swept the tip of his tongue lightly over the seam between them, tentatively requesting entrance, and Elim acquiesced by letting his lips part. He clearly wasn’t sure what to do, but Julian was undaunted; he’d had encounters with other aliens who were unfamiliar with the custom of kissing, and was more than willing to provide patient guidance.
The inside of Elim’s mouth was warmer than his cool skin, of course, but still cooler than he would expect of a Human partner. The surface of his tongue was rougher than a Human’s, and Julian couldn’t help imagining what it might feel like on a different part of his body (which was also, evidently, eagerly imagining it); his teeth were sharper, too, which presented both danger and tempting opportunity.
No, his mouth didn’t taste like wine or honey; of course it was a little stale from sleep, and anyway Julian couldn’t taste much past his own toothpaste. But being allowed to explore its unfamiliar textures, to silence its sophistic arguments and clever lies… that was sweeter than any honey, headier than any wine, and well worth all the time and trouble it had taken to gather it.
Just as Julian was coaxing Elim’s tongue to do some exploring of its own, his combadge chirped, startling them apart. “Nurse Chen to Doctor Bashir?” said an impatient woman’s voice.
Shit, what time is it? “Bashir here.”
“Your shift started ten minutes ago. Where are you?”
“Sorry, on my way. Bashir out.”
“I do apologize for detaining you, Doctor,” Elim said dryly.
“I’d say I detained myself,” Julian admitted. “But it was a very pleasant detention.”
“I believe that’s the first time anyone has said those precise words to me,” Garak said with a mischievous lilt.
Julian laughed and tried not to think about exactly how Garak was accustomed to making detention unpleasant. “Go back to bed, Ga— Elim.”
“You know, that doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
“I’ll see you in a few hours.”
“Until then, my dear… Julian.”
Was that a self-correction, Julian wondered as he hurried to Sick Bay—had he been about to say “my dear Doctor” and caught himself midway through? Or was it intended as a unified phrase: “my dear Julian”? His heart leapt and the butterflies fluttered madly at the thought. Your dear Julian, indeed. Garak had spent the night in his bed, and soon, he hoped, they’d even spend it in the same bed.