Chapter Text
There’s been a change to the shop next to his in the small shopping plaza. After 11 months of darkened windows bearing “for lease” signs, there is now white paper along the inside glass obscuring outsiders from watching internal construction. Elim Garak notes this with equal parts approval and pessimism. It has sat empty far too long, an indicator of both a downturned economy and a poor location choice for most new businesses, and so he’s glad to see it achieve commercial relevance - too many empty storefronts in a shopping center spooks customers. However, there is the matter of what it will become. There are no indicators yet, but his more cynical side (which encompasses a lion’s share of his various personality facets), already knows that it will be something unpleasant. It will be a music shop intent on driving him mad with constant racket amplified to an obscene volume or an Indian curry restaurant with its strong odors of cumin, coriander, turmeric and the like seeping through the walls into his clothing. Well, he’s found ways to discourage adjacent owners to renew their leases before (the last time, as a matter of fact, which is why the store has been empty) and if it comes down to it, he’s certain in his capacity for being able to accomplish the task again.
The noise of the construction over the next few months is enough to drive a simple tailor to homicidal fury. Luckily, the workers are as dedicated as their stereotype and the breaks they take are long, allowing Elim time to focus. He adjusts his schedule, doing the creative work - drafting up patterns or sewing embellishments and appliques - during their downtime. Hemming and re-sizing occur during the buzz of their circular saws and the pounding of their hammers.
While good to know that he hasn’t lost his adaptability in the years he’s been playing clothier, he still breathes a sigh of relief the morning that he arrives and finds the concealing butcher block paper removed. He spies through the window a perfectly acceptable medical office, its surfaces clean and new. Within a few days, comfortable but portably light chairs and small tables pop up in the waiting room. Art, mundane and inoffensive, appears on the wall in rectangular black frames. By the time he closes his shop one day, white letters have been adhered to the door. They read “Julian Bashir, DDS” along with a phone number, website, and a list of hours. He curses his obliviousness for not having heard the work be done so that he might coax information from whoever had put the markings up. He’ll wait. He does that well, or so he tells himself, and he keeps his inner thoughts well-hidden enough that few would be able to call him on his exaggeration.
By the time that he catches sight of the dentist for the first time, his online presence (what little there is of it) has already been committed to Elim’s memory, though the lack of his picture in the academic history means that the poor confused tailor mistakes him for yet another construction worker. That can hardly be considered his fault when, after stepping outside his shop to find something for lunch, he sees a tall young man clumsily attempting to unload a sizable water cooler onto a dolly. It’s been a struggle already if the man’s wild eyes, ringed armpits, and slick hands are any indicator. With a curse unbecoming of a man his age, he drops it with a bubbly clunk onto the dolly. Like a teeter-totter, it hits the base of the tool, causing the back half, the part with the handles, to right itself speedily. The man laughs at his good fortune. He wipes at his forehead and, noticing Elim’s attention, calls, “I can’t believe that worked.”
He hops down from the back of the truck with the ease of youth and spider-long legs. Had Elim ever been so spry? Surely not.
“Yes, I rather thought I would be dialing you an ambulance following that maneuver.” He steps closer, eying both the upright dolly and the trim waist in good turn. “Should you not have assistance in such endeavors?”
The man sighs. “Yes! I should! Unfortunately, my dear best friend Miles has been suddenly struck with a severe migraine the day that I planned to put the finishing touches on my clinic.” Wry amusement enters his voice as he adds, “I anticipate a very quick recovery once the process is done.”
“Your clinic? Don’t tell me that you are Dr. Bashir?” The numbers click into place from graduation and residency dates. Still, he’d expected someone a touch older, someone less… well, adorable. This could easily be as bad of a thing as loud music or strong curry.
“None other,” says the doctor. He wipes his hand on his pants and offers his palm for shaking. “Though you have me at a disadvantage.” That smile, Elim’s sure, has won over quite a few hearts or, at least, some other body parts.
“Garak, Duic Garak. I am the proprietor of the clothing alteration shop next door.” The hand is still mildly slimy but, as Elim suffers no mysophobia, the feel of palm-to-palm in this instance is pleasant. The dentist’s long fingers are strong. Following an impulse, he allows his free hand to cover the man’s from the other side, locking the shake in place. “Let me be the first to welcome you to Terok Nor Plaza.”
That’s too formal but it isn’t as though he can suck back the words into his lungs. He aims for self-assurance with his smile. While the dentist is taken aback, it’s brief, a stammered, “Oh, well, thank you.”
Elim retracts his overeager hands. “I do hope that your facility will bring more life into the plaza. Customers are rarely seen here in more than ones and twos and they seem intently focused on completing one errand to the exclusion of all the other worthwhile shops they could patronize.”
“I wouldn’t count on patients who have just been at the mercy of my drill to do much window shopping, Mister Garak, even with how delicately I treat them.”
Elim inclines his head. “A point I hadn’t considered, though I think you underestimate the attraction of a parking lot bustling with vehicles on potential buyers.” Nothing scares off customers like boarded-up windows and empty parking areas. It had been worth taking the hit to his business, though, to bully out the veterinarian from next door. It isn’t that he has anything against animals, just that he hadn’t wanted to hear their barks and whines at all hours of the day. “Where was your previous clinic?” He knows damn well that this is the dentist’s first attempt on his own, but it never benefits to reveal how much one knows.
“This is my first go. I know it’s an unusual site choice for a dental practice, but I work on a sliding scale and I wanted to make sure that everyone without means to afford dental work could still be seen.”
This Doctor Bashir had deliberately chosen to open a business in a higher crime, increasingly commercially irrelevant neighborhood out of the kindness of his heart. Garak’s move years earlier hadn’t been so charitable - the plaza had been quite vibrant back then and if he’d had any idea of the financially hard times ahead of him, he’d have chosen a more advantageous spot. He’s not sure whether he is horrified by the new medical practitioner’s terrible business acumen or impressed by his generosity. He decides, before he next speaks, that he must present that it is the former. Kindness is often found in optimistic youths who have not yet had a chance to suffer the ill-consequences of extending aid to the avaricious needy; there is nothing good that can come from encouraging this naivety. “In that case, Doctor, I believe that I should enjoy your company while I can…” Before you run it into the ground, goes unsaid. “Allow me to assist you with these clinical finishing touches and after, I’ll introduce you to the minimal food options that you’ll have for your lunches.”
“Oh, I can’t ask you to do that. It’s really not very much anyway. I can’t even imagine it’ll take me an hour.”
Elim sneaks a peek into the open back of the van where the water cooler had appeared from. “Good thing, then, that you didn’t ask me or might have thought you exploitative. Now, where can I be put to best use? I may be a few years your senior, but as my lineage comes from the Cardassian Mountain region, I imagine that I possess ample upper body strength for your needs.” He’d intended some innuendo, but it sounds more openly flirtatious than he’d meant it. Just like the overly familiar handshake, he plays it off with what he hopes will strike as confident and not skeevy.
Dr. Bashir looks conflicted. Proper etiquette dictates that he shouldn’t enlist a stranger’s help and that he shouldn’t imply that Elim is too old for the work. It’s delightful to watch the war behind the doctor’s ridiculously readable eyes, especially knowing that he’s the one who posted him to both sides of the battlefront. “I… I’m sure that I could find a few things for you to do, if you insist.”
Elim nods. “I do.”
Cleverly, the new dentist tasks him with the carrying and placement of decorative covers - delicate and lightweight - for the wall sconces in the waiting area and the man’s private office. He must make several trips lest he risk shattering the tinted glass in a mishap and this allows for extra time for Dr. Bashir to install the heavy water cooler and place two lockable filing cabinets. Well played, he thinks. The remaining additions to the clinic are minor, things like a dish rack for freshly washed mugs by the sink in the break room and a wall calendar complete with a thumbtacked pen on a piece of yarn.
All the expensive and daunting dental equipment (daunting to Elim, anyway, who hasn’t been in that type of chair since nearly as long as Dr. Bashir has been alive) is already installed. With the clinic empty, it has more of a laboratory feel, gadgetry just waiting for a mad scientist to abuse it. He’s only just met the man, but he suspects there might be some inner Dr. Jekyll tucked away under the boy’s polite layers; maybe even some Mr. Hyde, should he be induced with the right incentive.
True to Dr. Bashir’s prediction, they are sitting across from each other with plastic forks in hand within an hour. “I’m more excited than nervous. I mean, there’s still some nerves, I suppose. It’s a large undertaking, and I won’t have Dr. Gonzalez down the hall if I’m uncertain of a course of action, but it’s something I feel, if anything, I’ve over-prepared for! I’ve procrastinated because I enjoyed working at his clinic, though it’s been my intention since the outset to own my own.”
“You can hardly be thirty, doctor. I doubt you can be accused of procrastination.”
The chicken here is always too squishy like meat shouldn’t be, but it stops his belly from complaining on those days when he doesn’t plan ahead with a thermos full of soup or a sandwich. If Dr. Bashir notices anything unappealing in the meat’s texture, he doesn’t show it. Rather, Elim’s not sure his tongue even has time to notice the taste let alone the food’s other processes. He’s shoveling it away as though someone else is going to grab it from him. “You must have siblings,” Elim notes.
“No, actually. Only child. My parents were too practical for more.” He doesn’t even bother completely chewing as he answers, the food sloshing around his words. It’s rude but Elim’s curiosity is stronger than a mild amount of revulsion. “They’re both very busy. My father is a doctor as well and my mother is an ecologist. Even if they weren’t so caught up and had more time to spend raising children, she would have cited the negative impact of adding more bodies to the planet as justification for not.”
He’s used to strangers showing a little hesitancy in revealing personal information. This information gathering is less like peeling the shell from a crab as it is observing a crab performing a shell striptease for all the other ocean inhabitants. How easy this man’s life must have been to feel so comfortable giving away all of its details! Quite a difference from the stoic secrecy of his fellow Cardassians; even before the war had slivered their personalities with trauma, they were not a people prone to abundant self-disclosure.
“Your father must have been pleased that you went into a similar field.”
Dr. Bashir tilts his head as if the suggestion is a new one and he must consider it. “I wouldn’t assume so,” he says briefly.
The first vague response he’s gotten yet. So, there are some tender spots. How predictable that it would have something to do with his parents; no doubt he’d meet a similar response if he’d delved into the young man’s love life.
“When is opening day?” asks Elim, eager to shift his lunch partner back into his chattier state.
With a large sigh, Dr. Bashir says, “Monday. Well, technically Wednesday. All my staff will start on Monday. They’ll have two days to get acquainted with the computers and the tools, sort of learn the ropes, as it were. I’m very lucky to have found two experienced hygienists willing to work for me.”
“I’m sure your clinic will be a success,” offers Elim, sure of no such thing. “How could it not be with such a promising young man behind the helm?”
Empty flattery or not, it makes Dr. Bashir duck his head with a pleased smile. “I certainly hope it will be. You’ll have to make an appointment. We offer a very minimal fee for the initial exam and x-rays.”
Elim raises his hand. “I appreciate the offer, and while I am quite certain of your abilities, I believe I’ll leave the dental procedures to your fine customers.”
“Ah, a dentophobe. How long has it been, Mr. Garak?” His food long since inhaled down at least one of the tracts in his throat (presumably the one for digestion but with the speed he’d exercised, possibly both), Dr. Bashir’s hands are fork-free and available for steepling in menacing curiosity.
“Since I’ve shared such a pleasant lunch with a fellow entrepreneur? Far too long. It would be a pity to cast a shadow over such a nice time with intrusive medical inquiries.”
Unlike many others that Elim has the pleasure to talk to, Dr. Bashir follows his words without trouble, though the smugness that persists is less than endearing. “We can’t have that, can we?” He gathers up his utensils and napkin, shoving them into the styrofoam box. “Well, I won’t intrude on your medical history anymore, but I will say this: regular cleanings and routine maintenance go a long way in staving off the truly grueling trips that you probably associate with the dentist.”
“Grueling. What an apt word for what you do, Doctor.” Elim bats his eyes prettily.
In response, Dr. Bashir narrows his, but only for a moment, before he’s smiling again, easy-going nature quickly batting away any offense. “I’d like to check out the other restaurants in the plaza. Could I convince you to meet with me for lunch again next Friday?”
“I would be delighted.” He means it too.