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When Garak stopped at the corner of Julian’s table, the doctor was in no mood for the tailor’s antics. Julian looked up with a long-suffering sigh and rested his cheek in his palm, lazily raising his eyebrows at the Cardassian. “Come to reap the benefits of the lieutenant having poor taste in men?” he asked, laying his other arm on the table.
Garak blinked at him, slow and confused. “I beg your pardon?”
Julian sighed again. “Jadzia turned down my offer of lunch again, which means that if you asked me to eat with you, I might actually say yes.” A lunch date with Jadzia would have been enjoyable, but now that that was off the table… Julian had to admit that Garak had a certain intrigue that piqued his curiosity.
“I see.” Garak tipped his head gently; considering, considering… “I take it that means this seat isn’t taken by anyone more appealing than me?” He lay one scaly hand across the back, curling his claws against the metal.
“More appealing than you?” It was a bit like fencing, Julian thought, though he’d never been much of a fencer. Advance, thrust, parry. “I don’t think there is anyone, Garak. Aside from Miss Dax, of course.”
“Of course.” Advance. “Though I think I would choose your company over hers.” Garak sat down in the chair. Parry. “She isn’t much for Cardassians, is she?” Attempt to disarm! It made Julian almost giddy.
Julian stretched over the table, leaning almost into Garak’s space. He dropped his voice. “To be honest,” he replied smoothly, “neither am I.” He saw the flash through Garak’s eyes, but he continued before Garak could counter. Advance, thrust, thrust. “But you’re not much of a Cardassian, are you?”
There was a beat of terse silence as Garak’s reptilian eyes bore holes into Julian’s face, expression set in a stony, unreadable facade. Then Garak leaned back, stiffness flooding out of his body in a fluid wave, and laughed.
Julian blinked, pulled his chair in, and straightened up; his hands now lay clasped on the table, thumbs slipping absentmindedly in a nervous habit. “Did I say something funny?” he asked innocently. “I thought I was insulting you.”
“My dear Julian,” replied Garak, “you could never. I’m afraid you’re quite right. No true Cardassian would catch himself taking lunch with a Federation doctor.” He raised his not-eyebrows. “It’s lucky, then, that I gave up being a true Cardassian the moment you arrived here.”
“I thought you wanted to go home.”
“Of course, I do,” Garak said. “Doesn’t everyone?”
Julian fixed Garak with a questioning stare. “That’s not an answer and you know it.”
Before speaking again, Garak rose out of the chair and loomed over the table. “I believe, Doctor, it boils down to this,” he said softly. “There is nothing I want more than to return to Cardassia. But if you asked me to, I would change my mind.”
And then Garak left, leaving Julian with even more questions, and still without a date for lunch.