Work Text:
There was someone with him in the shop.
Garak felt a shiver down his spine. An imprecise evolutionary tic, to be sure, but one he would not underestimate. Instinct had kept him alive in the past and would do so again.
He allowed his presence to dissipate, to diminish. To vanish into the darkness.
The shop had long closed, the station settling for the night, but he had decided to stay in his workroom for just a few more hours. Working late prevented him from dwelling on what he lacked, dulling the temptation to reach for the kanar - or the hypospray.
It also made him a perfect target.
Abruptly, the feeling left him, and he was certain he was alone in the shop once more.
“How strange,” he muttered to himself, and decided to call it a night.
# # #
Elim Garak did not believe in ghosts. If he told himself that often enough, perhaps they would stop haunting him.
A lot of Bajoran workers had died on this station. He hadn’t been involved in any of those deaths, to his knowledge, but he doubted an angry Bajoran poltergeist cared about which Cardassian had killed them.
He could feel them moving around him. Brushing past his arm on the Promenade. Breathing on the back of his neck. Watching him through the open shop door.
He refused to give in to their intimidation. This station belonged to the living, and his rent money was as good as anyone else’s. If the breakdown of the wire inside his head hadn’t driven him from his shop, from his life, then no strange haunting would do it.
At lunch with Doctor Bashir, he flinched as an ice-cold finger ran over the back of his hand.
The good doctor frowned, clearly intent on making some observation about recovery and check-ups.
Garak made his excuses and fled.
# # #
The ghosts were stealing time. It was the only explanation.
One minute, he was hemming a skirt for Mrs O’Brien, and the next, Julian Bashir was standing in the shop doorway, chastising him for missing their lunch appointment.
“I am sorry, my dear Doctor,” he tried to say, but the words came out heavy and wrong.
“Garak, have you been drinking?” Bashir said, suddenly flushed with anger. “I thought we agreed no alcohol or drugs while your brain is still adjusting.”
Garak wanted to protest. He hadn’t been drinking, had he? If he were to drink kanar in his workroom in the middle of the day, he hoped he would be more discreet about it.
While he was still trying to form a response, his usually-agile mind sluggish and stuttering, Bashir threw up his hands and stormed out of the shop.
If the ghosts stole his friendship with Julian too, then what hope did he have left to him?
# # #
The first time a ghost pushed him, he fell against the work table and hit his head on the edge as he went down.
Thankfully, Doctor Girani was on duty in the infirmary. She did not much care for him, asked only the bare minimum of questions, and allowed him to depart after a few passes of the dermal regenerator.
On the second occasion, he was not so fortunate.
He had finally made it to the replimat for lunch. In fact, he was ten minutes early. Doctor Bashir would have no cause to be angry with him today. In fact, he might have finished Meditations on a Crimson Shadow, and then they could debate away their lunch hour, like–
Well, like two Human friends would, Garak imagined. The least said about why two Cardassians argued, the better. What Bashir didn’t know…
Someone had replicated something pungent. Perhaps it was fermented, or like that mouldy bovine produce that Terrans loved to add to everything from rice to salad.
He felt a headache coming on, one where the harsh brightness of the lights caused an odd flicking across the top of his vision.
“Garak!”
Bashir sounded pleased to see him, so Garak hurried to stand, ignoring the rising nausea.
“Doctor, how love-love-ly…t-to…”
The ghosts were taking his words! The indignity!
He tried to reach out, to warn Julian that they were behind him, look, look, he would surely fall…
But it was Garak who was falling, his whole arm trembling as it failed to grab hold of the table.
Julian caught him, his wide startled eyes conveying his horror. He must see them. He must know that Garak could not protect him.
His arm shuddered out of his control, and he lost everything all at once.
# # #
There was someone with him in his quarters.
Garak knew how to observe while feigning sleep. Preparing his body to strike, while his prey was lulled into a false sense of security.
But his senses did not communicate prey. The gait was familiar, the scent rich with spicy warmth and the touch like a balm, comforting and tantalising in equal measure.
“Garak? Can you open your eyes for me?”
Julian. It was his Julian.
In his quarters. Again. Was it the wire? His invitation to drink kanar? Something about a blue cheese risotto?
The warm fingers moved from his temple to his cheek.
“Garak, please. Give me a sign you can hear me. Anything.”
Garak made an effort to open his eyes, but they did not seem entirely at his command.
“Oh, there you are,” Julian sighed in apparent relief. “Just go easy now. Open your eyes in your own time. Computer, lights at 10%.”
His fingers lingered, before withdrawing in a soft caress. But was it Julian? He had to be sure.
Ignoring Julian’s advice, Garak forced his eyes to open, to seek out the truth of his surroundings. He was in his own quarters, in bed in his bedroom, with an emergency medical kit open on the table and an anxious doctor hovering over him. He couldn’t feel any other presence. In fact, the very idea of another presence seemed odd, like a fairytale from another age.
“Are they gone?” he rasped, before his mind caught up with his mouth.
Julian blinked at him, before his expression hardened into anger, overlying the distress in his eyes. “Garak, have you been seeing things?”
“Not seeing things, Doctor,” Garak said, defensively. “Just a few…odd events.”
“Like collapsing in your workroom and hitting your head. Or losing so much time that you missed our lunch. That flinch in the replimat!”
Julian was growing more agitated with each recollection, each piece of evidence. But Garak slowly realised that Julian wasn't angry with him.
“How did I not see it?” Julian murmured to himself.
“Because I did not want you to.” Garak made an attempt to sit up, but his arm did not seem to want to hold his weight.
Julian swept in to catch him - again - and carefully lowered him back down to the bed.
“The post-ictal fatigue will last quite some time, especially if you’ve been seizing at that frequency.
“Seizures,” he said, slowly. “I've been having seizures.”
Julian looked exasperated. “And if you had just told me what was going on, I would've figured that out before you went into status epilepticus for fourteen minutes.”
It did not take an expert to figure out that was not a good outcome and that Julian had been worried about him.
“If the convulisine hadn’t worked…” Julian trailed off, looking very far away.
Garak gave into the desire to reach for his hand and hold on. He could blame it on the medication, seizures, and fatigue, he knew. It didn’t have to mean anything.
Julian squeezed his hand and smiled at him, a little watery smile.
It meant everything.
“Will you promise to tell me if something like this happens again?”
Garak hesitated. To swear to honesty, to vulnerability - was he even capable of that?
Julian made to withdraw his hand.
Garak held on.
“I will endeavour to be honest about my health,” he said, each word feeling like a stone passing through his throat and leaving him lighter as it left.
“I would appreciate it,” Julian said, looking at him as if he had given him a great gift. “You should get some rest.”
Garak knew that Julian would leave, surely had other patients to return to, more important things to do. Some silly childish part of him did not want him to go.
Julian swept his thumb over the back of Garak’s hand. “I’ll be right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“I must be keeping you–”
“Nowhere else I need to be,” Julian said, firmly, squeezing his hand again. “Nowhere else I would want to be. Besides, my shift finished some hours ago, and I have experience of napping in this chair.”
He gestured behind him, to the chair in which he had kept his vigil during the incident with the wire. Except Julian had moved it into Garak’s bedroom. It felt more…intimate, somehow. Less clinical and more familiar.
“Several hours…?”
“Computer, time,” Julian asked.
“The time is 21:09.”
He had lost hours, the entire afternoon and evening. No wonder Julian was worried about him.
“My dear doctor - Julian - you cannot sleep in that chair. I will not allow it.”
A mischievous light entered Julian’s eyes, and Garak knew he was in trouble.
“Then where would you suggest I sleep?”
It was a clear and open invitation, brazen by Cardassian standards and not much less so by Human ones, from his observations. And Garak had no idea what to say, all his previous objections to such a liaison suddenly seeming unimportant and irrelevant.
But he had hesitated too long. Julian let go of his hand, adjusted the monitoring device on Garak’s forehead, and busied himself with the output of his instruments.
“A few days of rest and some dose adjustments–”
“Julian, look at me, my dear.”
Julian took a deep breath and turned towards him, with his eyes tightly closed. “Garak, I’m sorry - that was inappropriate–”
“Please.”
Julian opened his eyes. He looked lost, exhausted and emptied.
Garak had done that. He was suddenly aware that Julian’s heart was fragile in his hands. He had never before been entrusted with something so precious.
“I don’t want you to do something you will regret, merely because I scared you.”
Julian laughed. “Oh, I have been on the edge of something for months. It’s you whose…well, whose judgement may be impaired. It would be unethical–”
“Lie down, Julian. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
Julian smiled at him wistfully. “What if it means everything?”
Hearing his own thoughts echoed in Julian’s voice was, indeed, everything.
“I can live with that if you can, my dear.”
Julian took another of those steadying breaths and circled the bed, lying down on top of the covers, facing Garak on his side.
“Go to sleep,” he said, his fingers reaching for Garak’s. “Because yes, you did scare me, and I would feel better if I knew you were resting.”
“Anything for you, my dear,” Garak said - and feared he meant it.