Work Text:
“Doctor, I fear that I really may have gone mad after all.”
Julian laughs next to Garak on the bed, giddy and bright and very naked in the low light. “Oh no. Was it that bad? I thought we did alright. Well, there’s always next time, if we keep at it we’ll get it right yet.”
Garak brushes a lock of hair away from Julian’s face, reverent before his ability to do so. Julian’s big dark eyes are still warm with mirth. “Bad? On the contrary. This is too lovely. It seems like the sort of thing I must have made up, some — wishful reinvention added in the edit. Perhaps this is only one last desperate delirium that my brain has cooked up before death finally sets in, as a belated apology for everything else it has gotten up to on me over the years.”
“I hope not, I have been having way too good of a time to gladly accept being imaginary.”
There isn’t a lot of light in the shed, the sole source of illumination a small emergency lamp placed on the workbench that’s the only other piece of furniture the shed can fit, with the narrow bed taking up the rest of the floorspace. Sharing one pillow, keeping warm only by the insufficient coverage of the sheet and each other — it should feel claustrophobic, two bodies sharing the space so closely. It doesn’t. Everything smells like Julian.
Julian takes Garak’s hand and places it on his own chest — slightly to the left of center; a symbolically loaded position if ever there was one, from everything Garak has been able to gather of Human anatomy and metaphor both.
His skin really is so incredibly warm — immediately, undeniably alien in a way Garak has always found oddly pleasing even in brief mundane brushes, a sensation pattern that taken together with the steady gentleness of his hands means Julian and nothing else in Garak’s head. And Garak’s hand, briefly forgiven for and freed from all the disgusting things and all the useful things it has done in its time, only looks quiet and grey and almost innocent, resting over Julian’s heart.
Julian says, quietly: “Do you feel that?”
“Your heartbeat? I do.”
Julian’s eyes slip shut.
“I feel so calm,” he breathes, sounding… wondering, almost. “It’s never been like… I’ve never felt so…” He exhales, long and slow. Garak wonders if he knows, if he has any idea at all, of just how easily the fan of his eyelashes laid dark and soft against his cheek could undo Garak like an unsecured seam — one gentle tug, and he would come apart, fray to pieces, unravel.
Garak clears his throat. “Loathe as I am to take away from your larger point, which is — very good to hear, I would never wish you anything but the deepest peace of mind, Doctor… I fear I must admit that I don’t really have any frame of reference to compare it to,” Garak says, almost apologetic. “I gather this is a leisurely pace, then, for a resting Human heartbeat? Because if you were Cardassian, I would be calling in Dr. Parmak to evaluate you for a stress disorder right about now.”
Julian slips one eye open. “...you’re right, I didn’t think about that. Different frame of reference, I suppose.”
“Your profession may obscure for you the regularity or otherwise with which this situation occurs for the rest of us in the course of daily life, my dear. While the last seven years have made me fairly well-acquainted with the company of humans in general, I have rarely found myself quite this close to one of you before. Certainly not in a position where I was asked to evaluate their vital signs. If your tailor is putting his hands anywhere you’d take someone’s pulse for prolonged periods of time unbidden, there are bound to be — reactions.”
“Oh, was this not standard procedure for taking a measure of my inseam, then? My mistake, as you’re always telling me I understand so little about fashion. You mean to say you don’t do this for all your customers?”
“Only for the ones I like best.”
“So… an exclusive club, is it?”
“Extremely so”
Julian grins, squeezing Garak’s hand in his. “Then I’ll consider myself honoured, as well as happily debauched. Well, your point is taken, though it did somewhat spoil the effect I wanted here.”
“As long as the effect you wanted was for me to find it wildly and unaccountably charming, I beg to differ. Though I fear you have me at a bit of a disadvantage, Doctor — I believe you are far more familiar with the regularity or otherwise of my heartbeat than vice versa.”
“Really? You think so?” Julian says, absent-mindedly. “Well. Then we’ll have to take pains to even out this imbalance you perceive between us, don’t you think?”
He reaches out and trails the backs of his fingers along Garak’s jaw, expression still pensive.
“I’m… oh, I’m about to do something very silly,” Julian says.”Something so embarrassing.”
“Ah, but Doctor, to the Cardassian mind… aren’t we already?” Garak jokes. “In which case — what harm could it possibly do to incriminate ourselves a tiny bit more, hm? I promise I shall only laugh at you if you’re about to restate your misguided and ludicrous stance that your Shakespeare’s use of language is more sophisticated and evocative than that of Cylon Pareg. Otherwise, consider this a… what is that phrase again? Lieutenant Dax subjected me to the expression a couple of times, and after much internal striving I have eventually found it in my heart to forgive her.”
“A safe space.”
“A safe space,” Garak agrees. “Be as silly as you please, Julian.”
(Against his better judgment, Garak has actually grown to appreciate some of the Bard’s work, at least as it lives on in its diaspora across certain sections of Human language and literature — whenever this Shakespeare doesn’t recklessly wade into political depths he couldn’t doggy paddle his way out of to save his long-lost life, it’s hard to argue the man didn’t have a knack for a memorable turn of phrase. The exceedingly smug look Julian sends him whenever Garak finds himself slipping into using one of them forbids him from ever admitting as much out loud, though.)
Julian grins. “Oh, you may very well regret giving me that particular carte blanche before the night is old.”
“I have always liked living dangerously.”
“No, you don’t. Whenever the odds get tough, you’re the first voice to argue for going home rather than going big.”
“Which is why I have been one of the very few to consistently make it home, of course! In this case, however, I feel confident enough to take my chances.” He twitches an eyeridge in surprise when Julian leans to retrieve his small case of medical equipment from his bag on the floor, and roots around in it. With the way he’s stretching over the edge of the mattress to reach, the sheets slide tantalizingly low over his slim hips. Garak retains just enough self-control not to reach out and slide them lower still; he really does want to see where this is going. Julian has always had this way of piquing his curiosity.
“Here, take this,” Julian says, turning over to hand him something and then settling back into place on the pillow next to Garak, beaming at him expectantly.
Garak turns the instrument he’s been given over in his hands. It differs slightly in the particulars from the design that’s been most common on Cardassia in modern times, but he recognizes the general gist of it easily enough. “This is… a stethoscope, I believe?”
“Indeed it is. I trust you’re familiar with its function?”
“If I didn’t like you quite so much, I would kick your condescending Federation backside out of this bed and onto the street,” Garak says pleasantly.
Julian only grins as if he knows exactly how hollow a threat that is and guides Garak to slip the listening end into his ear, before positioning the chest piece over his own heart. Then he lies back — lounges, really, like the young handsome king in some fanciful Betazoid romance drama, as if he were resting upon perfumed silk sheets rather than on top of a battered and lumpy mattress. His eyes are half-lidded and dark.
He does look calm — all the sweet lanky lines of him relaxed and at peace, his chest rising and falling with no seeming effort or tension. After a while he says, softly: “You hear it?”
“I hear it.” Garak finds he likes the sound of it — the steady reassuring drumbeat of Julian’s heart, the most direct proof of life conceivable, wrapped up in the sound of his breathing like the ocean caressing the sand of a beach with each wave coming in and out.
Julian lets his eyes slip all the way shut, tilts his chin up slightly, as if in expectation. “Okay. Now… kiss me.”
Garak looks at him in such a haze of delight and joyous disbelief that he can barely get words out. “Oh, but — but surely not, that’s… really?”
“Yes, really! And you promised not to laugh, you fucking liar!”
“So I did, and I apologize most ardently. If it helps at all, I would like it known on the record that I am not laughing at you. I am laughing with you.”
“I’m not laughing!”
“You are now.”
“I defy anyone to deal with you for more than thirty seconds and not have to resort to either laughter or strangulation.”
“That… might vaguely check out with my experience, yes. But — please. Your experiment. I find I am quite invested in discovering where you were going with this.”
“Well, it won’t work now, I’d need to calm my breath down again.”
“Please, don’t let me stop you. I’m more than happy to simply enjoy the wondrous view for a while.”
“Yeah?”
“The course of true scientific progress never did run smooth, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t a worthy cause, or that we should give up on it so easily. I’d think you of all people would agree with me on this.”
Julian lets out a sound hard to describe as anything but a giggle. There are still some shadows lingering under his eyes, the same as when he arrived on Cardassia two weeks ago, but Garak hasn’t heard him laugh like that in so long — in years, he realizes, since before the war. The sound makes him feel the same way he had when he had gambled with the first of his limited store of fragile Edosian orchid tubers and found that the irradiated, scoured earth of the new Cardassia could still let it take root and flourish. There are, apparently, no limits or borders to awe.
“Oh, very well, then,” Julian says, “when you put it like that. For the sake of the scientific process. Just… give me a moment.”
“Every moment that is mine to give you is yours, now and always,” Garak says, knowing Julian knows him too well by now to believe that he’s exaggerating.
Instead of answering — or perhaps as another means to do so than words — Julian takes Garak’s hand and guides it to rest against his own stomach. This seems to be for no other reason than that he finds the weight there comforting. Julian then rests his own hand on top, twining their fingers loosely. The heat of laughter and pleasure still lingers on his skin, but his breath and his heart settle down easily.
“Wow. That’s kind of like magic, isn’t it,” Julian mumbles after a while, seemingly mostly to himself, his eyes closed. “I mean, it isn’t. I know all the science of it. At the end of the day it’s a simple matter of neurotransmitters — skin-to-skin contact to regulate nervous system activation and facilitate the release of hormones to encourage emotional bonding, common to many social species even outside of Earth mammals. Complex, certainly; fascinating, absolutely; pleasurable to experience, undoubtedly — ”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it,” Garak murmurs, brushing his thumb back and forth over Julian’s skin. Julian grins, his eyes still closed.
“ — and yet entirely explicable, based in material reality, cause and effect, however intricate and abstruse the processes involved.” He opens his eyes and looks at Garak for a long time. “But damned if it doesn’t feel like magic, anyway.”
“Does magic stop being magic, just because you learn how the trick is done?”
Julian tilts his head to one side. “Huh. What do you mean?”
“I’ve been led to understand that throughout history, some Humans have gone looking for God — whatever such a word might mean to each of them, by whatever name and in whatever mantle they would know the divine — everywhere, down to the space that exists between atoms, and found enough meaning to convince themselves. Not necessarily convinced of the same thing, to be sure — but convinced of something. Are you so sure the magic doesn’t exist, or is it merely a matter of looking for it in the wrong places, at the wrong angle, with an assumption of where it must reside, and in what form? Is the animating breath of a universe in motion, shorn of all other meaning, not miracle and magic enough, even when one does not care to seek further elaboration as to what exactly is doing the breathing? What? Why are you looking at me like that, Doctor?”
Julian laughs. “Oh, it’s nothing bad, I just — I mean, I read your letter and everything, but I never thought I’d really hear you argue for that side of the debate in person.”
“Hm. And yet, would you not be disappointed if I failed to throw you the occasional… what is it you call it in Standard, a curve ball?”
“I’m not sure you’ll ever be capable of not throwing me curve balls, even when you don’t mean to.”
“There is reportedly more between heaven and earth, my dear Doctor, than is dreamed of in your philosophy. I believe you were the one who said that, in fact.”
“No, Garak, that was Shakespeare again.”
“Ah, yes. I had endeavoured to forget.”
“Yes, you do seem remarkably adept at forgetfulness on this particular subject, considering all your exaltations of the benefits of a Cardassian memor — no, wait, you won’t get me distracted again, we’re doing this. Stop trying to pick fights about philosophy at me for a moment and just… just listen.”
“I will.”
Julian lets out a long soft sigh of a breath and smiles, adjusting the listening end of the stethoscope minutely on his chest. “Then… I’m ready whenever you are.”
Garak kisses Julian’s smiling mouth, and hears his pulse respond to the touch — a bright little jump up in pace, like the first steps of a dancer leaping into movement as the music begins to play. One of Julian’s hands comes to rest over Garak’s on the stethoscope, the other gently frames Garak’s face, guiding him even closer.
It is the silliest, most hopelessly, near-obscenely sentimental thing Garak could ever conceive of. Frivolous and insipid and deeply, obnoxiously Human. Garak wants to do something equally stupid and sentimental with Julian Bashir every single day for the rest of his life.
Julian pulls back a little, only enough to look at Garak with his face shorn of any pretense. For all his previous levity, there’s something pleading and almost desperate in his eyes now — an uncharacteristic uncertainty, a helpless unspoken inquiry.
“I heard it,” Garak says, moving the stethoscope away so he can rest his hand over Julian’s heart again with no barriers. “I hear.”
It takes a moment before something passes over Julian’s face — a fleeting tremor, a hitherto indiscernible veil lighting from his features and leaving them bared and almost unbearably naked with relief, and something starker. He blinks his eyes a little too rapidly, a shaky laugh falling out of him. “Oh. That’s, I, ah… I’m sorry, I’m not even entirely sure I understand what I’m asking here, I just…”
“I hear it,” Garak repeats softly, pressing his lips to the corner of Julian’s mouth without taking his hand away. “And if there comes a time when I don’t, I will listen for it until I can hear it again. This is my oath, and my promise.”
“The things you fucking say, Elim,” Julian says shakily, eyes slightly wild. “And all this time people have been telling me I have a tendency to get a little intense in relationships right off the bat. Sweet Lord.”
Garak smiles. “Hm. Is the intensity unwelcome, Doctor?”
“No!” Julian exclaims joyously. “No, not at all! Will you allow me to be a little off-puttingly intense a little too quickly in turn?”
“I wouldn’t have you any other way.”
“I would like to stay here,” Julian says. “On Cardassia. With you. For as long as you… I know it must seem impulsive and too much and too soon, I realize what the conditions are here, and that it won’t be a walk in the park, but I — but that’s what I want.”
“Julian… very rarely have you given me reason to doubt the strength of your convictions. And whenever I may have doubted them — a weakness of character that resides in me, not you, I assure you — you have dispelled those doubts with admirable elan and forcefulness.” Garak touches the spot on his neck where a scar would have been, had the Doctor not insisted on treating the wound immediately upon leaving the holosuite — fondly remembers Julian’s hands steady both on the trigger and the dermal regenerator later, thinks of the red bloom of blood on fine white fabric, the thrum of his own heart afterwards, awakened. Julian’s eyes follow the movement like he, too, remembers, and he doesn’t look ashamed anymore. “By which I only mean to say — I believe you. And I meant what I said. You’re always welcome here. However long you wish to stay.”
Julian nods slowly. “...alright. Alright. Then I stay.”
“Though more in the moment, I feel I must take pains to point out,” Garak adds gravely, “that only one set of measurements does not a scientifically valid study make. Can we really afford to be so sloppy in our research methods, with so much ideologically at stake?”
“Very true,” Julian agrees, “we must take pains to remedy this at once,” and the stethoscope eventually ends up in a tangle between them as they spend some pleasant minutes being almost as ridiculous as they just were, but at greater length and with more exuberance.
Finally Julian sighs happily and pulls away, nuzzling his nose against Garak’s before he fumbles for the stethoscope lost among the sheets. “Okay, your turn.”
Garak blinks. “Me? I was not aware I was enrolled in this experiment!”
“Yes, it can take a person like that.” Julian lifts his eyebrows and holds the stethoscope up inquiringly. “May I?”
“I — well, certainly, you may. Though I doubt you’ll find anything there you haven’t heard before.”
“No harm in revisiting a good thing, is there?”
“One would think the charm might be watered down by routine. Especially considering how often you had to listen in during the debacle with the wire, with so little in it boding well.”
“One is free to think whatever one pleases, Garak, as long as one recognizes the limitations of one’s own singular perspective,” Julian says, blithely.
Julian conscientiously warms the listening piece against his own arm before moving it to Garak’s chest, avoiding the bright shock of cold metal against skin. Garak could weep and weep and never stop, he really could.
To his own surprise, Garak has to focus to keep his breath steady while Julian listens. As he exhales he thinks about Tain — about the small fault hidden away behind his ribs that had spelled his end, when nothing else in the galaxy had been able to touch him. If the universe itself is not inherently holy just by existing, it at the very least has a sense of humour, for a man like that to be brought down by his own heart in the end.
He can tell Julian must be entertaining some of the same lines of thought, because after a while he glances up and smiles that radiant, open smile of his, relief subtly etched around the edges of it. “Steady as clockwork,” he announces, kissing Garak gently and smiling some more at whatever he hears through the stethoscope in response. “I gather it’s used to working under adverse conditions.”
“Half of them self-imposed, I’m sorry to say.”
“Yeah. That’s often how it works, from what I’ve gathered.” Julian adds: “But… I have heard rumours that it might get easier when it’s not working alone.”
“An interesting thesis,” Garak says. “May I suggest another experiment, Doctor?”
“I’d be incredibly disappointed if you didn’t, Elim.”
And so, beneath a sky made ashen with the souls of billions dead, huddled between the ghosts, in the gentle dark that cradles the living and the dead alike with the unconditional acceptance that is forgiveness’ inescapable twin, two people set out together to find out what might reside in the spaces between atoms.