Work Text:
…
In a twist, Bashir looks nervous, even fretful as he approaches Garak, wringing his hands a bit as he nears their customary lunch table. Garak frowns, puts his spoon down and dabs at his lips with his napkin. “My dear doctor, aren’t you going to eat?”
“Oh, I —“ Bashir looks down at his hands, then up at Garak, seeming surprised to find them empty. “Garak, I need a favor.”
He sounds rushed, apologetic but determined. Garak blinks at his desperate expression, emphasized by the slight trembling of the lower lip. State protect, but the man never seems to realize the appealing picture he paints when not putting on bravado for the women he chats up in Quark’s bar.
“By all means,” he says, and gestures for Bashir to sit. “Anything I can do to help, Doctor.”
Now here’s a pretty coloring, red blooming along those delicate cheekbones. “It’s silly.”
“My dear,” Garak says with finality, and pulls his napkin free from his collar. “Ask.”
Bashir draws in a deep breath, finally taking a hurried, sprawled seat across from him. He lays his arms out on the table, hunching over it, looking up at Garak from under his long eyelashes like he can barely keep his head up. “Something’s gone wrong with my pajamas.”
“Your pajamas,” Garak repeats.
“My pajamas,” Bashir confirms, and brings a hand to his mouth, swallowing the beginning of what would be quite a wide yawn. “They’re all — they feel wrong. They feel off. I can’t sleep.”
“Forgive me for harboring even a slight disbelief that a man who spends the entire day in Starfleet polymer fabric could have issues with his sleepwear.”
“Garak,” Bashir all but whines, eyes wider, more imploring. “I can’t sleep.”
Garak searches idly for the faint bruised shadows that should lurk under those big eyes. Such bluing in a Cardassian might signal the need for a very particular sort of favor, but in Humans it generally means exhaustion. It isn’t there, at least not yet, but the exaggerated sweep of eyelashes prompts a sort of poignant pang in what might yet be called Garak’s heart.
Sentiment. Somehow Humans had missed that one in their list of sins and vices. Garak sighs, but a favor is the least of what he owes the good doctor, and possibly the only way he’ll be allowed an attempt to make whole.
“You replicate your sleep clothes, don’t you?” he asks, resigned to the mission if not the vocabulary.
“Of course,” Bashir says immediately.
Of course. Garak neither flinches nor rolls his eyes. “Likely, my dear, there’s been an update to the system, and the replication budget has been adjusted.”
They stare at each other for a moment, Garak watching a sort of horror dawn in Bashir’s pretty eyes. “Then they’ll never feel like they’re supposed to, will they?”
“You chided me when I said the same about the flavor of the I'danian pudding,” Garak points out, and makes to stand. Bashir leaps to his feet, mouth opening in protest, but Garak talks cheerfully over him. “Come along to my shop, then, Doctor! We’ll make this right.”
“Your lunch,” Bashir begins feebly, winding his fingers together.
“You’ll owe me dinner,” Garak says grandly, and has to smile to himself when Bashir lights up. An easy enough trade for his young friend, he thinks, and a pleasant enough evening for himself.
…
Bashir puts in his replication code for his sleep clothes, the so-called pajamas, in the back of Garak’s shop. Of course the material will be polymer, but it ought to resemble some sort of naturally occurring fabric or blend. Garak watches with professional interest as Bashir lifts the shirt and trouser set, wincing a bit as it slides over his palms.
“What’s the difference in feel?” he asks, moving to take it from Bashir’s cringing grip.
“It’s… it’s almost slick,” Bashir begins, rubbing his hands together briskly. “Feels clingy. The other ones felt softer. Warmer, maybe.”
Warmer, hm? Garak doesn’t point out that there are easier ways to make the station warmer. He’s been banned from posting complaints about the temperature in the station’s “suggestions for improvement” tab in the public access system. Apparently, coding a program to flood the tab with hundreds of complaints each day is comparable to harassment, or even sabotage. Garak thinks Chief O’Brien is simply jealous of a simple tailor’s coding skill.
“Likely the polymer volume has been reduced,” Garak muses, rubbing the material between his fingers. There is an excessive smoothness to it, speaking to longer chains, which would lead to an overall thinning of the material and weakening of the knit. “A simpler code yields a poorer fabric. Think of it like thread count.”
“Thread count,” Bashir repeats dubiously, and Garak looks up, appalled.
“Don’t tell me you replicate generic bedding,” he begs, and sighs heavily at Bashir’s blush. “My dear, really! You’re having trouble with your sleep just now?”
Garak has done his fair share of breaking and entering, but never before has he been tempted to do so in order to replace every single fabric in a man’s home. Glaring at Bashir, seeing that blush heat all the way down his throat and likely to his collarbone, Garak wonders how long it would take before the doctor even suspected. Probably not until Garak ripped out the carpet.
“Come here,” he says, and takes Bashir’s arm, soothing himself with a little squeeze of a bicep as he leads Bashir to his workbench. “Tell me which of these feels most like your sleep clothes did.”
He has a large number of fabric swatches, from cheap to prohibitively expensive, with the latter mostly purchased by the diplomatic set such as Lwaxana Troi. Bashir pokes at them tentatively until Garak tuts, takes his hand in his own, and forces him to finger the material properly.
“Maybe, this one?” Bashir says, tilting his head quizzically as he takes up the Inkarian wool sample again. “It’s the closest, I would say.”
“But not the same.” Garak purses his lips. Something like a wool blend, then. Sturdy and warm, softer than slick, more structured than loose. “Which do you find most comfortable?”
“Ah, um.” Bashir runs his index finger over the sample, and over another, but before Garak can correct him yet again taps the second swatch. “I like this one best, but it’s not like my jimjams.”
“Your…” Garak’s brain stutters. “Jimjams?”
Bashir’s face floods with color.
It’s Garak’s understanding that Humans don’t sense heat in the same way Cardassians do, hence his surprise that Bashir wants warm… jimjams. Jimjams. The word repeats in Garak’s mind, in Bashir’s voice, gentle and lyrical, and the warmth glowing from chest to what, on a Cardassian, would be his crest makes Bashir the most enthralling figure in the entire room. Not that he isn’t anyway, but this sudden outpouring of heat makes Garak’s palms itch with the desire to press into it, against that soft Human skin.
State preserve, but the doctor is a beautiful thing when he flushes with such bright emotion.
“Why don’t I use the second fabric, then?” is all he says, smiling cheerfully and gathering up the samples. “I’ll take the pattern from the replicated set, and have this ready for you as soon as custom allows.”
“Oh, I can’t, I can’t just replicate it?” Bashir asks, a sort of hopelessness in his voice. His eyes are cast down now, and his hands clenched.
“If you could, I would be out of a job,” Garak says archly, and takes Bashir’s arm again, employing another squeeze. It’s an indulgence, but one he is compelled to take. “Go on back to your Infirmary, my dear. We’ll meet again tonight."
…
Custom is slow, as it tends to be midweek. Garak has a few commissions awaiting his attention, but there’s nothing pressing. Amused at the thought of a Starfleet officer finding fault in polymer sleepwear, charmed by the memory of Bashir’s glowing blush, Garak swiftly deconstructs the replicated jimjams and shakes his head over the simplicity of the pattern.
“All this and dinner, too,” he murmurs. On the face of it, it’s a very poor trade indeed: Bashir’s chosen fabric is, unsurprisingly, Andorian silk. Warm without clinging, soft without slipping, one of the most hardwearing yet elegant fabrics of the quadrant. And the amount to make a full set of sleep shirt and trousers would set a customer back enough to make a Ferengi cry. This particular bolt was slated for a dress meant to draw more Betazoid custom, dyed a deep wine red that never seems to be out of fashion in that set, and should have sold for far more than he’d spent acquiring it.
But what is the price of a life? Garak hums as he cuts, as he pins, as he sews. Bashir, who sleeps in replicated sheets, will never, ever know. How easy it is to settle debts with a man who never keeps receipts. The only thing Bashir would ever ask of him is to live, and to live well. Unfathomable. Garak IS going to rip out his carpeting, in fact, and grow orchids for his bedside table.
The only way in which he strays from the replicator pattern is to adjust the fastening from Terran buttons to Cardassian fabric anchors. The simple flat-knot construction, made to slip into place and lock with just a gentle pull, to come loose again with a pinch and tug, is not only far more comfortable than the hard material of a button, but sleeker without sacrificing style. It shouldn’t be difficult for a surgeon to figure out.
All of this means that the afternoon flies by, even with a few breaks for tea and chatty customers, and the sleep shirt, at least, is in its final stages when Bashir makes his hesitant entrance to the shop at around eighteen hundred hours. “Garak? Are you still open?”
“Come ‘round the back, Doctor!” he calls out, swiftly removing his close-work lenses. No sense in appearing his age, after all. Bashir makes his way over with a hesitant step, ducking his head and looking awkward in his lanky frame. “How is the polymer treating you this evening?”
“I told you, it’s the sleepwear,” Bashir begins, and then startles at the sight of the shirt on Garak’s workbench. “You’ve finished it already?”
“Not quite,” Garak demurs, flipping it to show the unfinished hems near the bottom. “But it was a simple pattern; pleasant work, really.”
“Really,” Bashir repeats, frowning moodily at the shirt.
“I can hardly let our Chief Medical Officer go without adequate rest,” Garak says, standing up and brushing his hands. “But I suppose a break for dinner would be welcome enough. Back to the Replimat, or do we dare brave Quark’s?”
Bashir is still staring at the shirt, a strange look coming over his face. One that Garak is, unfortunately, quite accustomed to seeing, though not in current circumstances. “You didn’t have to do this immediately, Garak. I didn’t mean to disrupt your entire day.”
“You didn’t at all,” Garak says. It’s guilt, that look on Bashir’s face. “You asked for a favor, and I granted it.”
“I asked for a favor, not that you should put yourself out for me,” Bashir says in a rush, and Garak has to wince, because guilt is not a pretty look on his pretty doctor. Where the audacity and embarrassment of the morning left him warm and glowing, recrimination and regret leave him cold and withdrawn, pale and almost sickly. “I can manage in replicated pajamas, Garak. Don’t waste your time on me.”
“Waste my time,” Garak repeats, and feels something ugly and hot in his chest, in his gut.
“You have customers, and —“
“You have never been and never will be a waste of my time,” Garak all but barks, the words slamming into the frozen moment like meteorites. Bashir jumps, rearing back and almost tripping over himself, and Garak wrestles the ugliness back inside himself, pushes it deep. Takes a calming breath and ignores the sourness in his throat. “If you’re trying to get out of dinner, my dear, simply say so.”
“No!” Bashir protests immediately, and reaches out in an instinctive panic. Garak’s scales begin to settle at the unthinking honesty of it. “No, Garak. I just, I don’t want to, I don’t —“
“Do not say waste my time again,” Garak says quietly, “or I shall be forced to remind you of how dearly I wasted yours.”
“You never,” Bashir begins, and cringes, mouth dropping open, when Garak gestures to his head, to the site of his implant. “That wasn’t a waste!”
“Then neither is this,” Garak says coldly, gesturing to the sleep shirt.
Bashir is still cringing, bent over himself, the visceral need to protect one’s soft belly. “No, no, that’s not what I meant.”
“I don’t care what you meant,” Garak snaps, and it isn’t true, but it’s true enough. State preserve, but he’s angry. Angry as he has never been before with his dear doctor. “Before you removed the wire, I was wasting my time. What precious little I had left. This isn’t a waste. This will last you long after I’m gone, Doctor.”
“I think I went about this all wrong,” Bashir says haltingly. His hand is clutching the corner of Garak’s work bench, but at least he’s coming out of his protective hunch.
“I agree. I think you meant to thank me, to compliment the work I’ve done, and to tell me where we’re set to dine.”
…
They go to the Celestial Cafe, a far cry from their usual routine. Garak exchanges a warm greeting with Chalan, who doesn’t seem at all surprised to see the two of them, and who seats them in a private section near the back.
Bashir’s color has come back, though Garak wishes he hadn’t been so quick to anger, had been able to tease him into the lovely glow from earlier in the afternoon. But it’s such a preposterous idea, that Garak could waste his time. If not for Bashir, he wouldn’t have any.
After Chalan has brought them a wine list, featuring some very new varietals of Bajoran spring wine, Garak broaches the subject again, albeit from a side angle. “I hope you won’t object when I make the trousers, Doctor.”
“This isn’t the favor I asked for,” Bashir says, not looking up from his menu.
Garak puts the wine list down. “What do you mean?”
Bashir finally looks at him, up from under his stern brow. “I asked you to tell me why my pajamas felt wrong. You did. I meant to go to Chief and figure out how to change the code back.”
“So you don’t want bespoke sleepwear.” Garak is going to have to kill him. It will be such a shame, such a pretty young life snuffed out in such a terrible way, with a silk sleep shirt shoved down his throat.
Bashir slams his menu down on the table, anger suffusing his cheeks with that glorious heat as he hisses, “I don’t want to force you into doing things for me because I performed a surgery on you!”
“You didn’t force me into doing anything, you fool!” Garak hisses back. Catching sight of Chalan approaching with two tasting glasses of a new red varietal, he sits back, and Bashir follows suit, both of them quiet and polite as she places them on the table.
“First pressing from Jo’Kala,” she tells them, and they each take a polite sip. It’s surprisingly good, Garak thinks, and watches with relish as Bashir blanches. He evidently disagrees.
After Bashir requests a sweeter wine, smiling winningly at Chalan, she leaves them to peruse the menu once more. Bashir leans forward again, speaking in a low tone through gritted teeth.
“You don’t owe me anything for doing my job.”
Garak remains set back, staring coldly over his wine glass. “Going after Tain wasn’t your job.”
“Clearly you know nothing of patient history taking.”
Garak has no idea how to answer that, so he doesn’t. “Regardless, you must admit you were terribly rude to call my work a waste of time.”
“That isn’t what I meant!” Bashir sits up again, all smiles, as Chalan comes back with their wine, bright and sparkling in her usual fashion. Garak swallows hard and tries to repress a little of the flush in his scales. She takes their orders and winks at Garak as she walks off; ah, she’s noticed the bluing of his ridges. That might come up at the next Merchant’s Association meeting.
“Don’t put off your customers because I asked for a favor, please,” Bashir says, leaning forward again, eyes wide and beseeching. They’ve reset, Garak realizes with some relief: they’re back to the conversation in the Replimat. They’re back to the favor.
“I can do what I want,” he says archly, emptying the tasting glass. Silently, with a set expression that can’t quite hide his own relief, Bashir places his own tasting glass closer to Garak.
“The shirt looks beautiful,” Bashir says, and that pretty blush, the gentle one, spreads along high, delicate cheekbones as Garak picks up the second tasting glass and makes sure to drink from the same side, faintly smudged, as Bashir had drank. “Thank you, Garak.”
“You’re very welcome, my dear,” Garak says in return, moving to cross one leg over the other. As he does so, his foot nudges Bashir’s leg, and that beautiful, glowing flush comes back.
“I can pay for them, though,” Bashir declares, lifting his chin. Garak blinks at him innocently, rubbing his foot up and down against Bashir’s knee, watching the blush deepen and deepen. He can feel the heat of it from his side of the table. “The pajamas.”
“The jimjams?”
“Don’t make fun of me,” Bashir begs, a smile starting to creep helplessly onto his face. He doesn’t move his knee. Garak shifts, sliding his foot around so that he’s rubbing it on the inside of Bashir’s leg. He watches, riveted, as Bashir swallows hard.
There’s really nothing like a good argument to get a flirtation moving along.
“My darling doctor,” Garak begins, noting and exulting over the little jump Bashir makes at his choice of endearment, “a full length set of sleepwear in Andorian silk is not something even a Federation officer can afford easily. Accept the gift, and we’ll say nothing more of it.”
Chalan, clearly lurking nearby to eavesdrop, ruins it by gasping aloud.
Definitely coming up at the next Merchant’s Association meeting.
…