Chapter Text
After the revelation of his secret, the dear doctor is—even less restrained. He’s always been recklessly emotional, at least to Garak’s sensibilities (but then, what human isn’t recklessly emotional, you have only to look at Captain Sisko), and now it turns out that all of that was a beautifully constructed front for who he really is. No feigned awkwardness, no mooning after the Trill, never even the ordinary level of clumsiness that inheres in every non-Cardassian that Garak has ever met. His eyes were always a little starry when he babbled on about frontier medicine, and now they’re sharp, clear. When the promenade is crowded, he slides through the crowd easily, never jostled. When Garak knocks a laser scalpel off his tailor’s bench, Julian catches it in a motion so fluid that it barely registers as out-of-the-ordinary. He stops losing at darts, stops losing at springball, goes into Quark’s every so often to run the dom-jot tables against passing travelers, and always knows when to stop just before anyone gets angry.
It's marvelous to watch him shuck his old identity now that the pretense is over. Garak, of course, has no prejudices against genetic engineering. He doesn’t know that he could slip out of any of the various identities that he wears, but it’s almost intoxicating to watch someone else do it, to derive immense satisfaction from seeing something done properly. So few things are done properly here.
Garak is alone in the shop, staring in despair at the truly hideous wedding costume that he’s constructed, when Julian strolls in and says, “Garak.”
“Good day to you, my dear doctor.” How much of the knife’s-edge shape of his shoulders is a release of his old identity, and how much of it is left over from his time in Internment Camp 371? “Can I help you with something? Have you finally decided to take me up on my offer of a new suit?”
He expects the usual dodge, the flailing, intended to cover some latent discomfort that the doctor carries about his own body, but instead Julian says, “Yes.”
Internally, Garak is surprised, but he’s too well-trained to let it show on his face. Instead, as though it’s the most natural thing in the world, he says, “At last! Come, follow me, I’ll need to take your measurements.”
Julian follows him into a fitting room and looks surprised when he pulls out an old-fashioned measuring tape. “You measure by hand? I would have assumed—”
“Don’t worry, I also use a sizing scanner. But the tape tells me things that the digital imaging can’t. How cloth will lie against your skin, the way that you twist your shoulders or your hips—everything that I need to make the perfect suit. Now, undress so that I can measure accurately.”
Julian laughs. “You know, sometimes you actually sound like a real tailor.” He slips off his shoes and removes his uniform with swift, precise motions. Garak takes a purely professional moment to examine the shape of him, his sharp shoulders and narrow hips, the way he holds himself with perfect balance. Imagine what Garak himself could have been, if Tain had taken the same efforts as the Bashirs.
“You have ample evidence all around you that I am, indeed, a humble tailor.” Garak begins with the column of his neck, then the breadth of each shoulder—sometimes they aren’t uniform, though Julian’s are identical. He slides his fingers along the tape to press it flat to Julian’s skin and thinks that he hears the faintest indrawn breath. Julian’s skin betrays him, prickling with the slightest hint of goosebumps—human bodies hide nothing—and Garak says, “Do tell me if I cause you any discomfort.”
“After the camp, I think I can handle a little tickling from a measuring tape.”
Very carefully, Garak measures from nipple to nipple and notes the way that they harden beneath his touch. “Even with your particular—gifts, I find it hard to imagine that you spent much time in the ring the way that the Klingons did.”
Julian laughs again. “None at all. But you know me, I talk too much.”
“I have never found that to be the case,” Garak says honestly. And how much of that was pretense too? Is this the way that Julian feels every time Garak reveals another of his identities? He finds he doesn’t like that thought.
“The Jem’Hadar would disagree with you. They believed that the best way to keep me from talking too much was to put me in isolation.” He truly is marvelous at this, the way his voice stays level even as he relates the story. Garak crouches to measure his legs, from heel to knee, knee to hip, inseam, and he feels the heat of Julian’s body as he does it. “It was—very cold. Dark. I worried at first that I might lose the use of my fingers.” He does flex his fingers almost unconsciously.
Garak recognizes this—unburdening that humans sometimes do. That even Cardassians do, when necessary. “You did not, I see.” He takes one of Julian’s hands in his and measures the length of each finger, for no reason other than to feel the warmth of those fingers. They are quite intact.
“No, nor my toes.” The slightest shiver ripples across his skin.
Garak pulls away regretfully. “You may dress yourself again.” He would like to stand here a little longer and look at Julian’s vulnerable form, the softness of his skin even where it pulls tight over bone, but he has no reason to do that. Apparently Julian’s parents did not see fit to make their son truly beyond human limitations.
Julian dresses just as swiftly as he undressed. “I’ll leave it to you to choose the color.” He smiles a little wryly. “As I suspect you would anyway.”
“Of course.” Garak tucks away the measuring tape. “Lunch?”
“I’m in the middle of running an experiment,” Julian says. “Why don’t we have dinner instead? My quarters? My real quarters, that is.”
A surprising deviation. “Very well. The suit will not be ready by tonight, of course.”
“Of course. I wouldn’t want you to rush it.”
“Until tonight, then, my dear doctor.” For some reason, the endearment tastes strange in his mouth this time.
* * * * *
Garak is punctual. He certainly did not spend the last ten minutes in the shop calculating exactly how long it would take to walk to Julian’s quarters and identifying which of the station’s residents he would need to avoid to prevent undesirable delay. That would have been unnecessary. And, in any case, neither he nor the doctor arrives on time for their designated lunches each time. In fact, Julian is routinely a little late due to some minor injury or other that he has insisted on finishing healing.
But Garak is punctual. When Julian calls, “Come in,” he enters to discover that the quarters are pleasantly warm, the lights dimmed to a tolerable level. There are two glasses, a bottle of clear liquid, and a small dish of ice set on a low table in front of a—sofa? These quarters are substantially modified from their Cardassian origins. “Sit down,” Julian says, gesturing him toward the sofa. When he does, Julian joins him, a little closer than Garak would allow anyone but him. “Here,” Julian says, and lifts the bottle. “I thought we should have a toast.”
“A toast?”
There’s that reckless flash of teeth, that new heedlessness. “All my secrets laid bare,” Julian says. He pours a healthy amount of the liquid into each glass. “This is called raki.” He passes Garak one of the glasses and says, “Now, watch.” When he drops an ice cube into Garak’s glass, the raki begins to turn milky white all around it.
Garak swirls the glass gently. “All your secrets hidden again.”
“Very well. To secrets,” Julian says, and clinks his glass against Garak’s before drinking.
Humans love their anise-flavored liquor, for reasons that Garak will never understand. “My dear doctor, this is vile—” Perhaps he should have been expecting it, when Julian leans in and kisses him, but he isn’t—so much so, in fact, that he doesn’t pull away immediately but instead wonders at the softness of Julian’s lips, at the warmth of his hand when Julian touches it to his face. As a result, they pull back at the same time. In the dim light, Julian’s eyes are very bright.
“All my secrets laid bare,” Julian repeats, and his voice is a little—huskier that usual, to Garak’s practiced ear.
“My dear—Doctor Bashir,” Garak begins. “I don’t wish to offend you, and I certainly never intended to mislead you.”
“Really.” Julian’s voice is tight now. “Really.”
“I have never—desired a more intimate relationship with you.”
“Five years of lunches and holosuite dates and book recommendations and that fitting today, when you had me undress so that you could put your hands all over me, and you never intended to mislead me.”
“I enjoy our—friendship,” Garak says, and it’s strange even to contemplate that he considers a human a friend. “But I am not—” He considers. “I have never coupled with a human. If that is all you desire, I am open to a new experience—”
For all that he is superior to other humans in many ways, Julian’s emotions are plain on his face. Shock, pain, disappointment, and Garak hates to see any of them there. Has Julian misinterpreted everything so poorly, when he is supposed to be so intelligent? “No,” Julian says. “No, I don’t do that anymore.” He stands abruptly. “I’m sorry to impose on you. I’m afraid I’m not feeling very hungry anymore.”
Garak stands as well. “Truly, I regret any pain—” and is he apologizing? This is dreadful. What a dreadful misunderstanding. There is a part of him, deep in the corner of his brain where the Obsidian Order lives on, that reminds him what power he has just been given, but he can’t find it in himself to clutch at that power now.
“No,” Julian says. “It was my mistake.”
“Perhaps…lunch instead?” For all that Julian has misinterpreted, Garak doesn’t wish to end their friendship over something like this.
“Yes,” Julian agrees. “Perhaps next week.”