Chapter Text
Garak is gone for a week and a half. Julius hasn’t been back in his room since that first day. He can’t allow himself the slightest temptation, not when he knows that the envelope with his name on it is lurking in Garak’s second drawer.
When he gets home on the tenth evening, he opens the door to the flat and can almost feel the difference. “Garak?” he calls. There are two voices talking.
“Julius!” Garak stands up from the couch, and Julius sees the hitch as he does it. “It seems you ate all the food that I left for you. I’m glad to see it.”
“You were gone—are you watching television?” He didn’t even realize the thing worked. It came with the flat and neither he nor Kay ever turned it on.
“Yes, the job took a little longer than expected. Matching wedding dresses—you can’t begin to imagine the trouble!”
Julius approaches him slowly. “It looks like it was a lot of trouble, the way you’re standing.” Garak hasn’t even carried his luggage into his room yet. It’s as though he came home and only managed to turn the television on before collapsing.
“Ah. Yes. I’m afraid I got in between two brides, and one of them landed quite a blow.” He grimaces. “I could use your assistance.”
“Whatever you need.”
Garak raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure?”
Julius can’t tell if that’s supposed to be innuendo or a warning. “I said I would help. What do you need?”
“In the bathroom, there’s a medical kit. As you may be aware. Please bring it out here, and a chair for me to sit in.”
Julius never searched the bathroom, he realizes. He’s overlooked the medical kit every night since Garak moved in, dismissing it as something ordinary. It’s surprisingly heavy. When he returns to the living room with the kit and a chair, Garak has divested himself of his sweater and is painstakingly unbuttoning his shirt. His mouth is pulled tight. “I can help with that,” Julius says.
“All right.” Garak sits in the chair, lets his arms ease to his sides, and allows Julius to unbutton the shirt. It brings them very close together, close enough that Julius can feel Garak’s harsh breath.
Julius focuses on the buttons so that he won’t look up into Garak’s face. “A fight between two brides, you said?” He finishes the buttons and helps slide the shirt off Garak, one arm at a time.
“Vicious. In the kit, there are scissors. Cut the undershirt up the side—carefully, pull it away from my skin.”
Julius obeys, increasingly alarmed. When he’s cut the undershirt off, he sees a bandage, blood seeping through, with livid bruising radiating out from it. “You’re bleeding through the bandage,” he says, and he keeps his voice very steady. “And you can’t tell me your ribs aren’t broken.”
The irritated hiss of breath tells him he’s right. “There should be a clean bandage in the kit,” Garak says. “Change—”
“Yes, I know how to change a bandage.” He peels it off slowly. “Garak—did you stitch this closed yourself?”
“Most certainly not!” Garak looks offended. “I would have done a much better job.”
“You should see a real doctor,” Julius tells him.
“I’ve seen a real doctor. I simply need a little assistance changing the bandage. If that’s too much to ask—”
“No.” Julius takes a long, slow breath. “What started the fight?” He kneels next to Garak.
“The first bride demanded much more white tulle for her dress than we had agreed.” Garak doesn’t flinch when Julius applies pressure, even though it must be excruciating. “It wouldn’t have left enough for the second bride’s dress.”
“And how did this happen? One of them stabbed you and the other hit you across the ribs?” The stitched wound is nauseating.
Garak smiles at him, eyes wide, even as he tenses beneath Julius’s hands. “Indeed! The second tried to get at the tulle herself, with an open pair of scissors, and the first threw an iron at her.”
“And they both hit you instead.” Julius smooths the bandage on as gently as possible. Garak’s skin is hot beneath his hands and he ghosts his fingers out to the edges of the bruises, until he’s touching undamaged skin. “What an unfortunate coincidence.”
“Indeed.” Garak’s gaze fixes on Julius, and he looks very tired all of a sudden. “Eventually their mothers pulled them apart, but it was a close thing.”
“You should be more careful,” Julius says. He still has one hand on Garak’s bare skin, almost at his lower back.
Garak closes his eyes. “So I’ve been told.” Julius watches the rise and fall of his chest. “Would you mind helping me to my room? I suspect that rest will be the best remedy.”
Julius lifts one hand to rest on Garak’s back, takes Garak’s hand in the other. Garak leans on him as he stands, until he’s mostly straightened up, and they walk together the few steps to Garak’s room. Julius waits for Garak to turn the knob, then helps him in, until they’re standing next to the bed. When Julius turns to leave, Garak says, “Wait.”
“What is it?” If not for Garak’s injury, this would feel dangerous—the two of them here in this room, in the darkness.
“I’d rather not sleep in my trousers.”
When Julius looks at his face, it’s shadowed, but for his eyes—luminous from the moonlight outside, and fixed on Julius. Very slowly, Julius unbuckles his belt, and then unbuttons his trousers with a touch even more delicate than that he used to search Garak’s room. He looks up and sees Garak still staring at him. “I hope you asked both brides for additional compensation,” he says, because he can’t take the silent tension any longer, and finds that his voice is a little hoarse.
“Oh, yes, quite a bit more.”
He can feel the vibration from Garak’s voice. When he goes to slide the trousers off Garak’s hips, he’s—clumsy?—and his fingertips slip just barely beneath the waistband of Garak’s briefs, just enough that Julius realizes and snatches his hands back. His cheeks are burning. “Will you be all right from there?”
“I think I can manage,” Garak says.
* * * * *
Garak is conspicuously absent for the next few days. Julius expects something—some further commentary on the fact that he ate every bit of the food that Garak left him, or some indication that he slipped up and Garak knows that he searched the room, or even just some of Garak’s usual good-natured lies. But Garak is gone except when he’s asleep in his bedroom, the door shut. He doesn’t ask for Julius’s help changing the bandage again, either.
Julius grows gradually more melancholy, which is ridiculous under the circumstances. He decides to blame it on work. He’s reached a scene in this month’s story in which the veteran soldier is forced to confront a young alien who wants to fight him, and it’s hitting him harder than he means it to. He drags his typewriter into the kitchen and sets it on the table—a true sign of desperation, he and Kay did it only when one of them needed privacy from the other—and digs out the bottle of Scotch that Garak gave him. He works through it steadily while staring at the half-empty piece of paper in his typewriter.
“Julius.”
It’s a testament to how much liquor he must have consumed that he’s startled by Garak’s arrival. “Garak! I didn’t hear you come home.”
“I assumed,” Garak says. “You’re usually quite—aware. And you don’t usually write at the kitchen table, do you.”
“No, only when things are dire—Come, sit, have a drink. I’ve consumed far too much of this by myself.” There’s an empty glass next to him and he realizes he’s been drinking directly from the bottle. “If you don’t mind—”
Garak sits in the other kitchen chair and pours himself a good measure, then passes the bottle back to Julius. “What’s brought on this—rather uncharacteristic choice of drinking location?”
Julius frowns. “I’m—struggling with a scene.”
“It’s making you a bit maudlin, if you’ve decided to bring your typewriter in here and drink this much.” Garak watches him steadily. “Do you do this whenever I’m gone?”
Whenever he's gone—Garak has had days now to examine his bedroom and drawn whatever meaning he wants to from its undisturbed state. God, Julius wants to know what meaning he drew from it. He wants to know what Garak thinks of him, if he should have opened one of the envelopes. If Garak was disappointed that Julius hadn’t engaged with his game, or thought that Julius hadn’t been good enough to so much as get to one of the envelopes. Garak's eyes are still fixed on him, patient. “Do you know, Garak, that when you look at me like that, I want to tell you all my secrets?” He doesn’t even mean to say that much.
Garak appears unsurprised. “It’s not an uncommon reaction,” he says. He inspects the glass. “This is really quite good, you know. You shouldn’t be drinking it when you’re already drunk.” He stoppers the bottle and moves it from Julius’s reach. “I suppose you’d like something else.”
“You know, Garak,” Julius begins. Garak hands him a bottle of Jack Daniels with a grimace and Julius takes a swig. “You’re right, that was a waste.” He’s not sure why he even has a bottle of Jack Daniels in this flat. “Do you want to know a secret?” He says it softly, as though the War Office has a listening device hidden in this flat. If they do, they know far more about him than he’d like to think.
“I want to know all your secrets.” Garak fixes his crystalline eyes on Julius’s. “But I’ll settle for one.”
“The army knew I was too young, when I enlisted.” He thinks he sees the slightest flicker of disappointment in Garak’s expression, quickly stifled.
“That’s no secret,” Garak protests. “You told me when you first met that you lied about your age. With your face, I can’t imagine that anyone would have been fooled.”
Julius shakes his head. “They chose the youngest of us—I suppose they thought we would adjust better. One hundred of us, as the first subjects.” Garak’s eyes turn icy. “They gave us—experimental drugs. The hope was that they could eventually develop drugs that would allow soldiers to become brilliant tacticians, able to memorize enemy troop movements, see broader strategies where no one else could. They were hoping for other benefits too. Enhanced strength, speed. Perhaps even special powers like in the stories I write.”
“I see.” Garak is perfectly motionless. Julius knows how to do that too. Has done it before. It’s a useful skill.
“They did—ask us. For consent.” Julius laughs a little at the idea of that. “The first thirty lost their minds. The doctors said they’d all developed schizophrenia, said it must have been an underlying defect triggered by the drugs.”
Garak inclines his head in the tiniest nod.
“They adjusted the drugs, tried another round. The next twenty-five were—insensate. Unable to speak. Shells that kept breathing. All of those had to be institutionalized.” He likes to think that’s what happened. “And then they adjusted it again, and tried it on the rest of us.” He rubs his hand across his eyes. They’re burning a little. “Most of us ended up like me.”
“Like you?” Garak’s voice is very soft. “Brilliant?”
Julius laughs a little. “I don’t know if I would call it that. I read very quickly, and I remember all of it. I notice details—every detail—and remember them—I was so surprised to see you at the club for the first time and learn that you’d been coming here for a long time. I can’t think of a single other person who’s been able to hide from me that way.”
“You wouldn’t, if they’ve never approached you,” Garak pointed out. Julius raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure you were aware of my presence in the past and simply dismissed it.”
“No,” Julius says, and finds that he’s jabbing his pointer finger against the second button of Garak’s shirt. It has the slightest sheen to it, but he doesn’t let himself investigate further. “No, I don’t forget people. I should have recognized you in the tailor shop, if I had seen you at the club before.”
Garak fixes his eyes on Julius and knocks his own glass off the table. This time, Julius catches it before it can hit the ground. “Improved reflexes as well, I would think. Unless you were naturally gifted.”
“You did that on purpose. To distract me.”
“Yes, of course.” Garak looks unrepentant. “What else?”
“Hand-eye coordination.”
“Yes, even under the influence of substantial quantities of alcohol. Fascinating.” Garak is staring at his hands now. “But not strength or speed or other unusual abilities?” Julius shakes his head. “I wonder that they didn’t make you a sniper.”
Cold washes through Julius’s entire body. “No.” His hand is steady on his glass when he takes a drink—his hands are always steady. “No, they did that with—one of us. One of the—successes. He lost his mind very quickly. They didn’t try it again.” Bad enough that Julius remembers the trajectory of every bullet he fired at faceless German soldiers. Bad enough that he remembers vomiting long after his stomach was empty, after they liberated the camp. “They distributed us into different units after the treatment ended, to see if things changed in…real-life scenarios.”
“And then they just—let you go at the end of the war? They didn’t try to keep you?”
“A few of us stayed behind. Voluntarily.”
Garak snorts. “I suppose that’s a comforting lie.”
“The doctors suggested that perhaps their memories could be—fixed. Made gentler. Some of us were willing to risk it again. I was not.” He shrugs. “Were I them, I would have set someone to watch me, but I suppose I would have spotted anyone.” The thought occurs to him. “Unless it’s you.” Even as he says it, he doesn’t really believe it.
Garak leans forward and covers Julius’s free hand with his own, then looks him directly in the eyes. This close, his eyes look almost like clear blue glass. “I assure you, Julius, I am not employed by any government to watch you.” Any government. What a strange way to say it.
“Do you want to know another secret?” Julius begins to turn his hand palm-up.
Garak is suddenly—closed, his hand withdrawn from above Julius’s, new distance between them. “I think that’s as many secrets as you want to tell me tonight,” Garak says. He stands. “I suggest that you drink some water and go to bed. You don’t appear to be accomplishing much writing.”
Julius is struggling to keep up with the speed with which things have changed. “I didn’t mean—” He stops and forces his mouth into a smile. “I hope you don’t regret that you’ve agreed to live with—someone unnatural. I suppose I don’t know if anyone else has manifested strange symptoms since the war—”
Garak’s hand rests lightly on his shoulder, so lightly that he has to turn his head to confirm it’s there. “Not at all.” He starts to leave the kitchen.
“Garak,” Julius says. He inhales very slowly, feels his lungs inflate. He can’t resist asking. “Why do you have so many passports?”
“I’m a citizen of the world,” and that’s glee in Garak’s voice—no doubt at the fact that Julius broke first and admitted to searching. “Incidentally, I notice you haven’t had any loud dreams recently. If you think you might have one tonight, what with your confession, it might be best if I slept in your bed from the start instead of joining you after you’ve already woken both of us.”