Chapter Text
Garak watches Julian carefully after that to make sure that he doesn’t slip back into overwork. He dislikes the infirmary, but he makes note of the hours at which he sees Julian coming and going, and occasionally resorts to intimidating a nurse into warning him if Julian is there for too long. He does his best to ensure that Julian actually consumes his meal when the two of them eat together. “My dear doctor,” he says, “while it is superior to most other beverages, a man cannot live on red-leaf tea alone.”
He sees a flash of laughter in Julian’s eyes, an expression that has returned more and more lately. “You know, I managed to feed myself quite well before you began to harass me about it,” Julian says, but he accepts the roll that Garak has offered him and takes a large bite of it.
“Incidentally, I’ve been contemplating your questionable selection of our next novel for discussion,” Garak says. “It’s been quite some time since we read anything Cardassian—”
Julian swallows rapidly, and Garak does not observe the line of his throat. “I see you had an ulterior motive when you suggested that I eat. And it has not, it’s been longer since we read anything Human. I thought we were branching out from our own cultural backgrounds?”
“You must admit, it’s more satisfying to recommend a personal favorite to another person and experience their reaction to it than it is to read something entirely new.”
Julian looks startled. “In some ways, I suppose, but—”
“It makes for a more stimulating discussion, that is. One person’s greater familiarity creates opportunities to identify—themes and techniques that the other has not yet observed, while the fresh perspective of the other allows for new interpretations.”
Julian raises an eyebrow. “You mean you actually listened when I told you that The Never-Ending Sacrifice would have been better with a little more poetic variation to it?”
Garak wonders if Julian recalls his admission that that’s when Garak first began to feel—but of course Julian recalls it. Julian recalls everything. “I merely think—”
“I think you’re overlooking the risk of one person becoming overly defensive of the literary merit of a work, or of their individual connection to it,” Julian says. “I’d think that you, of all people, would say that sentimental attachment—”
“Of course.” Garak’s mouth dries, and he has to take a mouthful of tea before he can speak again. “Of course, if a reader is sentimental as to the literary work, it prevents clear-eyed debate. I realize that you may struggle with such attachments—”
“An unforgivable insult,” Julian says, and his smile is so warm that Garak finds himself thrown further off balance. Thankfully, he sees Ziyal looking around the replimat for a place to sit and can wave her over to join them.
The headaches are an inconvenience whose significance Garak wishes he could ignore. Certainly, he is accustomed to discomfort, but for so long the worst of it has been dulled by the endorphins that his implant provides him. It’s been a long time—a very long time—since he’s been plagued with the kind of sudden stabbing headache that seems to afflict him now. It doesn’t help that his skin seems to be giving way too, the areas that Julian has healed turning dark and swollen. When they use the Cardassian sauna holoprogram, he catches Ziyal darting glances at his bare skin and she does a very poor job of concealing her reactions. He hasn’t kissed her since the first time in the program, and it seems that she’s come to accept his lack of romantic interest and sees him now only as a fellow exile.
Given Ziyal’s expression after their latest session, he’s unsurprised when Julian comms him shortly thereafter to summon him to the infirmary.
“Doctor.” He pastes a pleasant, mildly uninterested expression on his face. “No matter what you say, I am not going to suffer through another Bajoran folk epic—”
Julian looks inexplicably sad. “There’s no veto option, Garak. I haven’t forgotten about your cellular degeneration, you know. I’d like to check that nothing’s changed.”
How Garak has dreaded this. He can envision the course of the conversation, laid out before it begins, and yet he can’t steer himself away from it. “If you must.” He looks around carefully to ensure there is no one else to see before he removes his shirt.
Julian does a very poor job of stifling a gasp. “Garak! When did this happen?”
Garak avoids his eyes briefly, even though that itself reveals too much. “I don’t examine myself in the mirror on a daily basis,” he says tightly. “I don’t much like what I see in it.” Julian looks curiously embarrassed at that, as though he’d forgotten Garak is monstrous. “I have found myself with slightly less energy,” he admits, and then, because he can feel how closely Julian is watching, he yields and says, “Perhaps a mildly reduced ability to focus for long periods of time.” The idea that it will diminish further terrifies him.
“Well, that explains your opinions on Preloc’s early work—you skimmed all the dull bits.” Julian’s voice is very gentle. He moves with exaggerated slowness, presumably to ensure that Garak can see what he’s doing as he lays a hand on Garak’s shoulder, well clear of the wounded area. Garak can’t stop a shiver at the cool softness of his hand. Julian scans the area with his tricorder and exhales sharply. “It’s as though—as though the dermal regeneration is being undone slowly. But your old scars are unchanged, which suggests that the degeneration is linked to the particular function of a dermal regenerator.” Julian shifts his hand on Garak’s shoulder, as though he wants to stroke it. “Is there anything else you’d like to tell me?”
Pain lances through Garak’s head, almost blinding. He braces himself against it, as if that will help. “I have experienced periodic discomfort in my head.” When Julian begins to dither about more brain scans, Garak grows impatient. “I suspect that the implant in my parietal lobe is succumbing to—overuse.”
“You said it wasn’t working anymore.” Julian’s hand is still on his shoulder and Garak can’t keep himself from pressing a little closer.
“When I—came back to myself, on Empok Nor, I still knew about the implant. Living that way was—” Unspeakable. Torture worse than any physical suffering. “I found a way to turn the implant on, whenever I wanted. At first, I allowed myself only a few minutes of weakness per day. I told myself that it allowed me mental clarity, when I indulged. But eventually, I simply—turned it on and left it on.” Weakness. Tain would be disgusted.
“How long ago was that?” Julian’s voice is even, but then, Julian is a doctor and accustomed to hearing all kinds of nastiness from patients.
“My grasp of the passage of time has not always been exact. A year, perhaps two.” The days on Empok Nor, before Julian, are a long steady blur of misery. “I do realize that the only option is to cease my use of it.”
“I’ll stay with you,” Julian says promptly, as though it wouldn’t be all the more humiliating to have Julian there while Garak suffers through withdrawal. “You don’t have to do it alone.”
Garak touches Julian’s wrist, and he means to pull away from Julian, but instead he closes his fingers gently around the fragile skin there. “I would prefer to be alone.”
“I could keep you in the infirmary.”
How absurd this must look to anyone else, Garak’s monstrous form clinging to Julian’s wrist desperately. Garak forces himself to let go of Julian, take a deep breath, and stand. “Let’s not delude ourselves about your ability to detain me here.”
Julian looks strangely frantic. “Comm me if you need anything—anything at all, all right? And if you won’t stay in the infirmary, I’m going to come check on you when my shift ends.”
“I don’t doubt it, my dear,” Garak says, and the expression on Julian’s face is almost enough to keep him here
Now that he’s admitted to it, the pain in his head is spreading rapidly, branching along the nerves, and he nearly staggers to the turbolift. The rudimentary device that he created to trigger the implant is in his quarters, and it’s the work of an instant to crush it in his hand. In a single miraculous moment, the pain in his head stops. The relief itself is almost eye-watering, and Garak takes the brief respite to use the sonic shower and drink a little tea. He knows what will come next from the few times he tried to turn off the implant before, and it’s only half an hour or so before the discomfort begins to spread through his entire body. His muscles ache and he can’t seem to stand or sit still. He lies down, deluding himself that he’ll be able to sleep, but the shaking that makes him shudder every so often prevents that. When he tries to read instead to distract himself, the words swim in front of his eyes. The room is cold and too bright, and he turns the lights down and the heat as high as it will go.
He doesn’t know when the anger begins to seep in, only that at a certain point he finds himself swamped with it. He looks down at the broken device, and for a very weak moment, he wonders how long it would take to fix it—then he flings it to the floor in disgust and smashes it beneath one foot. Clumsy—how clumsy he is in this body! He destroys a lamp with a swing of one arm, grips the edge of the table and shoves it hard to see it topple. If he still had his claws, he could rend great slashes in the walls, but Julian has taken those from him, turned him from something dangerous into a tame beast so that he can ape the man he used to be. His door chimes and Garak recoils. Worse, Julian’s voice comes over the comm. Garak doesn’t register his words, only that he’s there, and the weakness in him opens the door.
“You shouldn’t have come.” Garak can’t stand still, but at least he can try to keep his lumbering steps even. “Julian—” He uses the name before he remembers he shouldn’t. “You should leave.” Garak can see that Julian is unafraid, and it only makes him angrier. Julian withdraws a hypospray from his bag and gestures with it at Garak. “You should leave,” Garak says again, and then, because he hasn’t said it clearly to either of them yet, “I don’t want you here.”
He hears the hiss of the hypo and insistent beeping and realizes that Julian is scanning him. Then Julian peels part of Garak’s shirt away, and Garak snarls and jerks free. “I don’t suppose I could persuade you to come to the infirmary,” Julian says. Garak does hear fear in his voice now. Julian would be a fool not to be frightened of Garak like this.
“To amuse those Bajorans?” Garak stalks to a corner of the room, further from Julian. “To watch you wring your hands at how little you can do? I don’t want you here.”
“You’re my patient,” Julian says.
“Yes, your patient—your science project, your little curiosity since the day you came to Empok Nor.” Since the day Garak was foolish enough to think that there was a way out of this curse at all, since he tricked himself into believing that Julian would be his salvation, one way or another. “And you wouldn’t leave well enough alone when I told you to leave—you had to bring me here—” Here, to watch Julian, to spend every day with him and settle for whatever scraps Julian will give him.
“I wouldn’t say you were well enough alone,” Julian says, and it’s as though he’s hooked something sharp into one of Garak’s oozing wounds. “I’m trying to save your life.”
Of all the absurdities. “You don’t even know who you’re trying to save!” Garak finds himself almost laughing at the idea of it. “You have no idea what I was, before this.”
“You were in the Obsidian Order,” Julian says. Julian, who can’t begin to contemplate what that means—Julian, who has never sat in a cell for hours with Garak’s eyes on him, imagining what Garak might be about to do—Julian, whose hands save life instead of stealing it away—
“In the—I was the protege of Enabran Tain himself,” Garak snarls, and if Julian had the slightest idea what any of this really meant, he would flinch—no, he would cower away at that name. “Tain was the Obsidian Order.” Garak remembers how Tain towered over everyone, over Garak, even after the curse took hold. “Not even the Central Command dared challenge him. And I was his right hand. My future was limitless until I threw it away.” He almost wishes that he could make Julian understand, but— “You, doctor, you chose to hide yourself away and make yourself less than you are, but I was—” He grabs the closest heavy thing at hand, a reader, and throws it as hard as he can. “It’s pathetic to think that this is what my life has been reduced to, this lump of flesh—” He wants to hurt something, destroy something. “You have no idea what I’ve done.” He can hear the growl creeping into his voice.
“I thought you didn’t remember,” Julian says softly, and it’s all wrong. “That’s all I do, Garak, when I’m not reading the books you give me or talking about them with you—I try to figure out how to restore you to who you were. I’m trying to help—”
How Garak hates him for it—not for being unable to love Garak, but for being so revoltingly selfless and giving—for giving himself up to Empok Nor in the first place, for trying to break the curse through science and magic and now, still, trying to patch Garak’s missing mind back together. “I could tell you anything,” Garak says. When he takes a step toward Julian, Julian goes still. “I could tell you that I was cursed because I killed a hundred prisoners. Because I killed my own garrison. Because I freed a prisoner. Because I disobeyed an order from Tain, because I obeyed an order from someone else—and you’d never know the difference.” Garak’s beginning to think he wouldn’t know the difference either.
“You don’t have to lie to me.” Julian’s eyes are still kind, and it’s monstrous that he should look at Garak like that.
“Ah, but what else do I have to entertain myself?” Garak takes another heavy step toward Julian, and another, and still Julian stands there. “With the implant turned off, I’m left to live out my days like this, with nothing to look forward to but—but having lunch with you.”
“I’m sorry. I thought you enjoyed my company.”
It almost makes Garak laugh. “I did!” He wishes that Julian would get angry, would snarl back, would do anything to show that he’s affected by Garak’s words. He kicks a chair out of the way, and still Julian doesn’t move. “That's the worst part. I can't believe that I actually enjoyed eating mediocre food and staring at your smug, sanctimonious face.” Admiring his clever turns of phrase, his curious little insights, his satisfied little smiles— There’s nothing else at hand to grab, so all he can do is snarl, “I hate this place and I—I hate you!” He hates Julian for not caring enough to react, for proving again that he’s just the self-sacrificing type, that he’ll flirt with Garak in the way that cuts closest without ever being affected by it when it leaves Garak’s heart pounding.
“Okay, Garak, that’s your prerogative,” Julian says, as though Garak’s a small child. “But you’re my patient, and right now, I really think you should lie down.”
When Julian starts to approach him, Garak loses control. “Get away from me,” he growls, even as he lunges for Julian. “Get away—get out, I don’t want you here!” The words stumble out of his mouth twisted up on themselves, and when Garak lurches toward Julian again, the ground leaps up to meet him.
He wakes slowly. The madness has mostly passed, but now his physical weakness is suffocating. If someone came at him with a knife, he’s not sure he could stop them. What rich irony.
“Hello, Garak.”
“Julian?” He wants to reach for Julian, but his arms are leaden. “What happened?” He recalls shouting at Julian, threatening to attack him—
“You collapsed. You’re deteriorating rapidly.” There’s a dull tone to Julian’s voice that alarms him.
“And you haven’t found a solution? Really, Doctor, I’m disappointed.”
“Garak—you’re dying. I don’t know how to save you myself—”
Garak looks at him and feels a stab of horror as he realizes what Julian means. “No,” he says frantically. “No—I forbid it—” He tries desperately to sit up and can’t.
“I’m going to go see Enabran Tain,” Julian says, “and you can’t stop me going.”
“Julian—” He scrambles for the words that will persuade Julian. “You can’t begin to understand who he is—once you put yourself in his power, there will be no escape—” What Tain would do, to have someone like Julian to take apart—
“It’s the only way I can think to save your life.” Julian’s voice is unsteady as he says it.
No, no, Garak refuses to let this happen—he summons all his strength and manages to grip Julian’s wrist. “If you go—” He gropes for a threat that will be enough. “I will tell everyone your secret. Starfleet will dismiss you—there will be no place for you to come back to. Surely that isn’t worth some—harebrained playacting at heroism.” He pleads for Julian to understand, not to throw himself away—Garak is nothing, compared to Tain’s menace, to the threat he will pose to Julian—
“To save the beast of Empok Nor? Haven’t you worked it out yet, Garak?” The sad smile on Julian’s face doesn’t make any sense. He slides his wrist away, until Garak has nothing to hold onto but his fingers. “I think it is,” Julian says, and then—then he touches his mouth to Garak’s forehead and Garak’s ears roar.
Garak is familiar with hallucinations. Enabran Tain is the next to visit him in the infirmary and says, “Elim, I’m surprised at you. The Garak I know would never—” and then melts away into the darkness. Garak gets up and staggers through the corridors to his own quarters, and the corridors are lined with strange faces that hate him. He hallucinates Julian again, the baffling pressure of Julian’s mouth against his skin, Julian’s hand soft on his face. “Stay alive, Garak,” he says. Garak tries to cocoon himself in blankets in his bed and Mila appears, her face sorrowful. “Elim,” she says. “I’ve missed you so much since you disappeared—”
The hallucinations come in many different forms, but Julian is there frequently, urging him to survive. Once, oddly, he comes in through the door to Garak’s quarters instead of simply appearing, and Garak almost laughs. “My dear doctor,” he forces out, “What a pleasure it’s been to hallucinate you.”
“I need—from Tain—” Julian’s voice fades in and out.
Garak grabs his hand and grips it tightly. Under no circumstances— “Don’t—don’t go to Tain!” His muscles spasm as he tries to hold on. “Not worth the risk—” Julian’s starting to fade out in front of him.
“It’ll be worth it if it saves you—”
Garak can’t get air into his lungs, but he clutches Julian’s hand. “Not—” He thinks he can feel Julian’s grasp slackening. “Julian—”
Everything is very dark around him. There’s a strange stillness where his heartbeat should be. Then his blood burns through his body and he hears a voice that sounds like Julian. “Damn it, Garak, I love you—don’t go and die now—”
The darkness turns to blinding light and the shock shoots through Garak’s body, stiffening every muscle for an instant. Agony ripples through his bones as they crack and reshape themselves. The world refocuses itself, and when he opens his eyes, Julian is staring down at him. “Julian?”
“Garak?” Julian looks disbelieving.
Garak’s body feels—wrong. He lifts his hand and it’s too light. When he brings it into his field of vision, it’s smaller, the fingers oddly dextrous. He flexes and the fingers move. “In the flesh.”
Julian snatches up a tricorder. “How—” He keeps glancing away from Garak and then back, as though he can’t believe who the body is in front of him. “There’s no sign of the degeneration, and all of your blood chemistry is back to normal—”
His body still aches from the transformation, but there’s a euphoric near-hysteria creeping through Garak’s body and threatening to emerge from his throat in some way. Garak flexes his fingers again, just to watch the way that they respond, and then brings them very cautiously to his face. There are deep scars there, but the ridges of his cheeks have softened, the horn on his forehead melted back into the scoop shape that belongs there. “It seems you’ve—cured me, doctor,” and cure is hard to say. “Computer, mirror.” He recognizes the face that stares back at him, but he can’t help feeling that it belongs to someone else after all this time.
“Let me see your wounds,” Julian says. Garak’s fingers move strangely as he unfastens his shirt, but it’s a relief to remove it from his skin. When Julian touches the scar tissue of his old wound, the contact lights up Garak’s body and he gasps in a breath. “Does that cause discomfort?”
Discomfort is not the word Garak would use to describe his reaction to Julian’s touch. “My skin appears to be extraordinarily sensitive. Physical contact is quite—different.”
Julian snatches his fingers away and Garak regrets saying anything. “Are you experiencing any other effects of the—change?”
Garak is very conscious of the other people standing around them, staring. “Given that I am no longer in imminent danger—”
“I can complete my examination in your quarters, if you’d like.” Julian’s voice has turned a little breathy, and the significance of what has just happened is still dawning in Garak’s mind. He can think of nothing he wants more.
When they rematerialize in his quarters, Garak almost staggers at the sweltering heat. “Computer, reduce temperature two degrees.” He catches Julian staring at him. “Doctor, I take it I will not shock your delicate sensibilities if I remove my trousers?” Julian—blushes? “My skin’s sensitivity makes them rather unpleasant.
“Not at all,” Julian says. “I really—do mean to examine you.” His eyes are very bright, eager in the way that they are sometimes when he and Garak have been arguing particularly passionately.
“I wouldn’t dream of stopping you.” Garak is hungry for that expression on Julian’s face, but he forces himself to look away, at least until he gives in and has to look back to make sure it’s still there.
Julian steps closer, directly into his field of vision, and holds up the tricorder. “Are you having trouble with your vision?”
Only in controlling its direction, Garak thinks. “It’s startling to see you from this angle.” Their faces are level now. “Everything seems—a little larger now.” He’s not sure that’s the right word for it. “But I appear to be entirely functional.”
“Good.” Julian lowers the tricorder and looks almost startled when their eyes meet again. He’s most certainly blushing, Garak realizes, and that euphoria threatens to overwhelm him. “Good.”
“My dear doctor,” Garak says, and he finds that he can’t seem to look away again. “We could engage in a lengthy dance of avoidance and uncertainty, or we could appreciate the convenience of the rather forceful revelation of your feelings and proceed from there.” He takes refuge in the formality of the words, because the fact is that he is still grappling with it, with what feels like an echo of a kiss, with the idea that somehow Julian has—
“Half an hour ago, you were nearly dead.” Julian’s mouth tightens when he says it. “I’m certain that you should be recovering.”
Garak has never felt better in his life. “Your—decisive action seems to have dealt with that.” He wants to feel Julian’s hands on his new skin again, desperately.
“Indulge me,” Julian says, and perhaps he intuits what Garak wants so badly. As he scans Garak’s body, he trails his fingers in the wake of the tricorder, and the feeling is—Garak can only imagine this is how physical touch always feels to Humans, with their delicate skin, but it’s almost painful with how overwhelming it is. His breath comes faster and faster, despite his attempts to slow it, as Julian circles behind him and strokes his hand along Garak’s spine. Then—then Garak feels his breath against the ridge at the back of Garak’s neck, followed by his lips.
“You—” Garak has cultivated his self-control for years, and it’s not enough to keep him from turning, pulling Julian into his arms, and kissing him. Julian’s lips are cooler than his own, but his mouth is hot, his tongue soft. Julian wraps one arm around his back, hand on Garak’s skin, and even when he breaks away for air, he keeps his forehead pressed to Garak’s. Julian runs one finger very gently along the ridges of Garak’s face and Garak can’t help but turn his face into that touch. Then Julian shifts, hides his face against Garak’s neck instead, though he never lets go.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Julian says very softly. His lips brush Garak’s skin as he speaks. “You were—Garak, you died.”
Garak wants him closer. He sits down on the couch, pulling Julian with him, and even the roughness of Julian’s uniform against his skin is only a reminder that Julian is here, that Julian has returned to him from Tain and made the rather extraordinary decision to fall—in love with him. “Apparently not enough that your kiss and declaration of love couldn’t revive me,” he says, even though it sounds truly absurd. Julian is apparently struck by the absurdity too, because he shifts against Garak, and Garak leans closer into him. “My dear Julian, given that the universe or the Prophets or the pahr have deemed us sufficiently in love with each other to break the curse—” Somewhere, Tain is laughing himself sick.
“I suppose it’s taking me a minute to accept having my private feelings so emphatically revealed,” Julian says. He tilts his head to press his forehead to Garak’s again, as though he knows what deep significance that has—and by now, with the Cardassian literary canon that they’ve consumed, he must. “I did think you were dying, you know.”
Garak can’t help but smile at that, even as he’s luxuriating in the feeling of Julian so close to him. “I am familiar with the discomfort of being forced to reveal one’s feelings, my dear.”
“I think—I think I’ve been in love with you since you came to Deep Space Nine,” Julian says, and that admission makes Garak’s breath catch for a moment. “But I thought that if I felt that way and you weren’t cured, your feelings must have changed. That I was—too late.”
Irony upon irony, that Garak has spent all of this time watching Julian, longing for Julian, hating the things that have rendered him unlovable. He tilts his head so that he can kiss Julian again. Though his skin is growing a little less sensitive, every touch from Julian feels new. “I suppose the curse demanded something a little more irrevocable.” Julian sets his hand on Garak’s chest, fingers splayed wide, and Garak grips his wrist very gently. It’s hard to gauge how much strength he has, now, but he can feel Julian’s pulse hammering beneath the skin. Garak presses his forehead against Julian’s again. “I suspect I’m in little danger of changing back, but to be clear, I—continue to love you.” The word is easier to say every time.
“Have any of your memories come back to you?” Julian sounds very tentative.
Garak considers for a moment. “No.” There’s still that infernal blankness surrounding the only thing he truly wants to know. “Perhaps with time, now that the curse is broken.”
Julian slides his hand across the span of Garak’s chest, narrower now. How strange it is. “I know that you were in the Obsidian Order, and I have some idea of what that entailed. I can't promise to understand everything in your past, nor to accept it. But I promise to try.”
Even that promise is remarkable. “I don’t doubt that, my dear,” Garak murmurs. He wants more of Julian to touch, and he pulls back just long enough to lift Julian’s shirt over his head and then tug Julian into his lap. The feeling of Julian’s bare skin pressed against his is extraordinary, and he tests the sensitivity of his new fingers as he traces the shape of Julian’s spine. Julian shivers against him and kisses him again, and for a long time, Garak loses himself in it. Even when they separate, Garak can’t seem to stop touching him, discovering the shape of his bones beneath his skin, the way the muscles shift and tighten.
“I’m afraid I may have declared my feelings in front of the infirmary,” Julian says, as though Garak will be embarrassed by this. “But it’s possible that—some people have suspected for a while. I might have—” Garak is—Garak has intended to move very slowly, touch no more of Julian than Julian offers first, but his resolve is wearing thin. He puts a hand on Julian’s hip and pulls him closer, lifting his own hips to meet him, and catches Julian’s groan with his mouth. “Bed,” Julian mumbles against his mouth. “There’s a bed—” and Garak shudders at the thought of the place where he huddled, sweating and hallucinating. He takes it as permission, though, and undoes Julian’s pants. The noise that Julian makes when Garak first touches him there is—extraordinary. Garak suspects he will want to hear it often, as often as possible for as long as they have.
Afterward, Julian curls close to him on the couch and Garak wraps his arm around Julian to keep him there. “I think I’m supposed to be on duty,” Julian mumbles eventually, and moves as though to stand.
“Considering what’s happened, my dear, I think your dereliction will be forgiven,” Garak says. But Julian is insistent, and finally Garak releases him. Julian stands and then offers Garak a hand as well. Garak is sorely tempted to see if he can pull Julian back down instead, perhaps even agree to test out the bed, but instead he stands. “Speaking of dereliction,” he says, and smiles a little, “I suspect you never got around to reading the latest book that I recommended.” Garak’s attempts to reread it during his withdrawal from the implant were unsuccessful, to say the least.
Julian looks insulted at the idea that he would have failed to read a book. “I—” Then he stops and very blatantly lies, “No. No, I didn’t.”
Garak reaches out and slides his fingers along the back of Julian’s neck. He suspects the miracle of being able to touch him like this will take awhile to sink in. “In that case, perhaps I will recommend something a little more—rarified as my next selection.” It’s hard to contain the smile, but he thinks he manages admirably. “Given our new—status, you might appreciate one of Ceveo’s repetitive epics.” How well he remembers the first time he read it, the shock of the words so blatant on the page, the way the narrative built and built—
“Ceveo? Garak—are you recommending that we read Cardassian pornography?”
“Anything to increase your appreciation for the repetitive epic,” Garak says in his blandest tone. “I know how you struggle with the—less prurient Cardassian literature. Besides, after the obscenity of that Shakespeare—”
Julian’s smile is nothing short of delighted. “I love you,” he says, and it’s the first time Garak has truly heard him say it. Garak can’t help pulling him closer again, kissing him once more, and Julian says, “I love you,” again, and then begins walking Garak back toward the couch even while saying, “I really should leave—”
“Should you?” Garak goes willingly when Julian pushes him down.
“Perhaps I could spare another fifteen minutes—”
It’s nearly an hour before Julian has actually managed to dress himself again. Garak walks him to the door and says, “Lunch, my dear doctor?”
“I think we missed lunch,” Julian says. “Dinner?”
“Always,” Garak tells him.