Chapter Text
Since being promoted from Q Branch agent to the official Q, Julian has been the voice in the ear of many, many different field agents. They like him—he’s cool-headed, he’s eminently competent. But just as he begins to build a rapport that’s more than a simple “Hello,” over the earwig, he gets the dubious honor of being promoted. First it’s to run 00 missions and then—even more dubiously—to run 003’s missions when there’s special tech involved. He’s developed a program designed to tap into every available camera to track an agent’s progress in a given location, which means he can just about follow anything that an operative does. M tells him, quite firmly, that running 003’s missions is part of the official Q’s duties.
When D comes to give him the news, there’s a slight smirk on her face. “You should know,” she says, “Garak—003—is even worse than 007 was. He isn’t—shy.”
“Shy?”
It only takes one mission with Garak for Julian to realize what D meant. In the course of a three-day mission, Garak seduces four different women—or at least, four that Julian knows of because all of the interludes take place within view of a device with some kind of uplink that he’s using to monitor the mission. Heaven knows what Garak gets up to when there’s nothing around to transmit the video and audio to Julian.
Julian has watched agents have sex on missions before—it comes with the 00 territory—but they usually try to be a little more private about it. Treat it as a necessity, back to the camera, or dim lighting, or something of that sort. Garak, though—the women always seem to end up splayed out over furniture, dresses rucked up to their waists and falling off their shoulders, as they make ecstatic noises. Julian would think it’s a coincidence except for the third woman, the target’s occasional mistress, who Garak has bent over a table, her shirt open. Julian has resigned himself to what he hopes will be a swift encounter, watching three different security feeds at once, when Garak looks straight up at the camera just as he pushes inside of her. Julian knows it because he knows the expression on her face, that first thrill of it, and Garak kisses her neck and smooths his fingers across her nipple while staring directly into the camera.
Christ. Julian is getting hard watching this. Garak’s hips are rolling lazily, one hand between her legs and the other on her breast, and the woman’s chest is heaving, her eyes fluttering a little. Julian doesn’t know how long it takes before she comes because his eyes are fixed on the lines of Garak’s body, but he sees it when she shudders, sees it when Garak mouths at her throat, and—shit, “003, the target is headed your way in 30 seconds,” Julian hisses. If his voice cracks, well, he’ll blame it on the audio transmission. Garak murmurs something in the woman’s ear, something too quiet for the earwig to pick up, and begins to withdraw even as she shakes her head in protest. He’s mostly dressed, trousers open just enough for sex, but the video quality is clear enough that Julian can see his cock is wet and still very much hard. It doesn’t seem to bother Garak, though, because he opens the door and shoots the target all the same. Behind him, the woman screams.
“The scanner in your belt buckle should show you—” Julian begins, but Garak has already whipped off his sagging belt and is slowly running it along the dead man’s arms for the chip embedded under his skin.
“Found it,” Garak says shortly.
“Remember to center it properly or you’ll damage the chip.”
“You know, I’ve managed to do my job for longer than you’ve been alive.” Garak presses his buckle to the man’s shoulder and pushes the triggering device. It punches out a neat circle of flesh, which Garak tucks into a capsule sewn into the lining of his suit jacket.
“Unless you were Britain’s most junior 00 agent in history, 003, I very much doubt that.” He suddenly doesn’t want to know how old Garak thinks that he is. “You have three people headed in your direction, ETA one minute. I recommend that you head for the exit.” A little spitefully, he adds, “Unless you’d prefer to finish what you started.”
Over the surveillance feed, he sees Garak turn his head briefly to glance at the woman, who’s cursing at him now. He threads his belt back through the loops. “The mission is complete,” Garak says, and heads for the exit.
Somehow, though, Garak still finds time to catch a flight attendant’s eye at the airport and pull her into a supply closet, for no discernible reason. There are no cameras in the closet, but when they emerge fifteen minutes later, her clothes are askew and her lipstick is smudged and Julian closes his eyes in resignation and tries not to think about what they were doing.
Next time Garak comes to him for gear, Julian includes something extra. He’s checked Garak’s medical file and is unsurprised to discover the vasectomy that went along with his promotion to 00 status—a child would be an unacceptable liability for any 00—but still, considering how Garak jumps from woman to woman, he could be a little more considerate.
“What’s this?” Garak picks up the packet from the tray of equipment that Julian has offered him.
“It’s called a con-dom, 003,” Julian says, throwing heavy emphasis on both syllables.
Garak inspects it as though he’s never seen one. “Does it explode?”
Julian sighs. Garak is clearly enjoying himself. “If you over-fill it.” Behind him, someone chokes on a laugh. “Really, 003, if you don’t know how to use it, you should familiarize yourself. Wouldn’t want His Majesty’s most vital organ to come down with the clap.”
Garak shakes his head with a bit of a smile. “Cheeky.” Then he tucks the rubber packet into his suit coat. “I’m sure Medical appreciates your concern.”
At first, Julian thinks it might have been a one-time thing—Garak having a little fun at the expense of his fresh-faced new quartermaster. For the first few days of this next mission, Garak is shockingly chaste. He even turns down a blatant invitation from a croupier in a very low-cut bustier and stockings on the first night that he goes to the casino where the target is laundering money. But the next evening, he strolls back to her table with a stack of chips and says, “Is there room for one more?”
She brings him into the floor master’s office, Garak already unlacing the back of the bustier. He tugs it down enough to free her breasts and then gets his mouth on her nipple. There are three cameras in the floor master’s office, and Garak lifts his head long enough to look into one of them with the slightest smile. It punches a quiet breath out of Julian. He hopes Garak didn’t hear it over the earwig.
Garak lifts her onto the edge of the desk, standing between her spread legs. Julian can see very clearly that she’s not wearing any underwear, only the garter belt to hold up her stockings. She leans back so he can suck at her nipple, one hand cradling her head, and he does it until she’s making breathy little noises thatJulian can hear clearly over the audio channel. Everyone outside the floor master’s office appears to be oblivious to what’s happening. Garak switches to her other nipple and pushes three fingers inside her, thumb working on her clit, and she arches with another, louder noise, reaching for his cock.
Garak murmurs something that doesn’t even sound like words and unfastens his suit trousers, his thumb still rubbing against her clit. His shirt and suit coat are still immaculate, though Julian can see his cock bobbing just below the bottom of his shirt. At the last second, Garak plucks the condom packet out of his inner suit pocket, makes hard eye contact with the camera, and tears it open with his teeth. Julian drags in another breath. He wishes he’d remembered to mute the channel. Garak rolls it onto his cock one-handed and thrusts inside, tugging at her nipple with his slick fingers and pulling her hips sharply to him as he does. Julian can see her shaking as Garak fucks her, breasts spilling over the top of the bustier, one nipple pinched between Garak’s fingers. His own nipples are stiff beneath the fabric of his undershirt. He hears Garak’s breathing grow harsh, looking up into the lens of the security camera, and realizes that he’s about to learn what Garak sounds like when he comes.
Garak kisses her as he does. It seems oddly romantic to Julian for a man with Garak’s reputation, a man who has just fucked a woman on her boss’s desk for the primary purpose of accessing the documents inside it, but it doesn’t matter. He’s biting his lip, he realizes. “003,” he says very quietly. “The documents should be in the middle drawer on the left-hand side of the desk.” He’s probably imagining the tiny shiver that crosses Garak’s skin, but then, Garak is still inside her and she’s moving restlessly like she wants him to keep going.
Garak leans close to her ear and whispers, “Close your eyes.” She moans and does—Garak really is very good at this—and Garak replaces his cock with his fingers again, teeth catching her nipple. His other hand, Julian sees, is creeping down the side of the desk.
“That’s it,” Julian says. He hopes Garak can’t hear how hoarse his voice is. “There’s a button next to the drawer handle, Press it twice and then pull the drawer open.” Garak is pumping his fingers in and out of her now, and he pulls back to crouch between her legs and lick her clit so that he can reach further into the drawer. She has one hand gripping the back of his head, holding him in place as she moves against him, and Julian can hear her moaning again. Garak lifts the documents slightly, angling them toward the camera so that Julian can zoom in. “Yes,” Julian says. “Good work, 003. That’s what we need.” Impossibly, Garak tucks the documents into his jacket pocket. “Press the button by the door handle three times when you close it to re-lock it.” Garak does, and then turns his full attention back to the croupier. “I encourage you to exit in due course,” Julian says. “The floor master will return from his break in under five minutes and the guards will have eyes on the door to this office in two.”
Garak sighs against her clit to let Julian know exactly how irritating the knowledge is and flicks his tongue one last time. He twists his fingers as he pushes them back in and she comes again, almost wailing. “I have to go,” Garak tells her, and leaves before she can protest.
When Garak is safely out of the casino, Julian finally looks away from the screen. His pants are very tight across his cock and every inch of his skin feels over-sensitized, as though Garak has been touching him through the screen. He sits very still and tries to breathe evenly and pulls up the most complex schematics he can think of to catalog, and eventually the erection subsides. When he goes home that night, though, he works three fingers inside himself as he thinks of the way that Garak had looked at the camera—at him—as he slid into the woman, remembers Garak’s fingers on her nipple and pinches his own, hard. When he comes, it’s to the not-quite-thought of Garak’s fingers inside him, and he tightens around his own fingers so hard that it’s almost painful.
It takes a great deal of self-control to look Garak in the eye without blushing when he returns. Garak is entirely nonchalant, as though it never happened, and once again, Julian thinks, maybe that was it.
It’s not.
Slowly, Julian grows used to this bizarre new normal—Garak seduces a woman and then makes hard eye contact with Julian through the surveillance camera while he fucks her, Julian sees the mission through and then goes home that night and jerks off to the memory of it. He’s taken to slipping a truly ridiculous number of condoms into a pocket-sized dispenser that he includes with Garak’s equipment requisition every time, and every time that Garak actually pulls one out, it hits Julian somewhere deep. It’s fine. Julian doesn’t have much time to date, only goes to clubs occasionally just long enough to pull someone and go back to theirs, so why should he object to his coworker creating pornography just for him? It’s not as though Julian expects anything else from it.
Then Garak changes things.
The target this time is a man suspected of arms-trading with a particularly nasty cabal of oil barons, a man with an attractive and very bored-looking boyfriend. Julian watches Garak scoping them out at the gala event’s bar and says, “The boyfriend will be an easier target.”
“Oh?” Garak sounds amused. “I don’t think I’ll need that sort of way in tonight,” he says, and it feels strangely like a punch to the gut. It’s not that Julian thinks Garak is actually interested in men, but then, he’s had enthusiastic sex with such a wide array of women in such a variety of ways in full view of Julian that Julian had rather assumed Garak wouldn’t be bothered by a little more variation. “But I do appreciate the opinion, Q.”
“Two of the guards on the north exit are about to get into a fight,” Julian says. They’ve been drinking and the signs of impending conflict are clear. “It should provide you with enough distraction to access his laptop.”
Garak nods almost minutely and they’re back in their normal roles. Garak makes his way to the coat-check, where he flashes a grin at the young man who’s working and points at a laptop bag. “I believe that’s for me,” he says. He’s got Julian's latest toy tucked up his sleeve.
“Of course.” The man hefts the bag and passes it across the counter to Garak, who opens it up just enough to peek at its contents and slip Julian's device—which will copy the laptop’s contents and feed them directly into the MI-6 decryption program—inside. Garak is supposed to retrieve it as soon as it’s copied the laptop, but given his poor track record of bringing back the toys that Julian gives him, Julian isn’t sanguine about that possibility.
“My mistake,” Garak says, and he’s handing back the bloody laptop, “that’s not mine after all.” He grins at the man and lets their fingers brush, and what the hell is he doing—
“No?” The man is returning his smile, and Julian feels a surge of absurd—that cannot possibly be jealousy—as Garak says something more, some of his meaningless lines that always seem to work. “Natalya, I’m going for a smoke,” the man says to someone nearby, who waves a hand at him.
Garak takes the man into one of the hotel guest rooms, and there’s something hot in Julian's stomach as he accesses the camera on the smart television in the room. Garak flicks his eyes toward it—toward Julian—and then he’s pressing the man back against the door with his hips and kissing him. Julian can hear the sound of it through Garak’s earwig, the harsh breath and the noise of their mouths. The man clutches at his shoulders, gripping hard at his suit, and Garak pulls back just a little. “Don’t wrinkle it,” he says.
The man loosens his grasp. “I won’t,” he promises.
Garak releases him and takes a few steps away. Then he unbuttons his own shirt efficiently, lays it and his jacket across a chair, and says, “Come over here.” There’s something dark in his voice, something that has Julian wanting to follow his instruction even from halfway around the world, and it works on the man who’s in the same room. He goes to Garak and kisses him again, slowly, from his mouth to his collarbone and then down and down, until the man is on his knees in front of Garak, unfastening Garak’s trousers.
Julian sees then that Garak has maneuvered the two of them so that they’re close to the television, so that Julian will have a clear view. He’s still monitoring the other video feeds on his screen because he does have half a brain—the laptop data is uploading as planned—but it’s a little hard to breathe as the man draws Garak’s trousers down and Julian sees the jut of his bare hip. The man bends his head down and the wet noise is unmistakable, as is the familiar sound of Garak’s inhalation—and what a world, that Julian knows how Garak breathes when someone sucks his cock, knows how he breathes when he comes “Your mouth,” Garak murmurs, and he’s staring straight at the camera. “A man could get distracted looking at your mouth.” Julian suddenly goes a little dizzy, watching Garak thread his fingers into the man’s dark hair, and realizes that the man bears more than a passing resemblance to him. Garak’s breathing is sharp and Julian can see how much restraint it’s taking him not to just thrust into the man’s mouth. Julian is very hard, here at his desk and it’s late at night, no one around to witness his gross lack of professionalism, as he slips the button on his trousers and just—cups himself, as though that will help him get back under control.
“You’re wasting time, 003,” Julian says into Garak’s ear, and he sees the jolt that it sends through Garak. Julian lets himself grip his own cock and he’s a mess, leaking at the sight of Garak, but he doesn’t want it to stop. Garak reaches down to touch the man’s lips where they’re stretched around his cock and Julian can’t help brushing his fingers across his own lips. This is too much, beyond whatever insane imaginary line there ever was, but when the man grabs Garak’s hips, Julian breaks. “He wants you deeper,” he tells Garak, and he knows his voice is wrecked. “He wants to wake up tomorrow and still taste you in the back of his throat—”
Halfway around the world, Garak comes almost violently.
* * * * *
Garak gets back to London three days later. In that time, Julian decides that this is a good idea (whatever this is), has at least three minor mental breakdowns, decides that this is a bad idea (again, whatever this is), seriously considers hiring someone to perform a spiritual cleansing of his office, debates confronting Garak, and concludes that really he’s having the only natural reaction to watching his coworker fuck his doppelganger.
Garak comes to Q Branch not long after his return and says, “Q, I brought you a present.”
It takes Julian a second to calibrate his response to Garak’s greeting. “Dare I hope it’s something I gave you, still intact?”
“I told you I would, one of these days.” Garak deposits the laptop scanner on Julian's desk. “Happy birthday.”
Julian doesn’t bother lying that today isn’t his birthday. Of course Garak would know something like that. “I don’t think it counts as a gift if you’re only returning something, especially if it’s rather worse for wear.” He lifts it gingerly between two fingers. “This wasn’t bent when I gave it to you, 003.” Neither were you, his brain supplies unhelpfully.
“Wasn’t it? My mistake.” Garak turns and strolls away.
Well. If that’s how he wants to play it. Julian certainly isn’t going to be the one to bring it up. Maybe he’ll look into that cleansing after all.
Garak idles around MI-6 for exactly four more days before M sends him out again, none of which involve visiting Julian. Funny, Julian talks more with him over the earwig than he ever has in person. He suspects that Garak prefers it that way. And he’s not Garak’s handler, to the extent Garak would ever tolerate a handler—only the one to guide him when a mission requires more technical expertise than necessary. He could go months without having to talk to Garak, if needed.
But it’s almost a relief, the next time that Garak tucks Julian into his ear on a mission that requires his presence. It’s a very fancy high-rise this time, in Paris of all places, with a target meant to be captured (preferably) or killed (only as a last resort). There are security cameras everywhere, too many for even Garak to dodge. It means that Julian spends a great deal of time preparing to loop the footage on any one camera at any time, since Garak has a nasty habit of taking unplanned routes with little warning. The capture itself goes off shockingly smoothly, well ahead of schedule, and Garak passes the man off to the extraction squad with a night to spare on his hotel reservation. He walks into the hotel bar, ostensibly to ensure that they haven’t missed anyone who might notice the target’s abrupt absence, and says, “Q, are you still with me?”
“Yes, 003, I haven’t expired from shock at the bloodless nature of this mission.” Julian swallows. He suspects he knows what will happen next—Garak will select someone, take her somewhere to show off to Julian—and so he dares to say, “At the bar. Blue shirt.”
“How thoughtful of you,” Garak says. The man at the bar is around Julian's age, with short black hair and dark skin, looking for the world like he doesn’t want to be there. For an agonizing minute, Garak doesn’t move and Julian begins to feel very stupid. Then Garak walks over and takes the empty seat next to him. “Cynar,” he tells the bartender, and then offers the man next to him a slow smile. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
The man is just as susceptible to Garak’s charm as everyone else is, and it’s not long at all before he’s taking Garak to his hotel room. “I wasn’t expecting anyone, so it’s—” he starts, as he opens the door to the room.
Julian is alone in his office. “Kiss him,” Julian says, and his mouth goes dry when Garak just does it, pulling the man close and cutting him off with a kiss. The man leans into it and Julian watches the way that Garak’s hands roam over his body and tries not to think about the strength of them, the barely-controlled violence that lives under Garak’s skin at all times. Garak walks the man backward until they reach the bed and tumble into it. Julian sees the way that the man’s hands keep returning to Garak’s shoulders where Garak is crouched over him and says, voice low, “He wants you to suck his cock.” The words burn in his mouth, even more so when Garak moves down the man’s body and unzips his pants and good god, what was Julian thinking? The wet sound of Garak’s mouth around the man’s cock is loud in Julian's ear and he has one hand in his pants listening to it. “I bet you’re good,” Julian says. “You’re good at everything, aren’t you, 003?” The man is swearing in Arabic and when he tries to thrust up into Garak’s mouth, Garak pins his hips to the bed. “Do you want to—fuck him?” It’s hard to say. He doesn’t know if it’s an answer to the question he’s really asking when Garak sucks harder, when the man arches and comes on the sheets, when Garak encourages him to turn over. He doesn’t know if it’s an answer when Garak grabs some hotel body lotion, when Garak works one finger inside the man, but Julian has one hand on his cock and the tip of his finger in his ass, the audio left on, and he says, “Go slowly. Your fingers are big,” and Garak breathes out a curse that Julian likes to think was aimed at him. The angle of the hotel security camera doesn’t let him see exactly what’s happening or how fast Garak is going, but he’s very close to coming by the time Garak rolls on a condom from Julian's dispenser, lifts the man’s hips and slides his cock inside. “Fuck,” Julian says, a little brokenly. It’s not meant as a command but Garak treats it like one and Julian hears them both groan. “Fuck, fuck,” he says, and comes. He doesn’t try to stifle the noise of it and Garak doesn’t stifle his own noise—he never does—when he comes a few seconds later.
This is a disaster.
* * * * *
Julian isn’t stupid (no one would say that he is). He knows that the world is littered with the hearts—and bodies—of women who believed that Elim Garak had special feelings for them. He suspects, now, that there are men among them too. Julian doesn’t doubt that Garak finds him attractive, not after watching Garak fuck two slight, dark-haired men who bear more than a passing resemblance to Julian The fact that Garak has begun to feature almost exclusively in Julian's masturbatory material is unsurprising and has no bearing on the reality of things.
Garak proceeds to ignore him for nearly a month, until Julian begins to wonder whether the hotel in Paris was only his imagination. But he saved the hotel security footage—they always save the footage from 00 missions, so that they can cross-check for the identity of non-targets if anything happens. He’s never let himself watch it for anything other than entirely professional reasons, but Julian decides that his own sanity is a professional necessity. He pulls it up, another of those late nights when he’s working at an impossible problem and needs a distraction. He means to watch just enough to confirm that he isn’t losing his mind (what an excuse), but he can’t seem to turn it off. Now that he isn’t speaking to Garak over the earwig, he can see the minute flinches that must mark whenever Julian spoke to him, and, even more clearly, the moment when Julian swore to him, because that’s when Garak turns almost frantic.
Julian is very, very close to unzipping his trousers when his office phone rings and breaks his concentration. He snatches it up and tries to steady his voice before he says, “Q here.”
“I need to discuss something with you,” and fucking hell it’s M. “Come to my office in 30 minutes.” M hangs up, brusque as ever.
If Julian were someone else, he’d be concerned that M has been watching him somehow and is about to fire him. But he would know if there was a single piece of unauthorized tech in his division and the simple fact is that he’s necessary enough to MI-6 to get away with most kinds of deviant behavior. Not that he wants to be called to the carpet for this. He takes a shower anyway, a cold one, and at the door to M’s office in precisely 30 minutes—only for his stomach to drop at the sight of Garak already inside.
“Come in,” M says. Julian obeys. “We have a mission for you, Q.”
From the corner of his eye, Julian can see that Garak is statue-still, enough so that Julian almost questions whether he’s breathing. “...What sort of mission?” Julian participates in missions all the time and he’s never heard that kind of trepidation in M’s voice.
“In the field. The United States.”
Julian's stomach drops. “Sir,” he says, “Given my skills, there’s nothing I can do in the field that I can’t do from here at MI-6.”
Garak speaks for the first time. “The compound we have to access is isolated,” he says. “Completely off the grid. Independently powered, not connected to any network. There’s nothing for you to hack into.”
“Everything is connected to some network,” Julian protests. His entire body is going numb at the thought of boarding a plane. “Besides, if that’s the case, we can simply send you in with something to plug in that will give me access from here—I have a few options—”
“This isn’t up for debate.” There’s no room for argument in M’s tone. “The mission is too important and there are too many unknowns to risk that 003 will get into the compound and be unable to connect to you. You have twenty-four hours to prepare.”
“Twenty-four hours?” Julian tries to contain the squawk, but it escapes anyway. “I don’t even have the parameters, let alone the time to develop whatever I might need—”
“We’re on a clock.” M’s voice is crisp. “003 will fill you in on your way to the airport. I’ve already authorized Medical to prepare something for you for the flight.” Julian isn’t usually embarrassed by his very natural and reasonable fear of flying, but something inside him squirms at having it discussed in front of Garak. M checks his watch. “I’ll let you begin your preparations.”
Julian leaves his office in a daze, so much so that he doesn’t realize Garak has followed him into the elevator. “I’ll minimize the risk,” Garak says. “You won’t be in any danger.”
“I’ve heard about your piloting skills, 003.” Julian hates how high-pitched his voice has gotten. “You don’t tend to leave airplanes or helicopters intact. And I know what you did to that gyrocopter that my predecessor gave you—”
Garak huffs out the tiniest laugh. “I don’t mean on the airplane.”
Julian waves a hand vaguely. “I’m sure I’ll feel appropriately apprehensive about the mission once we arrive at whatever hellish location—”
“—northern Montana—”
“—whatever hellish location is our destination, but for now, it’s not my primary concern.” Christ, northern Montana? That’s going to be at least four flights, if Julian recalls correctly—London to some place on America’s eastern coast, then another to a western hub, then another on a smaller plane to whatever the primary airport in Montana is, and then likely another even smaller plane to the bleak hellscape of northern Montana. Montana in January, lovely. At least they’ll freeze to death quickly if the plane crash doesn’t kill them.
* * * * *
Medical makes good on their promise, with a cocktail of drugs that leaves Julian feeling oddly disconnected from his brain. It’s an unsettling feeling, but it’s better than the sheer terror that an airplane flight causes. Garak steers him to their first-class seats and buckles him in. “Flying is quite safe,” Garak tells him.
“I know. I can read,” Julian says acidly. Drugged stupid as he is, he’ll die in the crash before he can reach an emergency exit.
“You will not.” Garak’s voice is firm, and Julian realizes he’s saying his thoughts aloud. “I don’t lose people.”
That’s so patently absurd that Julian laughs a little through the incipient hysteria. “No, no one has ever died on your watch,” and it’s a cruel thing to say to Garak, but there’s no visible reaction. “Do you know why I’m afraid of flying?”
“I can guess.” Garak’s voice is even. “M always said that orphans make the best—employees.” They’re supposed to be ordinary people for this. Julian is struggling with the idea of calling Garak anything but 003 out loud.
“I was 14,” Julian admits. “It was an executive jet, nearly 20 people.” He closes his eyes as the plane begins to trundle toward the runway.
“How long?”
“Search and rescue found me after a week.” It’s good that Julian is so disconnected. He doesn’t talk about this, not ever. He’s not sure he’s ever said it aloud, not in those endless therapy sessions. “They didn’t all die at once.” Thank god his parents were dead before he’d even crawled out of the wreckage. Better to see them like that than slowly bleeding to death or feverish with infection. “I was the only one anyone ever found alive. The doctors spent a good deal of time putting me back together.” There’s a strange warm pressure on his forearm and he realizes that Garak has gripped his arm in some kind of attempt at comfort. He likes it. He hopes he didn’t say that out loud. “It was quite some time ago,” he adds. It’s dark behind his eyelids. There’s a great roaring in his ears and his stomach drops as the plane leaps into the air, and he digs his fingernails into the armrest. Garak’s grip on his arm is so tight it’s almost painful and Julian hopes to god that Garak won’t take his hand away. So much for the drugs. He tries to breathe evenly.
“Q, open your eyes,” Garak says, and it’s the warm breath against his ear, more than anything else, that makes him obey. When he turns his head a little to look at Garak, their faces are very close together and Julian wonders what would happen if he leaned a little further forward. Would Garak accept it as part of his 003 duties? Push Julian away firmly and tell him it’s only the drugs? Christ, he hopes he’s not saying any of this out loud. He’s saved from his thoughts by a flight attendant with the drinks trolley.
“Three vodkas,” he tells the woman.
“Nervous flier?” She smiles gently and hands him three little bottles of vodka, cold from the refrigerator.
“Rather more a fear of dying than of flying,” Julian confides, already cracking the seal on one of the bottles.
“Nothing for me,” Garak says, which is more of a shock than anything else that’s happened. Once she’s walked away, he adds, “You’re going to regret that, with all the drugs you’re on.”
“I’ll regret having a heart attack on this plane a great deal more than a splitting headache in a few hours.” Julian doesn’t drink to excess often, but if ever a circumstance demands it, it’s an eight-hour flight followed by a four-hour flight followed by a flight he doesn’t want to begin to contemplate. “You know, general anesthesia is a great deal safer these days than it used to be. I would have been amenable.” He downs the second bottle in a single swallow and coughs when the last few drops catch in his throat. When he turns to look at Garak again, Garak is watching his mouth and Julian licks his lips automatically, then grimaces at the taste of the vodka. He offers the third bottle to Garak.
“No,” Garak says. “Thank you.”
Julian shrugs and tosses back the third bottle, tilting his head so it barely touches his tongue. It burns in the back of his throat. “Suit yourself.” Garak releases his arm. Julian immediately misses his hand. The plane hits a pocket of turbulence and Julian braces automatically, pressing himself back against his seat. He’s conscious enough to know that no one else is reacting the way that he is. How he detests this weakness. He’s arranged his career to avoid revealing how deep it reaches, has traveled through Europe by boat and train and automobile but never boarded an airplane since the crash, and how can anyone trust him to run Q Branch—to keep them alive in the field—after seeing this? “It was more than a decade ago,” Julian says unwillingly, more to himself than to Garak.
Garak wiggles his fingers in front of Julian's face to display a crooked pinky. “I broke that when I was a child. Almost four decades ago.”
Julian knows what he’s trying to say, but it almost makes it worse. “And yet the finger still works.” Unlike this particular traumatized corner of his mind. “I appreciate the effort, 00—Garak,” he says. His voice cracks on Garak and Garak looks momentarily poleaxed before visibly tucking the expression away. “I think I’ll try to sleep.” The alcohol is warm in his blood. He doesn’t doubt that he’ll be vomiting up what little he managed to eat in a few hours, but for now it’s a little better.
“All right.” Garak doesn’t touch his arm again. “I’ll wake you if need be.”
Julian’s dreams are dark fragmented things, the smell of burnt skin and metal and spilt fuel thick in his lungs. When Garak wakes him, they’re at the gate in New York and Julian barely makes it to an airport toilet before he’s hunched over, emptying his stomach. Garak does him the kindness of not following him inside, which means that Julian can retch in the relative privacy of the stall. He emerges to splash cold water on his face and drag one wet hand through his hair before walking out into the frenzied rush of the international terminal at Kennedy.
“We’ll take a train from Denver,” Garak tells him. “There’s one leaving an hour after we arrive. With the layover and transfer, it will only be a few hours longer than a flight.” Julian wants to protest, to argue that no, he can do this, but the words won’t come out of his mouth.
He holds grimly to the seat for the entire four-hour flight from New York to Denver. When he steps off the plane, his muscles cramp from sitting tense for so long and he staggers a little, but recovers before Garak can catch him. The torture of flying is over now, which means he can resume his role as a useful human. Garak is entirely business, and they travel in relative silence. Julian rereads the mission briefing—likely a bioweapons facility, get in, access the computers and figure out what to do next, most likely take the data and blow the place to hell—now that he’s functional again. In Billings, there’s a car waiting and Julian looks around at the snow that covers everything and wonders miserably why, if he had to board a plane, the mission couldn’t have at least been in Majorca or something.
The next piece of the nightmare falls into place when Garak says, “We’ll have to camp for the night.”
“What.” Julian isn’t afraid of camping, but he doesn’t particularly like the woods, he doesn’t like snow, and he doesn’t like tents.
“The compound is in an isolated area,” Garak tells him. “No hotels. Believe me, I had Moneypenny check extensively. If we’d arrived earlier, we might have made it today, but—”
But Julian is terrified of flying and has thrown the entire mission off-track. “Of course,” he says, because why not, why shouldn’t this mission become increasingly hellish. “I hope you know how to set up a tent, 003.” Now that they’re alone, there’s no reason to call him anything else.
“I know how to do a great deal of things,” Garak says, and there’s a little curl of innuendo in his voice. Julian knows better than to take anything from it beyond some attempt at distraction. Sometimes he thinks that flirting is Garak’s natural language and he must spend a great deal of time trying to just speak in ordinary English. “Including pitch a tent.”
A tent. A small tent, it turns out, because a two-man tent means large enough for two small men to lie side-by-side with their shoulders touching, and Garak is not a small man. Julian had feared that the tent would be too cold, out in the snow, but they discard their heavy coats by their feet and zip the sleeping bags together, something that Julian only ever did once on a camping trip with a boy he liked under the guise of sharing body heat. The size of the tent means that they’re both lying on their sides to fit, Garak pressed all along Julian's back in the darkness. When Julian shifts too many times, Garak lays a flat hand on his stomach, crooked pinky just dipping into his waistband, and says “Lie still” against his ear.
“Right,” Julian says. “Excellent chance of sleep.”
“Good night, Q.” Garak’s voice is firm.
“Good night, 003.”
* * * * *
He wakes from another nightmare in the dark and struggles against the arm that holds him fast. Someone is saying “Q” in a stern voice, and then there’s a burst of pain on his earlobe.
“You bit me!” At least it brings him back to reality.
“You were having a nightmare. Shaking the entire tent.”
“My mistake,” Julian says acidly. “I’m having a smidge of trouble sleeping out here.”
Garak’s hand shifts on his stomach. “If you need help sleeping, there are ways to do that,” he says, and his breath is hot on Julian’s neck. Julian realizes in not-quite-surprise that Garak is hardening against him, and it would be like this, wouldn’t it, the one time (and he has no doubt it will only be once).
Julian rolls his hips just slightly, just enough to get Garak’s hand a little lower. Garak obliges, until his fingertips are brushing through the coarse hair at the base of Julian's cock, and suddenly it all seems so inevitable. Julian rolls his hips again, a little harder, to feel the press of Garak’s cock against his ass, and when Garak closes his fingers around Julian's cock he doesn’t try to stifle the moan. Then Garak releases him and slides his hand lower to cup Julian's balls. Forget subtlety, Julian shoves his pants down around his thighs to relieve some of the pressure. Garak takes his hand away entirely, just for a moment, and Julian hears the rustle of cloth before Garak’s cock presses against the bare skin of his ass, thick and hot. Garak brings his hand to Julian's mouth and Julian sucks at his fingers, curls his tongue around each one, so that they’re wet when Garak wraps his hand around Julian again. There’s no sound but their harsh breaths and the curious stillness of snow outside. Garak’s cock wedges between his cheeks as Julian thrusts into the circle of his fingers, and Garak kisses his neck with the slightest bit of teeth. Julian has nothing to do with his hands but reach back and grip Garak’s bare hip, then lower, to get an awkward hand on Garak’s cock. He can hear the way that Garak’s breathing has turned ragged, and he readjusts the path of Garak’s cock so that the head is sliding across his hole with every thrust.
“I want you to fuck me,” Julian says, and it shatters the silence. “I want you to—open me up and hold me down and fuck all the other thoughts out of me—” Garak won’t, not here with nothing but saliva, but Julian can say it all the same. “003—”
Garak bites at his neck, harder this time. “My name.” His voice is gravelly and his hand tightens on Julian's cock.
“Garak—”
Garak makes an animal kind of noise and gets his other arm beneath Julian's head to put two fingers in his mouth even as he jerks Julian with the other hand. Julian sucks them like he would Garak’s cock, wet and desperate, and Garak says, “You were watching every time, weren’t you,” and Julian sucks harder, licks between the seam of his two fingers. His breath catches and he pulls his fingers out, sets them lightly against Julian's lower lip. “Tell me.”
“Every time,” Julian says. This is disastrous but he doesn’t care, doesn’t care about anything but Garak’s hand and cock and is beginning to think that maybe he could take Garak’s cock anyway with how much he wants it. “I would—I’d watch in my office and try not to touch myself at first—Garak—” Garak gives a wounded groan at that. “And then more and more I would just watch, and think about how your hands would feel—your mouth, your cock—I was fingering myself when you were fucking him in Paris, Garak—”
“Fuck,” Garak says, and comes with the head of his cock pressed to Julian's rim. Julian feels the heat of it and grabs wildly at Garak’s hand to lift it off his cock and drag it through the mess. Garak gets the idea quickly and begins to work one finger into Julian's hole, pushing the come inside as he does, and Julian spreads his legs wider. He wasn’t wrong when he told Garak that his fingers are big, and Julian ducks his head to suck those two fingers at his lip back into his mouth. He puts his own hand on his cock and this, this is incredible, Garak in his mouth and his ass and he’s squeezing the base of his cock to keep from coming because he knows that when he does, this will be over. “You have no idea,” Garak says, his voice ragged. “I knew you had to be watching—you’d never look away, not if it might put me at risk—” He works a second finger into Julian. Julian moans a little and clenches tight around him, too much and nothing like enough. “I knew you’d be blushing—you’d be biting your lip, I wanted to fuck your mouth open—” Julian hums around his fingers and flicks his tongue at the seam again. “I knew you wanted to see me fuck a man—knew you’d be imagining me doing it to you—” He twists his fingers in Julian's ass and Julian would yell when Garak hits just the right spot if his mouth weren’t full. “I want to ruin you,” Garak says into his ear like some kind of admission. That’s it, that’s all Julian can take, and he’s fucking into his fist and back onto Garak’s fingers. When he comes it rolls through him like thunder.
They don’t say anything more—Garak kisses Julian's neck as he pulls his fingers out gently and finds some cloth to wipe up the mess, and he was right, Julian is already drifting off to sleep.
He wakes to early morning light, Garak still pressed close along his back. There’s still some madness left in him, and he tells himself that it’s all one encounter if it all happens in the tent. Julian eases out of Garak’s hold—Garak is awake, but allows it—and readjusts their bodies so that he can lean down and take Garak’s half-hard cock in his mouth. Julian has always loved this, the power that it gives him over another person, the reactions that he can drag out of them, and Garak is no exception. His hands fist in the fabric of the sleeping bag, and then, when Julian looks up through his eyelashes and takes Garak a little deeper, one hand finds its way into his hair. Garak’s eyes are hectic and very bright blue, so bright that Julian drops his gaze again. Garak isn’t quiet as Julian sucks him, but none of his noises are words, only half-formed syllables and strangled breaths. Julian gets his hands beneath Garak’s hips to squeeze the muscles of his ass and urge him on, and when Garak doesn’t get the message, Julian pulls off entirely. “You can,” he says. “I want you to,” and then swallows Garak’s cock again.
Garak’s breath is explosive as his fingers tighten in Julian's hair. He thrusts experimentally and swears when his cock hits the back of Julian's throat, and Julian looks up at Garak again. His cock is thick in Julian's mouth as he thrusts again, hand holding Julian's head in place, and Julian hums around it and grips his ass hard again. Garak almost looks like he’s in pain as he fucks Julian's mouth, his breath coming fast, and he reaches down to touch Julian's lower lip where it’s stretched around his cock.
He comes without warning, thrusting deep into Julian's throat, and Julian swallows around him and sucks him through it as he shudders. Only when he’s soft does Julian release him. For an instant, Julian thinks he sees a kind of terror on Garak’s face, and then it’s gone just as quickly.
“We should get going,” Julian says, and his voice is hoarse. He can taste Garak in the back of his throat. He’s very hard but he doesn’t think he could take it if Garak touched him now. They’ve flung the sleeping bag back and the tent is chilly; it’ll deal with his erection quickly enough.
“Yes.” Garak looks dizzy as he glances at his watch. “Yes, we should.”
They take down the tent in near-silence, shoving it into the trunk of the car. Julian hopes fervently that they won’t have to camp again. He feels sticky and grimy and entirely off-balance.
When they reach the outskirts of the compound, they leave the car behind a snowbank and Garak leads him inside. Julian isn’t prideful enough to think that he knows how to do this part better than Garak; he steps where Garak does, matches his speed as best he can, ever-mindful of the equipment in his pack. They surprise three guards when they turn a corner in the hallway and Garak kills all three before one can draw a gun. Julian has seen him kill many, many people over surveillance cameras and hacked cell phones and spy satellites, but it’s very different to be here beside Garak as he does it. Garak doesn’t hesitate for even a breath. Perhaps it should disturb Julian, but somehow it makes him feel strangely safer.
Finally, Julian finds a place to plug in and the compound yields all its secrets to him. He pulls up the security feeds almost absently so that he can guide Garak through to set charges and then begins examining the data in their private server. There are terrifying formulas in there, documentation of horrific testing, and it’s not his job to pick and choose what data to bring home but it doesn’t matter. He refuses to bring this back. It’s a matter of a few keystrokes to wipe some of it away—not the names of anyone involved, not the suppliers, not even the compound schematics. But he irreversibly corrupts the biological data as he copies the entire server and uploads it to the satellite that the Americans are so kindly sharing. At the same time, he’s steering Garak to the most vulnerable spots in the compound, spotting guard patrols and looping surveillance footage, and no, he couldn’t have done this from London, he has to admit it.
He’s not perfect, though. He misses a hidden alarm as Garak progresses through the compound and “Shit, shit, 003, you need to get out of there,” he says, and for all his attention to stealth, he’s spoken too loud. Something strikes his head and everything goes dark.
* * * * *
Julian wakes up very cold in the backseat of their car. Through the window, he can see the snowy landscape whipping past, and when he twists a little, it’s just in time to see a series of massive explosions behind them. “Ow,” he says stupidly. When he touches the back of his head, his hand comes away sticky with blood. His senses return slowly, one at a time, and when he can hear again he realizes that that’s gunfire. There’s a terrific crash as the rear window shatters and Julian turns his face away just in time.
“Stay down.” Garak’s voice is terse as he accelerates further. Julian feels the car fishtailing and wishes he’d been able to send one of his own cars ahead for them to use instead.
“I don’t suppose this car has any special features?” Julian's tongue feels thick as he speaks. Probably a concussion. Lying across the seat isn’t helping.
“No.”
“Right.” There’s a weapons bag in the footwell. Julian leans further down, though it makes his head pound, and rummages through it. His hands close on the cold shape of grenades, and he knows this kind because he made them. Not so much grenades as miniature heat-seeking missiles that detect heavy weaponry; if he throws one through the now-empty rear window, it’ll find whoever is shooting at them and detonate. “Brace yourself, 003,” he tells Garak, and before Garak can protests, he hurls two outside with all his strength.
“Q—”
Something slams him against the back of the driver’s seat, and he struggles back onto the rear bench. For a moment, nothing happens. Then the grenades detonate one after another with a greedy roar and the gunfire just—stops. “Well,” Julian says. “That was even better than in the testing phase.” There’s a strange agony beginning in his side and when he looks down, he sees blood staining his parka. “Oh,” he says. “I appear to have been shot.”
Garak looks at him in the rearview mirror. “Get your parka off. Fold it up, put pressure on the wound.” When Julian is slow to obey, he adds, “Damn it, Q, do what I’m telling you!”
“Don’t yell,” Julian tells him. “It doesn’t help. I think I’m concussed.” He struggles out of the parka. There’s rather a lot of blood. He folds it into a pad and presses it to the wound, and then for once has the presence of mind to take off his belt and fasten it around his midsection instead to hold the pad in place. “I think I’m going to pass out,” he tells Garak, and promptly does.
* * * * *
Julian wakes up in blessedly familiar surroundings. Dr. Patel says, “Good, you’re awake. If this was your idea of a good way to avoid experiencing a flight home, Q, there are better options.” She offers a gentle smile.
Julian laughs, but it turns into a pained noise. When he takes stock, his head no longer hurts, but his abdomen aches steadily, a pain that turns sharp when he moves too quickly. “What happened? I remember being shot—”
Her face turns serious. “Yes. The bullet lodged in your spleen. You lost a great deal of blood before 003 was able to get you to a doctor, and I’m afraid their initial surgical intervention was—not of the quality that we expect, which meant that you required further surgery. As soon as you were stabilized, you were transferred back to MI-6. You had some significant brain swelling, but it appears to have subsided now. You’ve been here for four days.”
Yes, Julian's mouth tastes as though he hasn’t brushed his teeth in days. “The mission?”
“I’m told it was a success.” She smiles a little. “I’m afraid 003 didn’t recover your equipment, though.”
Julian stifles the noise of outrage. He can’t help glancing past Dr. Patel, just for a second, but there’s no one else in the room. “Is he—all right?” He hurries to add, “There was quite a lot of gunfire.”
“Nothing more than the usual bumps and bruises,” she says. “I believe he’s already back at it.”
“Oh.” It’s not as though Julian was expecting Garak to be—waiting for him, or something absurd like that, but it’s been less than a week since the mission and Julian has been in hospital for all this time. Garak might have—well. No, he wouldn’t have. “When can I go back to work?”
Dr. Patel sighs. “I’d like to tell you at least a week,” she says, “but I suppose you’ll tell me that since you work in this building, you’ll come to me at the first sign of trouble?”
“You really are an excellent doctor,” Julian tells her earnestly. “Now, can someone call D and have her bring me a laptop?”