Chapter Text
Recovery is bloody maddening. He’s always been good at ignoring things like needing to eat or sleep, but now his body announces itself to him with pain when he forgets to take his painkillers, which require food, which requires taking time away from work. The couch in his office is a pullout, usually reserved for when matters are very urgent and he needs to catch a few hours of sleep but can’t make it home, and he takes to sleeping there. Moneypenny appreciates him enough that she sends a very junior agent to his home to collect a few changes of clothes. Julian more or less moves into Q Branch for the duration.
Garak comes back from his mission nearly two weeks later. Julian finds out only because he’s in the midst of lecturing his team about the importance of good documentation in code when Garak walks through the doors of Q Branch. Julian trips over a sentence—just one—and manages to recover and continue lecturing. Garak leans against the wall and watches him until Julian reaches a reasonable stopping point and says, “Now, I want everyone to spend the next hour documenting the code that you just wrote so that other people can bloody well fix it when it breaks and you’re off on holiday.” He raises an eyebrow at Garak, who approaches him. “What can I do for you, 003?”
“I didn’t know you were allowed to live at Q Branch.” It might be the first time he’s ever commented on Julian's habits, or personal life, or really anything at all.
“I’m not living here,” Julian says automatically. “I found it easier to spend the odd night here while recovering than to brave the Tube, if you must know.”
“I think MI-6 could have spared the expense to get you a driver for a few days.” Garak’s voice is even. Julian wishes he could read Garak, even a little, but then there are plenty of people out in the world who’ve regretted Garak’s poker face as they bled to death.
“I was busy,” Julian says. “There’s a great deal of data to examine and someone seems to have blown up all of my equipment while I was unconscious.”
Garak’s lips tighten a fraction. A stray thought crosses Julian's mind: he wishes he’d kissed Garak, just once. “Well, Q, it was either carry you out or take the equipment, and you can always build new toys.”
“Ah. Yes. My apologies for that. I’m afraid I neglected my surroundings.” He wonders if anything in the tent registered for Garak—the admissions, calling him by his first name, any of it. Julian wouldn’t think it to look at him.
Garak’s lips tighten again. “The job got done. That’s what matters. Not the equipment.”
“Yes, well.” Julian is very aware that they’re standing out in the open in Q Branch, where everyone can see and hear them. Not exactly the time to say ‘thanks very much for the shag, wish we could do it again.’ “I’m afraid I don’t have anything to offer you at the moment,” he says instead. He means equipment, but it comes out sounding like something very different.
Garak’s eyes are flat; Julian can’t discern what emotions, if any, he might be feeling. He only nods once and then turns and leaves. Julian doesn’t see him again for a month, and Julian doesn’t go looking.
* * * * *
The only reason Julian is on Garak’s next mission is that it involves one of the names that they discovered on the compound’s server. He brings D in as backup, to cross-check anything that Garak finds in real time as Julian instructs him.
Naturally, Garak manages to find someone who has to be seduced to gain access to the target’s office. Julian had almost wondered if Garak might refrain, for some reason, but that’s absurd. Nothing has changed. Next to him, D sighs in annoyance. “You know, I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to run one of his missions,” she says. Then she says, “Oh, that’s a new one,” as Garak guides the man from the hallway into the office next to the target’s and pulls his shirt open, popping off the buttons. The man is a little more careful with Garak’s clothes—Julian doesn’t think he’d stand for having his shirt torn off—but his fingers still make quick work of the buttons. Julian's throat goes dry as the man unbuckles Garak’s trousers, waiting for it, and that’s it, that’s when Garak looks straight into the camera as the man goes to his knees. “Jesus,” D says. “Jesus Christ.” The man is lavishing kisses along Garak’s cock, which means that Julian has an excellent view of it. Garak has angled them so that Julian can watch clearly as he pushes into the man’s mouth, can watch the man swallow hard around him, and remember exactly what that was like. D stands up. “Are you kidding me?”
Garak has his hand on the man’s head, but he doesn’t push; he lets the man set the pace instead. Julian can hear the familiar sounds and it’s only D’s presence a few feet away that’s keeping him sane. Garak is still staring directly at the camera and Julian can see the tension in his muscles, the caught breath in his throat. D has taken her earwig out, apparently disgusted, and Julian dares to say, very low, “Don’t come yet.” He watches the shiver that passes through Garak, the way that his throat works as he pushes the man’s head back off his cock. Garak’s cock is stiff and flushed and he holds it tight with one hand. “Use your hand,” Julian tells him, and Garak strokes his cock hard and fast. Julian can see when he’s close—very close—and some devil grips his tongue and makes him say, “Not until I tell you.” Garak stops, almost shaking, and Julian says, louder, “That’s enough, 003. There’s an objective to achieve.”
Garak stares at the camera and Julian is sure that he won’t obey—but he does, says something short and sharp to the man, who leaves, and tucks himself back into his pants with a wince. The shape of his cock is obscene in his trousers as he advances on the target’s office. He finds the target’s hard drive and looks straight up into the security camera in this room, and if D weren’t here—if it were later at night, if he weren’t standing in a killer’s office—Julian would tell him to finish himself off now. But instead Garak says, “Objective complete. I’m going to eliminate the target. I’ll advise if I need guidance,” and slinks out of the office.
“What the fuck,” D says, “was that.”
Julian lets out a long breath to steady his voice. “Just 003 being 003,” he says, and he tries to keep his voice casual. “You did warn me that he wasn’t shy.” He keeps an eye on the monitors as Garak garrottes the target.
D stares at him. There’s color high in her cheeks. “That’s not—there’s a difference between not bothering to cover up at all, and—it’s like he was performing for you.”
“I thought—” Julian realizes how stupid it sounds as he says it. “I thought that’s what you meant when you said he wasn’t shy.” He looks at D. “I assumed you and he—?”
D looks somewhere between regretful, insulted, and horrified. “No,” she says. “Never. He didn’t—he didn’t look at the camera, Q. He and I didn’t—did he touch you?”
“You make it sound like you’re conducting a forensic interview,” Julian says, and now he’s insulted. “I was not—touched—by Elim Garak.” He supposes that’s the lie he’ll have to maintain, because ‘he got me off after I had nightmares’ is embarrassing on many levels.
She clearly doesn’t believe him. They’re protective of him, here in Q Branch. It doesn’t help that he’s young, nor that he so clearly looks it. Sometimes they act as though he’s never been out in the world. “Q, don’t get your heart broken. 003 isn’t like normal agents. He’s not even like the other 00s. He’s a bloody brilliant agent, and everything he touches turns to ash.”
Julian sighs. “I appreciate the warning,” he says. “I assure you, my heart is entirely safe.” On the screen, he sees Garak execute another target with two shots to the head and thinks, yes, he’d never be foolish enough to develop feelings of that sort for Elim Garak.
“All right.” D gives him a suspicious look. “If he bothers you, let me know. He may be a 00, but we take care of our own.”
“I’m your boss,” Julian reminds her, his voice plaintive, and D just shakes her head.
With the mission complete, D leaves the command center where they run missions that require more than one Q Branch operative and Julian transfers the video feed and slinks back to his desk in the privacy of his office. His program runs for the entirety of any mission—wheels down to wheels up—but during downtime like this, he usually puts it in a standby mode that’s set to alert if there’s any hostile movement in the agent’s vicinity. Every face is run through facial recognition software, every body shape compared against the shapes of known weapons. It’s not foolproof, not by a longshot, but Julian trusts it to be his eyes when his focus is elsewhere.
He expects Garak to go to a bar, perhaps, or invite some local lovely to his room, but Garak goes directly to his hotel room, pours himself a double, and stands at the window looking out over the city. There by the window, he’s almost outside the field of vision of their own security camera. He’s silent for a very long time—drinking, Julian assumes—and then Julian sees a window curtain billowing and his breath catches in his throat. “003, is everything all right?”
Garak steps back into the camera’s field of view. “Just the wind,” he says. “Still watching, Q?”
“Someone monitors until the mission is done,” Julian says, a little stiffly. “Since I can do it and still be working on three other projects at once, I didn’t see the need to task someone else with it.”
“No, you wouldn’t.” There’s something tight in Garak’s voice. He unbuttons his shirt one-handed, drink in the other. “Everything all right there?”
“I’m afraid you scandalized D with your display earlier.” Julian isn’t looking at the shadows on his chest as Garak shrugs his shirt off.
Garak chuckles. “I didn’t know she was watching. Listening too?”
Julian remembers what he’d said earlier. “No. Not listening.” His throat hurts a little. He wants Garak to go down to the hotel bar, find someone and bring them upstairs, finish what he’d started in the office. “I’ve—I’ve got quite a lot of work to do, 003. I’ll warn you if I detect any threats.”
“Of course. I do hope you’re not still living at the office.”
That startles Julian “No,” he says. “No, not until the next time I get shot.” The silence stretches between them, and finally Julian says, “Goodnight, 003.” The callsign is a comforting reminder of the formality between them.
Admittedly, he sleeps at the office that night, mostly because he forgets to go home until it’s late enough that it would be silly to go all the way home and come all the way back, but he does make an effort to leave by 8 p.m. the next night. Julian picks up two curries at the nearby takeaway—one for dinner, one for breakfast—a bottle of wine, because he’s feeling a little sorry for himself, and more cat food for the local strays. Carrying it all means that his hands are quite full when he reaches his flat and he grimly wishes that he’d been a little less zealous when he first installed all of his locks on the door. He’s contemplating whether he can hold something with his teeth to free up a hand when the door abruptly swings open. “What—003!” He goes from shock to horror to anger in about ten seconds. “What’s wrong?” He cranes his neck to see past Garak. “Did someone break in?” The locks are all intact, but he can’t fathom why else Garak would be here.
“Yes,” Garak says. “I did.”
It dawns on Julian that Garak really has broken into his apartment for no good reason, and he huffs in annoyance and shoulders past Garak. “I’ll have to re-randomize all the codes now, I hope you know. You might as well shut that.” The curries go on the counter, as does the wine; his laptop bag lives in the small area on the table not populated by stacks of technical manuals. He sets the cat food down by the back door for later distribution and removes his shoes indoors like a civilized person.
Garak watches him do it all with arms crossed and the slightest look of amusement. “Prescient of you to bring me dinner,” Garak says.
“Presumptuous,” Julian snaps. “That’s my breakfast.” He shoves it into the refrigerator. “What are you doing here?”
“You lied,” Garak says. “You said you weren’t sleeping at the office.”
Julian is too incensed to consider the implications of what Garak is saying. “In point of fact, 003, I told you that I wasn’t living at the office, which I am not. As you can see from the fact that I am here, in my own flat, preparing to eat my own dinner, alone.”
“You weren’t here this morning.” His voice is light, even, as though this is a normal kind of thing to say.
“Garak.” Julian is on the verge of wringing his neck and realizes he’s misspoken. “003. Please tell me that you have not been at my flat since this morning.”
“No,” Garak says. His face is unreadable. He walks further into the kitchen, until he’s almost crowding Julian against the counter. “How’s the wound?” When Julian gapes at him, Garak reaches down and actually lifts his shirt to examine it, fingertips not even brushing his skin.
“It’s been two months, it’s bloody well fine by now,” and Julian wants to say no thanks to you, but it quite literally is thanks to Garak. “I suppose I should thank you for saving my life.”
Garak leaves off staring at the ugly pink scar and lifts his blue eyes to Julian's. They’re a cold unearthly color, those eyes. “I suppose I did.” His face is very close, here in the bright light of Julian's tiny kitchen. Julian thinks he’ll go cross-eyed if he stands here much longer. When he starts to slip away, though, Garak puts a hand on the counter and presses him back against it until their hips are almost touching.
“What do you want, 003?” Julian knows what he’d like, but he also knows it would probably be a very bad idea.
Garak leans forward, until his mouth is very close to Julian's ear, and says, “I want you to tell me.” The heat of his breath makes Julian shiver.
“Tell you what?”
Garak’s voice is very gravelly. “You said not to come until you told me.”
That sends a bolt of white-hot heat through Julian that almost makes him stagger. “Didn’t think you’d listen,” he says, and if his voice is a little high-pitched, well, Garak is mouthing at his neck, somewhere between a kiss and a scrape of teeth, his other hand dropping firmly to Julian's hip. “You’re not—known for being—particularly good at following orders—!”
“I did,” Garak mumbles against his neck. “I did, and I want you to tell me.” His fingers creep under Julian's shirt, then hook into the waist of Julian's trousers.
Christ, Julian thinks he’s having a heart attack. “Kiss me,” Julian says. He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he wants that at least—and Garak does, presses him firmly against the counter and catches his mouth almost hungrily. Julian’s seen this a hundred times on surveillance footage but it’s no wonder they drop their panties and spill their secrets. Garak kisses like he wants to consume a person, like there’s no need for breath, and Julian doesn’t care if this is the thousandth time Garak has done it because everything he says is the best kind of lie. “All right,” Julian says at last, gasping in a breath. “All right.” If Garak is going to offer this to him, Julian is going to take it. One more time, what’s one more time? “You’re going to—you’re going to fuck me, and you’re not going to come until I tell you.”
The words sound a lot more authoritative in his head than they do when he says them aloud in the light of the kitchen, but Garak says, “All right,” in his ear and nearly drags Julian the four steps that it takes to reach his bedroom.
Garak’s hands are everywhere, pulling his jumper up over his head and discarding it on the floor, yanking at the buttons on his shirt until Julian races to undo them just to protect them, dragging Julian's trousers down and his pants with them, until Julian is entirely naked and lying, a little stunned, on the bed. Garak strips down with a kind of brutal efficiency that does something to Julian. He’s been hard almost ever since Garak said he’d been waiting for Julian’s permission, and when Garak presses him down into the mattress with another devouring kiss, his cock brushes heavy against Julian's thigh. Julian gropes in the direction of his bedside table for lube, because now that it’s in front of him, he feels like he’s been desperate for this since the tent.
Garak is ruthless opening him up, just this side of too fast. Julian shoves his hips up against Garak’s fingers and makes noises against his mouth that he would never admit. “Garak,” he says, and Garak swallows it down with another kiss, his fingers relentless and searching. He moves his mouth to Julian's abdomen, just to the side of the scar, and his lips are so light that Julian can barely feel them in contrast with his fingers. When he finds the right spot, he has Julian arching off the mattress with it, coming with his cock untouched. It feels like Garak is a firestorm that’s going to burn Julian alive and he wants it desperately. “Another—finger,” he says, even as his legs are a little jellylike. Garak’s gaze is hungry, catching on his mouth, the line of his throat, the streaks of come on his stomach, down to where he’s stretched around Garak’s fingers, and Julian says, “Do it.” Garak feels huge inside him as he bottoms out and Julian can’t quite seem to catch his breath. He cants his hips up because he can’t manage words and Garak wraps his hands around Julian's hips and sets up a rhythm that’s so good Julian's starting to harden again. “Fuck,” he pants, and Garak’s hips snap forward and make Julian light up behind his eyes.
“Tell me,” Garak says against Julian's mouth. “Tell me—”
“You can—you can come—Garak—”
The noise Garak makes as he comes is something wild and inhuman. He keeps thrusting as he does, and the friction of his sweat-slick skin against Julian’s cock has Julian coming again, desperately. Garak’s eyes are preternaturally blue as he stares down at Julian, who is still panting for air. When Garak pulls out, Julian feels the absence keenly. Garak half-collapses onto his back next to Julian, who glances at him from the corner of his eyes. Garak’s chest rises and falls evenly, as though he’s just had a mild workout. Whatever desperation was on his face is gone now, replaced by an even kind of blankness.
“I have no idea what the fuck is happening,” Julian says. He regrets it as soon as he does, because Garak stands almost instantly and begins to reassemble his clothing. Julian props himself on his elbows for a moment to watch, but he can’t bring himself to say anything more. Garak’s movements are brusque and efficient, and he doesn’t look at Julian. There’s a weight settling on Julian’s chest. He lets himself fall back onto the bed. “Lock the front door behind you,” he says to the ceiling. It’s not as though he expected Garak to spend the night—though why shouldn’t he, Garak is the one who came here, he didn’t ask for this—but there could have been a shower together, at least. Julian would even have ceded the second curry. He hears the door shut behind Garak and the cheery jingle of the electronic locks re-engaging and thinks, well, fuck.
* * * * *
Julian goes into work the next morning a little sore, his stomach grumbling over the mediocre tikka masala that he gulped down for breakfast. When D sees him, she blanches and grabs something out of her purse, then drags him into the bathroom.
“Good morning?” Julian sees the tube in her hand. “Oh, shit.” There’s a brilliant mark just above his collar that’s a truly impressive shade of purple.
“Tell me you went out last night and met someone nice,” D says. She dabs the cover-up on the mark. It’s not quite the right shade, but at least it’s something. “Someone sweet and age-appropriate.”
Julian heaves a sigh. “D, I’m twenty-six years old. I’m not a child.” She pokes a little too hard at the mark, and Julian winces. “Yes, we watched a Disney film and then ate ice cream.” He catches her eyes in the mirror. “Leave it, D.”
“All right,” she says, though he knows very well that she won’t.
Worse luck him, Garak is gearing up for a new mission and Julian has to introduce him to his latest darling, a heavily modified DB11. Garak arrives at his workshop beneath Q Branch at 10 AM sharp, impeccable as always. Julian is very conscious of the fact that he didn’t quite roll his sleeves up far enough to avoid a smear of engine lubricant. When Garak arrives, his eyes flick infinitesimally to Julian's neck and then past him to the Aston. “What do you have for me today?”
Julian has always prided himself on being able to keep things casual, but there’s casual and then there’s not fucking acknowledging that anything happened at all. “Good morning, 003,” he says. “Meet your new car. If you leave this one in pieces, or at the bottom of a ravine, or on fire, I will be displeased.”
“Your pleasure is always foremost in my mind,” Garak says, and it rings so false that it makes Julian's spine crawl.
Julian shows off the new features—exploding caltrops, front and rear undercarriage-mounted guns that can fire up to 100 rounds per second, ejectors for both the driver and passenger seats with optional reusable parachutes, depending on whether Garak wants the ejected person to survive—before finishing with, “And, of course, I’ve reinforced the bulletproofing of both the windows and body. Nothing short of a mine is going to penetrate the car.” He realizes that he’s pressing his hand to his scar and runs it through his hair instead. “Any questions?”
“Next time, I’d like a remote control too.”
That’s almost a smile, Julian thinks. He scoffs. “If it makes you feel better, 003, I can tell you that there are enough electronics in this car that I could drive it halfway around the world from right here in Q Branch.”
Garak does smile, a quick tug of one corner of his mouth. “I’d settle for being able to drive it myself from down the street.”
“Next time,” Julian promises. The only real obstacle will be coming up with a simple enough interface for Garak to use from a smartphone—or, knowing Garak’s propensity for losing things not attached to him, from a watch. “Any questions, 003?”
“I’ll try to bring it back intact.” Garak meets his eyes, and for the barest second, Julian thinks he’s going to say something else. He doesn’t.
All right, then. “See that you do,” Julian says weakly, and passes Garak the keys.