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Leeta leans across the bar. “Nobody’s taking orders at the dabo wheel, Quark. You’ve got thirsty customers.”
Quark nods, looks around for a free waiter. Leeta turns to go, but then Julian pulls her onto his knee and kisses her.
“No unauthorised breaks!” calls Quark.
Leeta pulls away, reluctant. “Later,” she says, quietly.
“Later,” agrees Julian.
Miles watches her head back to the dabo wheel, her hips swaying and the curve of her breasts visible at her sides. Then he remembers that he’s a married man who’s staring at his best friend’s girlfriend, and he looks away.
“There’s no harm in looking, Chief,” says Julian, who seems more amused than anything else. “Leeta’s a beautiful woman, she pleases the eye.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
Julian shrugs. “Everyone looks at her. They’re supposed to. If it bothered me I’d have no business dating her. Besides,” and here he smiles, “I’m the only one she goes to bed with.”
Miles can’t not think about it with a prompt like that: Leeta, naked. Julian naked. Leeta and Julian doing… whatever it is they do together. He feels himself blush, wishes his embarrassment wasn’t always so visible to other people. “I don’t think I’d be happy if Keiko got that sort of attention,” he says, lifting his pint of synthale.
Julian laughs, and Miles turns to stare at him – what’s so funny about that? “Sorry,” says Julian, “it’s just… the mental image of Keiko as a dabo girl.”
Miles laughs too. “She’d be terrible at it. If any of the customers annoyed her she’d let them know about it pretty quickly.”
“She wouldn’t last a day,” says Julian, grinning.
“She wouldn’t even last an hour!” He raises his glass towards Julian. “To the women in our lives.”
“To the women.” Their glasses clink together.