ST:DS9 G/B: Black Bottle: Ch1: The Gift

Title: Black Bottle: Chapter 1: The Gift
Author: Hermit
Fandom: Star Trek:DS9
Pairing: Garak/Bashir
Rating: PG-13 to be safe
Yadda: Not my characters, made up, just for fun etc.
Prompt: All of this can be yours; Just give me what I want; And nobody gets hurt. (From Vertigo)
A/N: For app1e_pi 's atomic_fiction challenge. I think I broke my pr0n on this one. Also, this is a bit long. And full of run-on sentences. And fragments. I had some trouble reconciling the character of Garak, who is mostly remembered for his sharp wit, with the fairly somber mood of this piece. Set near the end of the series at a vague point in time since I made an exhaustive 10 minute search online to find a comprehensive DS9 time line and couldn't find one, so I didn't know exactly when to set this story to make it canon. But I suppose it isn't very canon anyway since it doesn't leave much room for that whole Ezri thing at the end of the series. It occurs on the station, as opposed to on the Defiant, which I'm not even sure is possible - so in short, probably doesn't adhere to canon well. Enough of my blabber.
Warnings: Some very very mild bondage, sorta, if you want to think of it that way. Also mentions of torture. (pg-13 I swear!) Thanks to nickelsandcoats for the beta. Sorry you went through all that just to have me keep it basically how it was hon. You are very much the queen of grammar! (and I am the knave ;D)

prologue en bref

It didn't feel like this in the beginning. Before, it was easy and completely entertaining to watch the naïf try to be inconspicuous. The memory of that first hesitant smile makes his mouth quirk sympathetically. Though Garak did underestimate him. Everyone did. Behind that smile was a capacity for artifice he had not imagined. A learned and finely honed skill. That was a bit of a surprise, but only a mild one; only a connection between a few formerly unaccountable entries in Garak's mental tally. He knows better than to underestimate him now. Usually.

But it didn't feel like this in the beginning. Now it feels like deception. He'd never been troubled with such a notion before. But now. Julian trusts so much. Gives so much. Even after everything that has happened. Everyone they've lost, everything broken. His mood is often sombre these days. The war has closed in on everyone, a choking wind forcing too much air in your lungs, and there is little to do but hold on and face the gale. They seldom enjoy lunch together anymore either. Instead it takes a concerted effort to arrange a few hours of quiet escape. It's the only thing Garak looks forward to anymore. And yet it knots him up inside as well. Despite everything, Julian trusts him. And now it feels like deception.

Duplicity, coersion, intimidation; forms of discrete force that result in a gain for one and a loss for another. Second nature to Elim Garak. First nature. Whether used to extract information or as punishment, the most effective of them is the promise of a gain where none exists. If you make it clear that they are going to lose everything, not losing something feels like a win, and they will do anything for it. Tell you anything, sell you their own lives. It is a gift you give them. The knowledge that their family will suffer only humiliation and not death. Or perhaps you give them death as their concession. It is better than life in agony, but regretful if in vain.



~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

I. The Gift

Julian answers the door close to midnight and lets Garak in with barely a nod. Garak can see a beastly tension riding high in the human's shoulders and shadowing his face as he returns silently to a rumpled cloth half-spread over the table. Julian has rearranged his quarters a little since their last dinner. His half-moon couch has moved from the window to the middle of the room. Different, Garak thinks, and steps just inside. Julian does not seem to notice that he is invited in, but not yet welcomed, and he stands for a few silent seconds in the doorway.

“I have something for you,” Garak intones, taking the initiative. Julian looks up, edges back toward his guest with a final palm smoothed over the tabletop. Pleasantries are not necessary between them perhaps, but Garak can not help but wonder if the lack tonight indicates displeasure, or if it is just another facet of whatever it is that has turned the doctor's brow hard and flat.

Garak produces a small black glass bottle from a plain box. It bears an etched label painted in fine scrolls of red. Ragged curl of paper at the top. He always brings something, Julian has noticed. An off-world treat, a Cardassian dish to which he has not yet been introduced, a piece of music. Julian would reciprocate, but Garak has never offered to host and Julian does not bother suggesting it. The fact that he always brings some sort of offering is meaningless, he thinks, but his tired eyes snag on the glossy bottle just as his mind does on the way the Cardassian has drawn attention to the gift. Either the gift is different or he is different. He does not give Julian time to consider it right away.

“Azkali wine," Garak explains and Julian's attention is strung taught, overworked and resisting, but compulsory. Nothing with Garak is simple or wasted, and he is aware that there is either something important being communicated, or the Cardassian is trying to distract him from the important thing, or both. Sometimes he thinks Garak has been at his game so long he is no longer aware that he's playing it.

He shows his surprise with a blink. “I've heard of it. Isn't it extremely rare, hard to come by?”

Garak notes with a little melancholy amusement that Julian is even still in his uniform. 'Hello' and 'How are you?' are often not in the doctor's vocabulary on days he's so busy he's still in his uniform at midnight.

“Yes. Especially now that the Azkali's planet has been razed, I don't think we can expect a new vintage from them any time soon. I've only ever even seen one other bottle.” Garak explains.

“Tain?” Julian asks mildly, quietly, as if to avoid disturbing that particular spirit.

“Tain,” Garak nods. “He saw to it that he got a supply before he ordered the Azkali eliminated some fifty years ago. They refused to accept Cardassian currency for their goods." Julian's face hangs low as he looks the bottle over and Garak feels a sour pang of regret in his chest.

“If it's that rare, maybe we should...save it,” Julian says and frowns, thumbing the fine red lines to get their texture. Maybe, maybe, maybe he is reading too much between the lines.

“I'm sorry. It was not a good choice for a gift.”

Julian shakes his head and pushes the glower from his face. “No, what better way to remember them,” is all he can think to say, and hands it back to Garak with a forced half smile. A shallow and pedestrian sentiment perhaps, but what else is there? He won't refuse such a gift on the basis of it's dark connotations. He spends too much time in the dark these days. Especially where Garak is concerned. “Where did you find it?”

Garak places the bottle on the table Julian has set up for them in his living room and wanders toward the large window as Julian fetches glasses. Garak begins to lose himself in the inky black outside as soon as his eyes reach the infinity, the easy slip of an accustomed habit, and could swear he feels the station swaying under his feet.

War is like a churning engine in dark ocean waters. It stirs up the glittering living flotsam from its protected home on the seabed, and the current carries it to waters it has never seen, and where it is not likely to last long. The thought creeps unbidden into his palate and tastes of dust.

“Garak?” comes Julian's voice, soft, but neutral.

Garak takes a deep breath and refocuses with a sanguine smile. “War is a splendid motivator in the market of antiques and rarities. It inspires people to pick up and leave their homes, travel to new places, bringing their culture with them so they may liquidate it to survive. I found it for sale on the promenade only a week ago.”

Maybe not.

Julian blinks, his eyes momentarily hard and glassy. An odd reaction, Garak thinks. Then Julian's eyes drop, and his brow counterpoints in a way that makes him look indifferent, matching the tone of his next question. “Does it always come in such small bottles?” Julian examines it in one hand as he sets the two stems on the table top. Clearly he does not mean to imply that the donated bottle is inadequate, as he simply looks it over front and back and front again with casual reverence. It is a very small bottle for two people to share, or it would be if it were any other spirit.

Garak's smile becomes a little more yielding. “Doctor, you should be very well acquainted with the notion that appearances can be deceiving.”

A deep frustration has been growing like mold within Julian for the past several months. “Am I ever,” he mumbles irritably and replaces the bottle on the table between the two sparse place settings. He sighs and sits down at the otherwise empty table, and by the pause Garak takes to watch him do so, he guesses it was exactly the inaction that his Cardassian friend wasn't expecting. They are there to have dinner after all. Whether Julian's frustration stems more from the war or from a vein of hostility impregnating the thick membrane between Garak and himself, he isn't sure, but reletive to it, this small defiance is satisfying in a way. He sighs and says, “I can't say I really feel like eating, Garak.”

A thoughtful half-pause and Garak approaches the table. “No, I admit my appetite is lacking as well lately. But I don't recommend we indulge in the wine without something to buffer our stomachs.”

“It's that strong?” An indefinite moment hangs in the air and Julian scowels. He's teetering between aquiecence and rebellion and he doesn't like it. “I don't know, Garak. Getting well and fully drunk sounds like a good idea right about now.”

“I don't think we'll have any trouble accomplishing that, food or no. Why don't you pour while I find us something suitable to accompany it.”

He can't quite muster capitulation, so instead Julian slaps a limp hand to the bottle's neck and scrapes the vessel across the table toward himself, disturbing his perfect table cloth with a streak of ripples like a finger dragged over the surface of still water. He peels the seal off the top, leaving the crinkled and curled rind in the middle of the table. He turns the cap and the cork extracts itself with a tiny pop befitting the baby bottle. A glass before him, he tips the vessel gently but finds his hand rootless and weak. Probably because he hadn't eaten all day. Julian brackets the mouth of the glass with his other hand and steadies the neck of the bottle with thumb and middle finger. A warbled clicking as the air reaches inside the bottle to pull out its contents, and then the black liquid is emerging, quick and fluid as clear water, though the color shocks him. His breath catches in his throat and he finds himself in a state to memorize every glossy curl and dark film as they fill the glass.

“Julian.”

Julian looks up at his friend and feels the subtle, cool touch to his hand as he spills the wine. He looks down and tips the bottle back up quickly. He hasn't spilled much, just a little puddle in the web of his thumb that drips over the back of his hand. Reflex brings his hand to his mouth but he stops as he realizes that the wine isn't black as it appears, but the deepest vital red. It stains his skin slightly even after he has collected the spicy sweet moisture with his tongue.

Garak turns to look back at Julian, ask him what kind of bread he wants. He meets the brown eyes for a split second before they are wrenched away to the glass and the spatter of wine on Julian's skin, and Julian's lips claiming it. He forgets what he was going to say.

.................................

Garak brings a plate of sliced bread, cheese, dried dates, and sevruga caviar to the table and sets it between them without a word. Glasses full and the bottle empty, Garak sits and lifts his glass by the small bulbous cup. Julian does likewise and wordlessly touches the lip of his glass to Garak's before closing his eyes and taking a slow sip.

Hot and heady, the small volume rolls over his tongue with the same spicy sweet effect he had tasted a moment ago, but ten times as powerful without the alkali of his skin beneath. Like diving off a cliff.

“That is strong,” he says after he has swallowed and blinked a few times. He breathes through his nose and smells burning flowers.

Julian has a bite of the bread. Then, he lifts a minuscule spoon of caviar to his mouth, in the carefully focused manner one would use to paint a landscape, and takes another small sip of the black wine. The salty roe seems to take the fight out of the wine, mellow it right on his tongue before it releases every nuance of jasper and saffron, warms to his temperature to give him cinnamon and violet and ancho. Then he lets it slide down his throat and all that's left is the memory of warmth.
The corner of Garak's mouth curls up just a little. Leave it to his brilliant Julian to discover the nature of things without even a hint.

“It is stronger even than it tastes, Doctor. Drink with caution.” Julian simply nods in acknowledgment, the gnaw of hunger finally reasserting itself in his gut. “The Azkali were mariners. Most of their planet was covered with water, much like your own, but with many smaller continents. The only other thing they became known for was their vineyards, stiffened and nourished by the sea air. And perhaps all it does is perpetuate the connection between sailors and drinking, but there is little else left of them.”

.....................................

Garak took the smallest of tastes from his glass, but despite his moderation, his head began to swim pleasantly in short order. And he perhaps did not caution the doctor as sternly as he should have either. They settled into Julian's small and comfortable crescent sofa at some point. Garak still retaining the presence of mind to bring what was left of the food and two glasses of water with them (while the doctor seemed only concerned that the wine made it there), he set the lot on the short table in front of the couch. The wine bottle is empty, but somehow it follows them to the coffee table too as if it were another dinner guest. Shortly thereafter with his wine glass drained as well, Julian speaks softly, a whimsical asymmetry settling into his face, his red stained lips. He curls up into one half of the couch to face Garak, who simply leans back onto the opposite side. Julian looks small all folded up like that.

Bizarrely, all Garak can think as he listens to the wine speaking freely, now a little less weary and drum-taught, about everything he has thought and done since the last time they met for dinner, is that Julian needs some new pants. The bottom hem is frayed from wear, he can see, contrasted with Julian's skin. He had failed to notice, probably again the wicked drink in his belly, when Julian had pulled off his shoes and socks, but now his bare brown toes curl into the meat of the sofa seat in front of his bent knees. Those long elegant feet, despite how they match their owner in size and shape and grace, are completely alien. How often did he see human feet? He got used to the plain human faces, their soft, unprotected necks that look too frail to hold up their heads, and human hands which are just a shade thinner and less blocky than his own. But the feet. He isn't used to them and he finds himself staring unabashedly, considering, for a moment, reaching out and touching. Once again, the wine.

He thought about telling him once. Maybe in just this way. A few drinks to cushion what would likely be a mental blow to the head. Possibly an emotional upheaval. He imagines that if he did it gently enough, Julian would take it with maturity and the idea would be born and die in the space of a few minutes, never to return, and with little in the way of an awkward period.

It's just sex. More or less.

Garak smiles as Julian's face warms and brightens further with relaxation. He watches those lips move with lazy syllables as he talks about who knows what. Garak cannot quite stay focused on the meandering topic enough to participate. Nevertheless, he is absorbing the story in the background. His eyes roam, unnoticed by the doctor, over long lean limbs in dark fabric. He doesn't need to admit to himself that the physical attraction has something to do with the delicacy of the man. Near femininity. Either way, it doesn't bother him, but he wonders if he might convince the doctor that it is possible to extend the definition of heterosexuality to include different species, if one takes a small liberty with the etymology of the word. It would nicely cancel both issues if the doctor was sufficiently primed to accept the rationalization. Male or not, Cardassian or not, the potential has been enough to justify entertaining the fantasy for a long time, if not enough to pursue it.

Because it's never that simple. He can while away an hour now and then within a detached daydream where the needs of the minute are satisfied and nothing changes afterwards. It would never be enough though. For a man his age it's not even a frequent thought really. But the fact that, when he allows himself a brief romp in that fantasy world, it's always Julian he's with is telling, isn't it? He knows, even if Julian wouldn't dismiss it gracefully. Even if he smiled that wicked little smile and crawled cat-like across the couch to cover him, it wouldn't be enough, once, twice, and that would be truly horrible. That would be more torture than he could bear. Or perhaps worse yet, Bashir could surprise Garak once more and refuse to have anything to do with him ever again. Seems unlikely for a man so open and accepting and forgiving as the doctor, but a relevant concern, and hardly worth the risk. Especially since sex is hardly the main goal. Not that he is sure what the main goal is.

He can't really think that big anymore. Torture victims have very small wants, and his shrink more and more every day. Granted, he is not the victim of the kind of deliberate, violent injury that turns people into selfish, brutish animals. He isn't thinking just about himself yet. That sort of interrogation is like shooting a ship into space. It needs so much persistent force behind it to reach escape velocity, that if the craft isn't sturdy enough, the launch will destroy it, the vacuum of space sucking them from their lives, the air from their lungs, the light from their eyes. What's been done to him has had the force necessary to propel a bit of down through open space, or float a corked bottle on the surface of the sea.

In six years he's moved quarters once. Also in those six years he's begun to realize how saturated with pain he is.

Julian pauses in the middle of his story and looks Garak in the face. Garak is staring at a point in his vicinity, but he is clearly no longer engaged. The ridges and scales on that face do much to hide his thoughts, but after six years, Julian can read the darkness in his eyes.

“You know,” Garak starts with an air of thoughtful pause, filling the short void Julian has left. ('You know' is incidentally one of his favorite human phrases, a segue into anything. So pretentious. 'You are aware of this painfully obvious piece of information aren't you? It would be frightfully bourgeois of you if you weren't.' And, 'Whether or not you want or need this information, I'm going to impart it upon you, even if you've heard it a thousand times before, even if I'm aware that the reminder will be a slap in the face.' And let's not forget, 'I'm going to tell you what's real. I'm going to wipe that smirk off your face with the power of my wit, or else replace it with something a little more supplicant.' All those shades of meaning in two little words. He uses them all the time.) “If I were a greedy man, I would exploit that remark to the fullest extent of my ability,” Garak says, generously.

“What remark?” Julian grins, expectant, hopeful that his acquiescence might derail Garak's depression just this once.

“The one you made just now.”

“About the Chief?”

“How much have you had to drink, Julian?” He smiles just a little, a hazy reflection of Julian.

The fact that Garak would know exactly how much because he had had the same amount seems to be lost on Julian. “I've had...” he squeaks indignantly, looking at the streaks in his empty wine glass, “...just enough. Thank you.”

The comment in question seems to slip through the cracks of Julian's memory as he doesn't ask again, but Garak can not completely hide his own amusement at the idea of Julian attempting to lure a woman like Keiko O'Brian into bed at any stage in their lives. Even as Julian grins at him, glassy-eyed and open, Garak feels his own smile slipping. He turns his head a degree or two and looks at the empty bottle on the table. He feels like he is slowly being crushed.

“And how much have you had?”

Garak waits until the silence is loaded, though he doesn't mean to. There just seems to be an inordinate lag between his ears and his mouth. Maybe he's not being crushed. Maybe he's being stretched. “None at all.”

A strange timbre of annoyance creeps into Julian's voice and his smile seems to splinter a little. “We've never done this before, have we?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just...opened a bottle and got drunk together. The Chief and I. We must do about once a month. More if Keiko's away. Sometimes I go have drinks with Keira, Dax. Even Worf will have a pint with me, but in all the years we've known each other it's never happened. Why is that? And why does it start now?” For a drunk man Julian is forming a probative inquisition on Garak with alarming speed and accurate aim. His focus snaps back and he sits perfectly still in his seat.

“I'm sorry, Doctor. I didn't realize you felt our friendship lacked anything.”

Dismissive, “I don't know, Garak. I think I know more about you than anyone on the station-”

Garak nods. “Unless you've been briefing Sisko again.”

“And yet you still skirt every question I ask you, no matter how mundane.”

“And sometimes I suspect Chief O'Brian of being a much more devious investigator than he lets on. It's possible he knows things.”

“I mean, how long did it take me to drag out of you how old you are?”

“He did survive that Romulan debacle,” Garak says with an absent-looking flourish in a raised eye ridge. “Anyone who can out-deceive the Romulans has at least the potential to test my defenses.”

“And the other day. During your physical.” Garak's hard gaze glances off Julian's.

Julian's persistent nagging at him to get him into the infirmary year after year usually pays off for the doctor about once every two. The last time had been particularly unnerving. Julian's hands roving over his skin with more familiarity than had ever passed between them before. “Elim, why is your heart beating so fast?” he had asked him. Before Julian could suggest he get more regular exercise, Garak sprinted half-dressed to the infirmary restroom and threw up.

“I asked you what you had for breakfast and you made me deduce the answer with a, a-” Julian stammers, his frustration rising and the alcohol muddying his thoughts.

“Come to think of it. He's been giving me odd looks all week. More than usual,” Garak says. He sees the white cap of another crushing wave high above him.

“Are you even listening to me?”

There is the briefest pause and Garak meets his eyes again over the lip of his glass. “Maybe I'm just trying to keep things interesting for you, Doctor. You do seem to enjoy the pursuit even if you're just chasing your tail.” Garak swallows down the acid left behind by those words.

Julian feels beat upon, wan. “But why must everything be a bloody puzzle? Why do you never say what you're actually thinking? When you got here. You were staring out the window for fully five minutes without a word, and rather than tell me what was on your mind you made some sarcastic crack about the war.” Garak doesn't answer except for a simple smile. The volley dies out and Julian is quiet for a moment as well. Then he hits upon it. It comes from his mouth before the thought even completely forms in his head. “You don't have any more great secrets from me do you. You've turned to these petty quizzes and annoyances because you have nothing left to hide from me.”

Garak hates where he is even as he stares into the cinnamon brown eyes from across the short couch and notes the arch of every eyelash. Julian says he wants to know. He doesn't. How could he? Always looking through the rippled glass of Garak's facade with cupped hands and concentration. He wants to see it because it is hidden. And Julian presumes he keeps it hidden just to test him, just for Julian's own amusement. Sometimes that is true, but it is also true that he can not live without it. Either of them. Julian or his thick shell. And that is about when it starts to feel too familiar. Too much like the old Garak. Deception and not just protection. It keeps him coming back, and that is Garak's lifeline, his Julian. He lures him in like an angler, but he can not see Julian caught, fed upon. Not his Julian. And so he releases him again, even though it is further torment for Garak to have what he wants so near and yet unreachable. Even if he stopped his fishing, it would be the same. It would be punishment from afar or it would be punishment close and intimate. He prefers this.

Garak wants to reach out and rub the little stitch of discord from Julian's left eyebrow with the pad of his thumb, and he does it mentally. He wonders what that strange little ribbon of hair feels like. Would it yield to his touch or resist. Would it bristle or smooth.

“There's only one mystery left now, Elim.” Garak's nerves begin singing sour notes like rubbed crystal. “And that is, why is there a mystery at all?”

Julian is defiant but still completely open. He never shuts down like Garak. He stands, setting his glass on the table and his arms animating at his sides. “Do you keep me at arms length because you just don't like me?”

Garak droops to his left. “Now really Julian. You're-”

“No, Garak. At this point...I have to question it.” Julian wanders in a tight circle near the couch. “After, after everything we've been through together and apart, after everything we've shared, whether we wanted to or not at the time, I don't regret any of it. Do you?” Intoxicated and angry, Julian's upper lip curls a little on one side, seemingly in anticipation of disgust. And that was exactly what Garak was expecting, unfortunately.“We go on like this all the time. You, you evade me, you treat me like a child, you clam up for a few days and then you're back again and you act like nothing has happened. We go back to having lunch and talking politics and art and everything else and you, you're positively magnanimous, until it starts all over again. Do you think I don't notice?” he spits. “The only explanation I can come up with is that you keep me around as long as you can stand me for whatever..." he shakes his head, grappling for words, "...devious purpose you have, and then when you simply can't bear another minute of me you push me away and take a holiday so you can come back fresh Monday morning.” The bitterness of it, far more fiery than Garak had anticipated, rings out on an echo in the still room. Then he begins again, softly. “Or. You want something Elim, but you can't muster the courage to just say it.”

Garak's own mouth responds to Julian's heavy words by curling inward and down and he finds himself shakily on his feet to meet the human eye to eye.

“Don't you think if it were that easy I would have done something about it, Julian? Do you think me stupid? Yes! I do keep you around. I entice you with mystery and layers of invented intrigue to keep you coming for as long as I can bear your presence and then I turn on you, I swat you away like the irritating little pup that you are,” he growls acidly, a tremor in his face.
To Garak's discomfort, Julian looks completely sanguine. “You're doing it again. You think you can just get rid of me when I get too close? Why is there still a mystery Garak? I don't believe that we are anything less than friends. I don't care what you say or how you yell it.”

Garak's knees are locked to keep him upright. He breathes seven shallow breaths before attempting to speak again without malice. “I would not risk that friendship on a foolish gamble.”

“So you'd rather just permanently endanger it.” Julian swallows around a stubbornly tight throat and realizes how hard he is frowning. Garak is silent and Julian is getting the impression that he is going to remain that way. But he doesn't walk out. Yet. “Elim,” he says just above a whisper.

“Stop calling me that," he grates out behind his teeth.

A strange shock, those words. Ripped so fast from Garak's mouth as if they had been waiting there for a very long time. The shy retreat and contradiction of the next thing Julian says feels funny. “Garak, that's your name.”
“It is not my name. I am not Elim any longer. I cannot be. You get-” he says and makes a sound like a whimper he cut off and strangled within his own throat.

“You get near me,” Garak tries again, his voice still shaky and barely making it past his teeth which are bared in an uncharacteristic display of pain. The contortion of his face seems raw and exposed. He feels his stomach reject and surge and he has to stop again. He swallows hard and finds his breath. “You get near me, and you say that name. You don't say it you, you whip me with it, and I...can't stand to look at you.” He is pleading but not asking for anything. No, not outright. Asking but not. Wants so badly to ask, to shuck the need from himself, but that would ruin everything. It would ruin it much more criminally than it was already ruined. The sound of his own voice makes his hearing fade in and out in protest. How did this happen so quickly? He pictures himself in his mind, taking the little wine bottle, breaking it into a jagged, desperate weapon of pity and cutting his own throat.

“Garak are you alright?” Julian echoes from somewhere behind a high pitched hum. Garak's eyes light on his own reflection in the twinkling black velvet window and the dark leeches into the room and inks everything out like thick brine.

Hands have him and a couch comes up to meet him as his knees give and lower his body down to where his tired heart is capable of keeping up the pressure. His feet are up on the arm of the sofa only a second later.

“That's it. Take it easy.” Julian's fingertips are at his wrist, his other hand at his jaw, and as long as Garak is this close to unconsciousness anyway, he closes his eyes and enjoys the touch as if he is already safely dreaming. He swallows. It only takes a few moments with his skin tingling numb for the color to seep back into the room and Julian's voice, soft and gentle once more, to lead him back into the present.

Julian's blood pressure is high enough for both of them, but it doesn't do either of them any good. The Cardassian's pulse gradually begins to return to normal and his skin back to a healthy temperature and color. “I'm sorry,” he hears himself say, and before he even sees Garak look away from him in dejection he feels stupid for saying it. He takes his hands away from Garak's cool skin and grounds them on his thighs as he sits back on his heels. “Are you ok?”

“It is very strong wine,” he says after a long minute staring at the back of the couch. This is what he is reduced to.

More or less confident that he can remain upright, he flexes and pulls himself up to sit, slowly, and looks at his knees.

“Listen,” Julian says. He is listening of course, but it would be so easy to just tune out right now, go to that place where he only distantly exists. The place he sees when he stares into the stars.

Julian is shaking his head like he has a hand full of randomly suited high cards. Like anything he throws out is likely to be replaced by something less valuable, but the hand he has now isn't worth anything either.

Looking up at the grey eyes not looking back, he feels his heart hammer erratically before he opens his mouth again. “I love Elim Garak.” It hangs in the air like a bell. The grey eyes rise and meet his skittishly and Julian needs to explain. Needs to chose his cards carefully and quickly. “I, I know a lot about him. More than most others know about him. And I love him.” Not despite. “I don't care what he's done in his past, I love him now. I love who he is. What he is. So unless you have something else to confess, you are going to have to face that as I have.” Call.

Garak feels his whole face soften and crumble, and the pleasant hum in his head still left from his drink drowns out the tiny voice that normally shouts at him whenever these feelings come unbidden. Instead he is asking himself silently, What do I have to do to take this? Garak suddenly finds his hand, relaxed and pliant, raised to Julian's face, and his thumb outstretched to cover the start of Julian's left brow. As it slicks over it, slow and gentle, Julian's eyes slip closed as if he has nothing whatsoever to fear from Garak, from a man he knows to be a murderer, a torturer, a deceitful wasted wreck. He can't remember the last time he saw peace on another's face so close to his own. Peace without death. Oddly, it feels like a cold reprieve, a reminder of where he is. And where he is not.

He lets his fingers trail down Julian's temple and brush the hair above his ear before he fades away and turns the radian of his focus off of Julian's toffee skin.

“It is a complicated problem, Julian, having what you want offered to you but being unable to accept it.” Elim's voice is a level instrument.

“Why...why can't you accept...” Julian says fuzzily from the floor.

"I am not used to being given anything, Doctor. I take. I am an operative of the Obsidian Order. This you know. People hide from me, not the other way around. And when they do, I take these things from them. Their lives, their spirits. No one offers.” From one statement to the next, Garak's voice becomes straighter and cooler in Julian's ears.

Garak stands with eerie silence and extricates himself from the coda of the couch and Julian on the floor. He wanders back to the table they had shared just a few hours ago and regards it as if it is the other half of the conversation.

“I want to,” Julian says and stands.

Garak turns back and growls into Julian's wide eyes. With a glance to the nearby table, he gathers and then clutches the tiny black bottle in a tight fist near Julian's face, and together they back up into the wall, a short dance, until they are nearly chest to chest. And even as Garak fumes frustration, he hungers with the proximity. His words come out harsh and pointed. “I have a black hole in my heart, Julian,” he rumbles like thunder. “And I've filled it with the tears of the people I loved. And there is no. more. room. I can not take anymore; I can not ask it of anyone. Certainly not you.”

This time, he leaves.

II. The Gift Part 2

He can't see disposing of the bottle. It is empty but for the memory of a failing friendship and an extinct species, both nothing more than footnoted victims of another war. Beautiful still. He puts it in his office in the infirmary, in plain sight and he doesn't care what people think when they see it, if they think anything at all.

Though something in him clenches and worries a little at the thought of Garak walking in and seeing it displayed so. He is not yet sure if the feeling comes from regret or hope. Not much chance of it happening anyway. It might be his imagination, but it seems they both have the same idea, avoidance. Julian has stayed sequestered here and Garak, presumably, at his shop. Though he's taken the scenic route to and from his quarters to avoid passing the storefront and the replimat, so he doesn't even know that for sure.

Julian has been staring at it for two days. It is a pocket of darkness in his brightly-lit space, it catches his eye countless times. Even when he spends hours in the infirmary proper, a closed door between him and the bottle, it never leaves his mind completely.

Julian looks into the screen in front of him, his sight never quite reaching the text, but finding his own shadowed reflection on the smooth surface. He puts two fingertips to the side of his face where Elim had touched him and watches it happen in the screen until his eyes slide closed.

He would do anything to feel that again. Not the touch, just- the abandon. It was only a taste, the smallest sample of what it could be like, like that little bottle of wine, a fractal example of perfect freedom. It's just to the left of his screen. He can see it even now without looking, feel it as well. He opens his eyes, picks up the little glass rememberance and uncorks it, presses the neck to his lips. Cool and smooth, and fragrant with the dregs. Everything is a stochastic tendril of Elim.

“I can not ask it of anyone. Certainly not you. "

That, Julian realizes, now that the fog of alcohol is gone and his mind is clear of the raw rejection of two days ago, was an admission. That was more truth than Elim had ever voluntarily spilled before. In the past, Julian could expect about half of what Elim said to turn out to have a grain of truth to it, and the other half to be completely unaccountable. No witnesses of course.

“Of all the stories you've told me, which ones were true?”

“My dear doctor, all of them were true.”

“What about the lies?”

“Especially the lies.”

And it always amazes Julian, the way Garak is able to invent grey areas between the stark monochrome of truth and untruth. Julian, as a scientist, has always placed his faith on the strength of that definition. At any moment in time, something is either true or it is not. And he and Garak, they are speaking the same language. That is undeniable now. So a truth should follow naturally. This push and pull doesn't make any sense.

“You do seem to enjoy the pursuit even if you're just chasing your tail.”

A chilly finger of fear scratches up the back of his neck as he considers the probability that the reason it doesn't make sense is that it isn't true. Because it is all another act and he has bared his heart to a cruel madman.

“It is not my name.”

And yet. Julian can see the want in those grey eyes. Sees the affection behind them and feels warmed by that cold Cardassian gaze. Simply by that. Maybe it's all part of his own perspective, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels like an incomplete truth. Something hanging in limbo and not yet decided.

“No. More. Room.”

He shakes his head and hopes that all the pieces inside will rearrange themselves to a complete picture when they settle. It doesn't work. How do you wrap your mind around a thing as complex and bifurcated as Elim Garak?

“Julian? Oh, there you are.” O'Brian peeks around the corner of Julian's office and then steps inside. A reflex from somewhere wants to grab the bottle off the desk and shove it in a drawer, but he stifles it. “Do you have that hypo for Yoshi?” The Chief's gruff and accented burr is always a small comfort. A little reminder of home way out here on their metal island. It breaks the dreary spell Julian has been under, at least for the moment.

“Sure.” Julian swivels in his chair, picks up the vial in question from a little shelf next to him and swivels back to hand it over to the chief. “You don't want me to administer it?”

“Nah. Keiko wants to do it. Ever since she took the kids to see that farm on Bajor, Yoshi's scared of ya.”

Julian raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

“He thinks you're a scarecrow.”

Julian's face wrinkles up a little on one side with a tired smile and he leans back in his chair. Then his face falls. He didn't see it how it got there, but now Miles has the empty wine bottle between his hands, twirling it with vague and casual interest, the way one would handle a cheap souvenir on a shelf in a shuttleport store.

“Hey what's eating you?”

Julian flinches a little, he's perched to take it from him but the knowledge that that would bring undue attention to it keeps him in his seat. A lie, a half truth is on his lips but it tastes like bile. Tastes like something Garak would say to brush him off and he swallows it rather than feed it to Miles. “Just a puzzle I can't seem to find the answer to.” Vague is ok. Utter fallacy is not.

The chief chuffs with a funny little smile in his small mouth. “No really. What's the trouble.”

He can't laugh at himself today. Not at anything. He hates them, Miles. Julian loves one and Miles hates them all with perhaps only a measure of extreme distaste reserved for Garak. “I really...I'm just stuck. It appears to be a perfect knot," he grumbles.

“Julian. The problem has yet to be invented that you can't figure out. What is it anyway?” he asks and puts the bottle back on Julian's desk.

He thinks about how much he wants to tell his friend about this. Miles can be amazingly perceptive at times, though he doesn't think that even if he spilled the whole thing, he'd be able to just write up a solution on the spot. In fact, he could see him having Julian committed at the mere mention of it. “I guess it's sort of a philosophical problem," he begins. "If you take what you need to survive it's not immoral, but if you take what you need to be happy it is. But what good is it to simply survive if you can not be happy? And is decieving yourself, telling yourself you don't need to be happy, don't deserve to be happy, for whatever reason, is that the same as taking what you need to survive from someone else who would need you to be happy?"

Miles makes a face. “Julian, I'm an engineer, not a philosopher. Honestly, that sounds more like the kind of thing you should talk to Garak about. He at least seems to think he has all the answers, and he's never shy about sharing them and showing you how you're completely wrong, unless you're Cardassian. Of course you only get that far if you can get him to stop lying for a minute. But I think you have more luck at that than most of us.” Perceptive. Julian purses his lips against the wry smile that threatens there. Miles points at Julian. “Maybe you should interrogate him," the chief says as an afterthought, "Give him some of his own medicine.” Miles smirks mischievously and Julian is helpless not to return the grin.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Garak steps into the sultry refuge of his quarters. He doesn't bother with the lights. He just wants a drink and then he's going to bed.

Kanar in hand, he slumps into the round, padded chair in the shadowed corner of his living room. He takes a sip and lets it leech between his teeth before swallowing, leaving behind a comforting, if shallow warmth. His eyes slide closed and his head, with little voluntary action on his part, dips back and rests on the soft tall back of the chair in an unusual gesture of trust, or maybe just resignation, toward the darkness. His throat exposed, he swallows again.

“Computer, initiate force field.”

Garak's eyes and head snap open and up. Nothing else moves because nothing else can. His arms and legs are held fast to the chair. The familiarity of the voice was the only reason he didn't pop out of the seat at the first intonation of the first word of that sentence, but now he regrets allowing Julian to finish his command before reacting.

Julian emerges from the black of Garak's bedroom doorway and approaches the trapped tailor in his seat. Garak looks up at him through his brow and schools his face unreadable, the small measure of resignation of a moment ago gone. “My dear doctor, I assume that there is some grave, urgent, medical reason for this...unexpected visit.” A knot of anger twists in his gut, and he wants to call this an intrusion, blatant abuse, but he is the one stuck to his seat like a rat in glue, and he doesn't have the heart to raise his voice to Julian again.

Julian crosses the small room. He takes the short glass of kanar from the tailor's trapped hand and places it on the small table nearby. He turns back to Elim and places his own hands on the arms of the chair behind Garak's elbows and leans in closely. Julian can feel Garak's accelerated breath on his face. He looks into his eyes, now more firey blue than grey, and says lowly, “Yes. There is.”

Julian leans forward the rest of the way and as the centimeters between them disappear, Garak's mind shuts down and fails completely to think of a way to stop it from happening. Garak stiffens throughout his whole body and blinks over and over again as Julian's solid pressure forces him to press back or allow his head to be toppled to the back of the chair. A few seconds that blink by slow and fast at the same time, and Julian backs away. The sound the kiss makes as it breaks is foriegn and shocking. Elim blinks some more and presses his lips together, not entirely sure they are still there. It was a dry kiss, humble. A familial exchange; perhaps even an apology. Only as his mouth cools does he realize how warm Julian's lips were.

Garak stares straight ahead, at the flat seam between the black below and the shadowed cyan above it on Julian's uniform. In the foggy daze of overload, it looks like pre-dawn over a black sea, and his pulse in his ears laps like waves.

“Look at me,” Julian whispers, and focus returns.

Blue eyes rise from neutral to meet his, and Julian has never before seen Elim Garak look so guileless. His thumb goes without thought to the outer edge of a crescent ridge, hard as bone but smooth as silk. Garak's lips part and his pupils widen subtly. “Now,” says Julian, his heart hammering so hard he thinks Garak must be able to see it, “Are you going to listen to me?”

Garak clears his throat and swallows. “You have my undivided attention,” he says, only managing to get it above a whisper.

Julian seems bolstered, but his voice wavers as he speaks again. “Good,” he nods, a little knot forming between his brows before he leans in and kisses him again. Julian's knees snug between Garak's hips and the soft chair arms, and his hands bracket Garak's face, so warm, so soft. Garak's mouth falls open and he accepts it plainly, unhindered by a thing. Lips and tongue and panted breaths and then he pulls away again, wide eyed and breathing fast. He shivers a little even as his eyes are hard and steady on Garak's.

“I love Elim Garak,” he says. Another soft short kiss on the lips and a few more white hot pecks down his chin. Garak can't really think. “Say it.”

Garak's breath is shaky at best. He's forgotten how to do it automatically. “I,” he says, dizzy and helpless, “I...love Julian Bashir,” he just barely gets it out his own surprised lips.

Julian half grins and tuts out the smallest pebble of laughter. “No,” he purrs. “I. Love. Elim. Garak. Say it.”

Well well. Is that fear coiling around your rib cage Mr. Garak? Garak's eyes widen. He knows this game, he's just never been on this side of the playing field. “I...I...” he stumbles on it over and over, and Julian, brave now, runs the tip of his nose down Garak's neck. The human's touch is downy fire.

“Say it,” Julian whispers at his pulse.

“I...love...Elim Garak.” Julian's smile moves up and he kisses him again. His eyes slide shut as he takes Garak's mouth and slips his tongue inside, warm and luxurious. Garak can't even begin.

Julian tastes Garak's lips as if they were his own, laves his mouth and his breath, leaving Garak warm all over. He leaves his mouth after a moment and Elim licks the taste of him off his lips, wanting to capture it and frame it in case it never happens again, like a snapshot of a blazing meteor.

“Say it again,” Julian's voice is hoarse and low.

Garak is compelled to obey, and that feels like breathing water, but he does it. “I love... Elim Garak.”

Julian kisses him again. Escalating each time by a small step, climbing a short flight toward a blissful peak, each kiss seems to push the edges and now with the addition of gently dragging teeth, Garak is surrounded and bathed with a heat that this cold rock in space has never before granted him. And Garak can't move a muscle, nor can he remember the last time he has been so completely removed from his thoughts, so completely taken and helpless. Julian has punctured him with those teeth raked across a shell he had not known was so thin. Bitten a hole in his side with the most rudementary weapons, and he's going to bleed, he can feel it.

“Say it again,” he says, his kiss-swollen lips a centimeter away.

“I love Elim Garak," he says between heavy breaths.

“Again,” Julian whispers.

Garak's voice drops off as well, “I love Elim Garak.”

“Again.”

“I love-” Julian doesn't quite wait for him to finish. He's standing up tall on his knees, devouring Garak's mouth from high above, his hands threading hard into Garak's hair to rub solidly at his scalp and tug at the roots in a way that turns his spine to ice water. It seems anything Julian does now is perfect, every movement of his body against Garak's is artful and every plaintive nonsense syllable that escapes the lips pressed against his sets Garak's nerves alight. He feels as though he's arching up to the sky to taste the rain or reach the last bubble of air in a drowning cage it is that vital that he stretch as far as his invisible bonds will allow toward that face. He could be a seedling in the sun. Julian supports the back of his head as he stretches up, and the rest of his body might as well not be there as it is pinned down to the chair on every surface and just tingling. He can't remember the last time he breathed.

Julian sinks back down, slowly, taking Garak with him, and sits part of his weight on Garak's knees. The kiss breaks slowly, rolling away and peeling like rosey wet citrus, and Julian's eyes reopen and focus on Garak's from too few inches away to really see. Their noses brush and breath battles between their lips.

Garak pants shallowly for a moment and then says in an unsteady voice, “I thought you were going to tell me something.”

“I am telling you,” Julian says, sounding equally winded despite the fact they are both seated in the same comfortable chair. Then he's kissing him again. Short gentle kisses over and over because neither of them can really stand much more of the kind that bruise. Or perhaps this is just a breather.

“When do I get to rebut?” Garak says between a few of them, faintly surprised that his capacity for such talk is not removed by this point.

“Shut up,” Julian says with a sigh.

Elim barely gets “Ok,” out of his mouth before it is swallowed again by a ravenous human doctor with the softest, sweetest lips Garak has ever had the fortune to have forced upon him. The shape of them against his own is maddening; feeling the definition of their outline slip between his lips as he captures them in a playful mockery of his own predicament, and then releases them to taste their marriage with his tongue. It's a cruel tease, self-torture, as he participates at once eagerly and helplessly. He wants and he wants, and he tries, even as he is kissed into obliviousness, to take it all in, to feel everything there is to feel, breathe in his scent and absorb his taste, and to just resist the desire to let his eyes fall closed because even with his limited vantage point, there is so much he wants to catch. Even in the unlit room he can see Julian is flushed pink all over, and Garak wonders if he can feel that or if it is purely for the enjoyment of the observer. He is no longer concerned that he will wake from this and find it was another daydream or that it will end as abruptly as it began and all he will have to cherish is the memory of a few moments. No, this is not something transient that is building and budding here. He hangs on to every second tenaciously now the way one clings to a life preserver, or to a person long and severly missed, drowned and saved. He is memorizing this because it is a gift.

By the time the heady barrage begins to slow, Garak becomes aware that he has no idea how much time has gone by while they sat there.

Julian sits and strokes every small ridge and outlines every scale and strange marking on Elim's face and neck. He is hesitant to break the spell they are under, but Elim looks so tired, so spent and drained, even if he doesn't say so, even if he doesn't say a word, Julian can tell.

“Computer. Force field down.”

He is free but he doesn't move. Julian runs his hands down the large neck ridges and massages Elim's shoulders and chest through his clothes. His eyes shut for a while, then blink open over and over. Julian can't tell if it happens because he is sleepy but is trying to stay awake, or because he is relaxed and blissed out and just trying to remain alert. Either way it isn't really necessary. Garak hasn't moved his hands from the spot where the force field had them pinned. That isn't necessary either but he doesn't expect it to change right away.

Time passes again in random pieces and at strange speeds totally removed from normal experience, but eventually Julian shifts and stands, removing that secure anchoring weight from Garak's lap. Garak follows him with his gaze but still doesn't move. Julian takes his hand and pulls him up gently. His knees crack and he almost smiles as he faces Julian again.

Julian brushes his hair back into an approximation of that slick perfect arrangement Garak usually has, kisses him, and takes him by the hand to lead him toward his bedroom.

In the few steps it takes to get to Garak's bed side, his face has changed and he's breathing noticeably faster, if still quiet as a mouse. The silence is precious though, he knows, and does not break it. In the dark, Julian sits Garak down, removes his shoes and jacket, and lays him down on his bed with gently guiding hands. Elim swallows hard as Julian walks around the bed to the other side, slihouetted by Bajor, half lit in perpetual dusk on this side, and climbs in with him.

Julian draws the covers over both of them, thick, supple, blue sheets Garak made himself. Arms wrap around him then turn him to face the human and he realizes he's trembling, his hands are cold but everywhere else he's hot. And one part of him is extremely interested in everything that has happened tonight, but the rest of him is suddenly and absolutely terrified.

Bashir's sad eyes are looking into his as he continuously strokes his hair and face. “Julian,” he whispers, on the verge of something, at the corner of a precipice. The first thing he has said in perhaps hours. Julian scoots closer and slides and arm under his neck and the other around his back and he holds on, lips pressed to Elim's ear.

Julian pulls back to look at him again, and then moves in, and presses a soft kiss to the smooth round depression on Garak's forehead.

Garak is undone. He wonders only for a moment if Julian knows how intimate a gesture that is, but after everything that's happened in the past few days, he doesn't doubt that he knows. He's known all along. Despite Garak, he knew. So brilliant, and so beautiful looking at him from across the pale pillow. Garak bows his head and sinks into the deep blue beneath the sheet and in the circle of Julian's arms. His large hands reach out and find the slim waist in front of him, and gently grip his ribs. As he sinks, the pressure builds around him slowly and it feels like his whole body is being purged, wrung out. It is a long way to the bottom, where the soft sand will greet him, but even just this small rend bleeds out relief so sweet, he's struggling not to weep into Julian's tunic.

“It's ok,” Julian says, and pulls him closer.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Elim looks the picture of peace. Julian, his head propped up on the triangle of his bent arm, faintly strokes a shred of black hair above his ear. Every little ridge and embellishment on a Cardassian's body is an erogenous zone if touched the right way. By the right hand. Julian avoids them now in favor of more innocuous places, hoping to let Garak sleep as long as possible even if he lay awake until morning. He is content to just look and let his mind wander.

The desire for more, for everything, was unmistakably there and real, and now in the vanguard whereas it had been smoldering background noise for so long. But now was not the time for it. Some precious bottles should be preserved, saved for a time when it will sweeten happiness rather than simply dull despondency. Kept regardless of the chaotic destruction all around, the potential for loss. What good is a beautiful thing not fully appreciated? For them it will feel like a gain if it is not snatched from their grasp. And if unrealized catastrophe is gain then unrealized love is just as good as a loss undone. And Julian knows that in that they can lose themselves drunk and freed for many nights to come.