Hermit the Blog's New Pad

Fic - Bagenders U.S. - Chapter 1: House of the Rising Sun

2009-03-08T17:38:00.002-05:00

So this is the big secret fic I've been stealthily working on *eye roll*. Um, I wrote an episode of the Bagenders. And since I know very little about GB, this installment has them moving to the US of A. I hope fans of the original series enjoy this spin off. My writing style isn't really the same at all as Random Dent/Flatmate and Lady Alyssa, but I hope it's slightly funny anyway. If you never read the Original I highly recommend it. The original site is more or less in the toilet but I managed to scrape them together and archive them here.

I apologise for any continuity errors between my fic and the old series, but no, I will not fix them. I apologize for glaring errors in...idiomatic...cultural...whatever. I can't fix those either. I also apologize for any Legalocentricity. I just lurve him.

If you don't feel like prerequisite reading or you have read the original but have lost all memory of it due to binge drinking, binge binging, or binge bowling (pins to the head good for amnesia I hear), here's a brief, and possibly inaccurate synopsis: The Fellowship were granted eternal life as a reward for saving Middle Earth (except for Boromir since he died before they did most of the really heroic stuff, but he comes to visit now and then). So it's just them and the elves (who already live forever so it wasn't much of a reward for Legolas, bloody Valar) and the rest of us oblivious humans. They've gone their separate ways at times but they always end up back together, and for the better part of the last decade they were sharing a cramped flat in the North of England working blue collar jobs, getting arrested, committed, hit by buses, avoiding ex's and in-laws, and getting drunk at Elrond's karaoke parties. Aragorn and Arwen split up ages ago but she keeps in touch just enough to keep Aragorn bitchy. Legolas has been pushing a refreshment trolly on the train and swatting away fawning girls while maintaining a fragile grip on his elfish dignity. Merry and Pippin have employed themselves as people who get fired from jobs, Frodo is mentally unstable, and Sam takes care of Frodo and the garden. Gandalf is a drunken old codger, and Gimli works nights to avoid the rest of them. Not too long ago, while digging through Pippin's extensive collection of pornography, Legolas discovered some rather old and bawdy doodles penned by none other than Leonardo "Arse Grabber" DaVinci which he sold for a tidy profit. He used this windfall to buy the fellowship a new, spacious home with a relaxing room all to himself with a little motorized waterfall on the desk and some of those nice bamboo drawings on the walls. Aside from the odd existential crisis and the occasional fireball in the kitchen, their lives seemed destined to settle down a bit after that....

Legolas eats his breakfast at a polite pace, sitting neatly at the kitchen table and admiring the texture of the air in this new place; the subtle crispness, the gentle sting of lemon furniture polish, the way it does not yet smell like the flatulence of seven ten-thousand-year-old garlic and bacon free-basing alcoholics.

Aragorn is reading the newspaper in the seat next to Legolas. Aragorn glances at Legolas stealthily and then reaches for the corner of the page, plucks it between two fingers and carefully, oh so carefully, turns it. It is soundless as it swings from Aragorn's left to his right (he started reading from the back this morning because it was easier and less time consuming than attempting to flip the paper over in Legolas' presence). The long slow work of turning the page is done, and, watching Legolas for signs of disturbance, settles back into his seat and turns his eyes to the paper. He grumbles internally. Ads, all ads. Aragorn steels himself again and turns the next page with the delicacy normally reserved for sweaty dynamite and priceless, antique, fragile, sun-bleached and weakened eggshells. The paper crinkles once from the asymmetrical crease in the middle.

"SHHH!"

Aragorn cringes and grits his teeth. "'Sake, Legolas if you want perfect quiet why don't you eat your breakfast in your "room"?"

"Breakfast, is meant to be eaten in the breakfast nook. Reading is meant to be done in the library."

"We don't have a library."

"Well then I guess you know what you should do."

Aragorn scowls a minute and then very slowly, loudly and with exaggeration of the loudness, begins shredding his newspaper into paper mache-sized strips. Legolas watches him with a sour face, but as elves are not in the habit of participating in messy art projects, he is not familiar with the paper-mache-sized strips of newspaper nor the threat they bestow upon his bowl of wheaty cereal. He thinks that it is simply the noise that is mean to irritate him, and so frowns but then retreats into his disciplined elven mind, closes his eyes, and lets the world disappear until Aragorn is finished trying to annoy him and, hopefully, leaves the table.

Pippin and Merry come careening through the kitchen and fly out the door screeching, "OW!OW!OW!HOT!HOT!HOT!" and "Me pants! They're on fire!" respectively. Legolas grits his teeth, but as he does not smell smoke, tries to return to his mediation. All goes well and in a moment or two, the air around him is still and he does not detect the presence of annoyances about his corporeal aura and so opens his eyes once again. Before him is a gloppy swan that reads "Gun Control Lax in America" and his breakfast has disappeared.

Aragorn has indeed left the table. Legolas can see out the windows of the nook that Pippin and Merry are rolling on the grass fighting over the garden hose. When one gets it, he sprays it full stream down the front of his own shorts, writhing about on the lawn, then shortly has it wrestled away from him by the other one who performs the same act. It doesn't seem to matter to them that it's four outside this morning.

Legolas does retreat to his room then and shuts the door behind him, shutting out the noise and the atmosphere of mental infirmity inhabiting the rest of the house. It's Saturday morning. There is much he could do with his day; a walk in the park, shopping along the boardwalk, a museum. Places the rest of the fellowship wouldn't be caught dead usually. Unless the crazy bag lady is stripping for change in the park again. Pippin has a way with her, and an extra large pickle jar full of change. Legolas winces remembering the day he emptied the jar of it's pickles but eventually finds himself relaxing on his bed and into a meditative trance.

Legolas is broken from it once again after too few minutes in by a distinctly Gimlish knock to his door, only four feet up the door but more polite than the lesser two hobbits and more commanding than the greater two. Legolas gets up and answers his door though something in the back of his mind tells him not to. (The back of Legolas' mind is actually inhabited by a rare but clever elvish brain parasite which was enchanted by the old poet Celcindere to have the power to not only see the future but influence the mind of its host in order to protect the sanctity of it's home, vis, the brain, whenever it sees harm being done to said brain in the host's immediate future.)

Legolas opens the door and looks down upon the scuffed helmet.

"'Tis a fellowship meeting," is all Gimli says.

"What? Now? It's Saturday. And what could there possibly be a meeting about? Oh no, has Pippin brought someone home from the bar and stashed them in the cellar again? That bus driver was litigious by nature I agree, but it's still not a good idea!"

"No, there's no bus driver. Aragorn says it's moving time," Gimli huffs then moves off down the hall again.

Legolas pauses, then pauses within his pause. "Moving time," he whispers, and a chill like a freezey pop being melted down his collar sends him to a distant place in his mind, a long forgotten corner where dark memories linger... Legolas shuts the mental door on that place and locks it. As he understands it, there is a fellowship meeting called, he must go.

Legolas summons his courage and emerges from his pristine, elfly retreat into the living room, the most hated of rooms.

"Pah! Great sissy gayarse," Legolas hears from down the hall.

Legolas stops there before even reaching the living room, the most hated of all rooms. "What do you want Gandalf," he calls.

"Get me the bottle of brandy from under the sink," Galdalf replies in a grumble too unintelligible for the average human to understand while sober.

"What bottle of brandy from under the sink?" Legolas asks automatically.

"The one you poured off into the drain opener bottle."

"If you knew it was there why haven't you drunk it already?"

"Was saving it for a special occasion."

"What's so special about today?" Legolas asks with a stutter as he passes the living room, not looking in, and heads to the kitchen. In his peripheral they are all there perched quietly in various seats around the room with Gandalf in the middle.

"Don't tease him, Gandalf," Aragorn sighs.

Legolas returns and enters the living room and faces them all. He knows something is wrong because even the hobbits are quiet. Even Merry and Pippin, sitting on the couch in dripping wet shirts and shorts, shivering a little, have their mouths shut at the moment and not because they have cream puffs stuffed in them. He hands Gandalf the drain cleaner bottle and the reeking wizard begins pouring the now foul smelling brandy into one of Frodo's nice brandy snifters. The rest goes down his own gullet. Merry and pippin grimace but drink the stuff in the snifter, offering it to the others though no one accepts.

"It's moving day, Legolas," Aragorn says finally, and the others visibly hold their breath.

Legolas stands there like a four year old on a stage trying to remember how to sing twinkle twinkle little star and not wet his trousers. He stammers a few seconds with his eyes fluttering, trying to blink out the rest of the fellowship to see if that improves the situation at all and then mumbles, "What's that then?"

"It's alright Legolas. We called the North Eastern Railway yesterday and told them you died."

"W-w-w-w-w...." says Legolas.

"I died last week," Gimli offers.

"And merry and Pip...well, it didn't matter really...All the loose ends are tied up. It's just a matter of off we go now."

"But.. but...I don't want to move again. Please."

"The sea..it calls to you Legolas...." Aragorn mutters softly and in his voice the elder trees whisper to Legolas of stars and deep black waters. The world fades around him in a way that reminds him disturbingly of Celeborn's broom closet but he doesn't know why.

"Yes....yes, I ...No! Stop that! No no!"

"Yes! It calls to you, it says you must leave this place and find a new home, with a nice patio for having parties."

"No! I don't want to leave! I've finally got a place of my own. It's quiet here and peaceful, and I spent all that time on that mural of Lothlorien on the walls..."

The mural looks like it was painted by a dropout from the St. Biggles Mail-Order School of Art, but no one had the guts to tell him.

"We have to move every nine years, Legolas. We risk detection if we stay longer. And the Valar I liable to boil us alive if we don't."

"Nine, it it it it it it's such an arbitrary number, who decided it should be nine??" Legolas says with panic rising. He begins backing away and Aragorn and Gimli advance with matching pace, trying cut off his exit.

"The Valar decided it should be nine years and that there would be a punishment if we should fail to move. You remember the Valar right, Legolas?

"Y-yes."

"Remember that giant tea kettle they have?"

"Th-the one that hangs over the three mile lake of lava at the foot of Mount Gonorrhea in the land of Brókkenbirboetlz, Earth of the Evenrude?"

"That's the one. They said they'd boil us in that if we didn't move."

"I don't think they meant it."

"Why take the chance when it's so easy to just pick up and move once in a while?"

"Where are we going?"

"America."

"Oh God. No.. nononono... no please, not back there! Please!"

"It's already been settled. We don't include you in the decision making process because it upsets you so, so you'll have to just accept our judgment."

Legolas begins screaming at regular intervals and trying to climb the curtains presumably for the purpose of throwing himself off the top of the curtain rod in a last ditch effort to try to kill himself before they go.

Frodo folds his hands in his lap, smiling pleasantly and dangling his feet over the sofa seat. Sam and the other hobbits eye him for signs of violence. The last time he tried to kill them he was smiling too.

"I love moving day," Frodo blurts then, startling Sam briefly.

"Why?" Pip asks with a springy snarl of incredulity.

"It's the one day I feel like I'm normal."

Pip scoffs. "As if yood ever be noormal, Frodo." Sam kicks Pip wide-eyed and nervously watches Frodo in case the remark should upset him. Moving day, whether Frodo is enjoying it or not is a riotous upheaval and it compromises the delicate grip Frodo has on his sanity, putting them all in harm's way, much like chimney sweeping day, Gandalf's birthday, and most other days of the year.

"Oh no," Frodo says, "I mean compared to him." Frodo points at the blubbering pile of blond hair and tights that Legolas has become, now shivering in the corner batting away Gimli and babbling about hopeless education systems.

"Alright Gandalf, I think we're all ready to go. Any last minute jobs to be done, do them now, people, go to the toilet if you must!" Aragorn says as he takes a heroic pose standing on the couch cushion with one foot on the arm.

Gandalf makes a show of finishing the brandy-toilet duck cocktail and tosses the jug aside. Then, picking up his staff from it's holder attached to his recliner, he swirls it in the air with a grumbling belch. The air in the house begins to swirl and blow, gently at first, then growing like a hurricane. Small objects are knocked form their posts on the mantle and the bric-a-brac shelves and Frodo covers his eyes. Gandalf is reciting some ancient spell with such drunken alacrity, Aragorn is momentarily afraid of the end result of this move - after all, the Quenya word that means 'to move from one place to another' sounds an awful lot like the Sindarin word for 'to break a cricket bat off in (someone's) arse'. The grammar therein is also tricky, so anything could happen. Thunder claps in the kitchen and hall, a great rumble rises from all around them and Gimli wrestles Legolas onto the couch with the rest of the fellowship just as the house begins to crumble around them and everything turns to swirling sand. Purple and yellow lightning arcs around the couch and Gandalf's recliner and they are all flying catastrophically through an endless cloudy void screaming and clutching the couch cushions. In a matter of seconds though, it is all over, and the ground meets them sharply. The couch cracks on the bottom and Aragorn falls through. His legs stick up and as he flounders there a moment looking like a flipped beetle, everyone looks around them in shock.

"Gandalf this doesn't look like Central Park," Aragorn gripes.

"Too many bums."

"What?"

"Couldn't land. Too many bums in tents."

"Well where are we?"

"Dunno. Southern New England Somewhere. Maybe Maine."

"Oh Fabulous."

"Maine isn't in Southern New England. Maine is up North. There'd be seven feet of snow on the ground if this were Maine," Sam says.

The Fellowship look around themselves and find that here in the dark, and the cold, it doesn't much matter where they are, what matters is where they are not, and they are not anywhere near a hotel nor any form of civilization as far as they can tell. Its the middle of the night wherever they are, and it's winter, so they have that to go on, but the trees and the frozen ground are not giving them any further clues nor hope for a shower or brunch. Frodo still has his hands over his eyes, and the rest are quite happy to let him stay that way. Legolas, too, sits gibbering with his head under a pillow, avoiding.

Aragorn flails and gets up out of the couch to survey their surroundings. "Gandalf, where are all our things?"

"Dunno."

"What do you mean you 'dunno'?!?!"

"They got lost. Oh hang a second..." Gandalf reaches into the pocket of his jelly-stained dressing gown. "Here they are." He tosses a handful of glitter into the air and a great pile of boxes and furniture appear in the empty space next to them.

"Do yoo hear traffic?" Pip asks, and all listen for a moment.

"Yes! I think I do!"

There is a faint whisper of tires on pavement from a ways off, but not much.

"I think I see lights!" Merry exclaims in excitement and joy.

Aragorn tests the air around them for the smells and sounds of danger and is not pleased. Merry gets off the couch and runs for the trees before Aragorn can stop him. He stops himself though, at the base of a tree, and bends down to pick something from the ground. It is a shiny metallic wrapper - so at least they know Gandalf didn't take them through time accidentally again - and it is stuck with a wad of used gum to a tiny American flag. "Look everyone! We made it!" Aragorn looks at the ground and sees another flag at his feet, and another, trampled beneath the foot of the couch, and another near Gandalf's chair...Merry cautiously waves the little flag just as the three dozen men with enormous guns come bustling out of the bushes and surround them. Everyone is screaming again then and huddled up on the couch with limbs tucked in as if the ground were lava.

"Alright hands where we can see 'em!" shouts one of a bushel of men in black suits with headsets and dark glasses which must be the reason they're so calm, they cant actually see what is happening. The fellowship obey instinctively. They are summarily separated, cuffed and dragged through the woods to black unmarked cars in paralyzing silence and fear. It is only as Legolas is dropped on the ground in salted mud near the road that he catches a glimpse of the reason they have all been detained thusly - The White House looms in the distance, lighted beautifully by the moon herself in quiet detachment plus about three million watts of floodlights, and Legolas shuts his eyes and mutters "Son of a Bi-"

Legolas and Aragorn are thrown into the back of a car together, one in one door, one in the other, face down with all their respective limbs tied together like the corners of a napkin holding doggie doo-doo, and they meet squashed face against face in the middle.

"Intruders neutralized, cargo is being inspected by the bomb squad now," one of the agents says to his earpiece and then gets in the front passenger seat - on the right which is just plain boggling - and then they are rolling slowly away from the scene.

"Hmehmmn!" Legolas says, trying to get the rangers attention which he incorrectly assumes is not on the elf bruising his face. Then he tosses his face away from Aragorn's and says it again in a harsh whisper. "I think I've worked out where we are - we're in a lot of trouble."

"Gandolf can get us out of this, don't worry."

Legolas bends his body in a way that isn't humanly possible, but is rather elfly easy (Aragorn can only do it halfway but it still impresses the ladies) and looks out the rear window. "Gandolf is passed out!" he tells Aragorn in a hiss. He sees four men try, first, to pry Gandalf's limp body from his chair. When that doesn't work they grab two more large men and lift Gandalf and his chair onto the back of a box truck and surround him with a battalion of armoured police. Legolas shakes his head and lays back down. "That'll never be enough," he says to himself.

...

"Mr. Preisdent," a voice says from the darkness waking the couple.

"What is it?" We've caught a group trespassing on the White House grounds."

Barack turns the bedside light on and Michelle sits up as well. She looks concerned but calm, and they get up and get dressed.

...
They are hooded as they are pulled from the cars. This is presumably to keep them ignorant of their own whereabouts, though it was kind of obvious what with the Washington Monument looking like Saruman's tower in the distance (before they turned it into a Four Seasons, of course). They are brought in out of the cold and walked down many long corridors and placed in separate little concrete cells containing only a door and a table and a piece of horrific art on one wall. The tables are bolted to the floor, the door is bolted shut as they are shoved into the rooms, and the paintings are bolted to the wall though the reason for that remains a mystery.
...

A plain-looking man in a suit, middle-aged, average in every way, sits across the table from a most un-average hobbit and finds himself in the position of trying to operate on this very small man's level and failing completely. It may be because he is so small, and that his feet are so large, or because he seems so happy to be here and yet was frightened of the painting of Barbara Bush behind him so much he asked if he wouldn't mind moving his chair a little to the left so his head obscured his view of it more completely. Ed, that is his name, this hapless, didn't-want-nothing-fancy Secret Service agent, sits across from Frodo but thinks more than once about getting up and going home. Mostly because of the way Frodo grimaces every time he moves and forgets that he is supposed to be obscuring Mrs. Bush. The expression is that of someone who had seen something unspeakably horrible. Ed always thought Barbara was a handsome woman.

"So you came to America," Ed says for not the first time.

"Right," Frodo says.

"For the theme parks."

"Oh don't get me wrong. There are lots of reasons to want to live here. I hear there are lots of really wonderful museums now, plus spectacular natural wonders, real guns, it sounds like heaven to us, but I honestly wanted to go to Budapest this time, but Merry won the draw, and America it was. The rest of us were really put off by it but then he told us his reason for picking it, then we all had to admit he had a point. The theme parks. You just don't find that kind of thing in England, Budapest, anywhere really but America. Well, I here there's lots of fun things like that in Japan, but I'm not going there. I don't care who wins the draw next time, if they pick Japan I'll go back to the hospital for another nine years."

"...Why do you not want to go to Japan?" the agent asks with the sort of hesitation of someone who knows they shouldn't ask because they don't want to know the answer badly enough but can't help it.

"Bees. The size of my head." Frodo holds out his hands to show him what size that is exactly forgetting that the exemplar is also there in the room. "Not kidding. They shoot poison acid at your face, then sting you, then cut you up into pieces and bring your flesh back to the queen bee to feed her and her larvae. Then they track down your family, harvest their organs and sell them on the black market. And sometimes they sign you up for the local senior citizen's activity group newsletter. But that's very rare."

....

"Oh no I rather like working for mister Frodo. He's always in a good mood, 'ceptin' for when he's a bit under the weather. And it's what I've been doing for, gosh, a long time now."

"And, uh, exactly what kind of work do you do for this... Mister Freaudeaux"

"I'm the gardener, mostly."

"The gardener. I see." The long-faced American man in front of Sam has thinning red hair and a curly cord going to his ear that Sam badly wants to snatch away because it looks like a big pasty white worm is trying to get into his brain. He writes things down as Sam speaks, which is rather unnerving; nobody ever takes that much note of what Sam says, but that's all this fellow seems to know is taking notes.

"And which of you does deliveries?"

"Well, I guess that'd be Leg-uh, Mr. Green, Sir. He's the one always complaining about his customers. He gives them goodies on the train, see. ... I guess, to be truthful, I don't work just for mister Frodo exactly, I work mostly for myself, I take care of mister Frodo and I get some spending money from the bigger folks for it."

The man puts his pencil down and looks at Sam again, and and Sam knows to expect another question.

So you take care of mister Freaudeaux and his business partners in turn take care of you?"

Sam sits back and thinks. This gent certainly has a funny way of putting things. "I guess so."

"So you're an independent contractor, then?"

Sam thinks about it, and decides he's not keen on people putting so many words in his mouth when he doesn't quite know the meaning of them all.. "No sir. I'm not really independent. The gaffer always taught me we was all dependant on each other. I do the gardening, Mr. Green does deliveries, as you say. Mr. King does most of the driving seeing how most of the rest of us aren't allowed."

The man blinks, frowns very deeply, then writes that down as well.

"The older gentleman, tell me about him."

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"He seems ill. Like perhaps he should be in a convalescent home, or a hospice."

Sam blinks. "Well...He went to a home once, but the ladies there didn't care for his dress sense, so he came back. But I don't think he'd want to shack up with a bunch of mountain climbing college students so much - then again maybe he would, but only so he could try to see the girls in the shower."

The red haired man frowns again but Sam is starting to think maybe he isn't that sad, and that's just the way his face is.

"And...the shorter man with the beard. What is his job?"

"Oh...well. he's had a few. His last one was at a bank."

"So, funding."

"Aye."

"And his other jobs?"

"Oh a corner store, an offy, a restaurant - that one didn't go so well - and a rubber factory."

"A rubber factory?"

"Yes."

"Why a rubber factory?"

"Well they come in useful don't they."

"Ah yes I see. A calculated choice."

"Oh yes. That's Gimli, calculated. With all the mistakes we make on the crosswords every week, we need them."

There he goes looking sad again.

...

"I will tell you nothing!" yells the dwarf.

"I didn't ask you anything."

Gimli sits at the empty table in the empty room under the harsh lights, deprived of his pointy helmet and scowls fiercely at the two enormous black-suited men as if he were twice their size put together in full battle dress and a wizard and a host of elvish archers at his side. Never mind it's just him.

"I will tell you nothing!" he reiterates, and that's pretty much how it goes.

...

"And then I had to go to the loo, so Gandalf, he's the one with the hat - though he hasn't woorn it in a while - he says, why doon't you goo down the chemist's an' see if they'll let you use theirs! But he didnae knoo, tha' we we're the ones broke into the chemists to get 'im the ratialin, right? So me and Merry, we just fell about laughin' while the-"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING ON THE WHITE HOUSE GROUNDS!?!?!"

"Wha?

"What. Are you doing. On the White House. Grrrrrrrounds," the man in the black suit spits in Pippin's face.

"Oy, See it, doon't spree it."

....

"Yer friend tells me you like gettin' haa. That so?" The American man asks with his incomprehensible and boorish sounding accent.

"Don't know what you mean, sir." Merry says.

"I mean you like crushing up pills and shoving up yer nose, bowa."

"No sir."

"No, sir...." he repeats with venom. He's a tall man with a lot of teeth. "Where are you from, bowa?"

"Why do you keep calling me boy?" Merry quirks a look. "'M older 'n you."

"That so. You look like a bowa to me."

"Oh I see. Is that why you fancy me."

Black suit toothy man gets rather red in the face and spluttery after that.

...

"You can take the bag off of your head you know."

"Oh," the bag says off-handedly, carefully. "I hadn't noticed it was still on, actually."

"Mr. Green is it?" She snatches the bag from his head and he is compelled to open his eyes as well.

"Yes." Legolas says but no sounds come out so he coughs and tries again. "Yes," he squeaks.

"Well Mr. Green, what brings you to the U.S?"

Legolas blinks over an over and tries to say something but doesn't manage it."

Legolas' own personal interrogator is a lethal looking woman in a dress suit and heels. She bends down next to Legolas and speaks softly near his right ear. "You and your friends aren't' from around here. I know that much. But what I'm not sure of, is where you came from. See, immigration has never heard of any of you, you all have different accents though we can certainly pin a few of you down with just that unless they're fake - but the drugs will take care of that if they are." Legolas flinches and then glances at her a few times through madly batting eyelashes. "The other ones....I understand them. They're no different than any of the other creeps we see come through here. But you, Mr. Green....you I haven't figured out yet." She stands up straight again to Legolas' relief and paces around the room a little more, showing off how hard her calves have to work in those heels. You could kill an uruk-hai with them. One to the throat. That's all it would take. Legolas swallows and watches her. Yes, he could defend himself if she attacked him, but what good would it do? They're still in more trouble than they have ever been in before, even counting the Crusades, and there is no way out as far as Legolas can even imagine. All they can do is what they're told. Cooperate, no matter what happens to them. Deny every allegation, because they're not true, really, mostly, and cooperate and stay quiet.

"The only thing I can figure, Mr. Green, is that you're an innocent bystander in all this. It's the only thing that makes sense." Legolas looks up at her then, hopeful for the first time since he heard the word "America" this morning. "You poor thing," she says, and advances on him again. Legolas swallows hard as the woman drapes herself in his lap and puts her tongue in his ear. "I can make this all go away, Pumpkin."

"I did it!" Legolas yelps and stands up sending the woman to the floor. He gets up and pounds on the bolted door. "I did it! I'm a smuggler! An embezzler! I kidnapped..somebody! And I stole some things! Help!!!!"

....

"What do we do with him?"

"I dunno."

"What did O'rourke say?"

"To get him out of the chair and to get the cane out of his hand." Gandalf is still apparently passed out in the chair with his head back on the top if the backrest, mouth open, snoring loudly. He has magically fixed himself to the chair and fixed the staff to his palm. The gents in the sharp suits don't know it but the only solvent for magical glue is yellow chalk dust blown over the glued subjects by Richard Dawkins. He happens to be in Washington D.C. right at this moment in a hotel down the road, but what they don't know wont separate Gandalf from his chair and, vis, his stash of mini shooters.

"Ok....but we can't. He wont budge."

"Mm."

"So now what?"

"...Wake him up?"

....

For hours it seems they are left alone in their cells, each fellow alone with his thoughts. Some of them pace in their empty cells. Some of them pull muffin crumbs from their shirt pockets and nibble on them, some of them try to fashion a weapon from broken bits of the used-to-be-table and the stretched face of J. Edgar Hoover. One of them puts the bag back on his head. In the end they all come to the same conclusion. They're screwed.

....

Barack scratches his head and reads the notes given to him by the interrogators in each cell. He paces as he reads them, stops, looks at Ed who swallows and looks away, then keeps pacing and reading. "They're terrorists, they're drug runners, they're communist Russian spies...does Russia even have spies anymore? They're oceanographers bent on dominating Atlantis as soon as we come up with the money to bail them out....Who are they and why are they here? Can't anybody give me a good answer?"

"They're not very cooperative, sir."

Barack nods. Well I guess I'll have to go down there and find out myself."

...

Aragorn's agent spends twenty minutes or so staring at Aragorn from the other side of the table. He's a big man, very big in the American sense, very wide. Aragorn can hear the air whistle in and out of his bulging alveoli, and the hydraulic pressure in his arteries rings in Aragorn's ears like a creaky floorboard someone keeps stepping on over and over. The big man's sweat percolates through his clothes, his hair grows with the sound of corks twisting in their bottle necks. All in all he sounds to a rangers ears like a train wreck sitting perfectly still and quiet.

"So what's you're story?" he blurts from his turkey-neck with his lips hardly having the initiative to move.

"It's...a bit long."

"We have all the time in the world."

Aragorn opens his mouth to suggest that that was certainly true for himself but not for people with uncontrolled blood pressure, hard arteries, and a taste for pork fat saturated with salt. He changes his mind. "Actually, I don't understand it myself, so I don't really feel qualified to explain it."

The American taps his pen on the table a couple of times.

"Are you Al-Qeada?"

"No, I'm a park ranger."

"Suicidal?"

"Usually, but not today. Not yet."

"Drugs?"

"Please."

"Park ranger eh? I suppose that's what you were doing in the bushes out there. Rangering."

"Not specifically no."

"What. Specifically. We're you doing."

"Nothing. Specifically. When you arrived, we were doing exactly what we had been doing the entire time we were there. Nothing."

"Is that what your friends are going to tell me? Nothing? Somehow I doubt it. If they give it up you know what's going to happen to you don't you? Git-mo. Automatic. No questions, no lawyers no trial. You'll go to Git-mo and you'll never be heard from again. Unless that sounds like a day in the park to you, Ranger, you had better come up with something a little more substantial.

"Reggie, what have I told you about that?"

A tall and lanky man walks in the door past the guard's elbow. Aragorn looks at him. Blinks, looks again. This new face seems to be doing much the same such that the room becomes quiet (except for Mr. Train-wreck's bodily screeching) and the face in the door and the face at the table both stare at each other in disbelief of the face staring back but for slightly different reasons.

The face in the door becomes decisive and the man rolls up his sleeve. "I got this."

"What?"

"Go on. Get out of here I want to talk to this man. Alone."

"Sir!"

"No, go on."

"Sir, it is not your job to interrogate these intruders. Its not safe, it's-"

"It's not you're job either, Reggie! You're an undersecretary in the Federal Inter-agency Committee on the Management of Noxious and Exotic Weeds. I'm sorry the FBI rejected your application, I'm sorry your wife kicked you out. I said you could sleep on the futon in the Lincoln bedroom until you found a place, but that does not make you a part of the Secret Service!"

Barack looks at the greasy-haired ranger and blinks. The ranger looks back and blinks also. Reggie huffs and leaves the room but keeps the door quite purposefully open.

Barack palms it shut.

"What are you doing here?" he asks with whispery calm, and Aragorn looks all around his person for the source of the voice which was not at all Presidential in nature, and yet seems to have actually come from Barack Obama because there is no one else in the room.

"I..." Aragorn senses a presence still, can't escape the feeling that not all is as it seems. "I have come to live here, for a while."

"I see," says Barack sharply, and begins to pace the small room. "And your friends?"

"The same."

Barack nods. "You do not intend to harm this country or its people then?"

Aragorn senses a trap, but gives the only answer he may. "No."

"No, of course not. What about me?"

"I didn't even intend to track the mud in."

...

Barrack returns to the door then and knocks. The real SS man outside opens the door and peers in. "Will you bring the others in here?"

The door closes, and nothing is said for some time. Barack looks at Aragorn thoughtfully and Aragorn back at Barack but without as much thought, but with much more nausea as the weight of this comes down. This is as good as being discovered. Their pictures will be on the news, they'll be investigated, then the Valar will boil them. Great.

The rest of the fellowship is ushered in a moment later until the room gets rather uncomfortably crowded. Most of them look ok, not too much worse for wear, except Legolas who looks comatose. He was never fond of moving day. If they ever see another one, he'll likely need a rubber room next time.

"Oy, where's Gandalf?" Pip blurts. The wizard is conspicuously missing.

"He's being taken care of."

The fellowship look all around at each other, their faces beginning to glow with hope, sparkle with tears of joy. "You mean?..." Sam asks.

"Dare we believe?" Frodo responds and all look to Barack for some confirmation, because really, if it can be done, if an atrocity exists that could accomplish the job, the United States Government can do it.

Barack, momentarily confused, but only momentarily, says, "No, I mean they'll open the bar...."

They slump, hearts broken once again, but at least the bar is open.

This sets Aragorn's whip quick mind into action finally, for who else knows what horror Gandalf's vitality means to them? No one but them, and yet this man, this President seems to know all.

"I must apologise," Mr. Obama begins loudly, and they all stop and listen. "You would not have received such a chilly reception, if I had known you were coming, or if I had known who you were when you arrived." They all stop and swallow hard. This cannot be good. "No, we have never met before to my knowledge, but, I know who you are, all of you. It was you, Sire, that I recognised." Obama stands before Aragorn, and as the others watch, slack-jawed, he bends to one-knee.

"Oh my, God," Merry says. "The President is a poofter."

Barack reaches behind his head with both hands and removes one, then another prosthetic ear, revealing brown pointed ears beneath the comically huge rubbery molds.

No, he's a Vulcan!" Pip spits, aghast.

Legolas thwaps him on the back of the head.

"He's an elf, grrrrrass for brrrrains!" Gimli finishes.

"An elf."

"An elf?"

Barrack looks up at Aragorn with his exposed ears and a distinctly elfish look of calm curiosity.

"Uh," Aragorn says intelligently. "If you don't mind me saying so...I've never seen an elf with your....particular....eughhhrmmm..."

"We're from the south. The deep south."

"I see."

"My kind didn't make it up to Gondor much."

"Oh."

"I can't believe it. The President of the United States is an Elf," Legolas says with wonderment in his voice. "Wait. What about all that staying out of the limelight? The Valar are going to boil you..."

"I know I know, in the giant teapot. I've heard it all before."

"It's a tea kettle actually."

"But what about taking what we have, this enormous gift of ours and using it? We have a perfect understanding of history because we were there to see it. Why not using our long lives and our wisdom for the good of everyone?"

"What aboot using our gifts to find breakfast?" Pip asks.

"No, really. How have they not boiled you already? I mean. Becoming President of the United States of America...You might have gotten away with a smaller country, or maybe governor of Delaware or something, but this..." Aragorn shakes his head sadly. It really is too bad he'll be boiled. He seems like a nice guy.

"I'm willing to take the risk. So are Gwaedhiel and the girls."

"Mrs. President is...?"

"Yes Michelle is an elf, too. This whole thing was her idea actually..." Barack scratches his head in a way Aragorn can appreciate. He has made that same confused face many times thinking about his marriage to Arwen, scratched his head and wondered what the hell happened.

"And we do move every nine years just like everybody else. February would have been nine years for us, so moving in in January was right on time. And now I have time for two terms here, luck prevailing, then we'll be off again."

"But how will you slip into anonymity after spending eight years, four years, or any time at all as the President of the United Friggin' States, Man?"

"I was thinking about going back to Kenya."

"Oh. Yeah that'll probably work..." Aragorn scratches his head too.

"So tell me, Mr. President, where do you stand on the issue of the no third breakfast policy instituted after the cereal fiasco of nineteen eighty-eight? Will it be repealed during your term in office?" Merry holds his imaginary microphone to Barack's face. Barack blinks and Pippin shakes his head.

"Poor Merry. He's delirious from hunger."

"What do you know about hunger?" Sam gripes. "Remember that little thing a few ages ago, mount Doom, no food, no water for days and days..."

"-Blah blah blah. I'm Sam, I'm a wee poofter and I'm sooo traumatized by soomething that happened so long ago, the dinosaurs doon't even remember it."

Aragorn takes Barack aside, away from the hobbit's prattling. Barack begins putting his ears back on and Legolas watches closely, taking mental notes.

"Your heart is in the right place, Mellon, even if we think you're crazy risking exposure like this. You could hardly do worse than the guy you replaced!" Aragorn says with a grin, apparently intending to be funny. Legolas rolls his eyes.

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Well, that's about all I can give you, friend."

"Not a voter huh?"

"I'm not even legal!"

Legolas elbows him.

"I'm glad I have your blessing, Sire." Aragorn goes a bit liquidy. Not many people call him that anymore. He blushes and turns his head.

The door opens behind them. "Mr. President. The old man, we're having quite a time with him." They hear a scream and the nervous SS man fidgets in the doorway. "Did you take the staff away from him like I told you?"

"N-no sir, he wouldn't let it go."

Barack sighs. "Let him out. And show him the liquor cabinet. But! -" he says as the SS man was about to run off. "Take the good stuff out first and hide it."

"Hide it sir?"

"Yeah... uh....put it in the fridge in the vegetable crisper."

Legolas perks. "Wow! That is a good idea! I never thought to put it there. Aragorn, he really is smart."

"Indeed he is." In the middle of all this ego-petting comes the distinct sound of a man screaming as he falls about ten feet and then flumps to the floor, moaning in pain and shock. This being his first time being magically pinned to the ceiling of the White House, he probably did not have time to assume the correct posture for minimizing internal damage upon making it back to the floor. Shortly thereafter the squabbling hobbits stop their bickering and begin trying to claw their way out of the room over tables and chairs and people because the smell of bacon has wafted into the interrogation room.

Barack ushers the group out into the hall and gives them the short tour of the White House, only the points along the way to the state dining room.

The White House staff do their best to keep the eggs and sausages coming fast enough for the hobbits but they are clearly inexperienced with their sort of appetites, having only fed groups of two hundred people or so at a time, they simply couldn't have been adequately prepared for four hobbits on such short notice. Legolas is in heaven, eating muesli in quiet dignity next to the Obamas and the two young elf girls, who are quite obviously Elvish, and not American, in person. They aren't screaming at the top of their lungs and sucking down sugared cereal and lumps of congealed bacon grease like American kids, for one thing.

Gimli and Aragorn enjoy conversation over breakfast with the first family, revisiting the topic of the nine year move rule again when Gimli can't let it die.

"But you're just moving, you're not actually starting a new life," Aragorn injects. Legolas tries to avoid thinking about moving by engaging Michele in a low conversation concerning an Elvish potion for curing consciousness.

"The Valar never said we had to start a new life."

"Well I think it was implied, otherwise what would be the point?" Aragorn asks.

"Probably to annoy us."

"Either way you're putting us all in danger if you're discovered - oh my god do you always put that much salt on your food?"

"Nobody notices anything around here, Aragorn, and as soon as I'm out of the office again, I'll slink back into anonymity. It worked for Ike."

"Eisenhower was an elf?"

"Sure. Can't you tell?" He motions to a painting on the wall.

"What happened to his hair?"

Barack shrugs. Old war wound. Had a scrape with the Balrog. Burn most of it off. Never grew back. That's what he gets for being a Republican, I say."

"Oh Barry, stop it," Michelle cuts in. "You and I both know Ike lost his hair because of that spell you put on his lucky comb."

"That had nothing to do with it and don't call me Barry. Makes me sound like a carpet installer or a disc jockey or something."

Michelle rolls her eyes. Legolas makes a mental note to look into protective spells against baldness, and to replace all his combs and brushes and hair beads as soon as they're settled.

They finish breakfast after the hobbits have cleared the White House Kitchen and pantry of any remaining morsels of edibles. Gandalf has fallen asleep again in his chair and Sam watches nervously as Frodo plays with the elf children.

"So where do you intend to take the fellowship now that you're here, Aragorn?"

"We hadn't really decided. We were planning on New York City, figured we'd blend in pretty well there, but we somehow took a wrong turn..." Barack tosses his head side to side.

"It's true you'd be very normal for New Yorkers, even Gandalf, but I don't see the lifestyle agreeing with most of you." He eyes Legolas surreptitiously. "But it's a big country. We aught to be able to find some place where you coudl be out of the, uh, out of harm's way."

"Do we really have to do this Aragorn?" Legolas asks with a sigh. "Cant we go to Greece instead?"

"Greece?" Barack says. "I have just the place for you, Legolas. Just as good as Greece, in fact, it was named after the Island of Rhodes." Legolas awaits the revelation with a sliver of hope in his brow.

"Rhodes?" he says like a meek little child.

"Rhode Island," Barack says and puts and arm over Legolas' shoulders as they all make their way toward the cars waiting out front for the fellowship. "We'll get you set up in my favorite part of Rhode Island. It's right in the middle. A town called Cranston. You'll love it! Great people, ideal location, the job market, well, you know how that is, but a talented bunch like you shouldn't have any problem."

Aragorn thanks him in Elvish for his kindness, hospitality, and generosity as the others pile into the black cars. "Mr. President, how can we get in touch with you again?"

"I'll have my people call your people," he says with a smile as he backs away into the White House and Reggie escorts Aragorn into the passenger seat of the box truck carrying their belongings.

In the car with Gimli and Gandalf, Legolas sits and wonders what Rhode Island will be like. He imagines Rhodes as it was in it's heyday; bronze statues, marble alters, the palace of the Grand Master, the acropolis. Though, a shadow and a threat begin to grow in his mind as the car pulls away leaving the White House far behind. Legolas turns on the radio and Skid Row is playing Problem Child. He switches the station and gets Poison instead. The next station is playing Rat, then White Snake, then Winger. Legolas switches the radio off then and curls up into the fetal position on the car seat thinking about all the things that could happen to his hair given the right kind of hairbrush and enough Aquanet. He is too horrified by his own imaginings to speak of them and warn the others what he fears.

Dun dun dunnnnnn....

Yeah so there it is. That was my giant contribution to fandom this year. Man I am a bad bad fic writer. I haven't published anything in forever and the first piece I come out with is this monstrosity. Oh well. Hope you had a giggle at my expense.

update

2009-01-01T19:10:00.002-05:00

Due to popular request (by which I mean two people have mentioned it) I've posted black bottle chapters 8 and 9 here. I update insanejournal (hermit9) more frequently than my blog with story updates and other stuff, though I haven't updated black bottle in a long long time in either place. I AM working on it though. I swear. I took a few months off since it was going nowhere but I'm back to it again. Hopefully I'll have the new chapter soon. It's a big one, so that's one of the reasons. Not big as in important, just rather long.

ST:DS9 G/B Black Bottle Chapter 9: Aftercare

2009-01-01T15:01:00.003-05:00

Title: Black Bottle
Chapter: 9: Aftercare (is this a cliche chapter title? I don't know, I don't actually read stuff that's anything like what I write.)
Takes place during Tears of the Prophets and beyond.

Rating: Adult (but only just barely, sorry)

a/n: Holy hell. I went digging through some of my old LiveJournal stuff and I came to the realization that I have been writing this series for two years now. I posted the first part in March of 2006! On the one hand I think to myself, "What the hell are you wasting so much time on something like this?" and on the other I think,"Wow, this is possibly the longest I've stayed with anything except my husband," and on yet another hand still, because I'm actually Zaphod Beeblebrox and thusly, three-handed, I think, "There is no way I'm giving up on it now, but I really really gotta finish it soon before it consumes another two years." So. That's my mission now. Finish this bad boy. After this chapter, and I realize that my chapter predictions have been horrible and I never stick to them, but after this one I think I have three or four more to do that occur within the boundaries of the DS9 series, one "final" chapter after that, but then the potential for say, three or four more after that if I decide I want to continue the story beyond the end of the series. So, since every new post is farther from the last post than the last one to the one before it, I should be writing this for the rest of my life, easy.

a/n2: I fear I may have unintentionally plagiarised a tidbit in this chapter. Possibly from an episode of DS9 or another source altogether, but I can't nail down what it's from. If you read it and go "hey, I heard that before" let me know. If nobody spots it I'll assume it came creatively out of my own head! ;)

Warnings: AAAAAANNNGGGST. I promise after this chap it'll get more fun, and for those of you who like the angst, there will be more a bit later. There is some stuff in this chap. that sort of starts to begin to think about maybe bordering on violence and non-con. Just a heads up. I think it still falls under the normal bdsm umbrella though.

And then she was gone.

The dead of night is just like any other time on the station; dark, isolated, insulated by space against the passage of time. No dawn penetrates the rings and pylons, no sunset tells you when to lay down your tools and end the day. That could be what makes it so unbelievable. If time doesn't pass how can anything end? Could be what makes it so unbearable. Nothing ends.

He will bear it.

Julian went home leaving Dr. Girani in charge of the infirmary, tonight. She probably didn't want it either but he doesn't care. The corridors were silent as he headed home, he thinks, though it might have been his mind that was stuffed with cotton and closed off. Even now as he lays atop the covers in his own bed as if it belonged to someone else, not to be disturbed, the silence is complete and infinite as the blackness of space. The rest of the station, the population, though most of them have little or no connection to the Starfleet crew aboard, the whole station just knew, as one knows when walking into a room with two angry people, that the silence is a safety, the space loaded and compressed. You don't have to understand the argument, just sense that it hangs in the air as a combustible gas, and any carelessness on your part would be deadly or unseemly at least. Everyone knows though no one talked about it. He was afraid he'd have to hear them talking as he walked the halls feeling crooked and bent, avoiding eyes, avoiding lips, but his ears spared him that, still numb from so many hours ago. They could not pick up the muttered secrets.

His mind skitters away. He didn't say anything to anyone; he guessed he really wouldn't have to. Just tossed his scrubs on a table and left. Julian thinks about the symbiont in it's little jar of fluid. He feels his face contort for an instant, as if he was about to sneeze but stopped abruptly. He imagines going to the infirmary now that it's late and all the silent people are abed or sitting awake in front of mirrors or over cups of cold, undrunk tea, tumblers full of pain killers. He thinks about going in, locking himself in an exam room and injecting himself with a local, cutting himself open. He's a good doctor. He could find a way of joining permanently. He starts to gag as he lays there and has to swallow several times, breathe deeply, and shake it out of his head. Not realistic, but he doesn't have to be right now. He doesn't have to be anything. He thinks he just wants to know where she is. If he could talk to the symbiont, maybe.

Funny how it feels like it still balances on a knife's edge, as if it isn't done, as if there was still something to be done. Perhaps for some people it isn't over yet. Perhaps not everyone knows or believes yet. Perhaps someone still has hope. The station is a living thing in that way. Just as anger can pass through air, desperation seems to infuse metal and soft light. Julian just hopes that those people resign soon, so he can find sleep.

There is someone in his room, he realizes, though he doesn't know how long they have been there. All he feels is a shift in the air or perhaps hears a muffle in the midnight sounds that isn't usually there. That is all the information he gets about the body standing near his bed. He knows that it is Worf, and he will bear this too. As Julian stood in his office a few hours ago with the door locked, this was one of the scenarios his mind predicted, because he can't not postulate. Even with his heart stopped his mind will keep working. Julian prepares himself for what is to come. He will not do it right now, he won't kill him in cold blood, but will instead insist that Julian be alive and alert, he will make him face it and will let him know it is coming. He will not be merciful and allow him to die a coward's death lying quietly in his bed. There will be no swift strike to his head or neck to end this. It will be painful, it will be soon, but soon over.

It will be nice to just be quiet, without thought. He understands the warriors honor, he understands the need for death, right now, he really does. When Worf asks him to face his death tonight, when he does finally speak, Julian will thank him. He will repent to him for all his mistakes. He should have found something, he should have been able to. What good was all this, everything he had gone through to selfishly hide what he was for so long if in the end it didn't make a difference in the lives of the people he loves? All in vain. All vanity and self-preservation. There was no greater purpose in either his rebirth or his secret and no amount of making up for it will ever be payment enough.

"Julian." Garak's voice sounds alien in his quarters, but his weight is familiar as it bends the mattress in one spot behind Julian's back. He doesn't answer him though he knows he should. He didn't really think it was Worf in his room - but some very desperate part of him was wishing. He is left with desolation knowing it was Garak instead. Garak can't help him. "Julian...I...I wish I knew what to say."

Garak heard the news while on the bridge. That place became a tomb after that, the only sound the screaming engines burning up the light years to Bajoran Space. The captain didn't appear until they docked and he and Worf, Kira, everyone disembarked with fear in their eyes. The victory hollowed, the battle forgotten.

Julian speaks suddenly and hoarsely. "No matter how hard I work at it, no matter how far I come to accepting the idea that everything dies, that eventually, I will be separated from the people I love..." The pause stretches out.

"When it actually happens, you're never ready," Garak finishes.

It's true but that wasn't what Julian was going to say. He nods anyway. The real thought had less to do with actuality and more to do with forfeiture. He should be able to stop this mindlessness before it destroys everything.

"I've never done this before," Elim says, but Julian isn't quite sure what he's talking about. Maybe he means all of the available possibilities. Wouldn't be the first time. "I've never consoled the grieving before," he explains. "Not really a requirement in either of my most recent professions."

Julian says nothing, and Garak watches the slow movement of Julian's blinking eye, only the corner he can see with his slender back turned to him. If Garak searches hard in the reflection of his bedroom window, he can see Julian's wooden face looking out to the stars. He doesn't know what to do. Everything he can think to say sounds like rhetoric and platitude in his head. Any touch he wants to bring to Julian's body seems like an intrusion. Certainly, Garak himself has been in this place before, but for the life of him, he cannot recall a single thing that ever helped, or that he ever wished for while swallowed by that pain.

~*~

“What are you doing?”

Julian looks up from his screen with automatic eyes at Marcia but doesn't understand what she means by the question. Her face is sallow and low, her eyes fixed on him. He knows he should know what she means. There are a host of possible meanings for everything anyone could say to you, and picking out the right one from the context is something one learns to do as a child, but Julian cannot today, or will not. “Working,” he answers, because to ask a question in response is rude and would allow her the opportunity to rebut and rebuke at the same time, and to give any other answer would be to assume a meaning when he cannot guess it.

Marcia still just stares at him for a moment. “Are you going to talk to me about yesterday?”

He feels suddenly ill and feverish, but keeps his voice steady. “What about yesterday, specifically?” he asks, though he sounds abnormally slow to his own ears.

Marcia turns and shuts his office door. “What happened?”

He swallows and most of his body numbs against the hot anger radiating off of her. “There was nothing I could do to save her, Marcia.”

“That's not what I mean and you know it,” she hisses back. Julian's eyes flutter as if to close and take him away from here, but he knows he needs to stay, to finish his work, and to do his share. Marcia sighs with exasperation and puts her face in her hands. “Please, Julian. I need to know what happened. I can't function like this. I can't look at you--I can't follow you if I don't know where you're going.”

“I don't know what you mean,” he mutters. Again, he can't pull anything from the context because it's like he isn't really here.

“You once told me that I would find my own way of dealing with it. Is that what you meant? That we all find a way to run away from it, to become machines that just don't feel anything?”

Seconds tick by in his head like thunderclaps as Marcia waits in a cloud of frustration leaning over him.

“Kira to the Infirmary.”

Nothing happens for some time and Julian can't bring himself to answer either woman.

Marcia makes a sound, something Julian can't identify without looking at her, which he also can't do. He hears her breathe sharply and answer. “Louis here, Colonel. How can I help you?”

“Good morning, Ensign. ...Is Doctor Bashir there?”

Julian swallows. “Yes. I'm here.”

“Doctor, if...if you're not too busy this morning, we could use some help in ops.” Kira sounds like Julian feels. At least, he thinks, she understands better than Marcia would. Marcia hasn't been here long. She doesn't have front line experience. She isn't used to the very common event of loss that Kira knows, that Julian has seen so many times. He meets Marcia's eyes and clears his throat quietly. Marcia turns and leaves.

“I'll be right there.”

~*~

The door slides open and a few faces glance up at Julian. He enters but feels as if he is doing so with strange, out of place caution. Kira nods at him in thanks and turns back to her work. No one stands at Jadzia's station, and it's really no wonder. It appears to him a giant void, that glossy black console, but when he steps before it, it feels small and inadequate. Julian paws through Jadzia's work-flow for a few minutes, not really doing or understanding anything until Kira comes over a moment later. She speaks lowly to him as the whole station, and ops in particular is still and stagnant.

Kira pulls up a few things on the screen in front of Julian and he lets her lead the way. She is working with the speed of someone with a lot to do but the quiet of someone abused and self-restraining. “I don't know if you've ever had to run this station before. It's sort of an overflow from a few other stations during the morning. Jadzia had a system. She was on a first name basis with most of the captains that come through here regularly and she kept up to date on the clearance level of each one. Obviously you won't have that so you just need to check each one against the database and make sure their code checks out. Also, the sensors need calibrating once you catch up on the messages, and she usually runs a check on the long range once a day, if you can fit that in that would be great, but if not it can wait until tomorrow. We're not going to be able to do her job as efficiently as she did but we'll muddle through. It should quiet down here after lunch and after the traffic clears up.”

He nods and starts going through the messages and docking requests. Kira is right. There is a lot of work to be done. There are sub-space messages lined up like hungry beggars, ships requesting permission to dock and depart. So many were detained to allow the transport carrying the Dax symbiont and the ship carrying Jadzia's coffin unfettered and immediate clearance to leave as soon as both are ready this morning. The Symbiosis Commission representative was still stabilizing and checking the condition of the Dax symbiont when Julian left the infirmary. He didn't look happy, and Julian tries even now to simply forget that fact for as long as he can because thinking about it makes him balk.

He is at it a while. A few hours, he guesses, in crackling silence with lulling monotony guiding his absent mind. He doesn't keep track of how long exactly. Time just slips by as if in illness, the way fever distorts your care for the normal process of days and nights. In time, he realizes he can no longer see the display in front of him. His vision keeps getting trapped on the surface before it reaches the words and numbers and designations. The rows and columns of information are a blurry backdrop that he cannot command. He stops a moment and rubs his eyes. They feel like they are burning with tears but they're just warm with dryness and cold sterile air. He keeps looking, but all he sees is a reflection of Worf standing at his post above and behind him.

Part of Julian is afraid of the man now that the acuteness of yesterday's atmosphere is tamped by duty. It feels more like a prison sentence today, like he is waiting for an end that may come at any time around any corner, at the hand of an unseen assailant as soon as he is left alone. He should probably prepare himself for the possibility that Worf will try to kill him. Whether it is his fault or not, Worf may blame him, come for him. Julian lifts his gently curled fists to his chest experimentally. He probably wouldn't put up much of a fight right now.

"Doctor."

Julian sifts through another sheaf of communiques coming into ops. There are dozens of irritable ship captains waiting for a response from the station. They pour in faster than Julian can respond to them, even with automatic replies and canned pleasantries. They want to know where their usual liaison is. Where is the lovely young woman who usually greets me when I come here? Is she on vacation? He doesn't respond to those inquiries. From Bajor, the docking ring, even light years away, people want to know when they will be able to resume normal traffic with the station. The answer is always the same, after the funeral procession has cleared the shipping lanes. Though no one is quite sure when that will be. No one has yet said when far enough is far enough, or how long is long enough to keep the air quiet, the space still. It seems an affront to even think of business as usual. How can they expect to just carry on, how is it they want to? Julian must, but them? The vulgar mercantile clamor of the ships and people seems to trample Julian as he stands there. It's perfectly quiet in ops, sheltered, and yet he can feel their press. Something like anger, defiance, holds him immobile there and in minutes he is not only not responding to the vessels with reliable information, but not responding to them at all.

"Doctor."

Julian closes the messaging interface and brings up instead the calibration logs and begins fine tuning the array to far beyond accuracy standards for Starfleet regulations for long-range scanners. He can get them to within a trillionth of a point margin of error if he works carefully.

“Doctor,” Sisko says more gently and approaches Julian's station. Eyes across ops are on him hesitantly and stealthily as if they expect him to explode. Julian looks at his captain and Sisko puts that large hand of his on Julian's shoulder with the fingers curling around his back deeply from collar to spine. He squeezes tight the way Julian has seen him do with Jake. Julian's eyes almost close involuntarily that pinch is so singularly focusing and relaxing. Sisko seems to size him up in a few second's observation within that vulnerable moment, his dark eyes piercing and his frown a leaden weight, and in that moment Julian's heart pangs for Elim. He feels irrationally angry in the next instant at Sisko for making him feel that way, for nearly toppling him in front of everyone, but it fades as quickly as it surfaced. “Doctor, it's been a rough couple of days," Sisko rumbles, "why don't you go back to your quarters and get some rest.”

Julian isn't going to argue, though being dismissed stings a little. He nods and Sisko squeezes once more, sending him gliding toward the lift.

~*~

Garak knows Julian went to work. He came by his quarters in the morning and they were vacant. He still will not presume to bother him in the infirmary though his gut gnaws at him that there is something wrong, deeper than the obvious. Around lunch time Garak peruses the promenade looking for him. He finds instead Miles and Keiko at a quiet table in Quark's. Keiko's eyes are glittering, and the two of them sit silently, hand in hand. He finds Kira hunched and rigid over a hot cup in Odo's office, the pattern of glass in Odo's door reveals that much, as well as Odo himself speaking slowly from his own seat behind the desk, little more. Jake leans over the railing above everything, staring down, but not following people with his impassioned eyes as he usually does. Nog approaches just then and leans in next to him without a word. Morn clutches his ale and Quark wipes down the same patch of bar that he has been for the last twenty minutes as Garak leans against the wall watching the activity around him. Sisko is absent. Worf is absent. Julian. He watches as Marcia crosses the promenade looking haunted, enters the infirmary, then leaves again only a moment later and goes back the way she came.

Garak rings the chime on Julian's door again some time after two that afternoon when he doesn't show for lunch nor slip back into ops or the infirmary. The 'come' from inside is somehow both worrying and relieving. Relieving now that he knows where he is, worrying because it sounds terse. His quarters are barely lit, and Julian sits sort of crumpled in his chair with the glow of his computer console lighting his face in yellow and red. He glances up at Garak and then back to his screen. Garak approaches a bit closer and observes him keenly; the uncomfortable posture, the half lidded eyes, and the draw of his mouth. His features fall in plumb lines down his face until those lines reach his body, which betrays more of him than he knows.

He says nothing, so Garak starts. “I haven't seen much of you today.”

“I know,” he says with a small sigh and gestures vaguely at his screen. “I've just had a lot to do.”

“I understand.” Garak has left a thick cushion of space between them and is glad he did. That posture is reminiscent of a cornered animal despite the mildness of his words. Still, he wants to close that gap. Part of him thinks he should, that this distance can't be right after a tragedy like this. He is no human, nor even anything close, but the others on the station have all sought out comfortable companionship, most of them, human or not. Julian is no ordinary human, so perhaps he knows what he needs, but it still isn't sitting right with Garak. The problem with that perception though is that it is colored by his own wants, and his own guilt. “I thought perhaps we could have dinner tonight.”

Julian sighs again staring straight ahead. Garak swallows. Julian takes a stylus to his screen and touches a few times. “I...I just don't really have the time right now. I'm sorry.”

“Is there something I can help you with?”

Julian is already shaking his head.

“Julian.” Garak is feeling this tremendous petulance creeping in and he tries to bury it all for the sake of this interaction. His own emotions are not going to help this at all, he knows, and so they must be set aside until this makes more sense. “You've lost something important to you," he begins with caution, though he can see Julian's jaw tighten. "What is it that can't wait a little while, until you've had some time to adjust?”

Julian sighs more heavily this time and looks dejected, frustrated, like he wants to be left alone, and it's probably true. “I'm just busy, Garak. I still have paperwork to complete for Starfleet concerning the casualties on board the Defiant. Marcia is leaving, so I have to find her replacement. I have a hundred applications to go through.” He gestures to a short stack of padds. “And Dax's job still needs doing as well. I've taken over her reports to-”

“Marcia is leaving?”

“Yes. She tendered her resignation this afternoon. Doctor Girani just sent it to me.”

“Why?”

Julian shrugs half-heartedly, as if it was just one more thing, a drop in an overflowing bucket.

“I'm sorry, Garak. I just have a lot I need to get done. I'll. I'll come by later. Tomorrow maybe. I promise.”

Garak searches his face for a moment, his eyes, but for now sees only fatigue. Perhaps that is really all it is. After he has done what he needs to do, perhaps then time will permit for more personal matters. A lot of people depend on Julian. He is wrong if he thinks he isn't an important part of this place. He sees his duty as important, important enough to forslow the satisfaction of his own needs, but Garak fears he does not see the whole picture, that he does not know that he is not a piece meant for sacrifice. Or maybe this is just how this particular human faces death, with his hands tight around the lines and face to the wind. Again, it is hard to know when he isn't certain how he feels himself.

Garak nods to him, makes sure that Julian can read understanding in his eyes, and leaves.

~*~

Tomorrow comes and goes. Garak leaves Julian a simple message to let him know he is there and available, that he is welcome and wanted. When he checks his computer hours later, it tells him the message has gone unread. Across the station there is a rush to get off of this forsaken rock in the Bajoran sky. The captain and his son left yesterday, and rumor says they won't be back. Many of the Bajorans are going home too. Both the prophets and the emissary have abandoned it, why should they stay? The flight of these people takes on a frantic feel as the day wears on, and as more people leave, more decide to do the same it seems. Even Garak feels the pull, the emergency of it though no conception of despairing gods is behind his feeling.

In the replimat, Marcia looks shaken and small. She seems to hide against the gray walls of the station as she moves about it silently, and Garak watches her tremble at her table for a few moments at lunch time before she abandons her tray and heads for the habitat ring. Julian never leaves his office, and so, one avenue a dead end, Garak makes a snap decision and changes course, follows the young woman to her quarters.

Her door is just closing as Garak swings around the corner after her, so he waits in the corridor for a few minutes and thinks to himself. Not that that does any good - why should it really, he's been asking himself these questions for days now and not been able to provide himself with any answers that make sense. Why has Julian shut down? Why is Marcia leaving? What happens that two friends no longer speak and don't' have a word of comfort for each other at a time like this? And why wouldn't Julian then want to turn to him if other friends fail?

When she answers the door, her face is clear but he can tell she has been crying. She looks mainly startled to see him, and glances around the hall with red rimmed blue eyes as if looking for rescue, someone to shout for.

"Can we talk?" he asks.

She glances about her again but then nods and moves away from her door. Inside, she backs herself up to her living room wall unconsciously and waits, watching Garak uneasily and trying to disguise the pain in her face.

"Please," he begins. "Tell me what is going on." Marcia looks away and will not meet his gaze again. "Why are you leaving?" Her eyes glitter and she puts her hands to her face. Still, Garak gets no answer from her and minutes go by in painful sloth as she resists and he persists. "Please. I need to know what happened." She is shaking her head behind her hands and starts to slip to the floor as she is slowly taken over and begins to cry again in earnest and with little inhibition. Garak moves closer and takes her hands from her face and goes to the floor with her. She pulls her hands back and paws at her face to brush the tears and the grimace from it. She takes a few stuttering breaths and glances up at Garak. "Please," he whispers. "I don't know what else to do. Julian is an empty facade, and you are mourning like he is supposed to be. You are grieving for a woman you barely knew. Please tell me what happened. I will do everything I can to help, whatever it is."

"I can't tell you, Garak," she croaks. "I can't talk to you about my patients. You know that."

"She's gone. You don't have to guard it any more."

"Dax is still alive."

It is a horrible thought but he knows he isn't the first to think it about a Trill. It would have been easier on everyone if she had just died and taken the symbiont with her. "Who can you talk to?" If he can't get what he needs directly, indirectly is another option.

She begins to sob again. "I don't know. It would have killed the captain to know. And Worf. He would kill Julian if he knew. There is no one I can talk to."

"What about Julian?"

"Don't you think I tried? If he hasn't told you what makes you think he would talk to me about it?"

Garak sighs and shifts to sit against the wall next to her. This is getting more confusing. "Are you leaving because Jadzia died?"

"This isn't twenty questions, Garak," she grumbles bitterly.

Garak gruffs with irritation. "I know that. But you are making an enormous mistake by leaving." And you are possibly the most stubborn woman I have ever met.

She huffs a laugh through her tears. "I made a mistake by coming here. And is that why you're here? You're concerned about the future of my career?"

"I am here because Julian is in trouble. I can tell, but he won't talk to me. It seems that you aren't going to either, but I know without a doubt that whatever it is that is wrong with Julian it has something to do with you, and if you leave, I think the chances of resolving it will vanish. That leaves all of us at a disadvantage, my dear. You, because it means stunting your career, me, because Julian is unreachable and unreadable and I fear he is going to remain that way. And both Julian and I for the loss of your smile," he says with a gentle hand to her jaw. "He is acting like it doesn't matter, I know. I know that has to hurt but there must be a reason for it. I know Julian very very well and that is not him. I've seen a more convincing shapeshifter impersonate Julian...And he cares for you. Losing you too is not going to help any of us. Running away doesn't solve anything."

She laughs at that too but Garak doesn't understand why, exactly. She is quiet for a long time then with no explanation, apparently unmoved by his words, and Garak can read on her face as tears well slowly and fall, that she is reliving something behind her eyes as she has been constantly for the past two days.

Garak sighs again. "This place, Marcia," he begins before he knows where he is going, "has been my home for a long time. I'm the oldest resident as a matter of fact. Did you know that?" She shakes her head. "And while I have hated almost every moment of my stay here for one reason or another, I can tell you that this place is like no other place I've ever been. It tosses you around, it tries to drown you off of its back, but the rewards if you can hold on long enough, endure what it throws at you--Marcia, the rewards are endless. Julian is being tossed around just like you, just like me. We'll all have to leave here some day to make room for the people who will come after us, others who's lives will be touched by this place and whatever magic lives here, whatever piece of the prophets or wormhole aliens resides in these pylons, but you've only just arrived. Don't do as I did and spend every moment you're here trying to escape. You'll sit for six years wishing you were someone else when that possibility is right in front of you the whole time. You'll miss what is really going on." Then he shakes his own head at no one in particular. "Not that I have any idea what that might be at the moment."

Marcia rubs her face as she begins to calm again. "All I can tell you, Garak, is that Julian isn't who I thought he was. I can't work with him anymore. So. I'm leaving." Garak is failing to think of anything that Julian could have done that would cause an educated and effervescent woman like her to lose faith so suddenly. Garak has always had faith in Julian, oddly, considering how naturally faithless he is. "There is no magic here any more," she says harsh and low. "Someone killed it and it isn't coming back. There is no undoing this." That thought is far more disturbing to Garak than any other potential misdeed. She could be right. Whatever it is about this place that the stars and compasses all point here could be gone now that so much has left it in such a rush. This heavy gust of death and destruction could be enough to blow away that which Garak has been clinging to. That foul wind has a name but he will not use it here. If Julian is lost to him because of this, no wraiths nor prophets nor Jem Ha'dar battalions will be able to protect him.

Garak tries to brush off these thoughts for now because they are not constructive. Instead, he needs to concentrate on plan C since this has been only slightly informative and not the breakthrough he was hoping for. "When do you leave?" he asks her.

"End of the week. The Potemkin is making a stop here. I'm heading to Starbase 376 for reassignment." Marcia's face sinks lower in a mixture of sorrow and disgust. She speaks again barely above a whisper. "It feels like it is never going to end but at the same time, I'm dreading boarding that ship."

"Marcia, if I can get Julian to talk to you about it, will you consider staying?"

She thinks a moment, looking at the carpet and picking at a loose fiber. She shakes her head. "I would consider staying if there is a really good explanation for this." For what?!?! he wants to scream, but takes a shallow breath instead.

"Very well. I am going to try one last time to reach him, but if you change your mind and decide you want to tell me what this is about instead of making me drag it out of him, please do call on me." She makes no nod nor indication that she was even considering it, nor considering getting up off the floor. He takes her hand with a friendly pat and stands to leave. "And of course, if you do decide to share, there would be a very charming Bajoran camisole in it for you." A small smirk flashes across her face and she sniffles to cover it. Garak gives her a reassuring smile that she may not see and leaves quietly.

~*~

Julian turns in his chair at the sound of the door sliding closed behind him. "Garak." He sits at his desk still, as if he hadn't left it in the days that have passed since the last time they spoke. Garak takes in the room briefly, expecting to see cobwebs in the corners or on Julian's shoulder. His quarters are not sacked in darkness as they were previously, though. This evening they are lit as brightly as the infirmary usually is, so much so that the blackness out the window seems to suck the light out into space because it has no place else to go. The air smells dry and cold, and Elim spares a sympathetic glance to a plant in the corner that shivers in its pot of parched earth.

Elim finds his voice after a few seconds of muted hesitance and meets the human's gaze. "Forgive me for breaking and entering, but you didn't answer the door."

"Oh...I'm sorry," Julian says dazedly, "I didn't hear the chime."

"That's because I didn't ring it." Julian's face doesn't change, but Garak keeps his eyes locked there, vigilant and hopeful. Any other time and Julian would have chafed or smirked at that. Any other Julian would have done more than just return his destitute regard. Garak wants to do this the easy way. He does. He wants to give him all the chances he can give him, but at a certain point, offering those chances becomes a waste of time that should have been spent on doing it the harder way. Garak approaches closer than he's dared since he returned to the station, and standing over him, puts gentle fingers to his neck then down to his shoulder. Julian is radiating heat like an engine, but he's so still, so quiet. "I know it's a little late, but I thought perhaps we could spend some time together tonight. Dinner if you haven't eaten yet, as we had planned earlier. We could talk about a few things."

Julian can't look him in the eye, not when he is this close, not when he is touching him. He breaks the stare as those words in that comfortable voice fill his ears and the familiar touch tries to rend the slippery skin that has grown around his wound. His muscles flinch painfully beneath Garak's hand. "I don't think...I don't think I can do this right now." The room starts to feel like a powder keg again, and Julian is once again thinking about escape, about closing his eyes and dreaming himself away.

Garak lets his hand slip down and off his shoulder and turns away, idly, makes his way one stiff-legged step at a time towards Julian's window and leans against its frame. "That's it then, is it?" he says to his reflection.

The human is silent and Garak can feel the tension radiating off of him. The battlefield inside that mind must be atrocious, flaming wreckage under a bitter, smoke-filled sky. Julian is retreating, trying to regroup perhaps, and he will, he'll take another shot at it later on if Garak and the rest of Julian's life could allow him that, but it's a waste. He'll lose everything in the mean time. You can try to destroy yourself or everything around you just to try to make something else hurt as badly as you do in your head, you can lie to yourself for a time too, but it all just makes you dangerous. Marcia is smart. She saw it in him before Garak did. Though she knows the cause and Garak does not exactly. She is right to leave because Julian has become tainted, infected with despair. Garak himself is almost there. He can sympathize because Julian is trying to put him in the same position. Julian is falling and he's taking Garak down with him and it's crippling right now. The thought of letting him go. If he can't do anything about this, if he can't fix him, he stands a chance of becoming just as battered and hopeless as Julian is. And he knows in that state he would do the same thing. He'd protect that injury. He'd isolate himself and turn snarling teeth to anyone who came near. Julian isn't the type to angrily thrash to keep unwanted people away, he doesn't need to. His cold shoulder is the most violent rebuke he knows, Garak thinks. For a man, a genius, who will approach new people with humility just to get to know them, a man who can treat enemies who have killed his comrades with empathy and dignity, to reject Garak now, when Julian must know he needs him as much as Julian needs it too, it is the same as any other man cradling a bleeding limb and threatening death to all who try to help. Garak leans heavily on the rounded case of the window, and since Julian isn't watching him, he leans his cheek next to his hand. The cold metal on his skin is grounding in a way. He needs it now because there is hot fear climbing up his neck.

This cannot be happening. Jadzia is dead and she has taken everything with her to oblivion. It wasn't the prophets, it was her. Damn the prophets! And damn all the people who insist upon believing in them instead of the people they care about the most. If it weren't for such farcical beliefs maybe she would still be alive, and Julian would still be whole. I never made that mistake but I'm paying the price anyway. And Julian pays too. This cannot be happening.

Garak shakes his head and wanders away in another random direction, just to get somewhere else, try to turn a corner in his mind. Julian is silent and still to his left as Garak blindly approaches a shadowbox on Julian's wall displaying delicate Earth artifacts; a framed picture, a ceramic bell, a figurine in spun glass of a boy knelt in prayer, odds and ends Garak pays no real attention to. He has seen and studied them all many times before. They collect dust up here. Julian has forgotten they exist, but at one time they brought him pride to possess. Garak faces the wall but his senses are scattered. He squeezes a fist at his side and tries to think clearly for even a moment. All he can think to do for now is ask him why. He knows the reason but he's starting to slip into a downward spiral now too, and his mind screams for there to be a better reason, an incontrovertible, necessary reason. "No one ever meant for this to happen, Julian," he says, barely voiced, and he knows it's meaning is as fragile and weak as it's sound.

"I know."

"Then why are you shouldering it?"

"It's not that simple."

"It is that simple." Something electric runs up the side of Garak's neck and he sees a hot flash of anger behind his eyes. "I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to cross this line now. I wanted to be here for you. I wanted to be the person you went to when you needed help."

"Garak I...I just don't think that this...you and me...is going to help right now. It's too compli-"

Garak sweeps his arm across the shadowbox knocking it from the wall and sending everything in it scattering across Julian's floor in shards and clattering pieces. Julian stands abruptly but does nothing more when Garak's head snaps to him. Julian's shoulders are up and tense, his hands open at his sides and his eyes wide. "You're lying," Garak says gravely. "You can't even look me in the eye when you tell me you want me gone." A long moment passes between them. The cold air becomes heated with adrenaline, and eventually, Garak approaches him, never losing his eyes. Julian is no longer prepared to defend himself after the accusation and backs up to the edge of the window with Garak breathing down his neck. Julian's chest is rising and falling fast and his hands come up limply between them. Garak disregards this and takes Julian roughly by his hair. Julian gasps and takes hold of Garak's clothes, wincing as Garak puts some twist into his grip on Julian's hair. "I'm not letting this happen." Garak growls near Julian's ear. "Do you understand me?" He doesn't respond. "I didn't want to do it this way. But I'm not letting her or you or Dukat or the captain or anyone ruin this. I told you I would take care of you."

Julian is breathing hard still, confusion plain on his face. The words don't match the actions in his mind right now, and Garak knows he needs to remind him. Garak lets go and spins him so he faces the wall and slams his weight into Julian, knocking his face and hips against the window casing and the breath from his lungs. He takes his hands behind his back and twists them up. Julian grunts pain and tries to push himself up on his toes to release the pressure on his joints, but Garak just pushes harder until Julian is yelping with his mouth leaving fog on the cold metal frame.

Garak is breathing as fast as Julian now. He can see his own reflection in the blackness outside the window, sees the wildness in his eyes. "You told me I could trust you, my love. Is that no longer true?"

Julian trembles and pants. His mind is whirling. He sees flashes behind his eyes of his time in the Dominion prison camp, when they would hold him like this and search him and his bed for contraband. He squeezes his eyes to try to make those scenes go away and to wish away the pain in his twisted arms. He might be able to get free if he tried, but he can't try. He is just frozen to the wall, and the window casing crushing his cock and sternum and jaw breaks the continuity of what he sees in his head; tears streaking down her temple and across those delicate spots into her hair, Garak's face, disbelieving, as Tain lie dead before him, what he hears in his ears, 'Thank you Julian, for everything. I'll never forget you.' Finally, Julian replies in a whisper, "I don't know," unsure if he actually spoke.

Garak holds him there another moment and then lets him go abruptly, backs away with his fingers curling into his palms. Julian releases his arms and brings them in front of himself to hug his own elbows and relax the pain from his shoulders. He watches Garak warily with his back against the wall. His eyes dart around the room though he makes no move to try to escape. Garak rubs his own face in frustration and browses the destruction around them both real and tropal. There is nothing he can do here. It's too bright it's too bare, too cold. It's too full of the debris of six years of their lives spent playing other characters. "We're going to my quarters," he says finally, and takes Julian unresisting by the arm and leads him to the door.

Julian goes on automatic feet down the hall, into the lift with Garak close behind him, and to his quarters, but he barely remembers it. Like walking around drunk, all he sees is the ground moving beneath his clumsy feet until they are there behind Garak's door. Garak ushers him forcefully into the bedroom without the use of his hands or arms, simply the unblinking stare of his eyes. Julian backs into the half-lit room.

"Shoes and socks," Garak says plainly, and Julian removes them standing, with his hands, unthinking. He glances up over and over to see Garak unbuttoning his top and slipping quickly out of it. "Pants." Julian's hands are slow and awkward as they find his button. It comes undone but he can't move any further. Garak's chest is bare and broad, his scales are a dull grid across his skin and Julian can see subtle translucency at his shoulders and elbows where some of them are peeling and curling shaggy bits waiting to be shed. Time seems to smear across Julian's mind as he stands there dumbly. In a flash, Garak has taken Julian's top and pulled it over his head and down to bend him forward and over. Julian is muddled by the sudden darkness and immobilization. His arms come up of their own free will and release his shirt and before he can think of righting himself, Garak's arm, a single arm, is over his back, his skin against Elim's, and he lifts him off his feet. Julian's chest and middle harden instinctively with so much uncomfortable pressure on his insides, and his blood rushes to his head. He snatches at Elim's waist and feels the Cardassian's other hand take down his pants for him from the back. He is on the bed an instant later and Garak pulls his pants inside-out and off and tosses them to the floor.

Julian feels sort of sick but powerless to do anything, numb, as so often the past few days, as if he really doesn't care what is happening to him. He is somehow mentally drugged, restrained. He wonders if this is real. Wonders if he isn't in a hospital somewhere, strapped to a bed, tube fed pain killers and sedatives to protect him from himself, from his own nightmares. It could be. Maybe that world is better, if he could just wake up and see. But surely, he wouldn't throw himself into this place if the world he left was so grand. Would he?

Garak just stands there at the bed side with Julian half-lying before him. There is something in his eyes Julian has never seen before. If it wasn't new he'd call it malice, but he has seen Garak murderous before. He has seen him angry, lost, confused, everything but this. It scares him more than any of the other faces he has seen on him. He knows it is because of him. He did something to put that look there. He knows he should know what it was that he did, but his mind edges around it like a cat around a puddle.

"Julian," Garak says softly. "I'll do this. For you. Only for you. Because this is what needs to be done. I will do what needs to be done, for everyone concerned. For myself, for you. But this is the last time. I can't do it anymore." Julian doesn't say a word. Garak has to believe right now that it means he is down and not simply gone from his body. Garak approaches Julian and strokes a hand up his thigh then back down. Julian just watches, watches everything he does.

Though if he admits it, Garak really isn't sure he knows what he is doing right now. That's not a common thing when he puts on this hat. So much of this has been unplanned and unpredictable. He wants to believe that his gut is leading him where they need to go, but he isn't sure. Julian is under, he thinks, but he isn't going to stay that way for long. It seems fast. Very fast, but at the same time, if Julian comes back to the surface and flounders again, then Garak will have missed his only opportunity. On the other hand, if he takes that chance, and he is wrong, Julian will feel cheated and used.

"Turn over," Garak orders him and Julian does it. There is hesitation there that Garak doesn't miss, but he does it. "Knees and elbows under you." Again Julian glances back at him but does as he is told. "Down. Quickly. Quickly quickly," he breathes. There is no time to lose right now. Garak has a thin cane slipped under the mattress, and with Julian's head down now in his hands, he removes it from it's hiding place and examines it. It is not much thicker than his little switch, but it is stiffer. At the point of impact, it will wrap around the body to deliver a longer stroke than a larger cane because it is somewhat flexible, but it is stiff enough to be afflictive. The crop is toy comparatively, made for playing. While the cane is hardly an implement of torture, brave men cower before it. The damage is so minimal, but the pain compounds and destroys so easily. A quiet thrill shocks through him at the sight of it, but it is canceled out by the fear, the risk he sees curled up and tense on his bed, waiting with his lips parted and eyes dilated.

Julian is a curled little knot of human and with so little room for the expansion of his chest, his smooth back rises and falls in time with his heavy but quiet breathing. Such beautiful skin. He wishes he could pretend this was Julian's idea. Garak swallows. "Spread your knees a little, Love," he tells him softly. His back is too sloped. He doesn't want to touch his spine. Garak crawls onto the very foot of the bed on his knees and studies him another moment. "Shoulders up a little." He runs the backs of his fingers down Julian's spine and his muscles tense all along the way in response.

Julian doesn't move this time, just lays there breathing, and by and by that breathing slows until it is near calm. Garak fears he is wasting time here, but wants to give him this opportunity. One more moment. Julian is teetering on a precipice between lost and found, Garak knows. To Julian they look the same, the choices on each side. He can stop this or he can let it go on, and while it might be simpler to just do it and await the consequences, Garak is compelled to open this door for him. He wants him to come through it on his own. He'll push him if necessary, he's already made that decision, he is going to. He'd rather lose him trying to hang on to him than lose him because he didn't try. But he'd also prefer if it was a concerted effort. He wants Julian to trust enough to let it happen, that's all, and Garak's leaden heart is squeezing and trembling in the wait.

"Elim..." comes the small voice from the mattress. When Garak does and says not a thing, Julian pushes himself up on his knees and twists, turns to face him. "Elim...I--" Julian sees the cane in Garak's hand for the first time. It is draped in shadow and close to Garak's body, following the line of his straddling thigh. Julian's eyes meet Garak's and he doesn't say anything more.

"Hush," Elim whispers. There is a void where some reaction or thought or restrained speech should have been. There should have been something, but instead there was nothing there. There is always something there, Julian's mind always works forward, pushes into the mist to perceive what will be, seconds, minutes, years ahead, but right now with his eye slight on Elim's hand and the rod, it is quiet inside. He had wanted to be with him. Over and over during the night he wakes wanting him but he didn't go. Now he is here. He had cried desperately for emptiness, wanted quiet and solitary rest, to be without the ghosts haunting his skull, and now they are gone save an echo or two. He can't really believe it. Elim's free hand goes to Julian's cool, bare shoulder, and barely brushes him back down to the bed.

Garak closes his eyes, which is a first, and strikes him over his left hip. All there is is a nasal gasp from Julian, and when he looks down, the mark is subtle and pink, striping nearly from buttock to rib at an outward angle. Julian's back muscles have tensed fully again and he lays still. Garak wonders if in a few more strikes he will fall over one of those edges he is balanced upon; if he will fall into Garak's arms or lurch up off the bed yelling and angry. He wonders how many strikes it will take. He wonders if he will fall at all, or if it will be Garak that falls, falters, fails. Understanding the mind was always just as important as understanding the body in Garak's work, but Julian's is not ordinary by any means, not predictable. He has already decided to go forth, but the uncertainty gnaws at him. The fact that the best thing that ever happened to him hangs in the balance here is not lost on him at all.

Garak holds his breath and begins fanning Julian's back with long slow strikes. One. Two. Three. Four. Julian barely moves. His back rises and falls steadily, his muscles all pull taught and solid, but that is the limit of his preparation and defense. He flinches slightly with the first few, though that dissipates as Garak establishes a rhythm, and in no time at all, Julian has ten long stripes like the fronds of a palmetto arching across his back and nearly meeting at the top of his hips. They develop one by one like photographs of streaking meteorites. Each one comes out just a hair brighter than the one laid before it.

Is he a brick wall? Is he truly out of his mind right now and will Garak be cuffed and brought to the lockup in a few hours for beating a lunatic? Garak wants to touch him, hold him. He wants him to come back from wherever it is he has gone.

Garak crawls off the bed on the left side, slides to the floor. Julian could see him now if he wanted, but he does not look. He stares forward into the bedclothes beneath him breathing deeply through an open mouth. Garak swallows and aims. He cracks him across the shoulders and that one makes Julian wince. This new mark cuts across some of the previous and is broken in the middle where his spine hangs between protective columns of muscle. It's where the stripes cross that it gets more difficult to simply bear, yes. One might think that the stung skin would be more numb after the first strike but somehow it doesn't work that way. The next strike is lower, parallel to the first, and Julian jumps a little. Garak watches him tense and relax, hold his breath and then let it out sharply. He chants in his head pleas for Julian to just let go, to just let it out, pull out the knife, don't leave, don't give up. Another, and another stiff crack across the middle of his back and Julian begins to growl, clenching his teeth against what likely feels like licks of fire. Just a few more and the distorted grid across Julian's back is complete. Julian has wads of blanket and sheet twisted in his fists and is sweating all over.

Elim leaves his side to walk around the bed and Julian begins gasping for air in the pause. "Julian," Garak says softly as he rounds on him and comes to the other side. "Please." One weary brown eye is looking at him, and the beginnings of painful tears are at it's corner, but he doesn't say a thing, makes no move to sit or stand, flee or fall. Garak can only watch him with anxiety and need distorting his face, his shallow breathing keeping time with his heart. Garak looks up to the ceiling, somewhere, searching for strength, and then brings the cane down again on Julian's back. Careful and precise and practiced, this angled, short mark crosses the established grid at the intersections where his skin is already puffy and reddened. Julian wails. Garak doesn't stop, nor hesitate. His strokes are slow but steady, and in another breath he has brought it down again to cross the axes of two more stripes. Julian cries out again and pulls at the covers with shaking hands. Garak's grid is warped and uneven so he uses many shorter strokes to cross two or three of the junctions at a time, and the end of the cane bites him as well leaving new, double lines at their tops. Another two and Julian is climbing out of his skin. He cannot restrain himself and is beginning to crawl up the headboard. His hands find the cold metal bar there and hold on tight.

Elim hits him again and after yelping with his face mashed against the headboard he sobs once. Elim's heart races, but he hits him again. The same thing happens, Julian roars pain and inarticulate misery and then breaks down into a sob that wracks him for as long as the air remains in his lungs, then he inhales and stands ready again. As long as he is ready, Garak knows he must go on, and he hits him again, crossing more of the little bleeding x's everywhere which must feel like bullet holes by now. He yells, sobs hard, and then gasps for air. Just before Elim's arm whips across again, a tiny voice, strained and weak cries, "Elim."

Julian cries and writhes at the head of the bed and says his name again, plaintive this time, and hope, bright and beautiful starts to sparkle inside Garak, and he bites his lip hard to keep it down, and to keep his own pain swallowed and controlled. It takes only one more. Julian mewls through his teeth, then opens his mouth and cries out as the burn sets into his skin. "Elim, please." he says, but it's almost incomprehensible. He is reaching for the corner of the bed, to drag himself away when Garak, panting, tosses the cane to the floor and takes Julian by his naked hip.

Julian doesn't want to come suddenly. Animal instinct, the need to flee has him a moment longer and he holds tight the corner of the mattress. Apart from the swelling and scattered red lines he has across his back, he has a dozen or so four and six pointed stars where the strokes meet, where they combined and were enough to bring dots of blood to the surface.

"Love," Garak whispers to him and curls his fingers a little harder around that hip bone, away from any of his licks. Red-rimmed eyes turn and look at him finally. His brow crinkles, his frown breaks again and he joins him there. Garak is on the bed and wrapping his arms around him instantly, and Julian collapses into heavy sobs against him. He cries out every last breath of air and then gasps for more only to expel it again against Garak's bare chest in a rumble Garak can feel in his bones. His tears drip down Garak's flank and everywhere.

He can't believe it at first, and sits there with him, holding him, wide eyed, but in less than a moment is gathering him up, behind his head and under his bottom, avoiding the sensitive scores. He breathes into Julian's damp hair and coos to him softly, nonsense words and sounds, rocking him left and right, kissing any available part of him. He cries so long, so long. As he cries, Garak finds himself breathing thank-you's into his hair, over and over. Who exactly he is thanking he isn't sure, but somewhere, someone deserves them. Julian shakes as he grips Garak tightly around any part of him he can. His body is drained, though, and the limbs get weaker as his weeping goes on, and like the strength in his body, as it goes on, the strength of his cries depletes as well, and in time, Garak is rocking him in a quiet room. The only sound he makes after a while is an occasional stutter to his breath, an occasional sniffle or cough.

The silence stretches on into the night, and Garak begins feeling the weariness too. He shifts, finally, his joints stiff, and lays Julian down on his front. He urges him, and Julian lifts his body somewhat to help, to get the covers out from under him, awkwardly. Julian is shaky as he lowers himself back to the bed. Garak covers him to the waist.

Garak goes to his bathroom feeling dizzy and expelled. He finds a jar of ointment in his closet and comes back to Julian. He sits beside him and dabs his little star-shaped cuts and watches Julian's face.

Julian doesn't make a sound, nor move a muscle, just stares toward Garak's dark closet with his eyes unreadable but alive. Garak puts the ointment on the nightstand and climbs under the covers with Julian. He is rewarded with Julian's immediate acceptance there, and Garak smiles to himself just a little as Julian makes room for him on the bed and then drapes his tired body on top of Garak's. Garak covers him lightly with the sheet - he doesn't care if it gets stained from the ointment or a few tiny blood spots - and smooths his cool hand over his back which Garak guesses would feel a little pleasant.

As they lay there, and Garak drifts, he thinks about what is to come. Julian still needs to deal with this. Now, at least, he has begun. There won't be any turning back, he doesn't think, but this could be a long process. Julian begins to cry again, softly, as they lay there, and Garak strokes his hair.

"Shh. It's ok," he whispers, but Julian's tears continue to fall for some time.

"Julian," Garak says after a while, softly, but voiced. "I know you don't want to tell me what happened. I know you're not supposed to tell me, but I think you need to." Garak feels Julian's wet eyelashes grind against his chest as he squeezes his eyes shut, trying to stop the tears. Garak smooths the hair away from his face and curls his neck to bring his mouth to Julian's forehead. "I love you," he whispers. "I'm your friend. I'm your lover. You know damn well I can keep a secret, and whatever happened in that operating room, whatever you did that has made you turn on yourself, I can forgive you. I'll die before I betray you, and there is nothing you could have done in there that I could not forgive or that could make me stop loving you." Julian's shoulders shake as he cries, hard again, but after a moment or so, he begins to collect his breath back in his chest, and Garak feels the rub against his chest and shoulder as he nods.

~*~

And then she was gone.

There was a moment when it seemed like it simply wouldn't happen. Disbelief like a fog in his head, his mind balked and in that instant, not long enough, but for a brief second, he may have had the power to change reality with a thought. This isn't happening. But as is the problem with limited, corporeal, linear beings such as humans, a disbelief in ones self easily replaces that power and lands one firmly, with a shattering crash, back on solid ground. But for an instant, he may have lived up to his true potential. Because events aren't inevitable are they? If you break up the time between now and what is guaranteed to occur, you delay it forever because it's just like any other line, you can quantify it infinitely. But then it goes out the window. Time flies, it does.

"What happened?"

"A moment before the wormhole collapsed there were two energy discharges registered in the Bajoran temple. Security found her like this."

"Two cc's Leporazine. Now."

The familiar smell of burned tissue and fabric and Jadzia is unconscious, not breathing, her heart is stopped. They get a pulse the moment the drug hits her system and he sedates her to prevent her from waking while she is oxygen deprived and wounded.

Julian knew the moment he saw her, though.

Awake and alert, she already knew, too, he didn't have to tell her, and he wasn't sure he could have anyway. Marcia was there in his peripheral the whole time, but she hardly said a word. She prepared her for surgery while Julian stared at her monitor. A hand, trembling with weakness, but fingers strong with intention circled his wrist and captured his eyes finally. Her voice was hoarse, difficult to hear. "Thank you, Julian," she said. He felt his frown deepen and stretch. "For everything," she added with a squeeze. She meant it, he was sure. For everything. She glanced down at herself, what she could see, and at Marcia removing the drape from her mid section. Her eyes came back to Julian's and gave to him the last words of Jadzia Dax. "I'll never forget you."

The time he spent futilely looking for a way to save her though he knew none existed, the time he had alone with her then, until Worf arrived - she wanted him to hold her hand though he couldn't during the procedure. Marcia did. The symbiont, wounded but stable, away in stasis, she looked on it for the last time, horror in her eyes. Then he held her hand.

There were hours then. They must have been hours. Marcia waited in the wings and Julian stood by her bed after the simple act, his surgical scrubs loose around his neck. "Just when it was getting interesting. I had to come in and mess everything up again," she said with a smiling, faltering grim. He remembers sitting down by her side then and shaking his head. He said nothing. He couldn't think of a thing that would be permissible. All he could think was that this wasn't his. This didn't belong to him. She made it hard to remember that though. "Julian. Stay with me."

She cried, but bravely. All he could do was look at her, keep giving her painkillers until she was woozy with it. She was brave almost to the end. A cough shook her and painful tears rimmed her eyes. "Julian I don't want to die," she cried and a sob wracked her body.

Julian went numb and his ears rung dangerously from that moment on. He isn't sure if she said anything after that or not. He remembers putting his hand to her face, fingertips over her brown hair and then down past her temples to her neck. The spots. They're not raised at all. Perfectly smooth. If he closed his eyes he wouldn't have any idea they were there. Wouldn't have any idea who she was beyond cool skin beneath his hands. And almost immediately, he left the room. He stayed outside because it didn't belong to him. Never did.

"Julian?" she called after him weakly. He could hear her but couldn't move. Marcia came to her side and he could feel her regard on him in the doorway. "Julian..." Jadzia cried in anguish, confusion, but he didn't have an answer for her, and Marcia called him by his title but he didn't recognise it at all. There was a bleating, begging cry all around him but he could not acknowledge it. That fragile wall in his mind between sanity and lunacy was threatened by what he had seen, the things he saw in his own hands. The casual way he separated them. The only thing to do was to remove himself from this danger. And like so many times before, he hid himself shamefully away for the preservation of himself, and not for the good of everyone else, the good of the people he claimed were the whole reason he existed and the reason he had to hide.

"It's alright darlin'." Marcia cooed to her. Julian could not avoid a glance to them from the corner of his eye, and he saw Marcia's hand tight around Jadzia's, her fingers threading through her hair. He couldn't look again. It didn't belong to him and it never would and and never did. He ruined it, and he couldn't stand the reminder for another second. Julian slipped, slinked into his office around the corner and locked the door.

Hours later still. Three more hours she lay dying, and held on until the Defiant came home.

That yell. The station vibrated with it and fell silent as it had the last time a Klingon heart broke within those walls. Wasn't so long ago. Julian tossed his scrubs to the table after that moment and walked home.

~*~

Julian is finally asleep. He cried so long, there can't be another tear left in the human race. Garak doesn't dare leave him for long, but he gets up to do what he needs to.

Garak's sits at his computer and opens a channel. There is someone waiting for him, and Garak hopes he has some small amount of good fortune to share.

"A taller order than expected," the brown-scaled Corvallen says solemnly. Gytro is an old friend of Garak's from his time spent on Romulus. While not a handsome man, he is faithful to his friends to a fault, and Garak repays his loyalty as much as he can. Garak isn't sure he can repay him this time, but if the opportunity arises, he shall. This was a hefty request, difficult to fulfill even for a mercenary of Gytro's size and skill.

"Yes, I know," Garak says.

"You look well."

Garak smiles a little, "Thank you." He doesn't elaborate on why. Such things aren't discussed over illicit channels, but he will perhaps let him know the next time he sees him, which will probably not be for another fifteen years.

"And you took your damn time getting back to me, Lizard," he says with a gauze of affection in his voice that you couldn't hear without knowing the man half your life.

"He left quite a mess I'm afraid."

"Well, I got you a transmission code. It'll be valid at three fifteen station time, which is...right about now, and it'll start to degrade in less than ten minutes. I hope you can get what you need in that time."

"I hope so too."

"Transmitting now."

Gytro signs off. Shame they couldn't catch up a little. Garak would be lying if he said he didn't miss Gytro, and some of the other people who have helped him along the way, some of those he's aided himself. Just no time for that now, no place for it. That talk is meant for a table or a bar, for a happy reunion when there is nothing else to do because nothing else needs to be done.

Garak frowns at his console, breathes deeply to calm his nerves, and then opens a new encrypted subspace channel. He plugs in the code Gytro gave him with a secret superstitious thumb squeezed between his knuckles. A moment later a Cardassian appears on his screen looking sleepy and confused, vulnerable and naked in his bed. Slowly, understanding, and then finally open-eyed amusement creeps into his face as he stares at Garak in his own screen.

"Garak! What a pleasant surprise. I was expecting to hear from someone from the station in the near future, but I didn't think you would be the first."

Garak looks at him stoically, and says nothing.

Dukat's smile widens slightly in the silence. "What can I do for you?" he finally says when Garak doesn't volunteer.

"I'm sure you can guess."

Dukat chuckles. "Yes. I'm sure I can. But I think you're going to have to keep waiting, and failing to bring it about yourself. You and your cronies have certainly mastered that over the years."

"It's a pity you can't die more than once," Garak says thoughtfully.

Dukat laughs, good and long.

"After Commander Worf and Captain Sisko have finished with you, I'd like to kill you myself."

"Don't tell me you were smitten with her too."

"I think you know me better than that."

"Indeed. I do. But then Jadzia was a woman any man could love, even a dubious facsimile of a man such as yourself." Dukat sighs heavily, as if it actually weighted his heart at all. "That beautiful skin, silky hair, and that enchanting smile. It certainly is a pity. I know it doesn't make a difference but I never intended to harm her. It wasn't even me if you want to split hairs. It was the pah wraith."

“No, that is definitely not a worthwhile distinction.”

"So why did you wake me up then Garak?"

"Just to see your smiling face."

"Of course. You wouldn't be trying to triangulate my location would you? I can assure you that will be quite impossible. Surely you don't think I'm that stupid."

"You've driven some very long nails in your coffin recently, Dukat. So. Yes, but no that isn't the reason. I was merely curious of your intent. I fail to see how closing the wormhole benefits you or the Dominion."

"Yes. You do fail don't you," Dukat says cheerfully. "Think what you will, Garak. I certainly don't care. The Dominion is of little concern to me. I will have my Cardassia back the way I want it and I don't need them or the prophets to make that happen. So if you're finished trying to ogle me, I'd like to go back to bed."

"Sleep well."

"I shall," he says bright-eyed and grinning before the connection closes.

~*~

Julian wakes to the sensation of fingertips brushing his hair from his forehead. He opens his eyes and tries to move to rub the blur from them but regrets it. He winces sharply as every single muscle in his torso and beyond protests. Even the act of that sudden intake of breath shoots pain across his back where swollen patches tighten around painful bruises.

"Shh," Elim whispers and strokes a bare, unmarred shoulder.

There is misery, and there is this. He regrets not only moving but every single thing. He would cry as he did last night but he doesn't have the strength. He lays there instead with cracked eyes, dry lips, and resignation. "What time is it," he asks hoarsely after so many long minutes in pointless silence.

"A little after five." Julian blinks slowly and Garak can see in his eyes that he is actually trying to figure out how he is going to get himself into shape to go to work today. "Come on," Garak says then and gets up. He comes around to the other side of the bed to gently urge Julian up. Julian hisses and makes a little noise as he comes to sit facing Elim, but doesn't protest. "Come along. Let's get you into a hot bath."

Julian walks under his own power to the bathroom but Elim helps him sit on the edge of the tub just in case. Elim draws the bath and removes the pants he never took off last night. Julian hasn't seen him naked in a few days, and before that it was essentially the first time. He feels strange looking at him so casually after the past few days - feels like years - of absence. He looks at the floor instead and holds his forearms across his own bare lap. Elim steps into the tub when it is full enough and urges Julian to do the same. "How hot is it?" he asks, watching faint trails of steam against the dark tile.

"Positively frigid. You'll be fine." Elim takes Julian's hand and Julian swings one leg then the other into the water. It's hot, but tolerable. Elim sits with his back against the slanted tub wall, and with braced arms, gives Julian the support he needs to sit down safely as well. He isn't sure why this feels awkward, but it does. He feels like he doesn't belong here, doesn't deserve this, or that Elim somehow doesn't know who he is dealing with, who he is bestowing such kindness to. "Come," he says again, though, and Julian turns and lays back against him.

The heat is slightly sharp on a few spots, but fine in time, and they lay there in silence for quite a while with the echoes pinging off the walls, drenching Julian like a lullaby. He may have been dozing here and there, but wakens completely again when Elim pulls a dark blue cloth from the water and squeezes it out over Julian's chest. Garak shifts him a bit then, pulls Julian's weightless body over his left shoulder more, tilting his head back. Elim sponges down his neck and chest over and over, and eventually scoops his hair back from his forehead with a damp hand and wets his head. Julian closes his eyes again and allows his attention to fixate on the warmth trickling down his scalp. It occurs to him finally, a mere moment before Elim stops, that he can't recall a time since he was a young child that anyone cared for him like this. Maybe he never needed it before, or maybe there was no one there when he needed it. He is glad now though, that Elim is here, and that he knew what to do, because Julian never would have figured this one out on his own.

Elim sighs and rumbles behind and beneath Julian. "Remember how we were going to take this slow?"

Julian nods a little.

"We didn't quite succeed did we."

Garak squeezes out the cloth one last time and places it over the edge of the tub neatly to be picked up later. When he turns back, Julian's head is turned and he is watching him. He can't quite read his face, but he looks much more alert and relaxed than he did when he woke up.

It hurts to twist himself like this but he has to. Julian turns and takes a dripping arm out of the tepid water to hold Elim's head where it is. He twists the rest of him some more, wincing as he does, and brings his lips to Elim's. Their lips brush twice before Elim helps him, brings his hand to Julian's face to turn it up and back, and allow that twist and stretch to go more through his chest than his sore and abused back. Julian sighs and opens his mouth to him which Elim takes with deliberation.

Julian is hard within a moment, but Elim does no more than smile gently at him before helping him up and into a towel. He winces when he raises his arms to dry his hair, so Elim pats his head down for him and then his back too, dabbing away the water around the red and purple. He is mostly dry otherwise and calmed to an appropriate level, and Elim tells him to go lie on the bed. Julian leaves Elim in the bathroom and does as he wishes. On the bed stand is the jar of ointment that Elim used on him last night. He picks it up curiously and realizes that the label is quite familiar. The faint smell too, like vanilla and chamomile. He hasn't seen it in years, but his mother used to use it for minor cuts and scrapes rather than using the regenerator. He didn't appreciate it at the time, but as an adult, as a doctor, he would come to agree with her that immediately healing every little thing is as bad for you as letting large wounds go untreated. There are millions of people who cannot handle even the smallest discomfort now because as children, their parents sheltered them from pain with every available technology and medication. A little cream to keep the skin supple and avoid scars is really all that is needed.

Elim emerges from the bathroom finally with a towel around his waist. "Where did you get this?" Julian asks him softly, still unsure of his voice.

He smiles. "It's quite common on Cardassia. I had this shipped from Earth, I understand it's made there."

"It is. I haven't seen it in years though."

"Every Cardassian household has a jar of this. It is the best product in the galaxy to treat the itchiness caused by peeling scales." Julian almost smirks at that. "Lay down. Let's look at you." Julian stretches out on the bed face down and carefully lifts his hands up above his head. Elim sits beside him and turns the reading light on above Julian, flooding the pillow at his face with soft light. Elim's fingers smooth gently down his back and it does sting here and there. He doesn't touch the little cuts, but tests the bruises gingerly. "We can use the regenerator on this if you want. You're going to be pretty uncomfortable for the next few days. Mine isn't suitable for large areas, but it will take the edge off."

The thought hadn't occurred to him actually. He just assumed he'd wear the bruises until they faded. He considers it a moment, and shakes his head. He has survived worse than this, he knows. Odd how everything reminds him of childhood right now. He feels like a child, weak, punished. When Elim kisses his back lightly, once, and then opens the jar lid and releasing that scent it comes back to him quite fully. Tears well in his eyes and he lets them fall though he keeps his breathing steady and slow. "I've never lost anyone before," he says facing away from him.

Elim pauses in his gentle aid as if halted by that remark, but then begins again. "No one?"

"No one close to me. An acquaintance or two. I've been....lucky."

Garak smooths another sticky-soft dab of the ointment over his skin with a delicate touch and Julian hears the lid meet the open jar again. "I should say so, my dear. We're in the middle of a war. Not many people live through even a small war without being separated from someone they love."

Garak begins to walk away and a shudder comes over Julian, urging him up to his feet. Julian tosses his towel to the bed and begins pulling his clothes on. When Garak returns from the bathroom he stands in silence and watches Julian throw himself together with urgency slowed by pain and awkwardness. "Where are you going?"

"I have to talk to Marcia. I have to try to fix some of this."

Julian gets his shoes on with a heavy wince, and then stands. Elim is there before him, a solid steady rock that captures Julian's impetus and pauses it with his mere presence. Elim puts a hand to his neck. "Do what you need to do. Then come back to me."

Julian returns his gaze for half a moment, a resisting mixture of fear and sorrow and gratitude swirling through him. "Thank you," he whispers and fights the tears back again. He kisses him once, quick as a hummingbird, and leaves.

~*~

Marcia doesn't react when he shows up at her door except to take in the hang of his face and the way that tall frame is bent and shivering under its own weight. "Can we talk?" he asks finally, and she steps away from the door to let him by with an impassive face. Inside, her belongings are mostly packed into a couple of trunks and she leans back against them with her arms across her middle looking as haggard as he feels. He wants to cry again already but knows that would be a bad idea.

"Have you ever done something so grotesquely stupid and horrible, that, when you realized what you had done, you felt that the only option was to give up and resign yourself to the fact that you were a coward and a charlatan, and in doing so made it worse?" he blurts and then covers his face. "No I don't imagine you have...."

"Is that what happened?" she asks quietly, stoically. "Is that why you won't talk to me?"

"No. That is why it happened. The other night...that was the compounding of the evil, not the evil itself. They wanted to have a baby."

"I know."

With his face hidden, he can't hold the tears back. "I told her I found a way for them to have a baby. I told her I had the solution but I didn't," he croaks. "I just wanted to give her some hope. I wanted them all to come back alive. So she went....she went to thank the prophets." His voice is weakening, his whole body, again like last night, and he squats, feeling the pain of his bruised muscles pulling and feeling he deserves so much more.

"Julian...this wasn't your fault. It doesn't matter why she went there when she did. There was no way for you or anyone else to know what Dukat was planning. He did this to her, not you. And the lie. It doesn't matter now either. You don't know. Maybe the hope you gave them was what brought them all home alive." He knows she's just trying to help but fatalistic scenarios just depress him. He shakes his head in rejection and thinks he hears the acknowledgement in her voice. "You didn't kill her Julian."

"Yes. I did. I cut her in two."

"You did what you had to do and a part of her is still alive because you had the strength to do it." He knows that but it doesn't matter.

"But I took that life away from her, and then she died of that loss."

"There was nothing you could have done that would have saved her. You must know that."

"Did I tell you I was in love with her from the day I met her?" Julian stands again and goes to Marcia's counter to lean against it, away from her eyes.

"What?"

"Remember the 'one that got away?' She hasn't been here long enough to have absorbed their history, but she might remember that conversation.

Marcia is quiet for some time and Julian tries to recover in that gap, breathing slowly and staring at the counter top. Marcia mumbles in melancholy then, crumbling the silence, "For some reason I always thought it was Colonel Kira...I don't know why."

There isn't much more to say about that really. Maybe now that she knows who Jadzia was to him, she'll understand, though he doesn't hope for it. He doesn't dare hope for nor deserve that. "She didn't belong to me, but I loved her as if she did, Marcia. I couldn't. I couldn't stand there and watch her die. I lied to her. I ripped her apart. I couldn't save her. Three times I killed her. Even if I had been smart enough to prevent two of them I still would have killed her. And it was only for my own selfishness."

"Oh Julian," she whispers like a prayer. Marcia doesn't fully understand all of this, but the realization that there is more than simple cowardice under this is very forcefully creeping in and shaking her resolve. She was afraid of this the second she saw him.

"I couldn't watch. And I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

"I'm not the one who can forgive you, Sweetie."

Julian trembles and crumples against the counter and sobs. "There is no one else for me to beg."

Marcia approaches him, and feels overwhelmingly sorry suddenly. She suspects that she did not help this at all. Marcia puts a hand to his back, then moves around to take him by the arm and lead him to her couch. She sits, and while she expected him to sit with her, instead he kneels at her feet and puts his head and arms down on her lap. That pretty much breaks her, and while she strokes through his hair as he cries quietly, she has to wipe her own eyes for the hundredth time this week. She idly strokes his hair and back until he calms down again, until they both do. "Is it too late to withdraw my resignation or have you already found my replacement?"

Julian rises finally to look at her with red-rimmed wet eyes. "Don't stay just because I'm a mess. I don't want you to stay where you're not happy."

Marcia sighs heavily. "No, Julian. I was leaving because you were a mess." Then she huffs a little exhausted exasperated laugh. "But you're not a mess. Well. You are. But I think this is a curable mess."

Julian just shakes his head. "I don't know where to go from here. I don't know what I'm doing. Why didn't I have the strength to see it through to the end? Why do I never have the strength to do that? Am I going to quit on Elim too when it matters?" His face is already red but it gets redder when he realizes he is speaking about it openly with her. It shouldn't embarrass him and he feels foolish for that too.

"You can't be on duty like this, Julian."

"I'm ....so tired."

"You need some time off. Some time to think."

He rejects it and it shows on his face he knows. "More time, always more time. More time doing nothing, more time to waste being useless."

"Julian...sometimes, there's nothing you can do." He shakes his head. "Yes. Sometimes. There is nothing you can do. And nothing...is something, Julian." He looks at her weirdly. "Ensign Louis to Colonel Kira."

"Kira here."

"Colonel, I'm Marcia Louis, I work in the infirmary," she says in case Kira doesn't remember her by name.

"Yes Ensign, what can I do for you?"

"I wanted to let you know, I"m taking Julian--Doctor Bashir off active duty for a while."

"You--" Julian tries to interject.

"Is he alright?"

"He'll be fine. He just needs some time."

"Understood. Tell Julian to take as much time as he needs. If need be we can get Doctor Ledo from Bajor to fill in."

"Thank you Colonel."

Julian just looks a little bewildered. "You know, technically, you don't have the authority to take me off duty. Only Sisko or Doctor Girani do."

"Well the Colonel didn't seem to have a problem with it." Marcia sighs shortly and then glances at the clock. "Oh, peaches. I have to get to the infirmary." She gets up and starts trying to straighten her hair and fix her face. "And I have to talk my way out of my transfer. That's going to be an uncomfortable conversation."

"I can talk to them..."

"No you can't. You're on leave. Go home."

Garak has been mooching around the corridor waiting for Julian to come out of Marcia's quarters. When he finally does, Marcia is with him, ready to start her shift, and Julian leans over in the doorway to put his arms around her. Garak watches his face, heavy with pain that Marcia can obviously detect as well. Some of that is physical pain, but the result is the same. At least she can see it now. At least that veil is lifted.

~*~

Julian comes through the door nearly dragging his feet. He appears so burdened still, barely holding himself up. Garak is in his bedroom doorway, dressed and waiting.

"Aren't you supposed to be at the shop?" he asks him.

"I don't think anyone will notice if I'm not there today." Julian looks like he is about to melt, but is holding himself up for etiquette's sake. You don't enter a friend's home and then fall on the floor and cry.

"Marcia is staying," he tells him then, that was the reason he left after all. "And she relieved me of duty."

"Can she do that?"

"No. But she did."

Elim goes to him, can see how close he is to coming apart again. This is the worst of it he thinks. Marcia is going to stay, so he made some kind of progress on that front, but there is so much more that needs doing. Right now, Julian needs support. Actual physical support, and Garak holds onto him and lets Julian slump into him as he walks him to the bedroom. Julian feels hot all over but blotchy, different temperatures all over him, not with that smooth transition Elim can feel over his skin most of the time, just erratically varying shades of hot, his eyes and lips and neck the hottest. He takes him to bed, dresses him down again, marveling at that beautiful body that lays before him so willingly now, and covers him with a light blanket.

"I know...intellectually, that I didn't kill her. I did what I thought was best," Julian says from way down low in his chest. Elim looks on him with a sadness in his face. "It just feels like her life was so much a part of mine, I can't figure out how I missed the potential for it, why I didn't see a danger in what I was doing."

"What does all of this mean to you, Julian?"

"I'm a coward, and a liar."

"But I know that you are neither of those things."

Julian doesn't say anything.

"If that isn't it, what is?"

"I love her," he whispers, pain in his heart for even uttering those words in front of this man who loves him despite all of this. He feels flashes inside of him of what it must be like to be Elim right now and is ashamed of himself.

"I know," Elim says without a flinch.

"I don't want to love her anymore," Julian whimpers and buries his head under Garak's neck to cry.

"I know."

The lights from the living room cast a box of light on the bedroom wall just to Julian's left. The glow diffuses gently across the room and the two forms on the bed. Julian, despite his grief, looks more reposed now that he is lying down again and relieved of inhibitions. Garak brings his hands to Julian's face and chest to soothe him back toward sleep. When he wakes that afternoon, perhaps they'll talk about it some. Perhaps Julian will begin to expel some of that guilt he is holding on to. Garak knows he needs it right now, to punish himself for what he did, but it can't stay forever.

Garak has some of his own that he will sleep with tonight. So many on the station do right now. Julian is so tormented, he probably can't see that yet.

There were so many failures. It would seem she was doomed from the beginning if he were inclined to consider such things. There were so many opportunities for any of them to have stopped it, but they all made mistakes. The captain, Julian, Kira, Worf, Garak. They are all complicit if they can be blamed for each adding an ingredient that happened to form poison when mixed. Dukat is the killer, but the people she loved failed her. Makes one wonder if it wasn't fate. Makes one doubt. A woman as strong as her - it took half the station to kill her. It took failures on the part of so many to orchestrate her demise. If it doesn't point to fate or the force of a malevolent god he doesn't know what does. Horrifying thought really. His own guilt seems minor, and opposite of the irrationality that could in part be blamed for her death. He chose rationality, and maybe, in some small way that might have contributed to it. If he had warned Julian, or anyone, maybe it wouldn't have happened. He felt an event on the horizon just a few days ago. His premonitions, while accurate, are baseless, so he said nothing and assumed instead that what he felt was due solely to the tide changing within him because of the man in his bed. But he was also warned. Omar told him he might be planning something. But even the two things together didn't point to anything. There is no way he could have predicted what would happen, but maybe Julian could have. And Julian is the one in the most pain right now. He can't help but sour his thoughts right now as he looks at him and wish that he had told him, had said something, anything, but he knows that is a hopeless train of thought, that it could have been worse.

The Bajoran Vedek at the door of the temple is not only not used to being approached by Cardassians, but clearly reluctant to let one into his temple. However, now that at least half of the Bajoran population of the station has left, the slip of latinum Garak places in the collection tin sways the priest and garners him a few moments at least. Inside, the amber hues of the temple are muddied by the flickering shadows cast by hundreds of tiny candles lit, most likely, for Jadzia as well as others recently lost to the war. The orb sits in its chamber looking oddly inert, more like a trinket than the powerful artifact it once was. Garak finds a place at the front of the empty room and an unlit candle. He lights it from another and places it upon the shrine, not knowing exactly what he is meant to do with it, only going through the motions for the Vedek peeking at him from around the corner. Garak kneels there, eyes closed, feeling the weight of the day on his shoulders and knees, the weight of guilt and anger, sorrow for the pain Julian is going through, and tries to clear his mind of it for now. He breathes slow and deep, and then opens his eyes to look at the little flame in a white paper shell before him.

Garak can only shake his head once and then whisper what he needs to say to that little flame.

"Jadzia, I am a logical being, as much as any Vulcan, as any scientist though I am neither. I know you cannot hear me. I know you no longer are a part of this world except in as much as you are a stagnant entity who's potential has been removed, your energy released back freely into the universe. I know you don't need to hear this. I speak to you now because it is my need to do so. I also know that it didn't have to be you. I am not so dull to think that someone picked you out to die; that some aliens or gods sent a madman to kill you to punish the emissary or that God was unhappy with you, that you defied him by marrying a Klingon, I'm not so stupid to think that you or I are fated to anything. It didn't have to be you that was in that temple. It didn't have to be anyone. If you had been somewhere else, maybe no one had to die there, maybe that monster could have done what he came to do and then left, I don't know. Those predictions are as pointless as the other. The fact is that it was you, and because of that, I thank you. Not some prophets, or aliens, or fickle fate or even the universe. I thank you because you were the one that paid the price. Because it could have been him.... It could just as easily have been him. I know it was not what you intended, and it is certainly not what I ever wanted or hoped for, but what you have done, has changed my life, Jadzia. The two of us never had much in the way of interaction, but that was because Julian lie between us I think, torn between us. Leaving us, Jadzia, no one wanted you to leave us. I did not. Not even if Julian remained torn, not even if Julian were to leave me to be with you. All I can say my dear, is thank you. For today, and for every day after this that we might be given."

~*~

A blossoming romance is supposed to be fiery in the beginning. The blush of new love is supposed to overtake the lovers and be expressed in their passion for each other, their time spent together is supposed to be vivid and exciting, their lovemaking more intense with each passing night. It is different for Elim and Julian, though. Theirs is a romance interrupted. Certainly this is not the only way in which theirs is an uncommon relationship, the ways are countless really, and perhaps this early tragedy is not even the most difficult hurdle because as the days and then weeks pass after its manifestation, they are recovering lost ground with gentle steps that would seem to be unattainable for most people.

Those first few nights spent wound around each other for fear of finding the other missing in the morning are quiet and solemn. Garak runs fingers through his hair as they drift off and accepts the kisses Julian leaves on his jaw. Julian asks him, because it is still too foggy and near to understand fully, like the pages of a book too close to your face, what has happened, why he is the way he is. It is hard to believe. Julian had been in danger of sabotaging his whole life, and while Garak's rescue was risky, his relief in these days is complete. The young women who played parts in this are not destroyed, changed but not gone. Julian has not been eaten from the inside by his guilt, his misstep. He was, despite his intellect, unable to fool Garak into letting him rot away or breaking the promise. His answers to Julian's questions about himself are simple because the more words he gives him the more complex he will make it and the more likely he will try to turn it in upon himself again. Why did I do it? You did it for love. Then why did it go wrong? Love is not a guarantee, love is a risk.

Even after a few days when Julian begins to kiss him more forcefully, hungrily as they lie in bed, Elim tries to cool him because they need to go back a few steps. You can't just pick up where you left off when one person quits, even for a minute. Catching up is long work, and Garak wants something before he is willing to take him back into his bed for anything other than companionable sleep. He wants him to laugh. Julian perhaps doesn't realize it, but he hasn't laughed in a week. Hasn't smiled except bitterly. Garak has been watching and listening for a week now. He spends his leave reading, walking, sleeping, staring into the stars in a way that Garak understands quite completely; a wordless, thoughtless pining for home. But he doesn't laugh, doesn't even approach it.

He knows too, that Garak hesitates. He knows there is something off. He lays on him this evening, trying to make his intent clear, hips between Garak's, head on his chest, silent and thinking and then finally asks. "Is this...is this over?"

"What do you mean?" Julian lifts his head to look him in the eye even though it's mostly too dark to see.

"You and me. Is this the beginning of the end?" Julian feels slightly brave asking, but somehow bravery is easier on the downhill side of grief.

"Why would you think that?"

"You don't want to make love," he says almost to quietly to hear.

Elim holds his face. "No. I'm just waiting until you are ready."

The relief in Julian is palpable but not complete. "I'm ready," he says with the tiniest smirk and Elim smiles back, huffs a little laugh through his nose.

"No. Not yet."

"How do you know?"

"I can tell."

"Are you sure you aren't projecting your own unreadiness onto me?"

Elim smiles quite warmly at that. "I'm sure."

Julian sighs and places his hard chin back on Elim's chest. "What do I have to do to convince you I am 'ready?'"

"Oh I think you're well on your way, Love. Don't worry."

It finally happens twelve nights after she died. Elim wakes to find his bed curiously empty. Still the middle of the night, he gets up and pads into the dark living room. Julian doesn't say anything, just reaches up to touch him when he draws near. His face is lit only by the pale white text on the screen and he has tears streaming down his cheeks but is smiling harshly, pain and laughter there in his cheeks. He laughs, chuckles a little, two, three times, each time exactly the same quiet sound as the last time.

"What are you reading?"

"Text conversation that I had with Jadzia a few months ago while she was bored in ops. That woman....she was completely insane, do you know that?" It comes out choked on a half-sob, half laugh and his breath quivers. Elim crouches next to his seat to read a few of the lines on the screen.

L.C. Dax J.: I saw Captain Boday last night.
C.M.O. Bashir J.: Do tell.
L.C. Dax J.:We just went to Quark's but it was a lot of fun.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:Worf come with you?
L.C. Dax J.:God no. He didn't know I went. I asked Kira to cover for me.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:Um.
L.C. Dax J.:Oh stop it Julian. Don't be so pedestrian. A woman, who has been a man, I might add several times before, is not simply a woman any more. I like the company of men for the same reason I like to watch acrobats. I used to be one. Worf doesn't understand. So I spare him.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:But you won't spare me.
L.C. Dax J.:You love it. And besides, I didn't tell you the really fun part yet.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:I can't wait.
L.C. Dax J.:Boday thought he was getting somewhere with me apparently, and started buying me drinks and holding my hand. Quark got so mad, he came by with a tray full of black holes and "accidentally" tipped it over his head.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:His head?
L.C. Dax J.:Yes! I can't stop laughing! Ben is looking at me funny.
L.C. Dax J.:His head is purple.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:The captain's?
L.C. Dax J.:No! Don't be obtuse. Boday's. It was still purple when I saw him leave on his ship this morning. It looks like he got his skull tinted. And I couldn't resist. I asked him if it would be safer now for him to go to a desert planet like Yadozi.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:Oh my god. What did he say?
L.C. Dax J.: He said he'd wear a hat. I don't know if he meant because his skull was purple or if he didn't get it and he meant that he'd wear a hat to Yadozi regardless. Either way, I'll be entertained by that for weeks.
C.M.O. Bashir J.:Has anyone ever called you evil before?
L.C. Dax J.:Only everyone who knows me.

"God. I miss her already. I miss her so much, like I've been missing her for years and I can't stop." He cries in earnest for a moment. "I really thought I could hang on to her forever, somehow. That if I could make her happy I could be this favorite of hers for the rest of my life."

Garak sits beside him and watches him a while longer. He wipes the tears away from his face as they come, and reading on through the logs, he laughs again and again until he is looking haggard and sleepy. Garak pats him on the shoulder finally and stands. Julian looks and is drawn up with him, clicking off the computer screen and following him to bed.

This will be the first time in twenty years Garak has simply made love with someone without asking or being asked to hurt his lover. He feels no small amount of pride in that number. It means to him that he hasn't hidden his desires from his partners, he hasn't substituted something else for what he really needed nor allowed someone else to use him to fulfill their desires without returning the gesture, but he is also more than happy to break his record for Julian. Julian is already in pain, and it's not something that can be built off of in a positive way. And this isn't casual sex, this never was just a passing fling to be enjoyed and released. They are going to explore every facet of this over time, even the commonplace ones Garak has been avoiding with everyone else.

And commonplace is good. Ordinary things are the stabilizers of life that take the wayward swinging pendulum and counter it. Julian understands this too, and brings the ordinary back into his life one day at a time. The day comes soon enough that he brings the infirmary back to Ordinary with the presence of himself. He lays in bed that morning looking at Garak from across the pillow, and, half asleep and comfortable with his bed-warmer in place on his hip, Garak may have selfishly suggested that Julian could do with another day of rest.

"No," Julian coos and kisses Elim's head. "I don't want to be gone too long. It'll just get harder to go back from here on, I think. Time to get back on the horse."

Garak scowls sleepily. "I have an inkling of what that means, but just in case I'm wrong, I don't want to know."

Julian sets foot inside his demesne and is greeted with a warm smile from a mere five feet off the floor. He returns it easily, happily.

"How ya feelin', Sugar?"

Julian tosses his head a little. "About eighty-five percent I guess," he says privately. As far as anyone else is concerned, Julian was over-worked and simply needed a break, so only she needs to know the answer to that question. She smiles again and reaches for him. He hugs her and grumbles a little, melting in her strong embrace. "Make that ninety."

Garak peeks in the infirmary some time that morning before going to his shop, sees Julian at his workstation with that slack-jawed squinty expression he always gets when he looks at his prion work for more than an hour at a time. Garak leaves the infirmary satisfied and takes a stroll before opening up. All around the station even, the hugs are lighter and graced with smiles, and people have a fragile freshness about them, as if they had all just left the infirmary themselves. They walk gingerly as they re-add their own ordinary things, one balancing weight at a time; not too much so as to avoid overcompensation, and careful not to reopen the wound with crass mistakes and words, careful not to try to heal too quickly. Things are different, yes, but the magic isn't gone, just...on a break of its own, Garak thinks. Garak stops in the middle of the quiet promenade and takes a lingering look around him. The old vedek is opening the temple. O'Brien crouches beneath a replicator. A lift opens. Garak clasps his hands behind his back, and walks on.

ST:DS9 G/B Black Bottle Chapter: 8: A lie for Love

2009-01-01T14:56:00.004-05:00

Title: Black Bottle
This Chapter: 8:
Author: Hermit9
Fandom: Star Trek:DS9
Pairing: Garak/Bashir
Rating: Very Adult
Warnings: Overall:BDSM, Violence, Angst, Canonical character death. This Chapter: just angst
Summ: Chapters 1-7 saw the beginning of a new and unexpected love affair, now life throws a wrench in the works.

A/N: Takes place during Tears of the Prophets, just the parts of the ep. that I changed to fit in my universe and of course all the G/B stuff that didn't happen on screen...

He is being kissed. Jaw. A vague part between jaw and neck that doesn't have a real name in his mind, just a long descriptive anatomical name, another part of the jaw but not the part most commonly called 'jaw'. He knows that part is being kissed now, lightly. Just damp feather tracks that tickle across his skin, but he can't bring that notion to coherency because that 'jaw' part doesn't have a name, doesn't have an identity of its own. He imagines that he himself is much like that part right now. He is sure he has a name, but he can't come up with it this second nor identify his place relative to the rest of the world. He's pretty sure he's being kissed, or something that feels like being kissed, but he isn't certain what that means.

The kissing moves up, or down, depending on where he is relative to the kissing, or maybe relative to something else. Earth? No. Station. So, no up or down. He's being kissed corporeally northward. Toward his ear. Then suddenly south-southeast, down his neck, and he is quite sure now that he is being kissed.

Julian. That's it.

The fact that he has a name now seems to bring a lot of things together all at once, not because the name is all that important, but because he can remember the sound of someone saying it, breathing it on his neck right where he is being kissed and nipped at right now. He knows that voice better than his own and Julian opens his eyes to find smoky blue ones looking back at him. His pulse quickens even as he struggles to keep a grip on consciousness. His heart knows what is going on, and so do other parts of him. The brain has yet to catch up.

Elim nuzzles Julian's earlobe a moment and continues kissing zigzag patterns down the softer parts of his sterno-cleidol mastoideus. Elim stops his gentle osculation and Julian's breath hitches in anticipation. The first bite. He knows it is coming. That's how he likes to start, it seems. He wonders how hard it will be, where it will be placed. He wonders if he will bite him or just distract him with a bite, or even the anticipation of a bite so that he may catch him off guard while he does some other cruel thing to him that will leave him panting and helpless. Julian's eyes are foggy still and his mind a wobbling turntable, and yet he is aching and every nerve is on end waiting for it eternally.

"Relax," Elim rumbles.

Julian chuckles under his breath but doesn't dare move, not even to rub his eyes. Relax. Ridiculous.

He doesn't bite him really. His teeth connect but just scrape along as if Julian's flesh were as soft as a ripe peach, only the gentlest pressure needed. He takes a juicy bite from his neck, places a few more kisses there and then relaxes back into the pillow to bury his face in Julian's hair and squeeze him around the middle.

That's not so bad. Julian throbs a little, but starts to relax again like Elim. His body needs to learn that not every little touch or kiss is a prelude to more. He'll sort it out eventually he is sure. He'll learn Elim's tells.

"Sorry to wake you," Elim whispers behind him. "You just looked so good."

Julian squirms and turns over to face him now that he is sure he isn't on the breakfast menu. "That's ok," he yawns. "Have to get up for work anyway."

Garak is nuzzling again, but this time it is a full body nuzzle, with every inch of Elim pressed up and rooting around every corresponding inch of Julian in a slow, snaky way. This has the added effect of somehow removing the covers from most of their bodies at the same time as it reduces Julian to a happy touch-drunk pile of sleepy limbs. Elim finally settles down again and Julian finds he wants to squirm now, too.

Julian's toes flex out playfully as Garak's foot brushes them. Garak grabs them with his own toes and smiles in the semi-darkness. The smile widens and he chuckles silently to himself, marvelling as the past few weeks replay in his head and he thinks about how many times he tried to walk away from this. He can just make out in blue shadows as Julian's smile mirrors his own, though he doubts Julian's reason is quite the same. It looks more like just unfettered happiness om Julian's face, not happiness touched with grateful irony. How many times was it? How many times did he doubt, second guess, and stumble? Now, it would take a fleet of starships to drag him away.

Only a short time ago he had been afraid to touch Julian, afraid of what he might do. He could barely dare to take his hand as a friendly welcome in public. He could fit him in the insulated protection of his shop as his profession acted like a pair of gloves. He did so enjoy those touches. Funny how the pleasure is so sweet when stolen. Not that it isn't now, of course, but there is something to be said for the effect of self-denial on the boiling of his blood. And ages ago now, it seems, he could place his hands on Julian's shoulders as he sat in the replimat talking to Jadzia, a friendly reminder for her. He is mine. Wasn't necessary with anyone else. She was the only one he considered a threat anyway. A threat to what, who knows. Not like he ever had any hope that this would happen.

Julian stretches a little and Elim glides the backs of his fingers up his neck to his chin then back down to his bare hip. He was afraid to touch all that skin, once. There was a threat, but it wasn't from Jadzia, and it wasn't to Julian. He was afraid Julian would hurt him. Uproot his control. Even when this began he wouldn't touch him. Afraid he would be consumed by that radiating flesh. It doesn't. It energizes him. The warmth, the softness. He wonders how all of his predictions have been so completely wrong. Not that he's complaining. He's just suspicious and cynical by nature. Or maybe he's just blind when it comes to this man.

Elim is woken some time later, without realizing he was falling asleep, by a warm and damp, clean-smelling young man crawling up over his body and under the sheet. Elim's arms go up automatically to grasp him and pull him down and Julian groans happily. Julian smells fresh and sweet, and wet human skin stutters under his touch at first, and then slides as it dries. His own skin hardly changes except to repel the water when he bathes. Though Cardassian skin is also fascinating when wet. Many hundreds of thousands of portraits have undoubtedly been devoted to the sparkling surface of wet scales and the trenching of water over ridges, mercurial pools in the cups of eyes containing the living aquatic creatures in blue and white. But still they are grey and hydrophobic. They cannot be infused with it like that beautiful human canvas, glowing as Julian is now, smiling at him. Maybe it isn't that his own species is deficient, maybe Julian is the only one that glows.

"You know. This has been a really good weekend," Julian says with a gleaming grin, dripping a little on Elim's chest from his wet hair.

"Yes, I'd say we've been extremely productive," Garak retorts a little hoarsely, and yawns again.

"Our efforts to remain in bed for the duration were highly successful," Julian continues in a low tone, not wanting to disrupt this morning quiet despite his playful mood. "I'd estimate on the order of eighty seven percent."

"Oh surely it was at least ninety," Garak says with a smile, amiable.

"Quite possible."

"Too bad you have to foul it up now."

He sighs. "I'm not occupied all day. I'm sure we can work some more sloth into some of my free time slots."

"Sloth yes, but what about the other six sins?"

Julian shrugs with an indifferent noise. "Only three of them are any fun."

"I suppose."

Julian is about to get up and get dressed. He places a final kiss on Elim's sleepy head and begins to roll away when a hand captures his and holds it gently. "Julian, we are...keeping this to ourselves, aren't we?"

Julian's heart flutters a little but he shrugs it away. "I wasn't going to shout it from the upper pylons, but they're going to find out eventually. I think we should tell people before that happens."

"Agreed, but perhaps we should wait a little while for that."

Waiting again. He can't help but smile though. He does agree at least for now. "Of course."

They have breakfast on the promenade before Julian has to be in the infirmary. Julian considers for a moment how suspicious it would look to passers by, the two of them arriving together and having breakfast. They don't do that as a rule, but one instance is certainly not going to point even a naturally suspicious person toward the true conclusion, though Julian does make a mental note to watch for Odo and have a cheerful alibi ready. It is Marcia however that passes them first. She appears to just be intended for the infirmary but is stopped in her tracks by Garak's wide and bright-eyed smile. She smiles a little too, with a wary look on her face, trying not to look complicit perhaps, but her eyes dart to Julian over and over. Julian doesn't have that alibi ready yet.

"Marcia," Julian nods at her politely.

"How are you this morning, my dear?" Garak asks and takes her hand.

"Just peachy. And yourselves?"

"Wonderful. Won't you join us?"

"No, I'm afraid I have to be in a little early this morning to pick up after my boss. He's a bit of a slob," she says with an affectionate little smile directed at Julian who returns it.

"I see. Must be a human trait. I seem to recall someone leaving a pile of clothes in my fitting room the last time she graced me with a visit."

"Wasn't me."

"Oh no of course not. What would make you think I was implying that?" he says flatly. "And speaking of. How's the..." Julian sips his coffee and pretends he isn't interested in the conversation that is so obviously abridged because of his presence.

"Good. Good," she replies.

"Glad to hear it. Well-" Garak says with finality but doesn't get to conclude.

Marcia cuts him off. "And yours?" she asks with one eyebrow raised high.

Both of Garak's go up in surprise, and as Julian watches him, he thinks for a moment he almost detects a hint of fluster, uncertainty. That would be different. "Why. Very well indeed. Thank you. Again."

Marcia nods with a tight-lipped, satisfied smile. "I better get going. See you soon, Julian."

Marcia sets off across the bustling promenade toward the infirmary with the posture of a woman a foot taller than her.

"What was that all about?" Julian asks semi-absently.

"What do you mean?"

"Since when are you on flirting terms with Marcia?"

"Oh...." he says sharply, and then subtly adds, "We know each other well," as if that should have been obvious.

"Really. Then maybe you can tell me why she has been giving me weird looks all week."

"It's because she knows about us, but hasn't quite figured out what to make of it."

Julian sputters into his coffee cup. "How does she know?!"

"I told her."

"Elim! This right after you told me not to tell anyone," he says harsh and low, eyes unconsciously following Marcia's empty path behind her and his heart jumping into double-time.

"I asked for your discretion after I had already told her."

Julian glares, sweats, and tries to work out how he is going to face her again in a moment without blushing like a Risian sunset. "Why did you tell her anyway?"

Elim pauses, thinks. "She was a....fire break."

"Excuse me?"

"When a forest fire encroaches on a settlement, rather than trying to put out the whole fire, you burn sections of brush in the fire's path in a strategic, controlled manner so that when the fire reaches it it has no fuel and will not spread any further in that direction. I told her so that the rumor, should it get out, might not 'spread like wildfire'."

Julian blinks once then laughs. "That's a good one, Elim. But it will never work."

Elim smiles satisfaction in return, apparently getting the reaction he wanted. "I told her because she is your closest friend and would have found out anyway. And I also told her because I wanted to know what she knows."

Spying on him then. Shouldn't be all that surprising. "I see. Strategic, but not a fire break."

"No not really. And she's a lovely woman. I don't mind counting her among my accomplices at all."

Julian considers this again. His closest friend. He always thought of Garak and Miles as his closest friends. Garak is different now though. Friendship changes with sex no matter what you do to try to keep it the same. And somehow, it even changed his friendships with others. He won't be able to use Miles as a sounding board for this new relationship. Jadzia - no. Too complicated. Who does that leave besides Marcia? Just Vic. Even Julian would have to admit that if he started considering Vic his best friend, it would constitute a problem. But still, he's known her what, a month?

"Don't worry," Elim says suddenly with quiet solemnity and a quality of earnest empathy Julian has rarely heard in that voice. "As stubborn as she is she wears her heart on her sleeve. She has quite a lot of respect for you."

......

For now, it is business as usual. He meets Marcia's eyes as he enters the infirmary, smiles tightly, and gets to work. Amazing how fast he is able to focus on work when he is trying to avoid something else.

Amazing how quickly he can be distracted from both things by a pair of beautiful blue eyes.

He has barely sat down at his desk when Jadzia turns the corner into his office with her hands awkwardly steepled in front of her midsection. Jadzia always walks with her hands behind her back, anyone who has known her more than a day will tell you that. Those eyes are sharp and distracted when they meet Julian's, internally focused but not on herself. Julian sits up slowly in his chair, avoiding letting on what he sees in her demeanor, and smiles mildly. He doesn't offer a greeting because she clearly has a purpose, already engaged in a conversation within her own mind, and he doesn't want to interrupt.

"Julian," she says as if she thought she didn't already have his attention.

"Hi," he replies for lack of a better idea.

Her hands, still talking more than she, clutch together in front of her and gesture once toward him. "Can we talk?"

"Sure. What's on your mind?"

She opens her mouth but then shuts it again and goes back to the office door. Julian sees her smile apologetically to whomever is out there, probably Marcia, and then shut the door. She turns back to Julian, staring him down with one more instant's hesitance. "Worf and I are going to have a baby."

Julian isn't permitted to feel anything right now, he knows he isn't, and so he puts that on hold, and leans forward in his chair as Jadzia pulls a chair up for herself right in front of him.

"That's what I've been trying to talk to you about all week. We decided last night. We want to try."

"Jadzia," he begins softly, "I told you when you got married it would be difficult for a Klingon and Trill to conceive." He tries not to let it sound like a reprimand. No warranties, no returns. He already knows this is not going to deter her, though it is his instinct to try. Something guilty asks him what his motivation is.

"I know. But things have changed, even just since the wedding." She doesn't offer any more explanation than that.

"We also know nothing about what kind of difficulties you'll having in giving birth to a half-Klingon baby."

"I know. I know. I know it's a risk and I know it won't be easy, but I need to do this."

"Need?"

Jadzia stands and turns away from him quietly for a moment. "You've heard the Defiant is leaving in the morning for Cardassian space?"

"...No...I just got in..." He wasn't expecting it so soon. The talks with the Romulans must have gone better than expected. The news puts an edge of worry to his nerves but also of hope. The Captain has been pressing for an offensive for a long time. He isn't one to take foolish risks. If he thinks they can win, chances are they can, Julian and all his calculations be damned.

"I need to do this before my opportunity is gone." She turns back to him again and she's fighting back tears. Julian stands and takes her chilled hand. "It's been so long, Julian," she blurts. She looks like she regrets saying it but now that it's out, she continues. "First it was Nilani, then Deral, then Lenara, then Jayvin. And Curzon never settled down....It's been a long time since I felt like this. It's been so long since I had a real partner in life, since I felt this kind of love." A tear glances off her cheek and her voice trembles. "Don't let anyone tell you that there are plenty of fish in the sea," she says then with a small bitter laugh, "Don't let anyone tell you that true love happens every day. It does not. And once you have it don't you dare let it go for anything less. Once it's gone it's gone, and you may wait an entire lifetime to find another, or you may not find it at all." Jadzia trembles a little and pauses, wiping the tear tracks from her cheeks briskly. "Because it's all timing, and it's all opportunity. I don't know if this makes any sense to you....It's been a long time. So many times I've lost it as soon as I caught a glimpse of it. Now I have it and I'm just so scared. I have to be strong for him, because of who he is. I can't show him how much it scares me when he puts himself in danger, but I'm just, I'm so afraid he's going to go on one of these missions and never come back. And it's almost inevitable. I've made my peace with that, but it's too soon. It's too soon to lose him. Right now. I want to do this while we can. I want there to be something of us left even if one of us doesn't survive. I want a little piece of him to live forever. When I die it's not the end of me. I want there to be a little piece of him that keeps going too, and I want to do it before it's too late. And if...if you think we can do it, if you can make it possible, then he'll have a reason to keep coming home."

"Jadzia... he has every reason in the world to want that already. He has you," the words feel hollow and sad. Julian's throat is tight.

She smiles weakly. "Julian, you know that isn't true. Regardless of how he feels about me, he's perfectly happy to die any day of the week. But he wants a baby, too. The only reason we could think of not to is the war, but it is also the reason we must. Because if we stop living our lives because of the Dominion then they win. And if we don't do it while we have the opportunity then they win. It means a lot to both of us."

Julian swallows. There is too much here to think about right now, but right now is what she wants. There are questions swimming in his head, alarm fighting with empathy and all the while her eyes implore him.

"Please."

Julian swallows again. "I'll do what I can," he intones numbly.

She smiles through her tears and hugs him tightly. Her breath is warm on his neck. "Thank you."

~*~

Garak is whistling to himself as he tidies up the shop, which is a thing as rare as a Cardassian in love with a human. Not the tidying. That's rather ununique to Cardassians to the point that humans might claim obsession. But the whistling, well, he'll stop if anyone comes in, but for now he has some sort of ridiculous little song bird fluttering around inside his chest making him do this. The station outside is bustling already despite the early hour, and the appearance of a munitions officer headed toward ops indicates something special as well. The mission must be a go. Garak's tune slips away from his lips for a moment, but returns another moment later. He'll get some details after he is finished here. Surely Quark knows something by now. He'd know himself if he hadn't been otherwise occupied this morning. Garak smiles like a loony at a pair of steel blue trousers. The trousers are unimpressed.

"Sisko to Garak." The surprising voice knocks Garak out of his reverie.

"Garak here. What can I do for you, Captain?"

"Sorry to call on you so early, Garak, but I'd like to see you in my office as soon as possible." Sisko's voice sounds calm enough, low and light like usual, but he suspects that the tone is meant for any bystanders who might be in his shop unbeknownst to the captain.

"Certainly. I'll be there in a just a moment."

"Thank you."

"Ah, Captain."

"Yes?"

"Shall I bring my tape measure?"

"I think we can dispense with that for now. Though I do have a job for you."

"Understood."

~*~

Julian throws his padd at the bulkhead with a little more force than is necessary to really break it thoroughly. He rubs his face harshly and breathes into his hands until the anger cools to simmer. She needs to have a baby just to keep him. To keep him interested enough to not die in some pointless pissing contest with the Jem'Hedar. Julian paces in his office, not really a large enough space to pace effectively, but he's not leaving this room until he has his head on straight again.

A baby. He hasn't delivered a baby in quite a while. And never a Klingon one. Funny how he thinks of this future child as a Klingon, it's only half, but somehow the Klingon cancels the Trill like vinegar mixed with wine. This child will be just another Alexander, lost and confused, mixed up in his own clashing gene pool and dislocated culture. Neither one thing or the other and ineffective as both. It will be almost impossible anyway. He doesn't know why he's worried. No, he does know why he's worried. While Julian has an ability to foul up relationships in the most creative ways, make a fool of himself, annoy and irritate people without even trying, he also has similar success at being a doctor. He is reasonably sure that he can make it happen one way or another. Though he is still worried. So either he is worried he won't be successful or he is worried that he will.

If he is, she'll have a baby. She could die giving birth. Klingon babies are large, and if Worf insists, and Jadzia goes along with it, which Julian bets she would, their child will come into the world in the traditional Klingon way. Which means Julian will essentially not be involved.

He has to be. As CMO he will protect his crew mate. He'll just have to order Worf to step down. Jadzia won't have a say either. He'll do the birth in the most controlled manner possible. She'll come out of it safely no matter what. He'll disobey orders if Sisko tries to keep him from interfering. There is no way he's letting her die for Worf's pride.

Julian's breathing is rapid and he tries to stop again and calm himself. He is a little ahead of himself after all. No reason to panic yet. It's entirely possible that he will fail to find a way to get the haploids to shake hands. It's just a matter of finding the right enzyme combination and the timing. Timing and opportunity. He isn't entirely sure what she meant by that but it sounds right. A few practice runs will work that out once he has the chemicals synthesized. But, maybe it won't happen. And if it doesn't? It'll be a disappointment, but surely it doesn't mean that Worf simply won't come home. How can he not care if he lives or dies when he has her to live for? Why does he need more, or why does she think he needs more? Though maybe the need is the need? The possibility the lure? And maybe it's impossible.

Maybe within the impossible is a new possibility.

The possibility of her.

'...when I look back at her, she's drifted even further away.'

Every time he takes this step it puts more distance between them. It just hurts. It doesn't matter how amazing the past few days have been, it hurts to have her so far away. Marcia, Vic, Quark, they've all said it. Just let her go. But this time. Right now, tomorrow...it could happen.

Julian feels numb all over for a second. "What the hell am I thinking?" he mutters to the air, and stumbles into his chair. Julian shakes his head and tries to dig his fingertips into his skull, feels tears prick at his eyes. Selfish son of a bitch. He can see Jadzia, destitute, beside herself with grief and knows that that is what awaits her if Worf doesn't come home, not a happily ever after with Julian. He's shaking....He doesn't want that. He may have no love for Worf, but he doesn't want him to die, and he doesn't want to see her like that. Doesn't want her to hurt like that. Like Tavana. Like the Captain.

"You're just upset, Julian," he mumbles into his hands. On the rare occasion something does fluster and uproot him completely, he often finds himself spinning off into a radically irrational and careening train of thought. He guesses that would be normal for anyone, but he is especially tuned into it in himself because it brings the memory of his less fortunate augmented friends bubbling to the surface. He is quick to clamp down on it these days. He senses a danger in indulging in despair and even more in fanciful daydreams. He has had more than his fair share of daydreams about Jadzia over the years. He convinced himself they were harmless, but lately he isn't so sure. On the more rational side of his predictions he thought and knew that at some point they would want to try to have children. It's only natural. And perhaps guaranteed with the hardheadedness of Dax taken into account. But he never thought he would be the one doing that research. He isn't a fertility doctor after all.

The thing is, it makes sense.

Julian breathes more deeply and slowly, feeling himself coming back down again, his mind funneling back into it's socket. He realizes that this is a way through it. This could indeed be an opportunity for him. Starting this thing with Garak meant giving her up, for good. For good because Garak does not love lightly or casually, and because he isn't going to keep doing this, imagining what is never gong to be. The opportunity lies not with her, but with himself. If he can tie himself to her life in this way, he never really has to lose her completely. He will never be a lover or husband to her, but if he can give her the thing she wants most, a child, and if that helps keep what she already has, she will be a part of his life forever afterwards. And that is more than he should even hope for.

He spends the rest of those morning hours setting up the first series of tests. Everything else is on hold. He closes his work on his prion research and shelves it. There are genetic samples in both of their files, so he starts with that, Trill conception, and amniotic chemistry. He sets up a series of three million hypothetical chromosome matches, with a second tier test, should any of them make it through the match, to see if the resulting zygote would survive to implantation. He starts the program and goes to lunch with his head still swimming with what-if's and unnerving bursts of cloudy emotion, visions of a Klingon baby with spots. When he comes back after picking at his meal for an hour, the results are in and not in the least surprising. "This isn't going to work," he mutters to himself. It is. It will work. He knows there is a way, by virtue of love there is a way. Attraction is not an indicator to be ignored. It is as meaningful as matched sets of chromosomes, which many did, by the way, turn up a perfectly healthy zygote. The problem is finding the path there, finding a way for that little hypothetical egg to become a person. Even that, Julian knows, is quite possible, by virtue of his birth and subsequent reinvention. There would be no reason for him to exist if such problems were completely unsolvable. The phenomenon of an interspecies couple in love who cannot procreate is too ironic for the cold universe to produce on its own. Julian doesn't believe in fate. Things happen for logical reasons and it has nothing to do with morbid poetry. The thing that hinders, is time. This could take months, maybe years of research and testing. That is what isn't going to work. Not for the here and now, which is what he needs, what she needs.

Julian sighs out loud. Marcia looks over at him then and looks like she is about to come over and start asking questions, so Julian picks up his coffee cup and retreats to his office once again to work in solitude.

Laying on his desk is a card the size of Julian's hand folded top to bottom and tied with a sky blue ribbon through a small eyelet. Tucked into the ribbon is a tiny five-petaled wildflower in the same blue. His name is scrawled, written in an unfamiliar hand, on the top. Such an object stands out on his desk as much as the little black bottle, though the two things together seem to match very well. He doesn't need to speculate any further as to who placed it there. Though, he wonders with a little half smile how he got in and out of this room while it was locked. Julian sits at his desk and pulls the ribbon away from the card. It opens to reveal a short note in the same strange letters, the handwriting of a Cardassian who has a well-developed handwriting skill, just not in English. The letters are perfectly formed, though foreign to a degree, and magnificently exotic to Julian's eyes. The words themselves make his whole body thrum as if Elim were there behind him whispering them in his ear.

My Dearest Julian,

As I write this I am struck by the simplicity of the message I wish to convey to you, and how large a card I chose to write it on. I guess it just feels much larger than it turns out to be when digested by these words.

I know I have said this before, once or twice over the past few weeks, and I think you already know the truth of it; that it perhaps does not need saying so much between people like us, but I want you to know that it holds true while I am rational and calm as well as when the emotional turmoil of these lives we lead boils over. I want you to know that it is, and has been a constant for some time, that when I have said it before, that it was not madness or maudlin that caused me to manufacture it, that it was always there, but that the blister is less difficult to break when I am thinned by pain. It is easier, too, in writing. For while more permanent, I can choose my words over time and match them to my thoughts and feelings without the fear of misspeaking.

That said, I think I have put it together in the most accurate way this language allows: I love you. You are my world.

E.G.

Julian is faintly glad he is already sitting down, though he feels like he might fall anyway. He rereads it. Then again. He keeps expecting it to make him less dizzy the next time he reads it but it just doesn't, if anything the effect is becoming cumulative and he decides he should stop and put it away somewhere safe before he passes out. He smirks stupidly to himself. He thinks about walking it home to his quarters actually, because there are always people rummaging through his office (even with the door locked) but he knows he definitely wants to keep it here. He never spends any time at home, and he wants this where he can read it again and again on days like today. He looks around for a few moments and then finally slides it behind a photograph of Miles and himself on the Colorado river in the holosuite.

Julian grins and tries to tuck the corners of the card more squarely behind the picture, but ends up taking it out and reading it again. He wonders about the probability of cardiac arrest caused by an excess of joy. The urge to run over to his shop is almost overwhelming, but not only would that be wildly inappropriate, he has a lot of work to do for someone else he loves.

It was exactly what he needed though. Somehow that scaly, nefarious tailor knew without any communication from Julian that he was in trouble, that he needed support. Maybe it wasn't his intention to support him, maybe he didn't have a clue that his card would provide the lift Julian needed. Maybe he is just making sure Julian will be receptive and ready when he comes home after work, which he certainly will be now, but the effect on his distress is brilliant.

~*~

Julian comes through the door three minutes after eight without ringing the chime and without a hello. He resists the urge to leap onto him, but only just, and instead finds Elim looking mildly surprised standing in the middle of his living room. Julian crosses the distance in three steps, smoothly locks his arms around Elim's neck, and none too gently grabs his mouth with his own. Elim is chilly. He must have just gotten home as well, both of their days turning out to be busier than they had hoped, but it doesn't matter now, because he has him, and invisible hands seem to grab Julian from under his rib cage and squeeze his diaphragm as he plunges into him. He gives him everything he can in that kiss; every bit of heat that has been collecting like heavy dew on his insides comes tumbling down on them both now, shaken from above, and every bit of tender care he can furnish in that kiss comes out as well in the warm swipe of his tongue, to the gentle and fastidious sucking of his lips. Every vibrato inhale tightens those sharp fingers in Julian's ribs and chest, hikes his heartbeat, and every exhale releases it only to have it come back stronger a moment later. Julian works the fingers of one hand into his hair and clutches the other around the back of his neck, fingers tight around the tendons. Elim's hands are strangely inert at his hips, fingertips only just gently squeezing into the wrinkles of his uniform and sliding slowly upward without seeming to have a destination in mind. He responds to everything Julian does, every lick and nibble, every wanting noise he makes, he isn't absent by any means, but he also isn't completely animalistic as Julian is at the moment, and finally, without Elim ripping his clothes off, or exacerbating this outburst, he lets it die on his lips with a final slow kiss. Julian sighs as he lets their lips part and opens his eyes.

Elim is looking back at him with his head slightly down and coy, looking up below suggestive ridges. He strokes his thumb over Julian's cheek once and then those ridges glide upward with a small smile. "Did you get my note?" he asks.

Julian huffs disbelief, slumps to one side and then kisses him soundly again.

"I don't know how you did it, Elim, and I probably don't want to know..." Julian is grinning at him, up close, nose to nose, and the proximity is overwhelming. He wonders how long this feeling will last, being lost when he is in his arms, delirious happiness just looking at his face. "I missed you today," he breathes, smiles, but notices then that Elim's smile isn't the same as his.

The past few days, when he was happy, so was Elim. When he was uncomfortable, so Elim seemed to be as well. Perfectly matched, perfectly in sync, and while his petty doubts still gnaw at him, simply because he is who he is, the card this morning seemed to seal Elim within his heart. He hadn't thought of anything that poetic, and it never occurred to him to send Elim flowers or cards or other such things, but that is it, that is the nature of it, that is where they both are. They are at the point where they are hopeless, pathetic, and ridiculous in their thoughts and actions, their reactions to each other. The helpless smiles, the wayward and erratic heartbeat, there is no question in Julian's mind that they feel the same, that Elim knows it too, and yet right now, something is missing from this puzzle and he searches his face for a clue, and waits for him to reveal it.

"And I you," Elim says at last. "I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to see you today. It turned out I had more to do than I thought."

"You're not the only one. Jadzia came in to see me today. I'm sure you've heard that rumour--" Julian stops because Elim still looks strange to him. Julian is spinning like a top still, but there is an intensity to his grey-blue eyes that is making Julian's heart skip a beat now and then, and yet that intensity doesn't seem to have anything to do with Julian himself. While Elim stands, fully concentrated on him, watching his lips move as he speaks, his hands merely grasp Julian's lightly, and Garak's ever-present, congenial smile is absent.

Elim brushes a thumb over Julian's cheekbone, slides one arm and then the other around his waist, and kisses him again, softly. It is now the only sound in the room when they part, and Julian's eyes open to find Elim's smile is gone altogether, as if it had been hanging by a thread before, and it is replaced with open-eyed solemnity, sufferance. Now they match.

"Julian...I'm leaving for Cardassia in the morning."

Julian's ears seem to object to the words and begin to ring and grow hot. All the rest of him blanches cold all over and he feels Elim's arms tighten around him subtly. He just stands there against him for a moment until he realizes he hasn't really been breathing and finally inhales. Tears prick at his eyes as he does though he doesn't quite understand why. It is like they cry for something they have not yet seen.

It feels like being run through, and there isn't time to digest all of this either.

Julian is man of accurate thought and fast calculation. His mind can take the concrete things of the universe and manipulate them theoretically with startling accuracy and whip quick speed. He has met only one other person that could do such things quicker or more accurately, and that man was a machine, technically. That man is possibly even more at a loss when it comes to the more intangible, internal, and subjective things in life that also need reduction and calculation, but really not much more than Julian himself. When he has time to consider it, to separate himself from it and consider all the known variables, he does pretty well, he thinks. Hindsight is a good teacher, at any rate, and his mistakes number in quantities that his body of examples from which to learn is enormous and varied. But when he lacks the time, and lacks the emotional distance to put it into perspective, he knows he is at his weakest, and must rely on those shaky and capricious emotions to guide him.

He is trembling slightly as he lays his head on Elim's shoulder. He can feel that he is. They stand there still and silent, and Elim's hand cradles the back of his head. At some point, and he doesn't remember quite how or when, they lay together on the couch with Julian's head on his chest, facing the window and the stars. They don't say a word, and Julian is somewhat glad of it. Elim's fingers thread idly through his hair for so long before he finally stiffens beneath him, rises, and leads them to Elim's bed. They lay entangled, partially covered until Elim falls asleep. He has an important role to play tomorrow, and he will need his rest. He can't begrudge him that. Julian's shock has faded, his numbness withdrawn, and he feels alone and raw laying next to him, touching him. He cannot justify waking him, not to slake his own sorrow. It isn't his planet that is controlled by the Dominion. He has no right. But still, the dark and quiet night will offer him no peace.

Julian gets up, dresses, and lets himself out of Elim's quarters. He goes back home, hasn't been there in days. He waters his plants, and paces around his living room for another span of time that disappears before he knew it was even upon him. He should sleep, but laying down here he knows he'll stare into the blackness until dawn, and going back to Elim's the temptation to lay beside him and cry, break down and beg him not to go, is too great.

He goes to the computer and pulls up Jadzia's file. He gets it now, he does. Whenever he fails, it seems, the Universe is right there to show him what he did wrong, though never in time to prevent it when it matters. He supposes he wouldn't learn if it didn't matter, maybe. Seems cruel. He bites his bottom lip hard. Right now, he would do absolutely anything to ensure that Elim will come home to him safely. Absolutely anything, and he can't blame Jadzia for wanting the same thing, nor Worf for leaving, because he can't blame Elim for doing what his character demands.

He also doesn't want to tell her it won't work. If he tells her it will work and Worf doesn't come back - Julian doesn't want to think of the possibility again. At the same time he doesn't want to see her get pregnant and then immediately lose the father to his warrior's fate. Immoral, this. Making judgments, deciding for others what is best for them. That is what it is, but Julian knows the odds. Someone is going to die. They're at war. Better a warrior prepared to accept it than someone else. Better that Jadzia find solace in the knowledge that she wasn't wasting her time with him, better that she not resent him. He should tell her. It isn't going to happen, not right now. Worf has already made his contribution, too. Even if he doesn't come back. Jadzia can have his baby as soon as Julian figures out how. She can't resent him for dying if he has left her that. Though she would. It isn't the baby she wants. She wants him and the baby. She'll accept one or the other, but she isn't ready to. What she said is true. All the others, all the love in her life cut short; Worf needs only a reason to come home to make it happen. There is enough passion in a Klingon heart to turn the tide of any battle. If that passion is fixed on life, he will live. A wife, he has, love, yes, those he can retain in Stovo-Kor. He cannot complete the tasks of his life, however, if he is dead. If he feels he is to have another child, and Julian can provide the means, or even at this early juncture, the possibilty of the means - then he will return. They all will. Worf would not jump ship even for that future. If Julian loses, Jadzia will too most likely. If Jadzia loses, it could be her alone. Julian wouldn't know how to heal her after that.

Julian takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, and then opens a comm to Jadzia's quarters. A moment later and she is on the screen, quiet in her greeting. She wasn't asleep, he can tell by the set of her eyes, though she wears a nightgown and has her hair down, soft and inviting around her shoulders, a stitch of worry in her brow. She looks older than he's ever seen her, and he wonders if he appears the same, and if she would notice. Despite that, he can still see nothing but timeless beauty in that face. He swallows once and she waits patiently for the reason for his call. "I found it," he says, and when his ears start ringing again, the lie like an emetic to his mind, he shouts at himself internally. You can do this, you selfish fuck. I don't care if you're uncomfortable with it, I don't care if you think you're so much better than this. You will do it for her. You owe her for even thinking for a moment about wishing ill on her husband. You can lie to her, for her.

"What?" she asks, guessing, but not trusting to believe.

He takes another quick deep breath and spits it out. "You're gonna have a baby."

A smile flickers over her face, then she covers it with her hands and laughs, her eyes glittering with tears. "Julian, are you serious?" He nods and clenches his jaw to keep his own tears back. She laughs again, the tears fall, and she wipes them away. "Oh, Julian. I can't believe it. I can't believe you did it so quickly."

He nods again. "We got lucky."

"Kira...she told me she went to the temple to pray for us. I guess it helped." He nods again and averts his eyes to the console. "You look so tired, Julian. You must have been working on this all day - thank you. You are such a good friend." She is beaming again, like the last star in the sky.

He smiles tightly at her, wishes her a good night, and signs off.

LOTRPS: DM/OB: Between the Sheets

2008-07-01T11:34:00.002-05:00

Between the Sheets
Summ: AU. Dom is a bit of a goody-two shoes with a galloping case of rotten luck. He has a summer job to help pay for Uni, but he hates it. Orlando is the reason. Action! Adventure! Dermatitis!
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Orlando is a bit weird in this one. I'm not sure who this Orlando is or where he came from, just popped out of my head and splattered all over the keyboard, sorta. My apologies for my poor approximation ofBritspeak, and as for the German, it was pastede together using a German-English dictionary, and Google translator. Also, this didn't want to end. I had trouble cutting it off where I did, seem abrupt to me,
Prompted by msilverstar. Probably not what she had in mind, but I can't account for the behavior of my brain.

Summer jobs are the worst thing invented by man, and Dom has had the worst summer jobs of anyone he knows. In sixth form, when his mum first started making him do this to himself, he worked at an ice cream shoppe. Great job you'd think. That's what mum thought. She did have the best intentions. Surrounded by ice cream and cute high school girls, it should have been a great summer. As it turns out Dom has a very bad pistachio allergy that no one knew about. He'd never had them before. Dom had a bubbling rash all over him the entire summer and it wasn't until he had a week left before school started back up that they ran out of pistachio ice cream, the owner decided not to order any more, and the rash went away, cruelly revealing it's true source. The cute girls he worked with were sort of horrified by his blistered skin. He had to wear gloves and long sleeves to work and often had shiny ointment on his face. Had to scratch at it every five minutes, then wash his hands, get a new pair of gloves... Not that Dom cared what the girls thought. Mum didn't know about his "proclivities" at that point but he did. Unfortunately the little hottie with the soul patch and the earring was also horrified. That's what really cheesed Dom off. He never seems to be able to hang onto a guy for more than a quick roll in the hay.
At seventeen it was the year that he got a job as a lifeguard. First day on the job and he slipped on the wet tile around the pool and broke his leg.
When he was eighteen, he got a job in a waste treatment plant over the summer. This was nasty for reasons that should be obvious. Mum thought he'd meet nice intelligent girls working there. Have to have a degree to get any of the salaried jobs. He did meet a cute Scottish bloke who worked in receiving, managed to get off with him once, but it still didn't make up for the stench that followed him the rest of that summer.
This year though, despite the lack of rashes, ten week casts, the reek of chemicals and squalor, looks like it is going to be the worst yet. Dom has school work to do this summer, too. Mum even told him not to get a job, to concentrate on school, but the fact is he needs it this year, because he won't be able to afford his books in the fall if he doesn't. The worst part this year though is not the job itself. He's scrubbing boats at the marina. It's not as glamorous as a car wash or anything, but it's somewhat interesting, harrowing, and extremely physical. Nor is it a freaky coincidence that is going to make him miserable; he doesn't seem to be allergic to the boat soap or even the algae that coats everything or the gull droppings. No, this year it's the coworker from hell that is making him wish away his summer.
"Oi. Squash Face. Need the bucket over here." Dom sighs heavily and slogs his way over the small teetering craft to deposit the bucket of icy cold soapy water next to Orlando.
'Squash face' is Orlando's pet name for Dom. Thirty seconds after he introduced himself he was calling him that. It was, "Hallo. Name's Orlando. Since this is your first summer here and this is my third, I'm your boss. You can call me Mr. Bloom, and I'll call you...Squash Face. How's that sound?"
Dom wouldn't mind if he was a nice bloke. But he isn't. He's mean, crude, violent; all the things that Dom usually likes in a bloke, but now that he's met the epitome, he's beginning to question his own taste - which might finally make his mother happy. Now that she does know about his "proclivities", she worries incessantly that he's going to end up dating one of those 'dirty' gay boys. Mum doesn't really understand gay culture so much, but that's ok. She's adjusting. It's just that this summer, it was the hardest disappointment as Charlie, their boss, walked him up to this tall gorgeous boy on Dom's first day at the sunny Harbour Side Marina (clever name for a marina on one side of the harbour), and Dom, for one glittering, foolish moment, thought his curse was lifted, that this job was going to be a pleasure to wake up for, and only a second later that dream was dashed by Orlando's insufferable mouth and smug laughter.
The other thing to consider about Orlando is that he is more than just an obnoxious pretty boy. Dom, while not known for his bravado or scrappiness, doesn't normally let people walk over him if they're just regular guys. Fact is, Orlando scares him a little. Orlando looks tall and lanky, and he is, but he's strong as an ox. Something about his youth, something about his face hides it. You look at him and you think he is going to be the sweetest, most lovable, even frail and fragile boy you ever met because he's beautiful to be sure, with his dark curls and sunny smile, and then he lifts a seventy kilogramme bagged sail up onto his shoulder so you can rub tung oil into the boom, and he spouts profanities at you until you're done as if those words were what gave him the ability to lift more than his own body weight in folded canvas. He's like some kind of lean and gorgeous olive-skinned Incredible Hulk. Charlie frequently exploits Orlando's prowess at the marina. Today he is unloading bags of cement from the back of his truck and loading them into the mixer over his head. The veins pop out in his face and arms. Dom just watches him with a dry mouth as he points the hose into the mixer. Next to Dom's ear, the cement mixer sounds like you would expect a cement mixer to sound, but much louder than you'd even be able to imagine. So if Orlando is telling the cement mixer to fucking fuck off and muttering that their boss needs a trowel up his arse, Dom can't hear him. It's getting warm out, and Orlando is soaked with sweat after about four of those big bags cut and emptied into the mix. Thankfully they're not responsible for pouring the new sidewalk outside the yacht club, just doing the lifting, otherwise Orlando would be just that much more cranky about it. More cranky would be bad, Dom thinks, because he does turn to Dom after the last bag is in the tumbling machine and say, "You're next Squash Face."
Dom considers it very possible for Orlando to lift him up by his groin with one hand and toss him into the mixer, pour him out and force him to lie there until he hardened. And lying there on the ground looking up at Orlando's crotch is one way to accomplish that, quick-set or no. At the same time, he shrinks with dread at the thought of what a belligerent, ignorant man of his strength could do to him if he wanted, if it suited him to try to beat the gay out of him. They work alone, they work late. On his lunch break Orlando frequently amuses himself by throwing a knife into a tree on the far side of the parking lot seventy or eighty times from various distances and angles. Sometimes with his eyes shut. So, Dom keeps his mouth shut too, doesn't try to appeal to Orlando's good side because he doesn't seem to have one, has never seen the opportunity to make a peaceful gesture towards this self-sustaining machine, and just stays out of his way.
They don't do stuff like that every day though. And he doesn't threaten him with a cartoon death every day. Most of the time they clean boats with mops and brushes, scrape barnacles off the dry-docked ones (not fun), and tidy the clubhouse. And most of the time Orlando just tries to make Dom look and feel like a moron. For instance, a week into the job Orlando told him they had to start cleaning the bottom of the slips when the owners had their boats out. He gave him a shovel, a pail, and a diving mask and told him to dig out the bottom of Mr.Giaconi's slip a couple inches the whole way round, and Orlando would dump the waste on the other side of the pier. Dom got his shoes off and lowered himself into the cold, dank, oil slicked water up to his chest before Orlando sputtered and couldn't not laugh at him any more. Dom worked the rest of the day in wet clothes with a bizarre green stripe across his chest where the water stopped. That was possibly one of the worst days of his life in recent memory. The itching, the cold, the chafing clothes, the weird looks from the boat owners. Orlando must have decided he'd had enough that day because he didn't do anything else to him of note. He just went back to his expository complaining about each of the boat owners as they worked instead. He informed Dom which of them had the fattest arses, which were so tight they couldn't be counted on to leave unattended beer or liquor in their boats at all, and which ones probably use their boats to dump bodies in the Channel.
"You working late?" Orlando asks him as he climbs back up to the top deck. Dom cringes and stops in his tracks.
"I have school work to do."
"There's four more after this one," Orlando says and continues his work on the life vest trunks without looking at Dom. Dom watches the muscles of his forearm work under his tanned skin. "And rimming your boyfriend doesn't count as school work. I don't care if he is your Biology professor," Orlando adds. Dom blushes hard and goes hot all over but doesn't look up from his work, just scowls at the deck and the brush and wants to fucking club him with it.
Dom stays until all the boats are done and he is exhausted physically, and has exhausted his capacity for resentment. His Biology professor is attractive for an older guy.

~*~

It's Thursday which means half the marina will be calling up Charlie and wanting their boats clean by Friday evening. That's all they do Thursday and Friday is get through as many as they can. Charlie has them skip the little things on those days, get away with as quick a job as they can and move on to the next. Orlando fucking hates that because these people tip - some of them - and he claims that the faster they get through them the lousier the tips. Dom has to imagine though that he makes up for it in quantity, but he hasn't been doing it long enough to be sure so he doesn't say anything. One thing he is sure of: Orlando doesn't wear underwear very often, possibly at all.
Dom has learned his way around the place by now, knows what needs to be done with each little skiff and sail for the most part. It's not exactly mentally taxing. He and Orlando, despite having absolutely nothing in common, apparently, have found a rhythm to their work. Dom avoids him and tries to stay at the end of the boat that Orlando isn't, and that actually works pretty well. He'd be lying if he claimed he had never intentionally aimed a bucket of cold water in Orlando's direction, but he'd be telling the truth if he said he never found the courage to do more than wet his feet with it, which he doesn't seem to notice, going around barefoot the whole time anyway. (Orlando laughs at Dom's boat shoes but Dom stolidly wears them anyway. The slivers from the wooden ladders on the slips would be far worse than Orlando's occasional mention of blue-footed boobies.) Other than the odd passive-aggressive gesture on his part, or distant admiration of Orlando's fantastic body, Dom stays clear of him. Orlando usually cleans up the aft, checks the motor, since he seems to know how, does the cabins if he has the keys, and Dom does the decking, sail bags, awnings and railings. They clean up pretty nice, those little fibreglass schooners. They can get through a mess of them in a day with the bigger boats taking quite a lot of time (but they're usually worth it for the tips) and the monstrous ones - they're not generally allowed to board much less touch with their grubby, working-class paws.
They clean forty boats between Thursday morning and Friday night. At the end of it, Dom is sun-burnt (Orlando didn't take a break for lunch or sunscreen which meant Dom didn't get one either), and fucking fatigued down to his bones. Charlie gives them each their tips in cash Friday night after hours while Dom is sitting on the curb tying his regular kicks back on. They thank him quietly and Dom thinks even Orlando might be tired tonight. As soon as Charlie is in his car and heading down the road, Orlando grumbles, "Fucker took a cut." Then, "Oh well. Time to go get a fucking drink, eh Mate?" he says turning to Dom with bright eyes showing no signs of tiring at all. But the real shock was the words, not the look. Dom has his shoe laces half tied and his foot slips out of his grasp. Dom just stares at him a second before the automated speech generator in his head kicks in and whirs to life.
"Yeah. Yeah right, man." Dom takes his shoe laces in his hands again and is trying to tie them but can't remember how.
Orlando folds his money into his wallet then, replaces it in his back pocket, puts his hands in his front pockets. Dom looks at him, waiting for something but he's not sure what. That almost sounded like an invitation a moment ago. Dom's stomach turns at the thought of accepting it, and yet he can't help but want to.
"Well!" Orlando's expression regains it's normal bristle. "See you Monday, Squash Face." He turns and heads off to his little old beater in the far corner of the lot.

~*~

Dom spends the weekend working on a paper, nose in seven books at once, trying to sound like he at least understands the material, even if he can't keep his mind focused on it. It's Sunday night when he collapses on his bed surrounded by photocopied notes and plunges a hand down his pants to hopefully quell the distraction. He doesn't have time for it though. Dom is a champion wanker, really. He spent some of his early teen summers doing little but that. He likes to take his time, take Mr. Palm in the shower, in bed, on the floor, anywhere and everywhere, he likes to experiment and play, but he just doesn't have the time anymore in this quasi-adulthood he's reached. He has hours more work to do on this paper and every minute he spends yanking it is minutes lost. Dom shuts his eyes tight and lets a fast slide show flicker behind his eyes, entertaining whatever sick thing that might come to mind just as long as it gets him off soon. Some time last week a couple in their thirty's went into their boat, closed the cabin door and didn't come out for a half hour. They walked by Dom and Orlando putting away the hose and brushes and having a break with some pop and crisps from the vending machine. As soon as they passed, Orlando turned to Dom and swallowed the neck of his soda bottle, rolling his eyes back into his head and making the bottle top poke into his cheek. Then he came upsniggering . Dom glanced around looking for Charlie or whomever might tell Charlie they saw Orlando doing that, and saw Dom, the accessory to vulgarity. Dom opens his eyes now, looking around the room as if someone might know he was thinking about his lips and tongue on that bottle. "No no no no," Dom moans. "Nuns, bestiality, anything but Orlando," he tells himself.
Monday comes all too quickly. Dom wakes suddenly with the memory of Orlando's sweat-shiny back behind his eyes and has to shake it away. Either he has no self respect left at all or he has some kind of sad pathetic sort of hero-worship complex because he cannot get him off his mind lately. In class Monday morning he chews on his lips wondering who Orlando was with all weekend, what he does with his time. He can picture him with some trashy girl he picked up somewhere, getting his brains fucked out. Dom's eyes slip closed as he replaces the made-up jiggling screaming whore with himself, riding him with Orlando's rough hands wrapped around his waist.
Oh God. He needs to get his head on straight. It'll never be straight straight, but it's got to get straighter than this. Intellectually he knows that just spending the day at work with Orlando should (if he has any sense at all) cure him of any misconceptions he has regarding the likelihood of Orlando wanting Dom to go home with him and ride him. And yet he doubts that the further study of him is going to result in anything except more day dreams about that very thing. Intellectually, he knows this as he knows that he's not meant to be a marathon runner. Asthma, allergies, and legs that are nothing like the long stilts of Kenyan runners kind of clinch that, but that too doesn't keep him from running through that imaginary tape on the rare occasion he finds the time to go for a little jog. But this is different. Orlando, unlike dreams of fame and fortune and talent, is a poison. He's everything he should hate. What's worse though is Dom never saw this in himself. He never thought he was the type of self-hating fuck that would get attached to a dick head who treats him like shit. As much as his mother is out of touch with the world Dom is trying to find a place in, her fears are valid and live in him too. It brings him close to tears as he sits there in the auditorium, half hard and completely lost. He knows he likes bad boys a bit, but he thought there was a line there. The only relief from this train of thought comes from the knowledge that Orlando would likely never get the opportunity to abuse him in all the ways a boyfriend could. It will be over in another month and half, and he can make a clean break from this tempting, delicious, cunt.
The mind-numbing tedium of lecture ends quickly too, and Dom escapes it and the atmosphere of self defeat to head, of course, towards the Marina. Orlando is already there, hauling random equipment from an old shed that Charlie is going to tear down and rebuild soon. Dom watches him for a moment, fully aware of how perving on him from a distance not only makes the attraction stronger but dilutes the qualities of Orlando that make him so detestable. This has the effect of leaving Dom quite at the mercy of his needy cock, and no longer under the power of logic and the knowledge that Orlando is a bad man. At a distance it doesn't matter because he is godly with his shoulders browned and his arms have eggplants embedded in them, they must, those can't be his muscles. At a distance, the marina is a glittering grid of water and maritime nostalgia. It's only up close that it smells like fish.
Mondays are easier at the marina. That has to be a switch from any other job on the planet. Easier for Dom anyway. Charlie has Orlando busy all day, working him like a fucking horse. It does nothing for Dom's mental predicament. In a way he wishes he would come over and insult him or embarrass him again so he could back up what he's trying to teach himself. He's no good. Don't even wish it. On the other hand he has to wonder why he would want such a thing unless he was deluding himself. Maybe he really wants Orlando to be a creep towards him. Maybe that's part of what makes him so attractive. That thought just depresses him again, though, and Dom spends most of the day scowling at his reflection in the water instead of enjoying the view and the Orlando reprieve.
Charlie leaves early. It's tempting to do the same, and yet not too tempting with Orlando off in the distance doing ineffable things to a dodgy-looking skiff on the other side of the pond, the sun glaring off his sweaty skin, his face a blocky mask of concentration at this distance. Dom is finishing up MrGiaconi's boat, the little sloop with the immaculate deck and sails and rigging, (they clean it every damn week for him), and he is crouched on the slip by the ladder when Orlando's scuffing footsteps creep in behind him. He knows they're Orlando's even before he turns and looks. He's gotten to know the way he walks on the balls of his feet half the time like some kind of raptor.
Dom takes a breath and prepares to face him for the first time today and looks up at him with the sun partially blinding him.
Orlando has sunglasses on and as such is even more unreadable than normal.
"You wanna take her out for a spin?" he asks with no inflection and nothing on his face but the shiny black glasses staring back.
"...What?"
"Thee boat," he enunciates in what Dom presumes must be his imitation of Dom's own voice, his accent, which he has made a point of sticking to so as to separate himself from the prick.
"You mean...out on the water?"
"Yeah."
There are a multitude of things running through Dom's mind at this particular moment, most of them centred on figuring out Orlando's motive for the question. He's not coming up with anything. The worst ideas seem outlandishly unlikely, and the best seem ridiculous to consider. Yet he's filled with swirly gushing pudding of shivering fear and anticipation of the next moments.
"You mean you want to take Mr. Giaconi's boat out without his permission?"
Orlando takes off his glasses and rolls his eyes. "He won't even know it was ever gone. We'll take it out, couple hours. We'll stay in the harbour. Fill up the gas tank for him when we get back all nice an neighbourly-like. It'll be fun."
Another long moment passes in which Dom's gut twists. "You know how to sail it?"
"Of course. Sailing is in me blood."
Dom doesn't say anything.
"Look, I'd take you out on my boat but it's on the other side of the harbour, Giaconi's boat is bigger, nicer, and the beer is already here." Orlando steps aside and gestures toward a case of something sitting on the cement. It is a worthy footnote but not principal at the moment. Also, he didn't know Orlando had his own boat. He has to wonder why he doesn't keep it here, but that thought is even farther from what is important now than the case of beer and where it came from. Dom's impulse is to say no, but he can't think of a way to do it. Can't think of a reason not to. He's not asking him to work late without asking him, just, insinuating that he should, he...can't be trying to get him fired since he's going to be sailing away with him.
"Come on," Orlando says and steps onto the clean deck with his dirty feet.
Orlando just sort of takes it from there. He has Dom untie one of the leads and help him push off out of the slip, but after that, Orlando just goes into action and genuinely seems to know what he's doing. He starts the motor and they take a slow ride out of the marina. It's surreal to see the back ends of all these boats he's been scrubbing with his calloused hands. Weird to see it from the point of view of the people who get to enjoy the marina, not work at it.. Some of these crafts have names. The Dubious, The Sea Rabbit, Serendipity. Once past the two markers at the head of the marina, Orlando cuts the engine and ducks down into the cabin. Dom peers over the edge curiously watching him as he opens an access panel and turns a crank. Something makes a gentle clunk sound and then Orlando is done with that bewildering task and moves up on deck to do more familiar things. He unzips the main sail and hoists it up, then unfurls the jib, and before Dom can even ask if there is something he can do, the sail is full, pulled tight with Orlando's ropes tied down near his seat at the back of the boat, near the rudder, and they are moving and putting the marina behind them quickly. The sun is starting to set over the calm sea, and Orlando turns the boat into the wind, let's the boom fly over Dom's head, making it list hard to one side as he follows the curving line of the canal. Dom hangs on tightly but tries to act natural. He doubts that being completely silent for the entire trip so far is natural, but Orlando hasn't said a word since either. Instead, he's looking out to the sea to his right and in front of the sloop with his eyes half-lidded and his usually rank mouth shut and placid. The sun is waning orange behind them, and the land is a twinkling stripe far in the distance when Orlando lets the sails loose, turns on the red and green lights at the top of the mast with a switch buy his knees, and drops the anchor. The boat wobbles gently in the water and Orlando goes down below. Dom follows to see what he can do. It feels like a mission, like they have to be here for some higher purpose or like they're still at work, but Dom is at a loss as to his role in that.
"You want a can?"
Dom stands with his hands in his pockets and tries not to fidget. "Sure, thanks." Alcohol will help. Whatever this is, whatever is coming, alcohol will help it, surely.
"I'm fucking knackered. Wish I brought food."
"There's fish," Dom suggests with a light-weight voice he never finds with Orlando, but Orlando doesn't seem to notice. A few sips of cheap lager on an empty stomach and he already feels better, braver, and he scowls at that and worries.
Orlando sits on a plaid cushion on the port side and his long legs stretch out across the boat to rest on seat on the starboard side. Dom tries to make himself look comfortable by sitting on the narrow fibreglass ledge of the cabin doorway.
"Why do you always have that look on your face?" Orlando says with what sounds like dejection and puts his head back, stands his sweating beer on his forehead. "Like you hate life and everything in it. Like your life is so bad going to school and working a tit job. Every time I see you you look like that. Like you just want the world to explode and be done with it."
"The observer always changes the observed," Dom blurts then tries to down his beer as fast as possible to erase that remark from his memory.
"Why don't you keep your boat at the marina. This marina I mean?" Dom asks as filler.
"It's overpriced and the staff are a bunch of fucking cunts."
Orlando doesn't say much after that, just swallows two cans more over long silent minutes of fading daylight and then heads back onto the deck to get another one. Dom fidgets and curses himself for not just going home. He wants to ask Orlando when they're planning on going back but can't yet. He's also faintly concerned about Orlando sailing drunk. Dom can't be trusted to sharpen a pencil drunk, he couldn't sail. Couldn't sail sober either. Dom is hungry too. They must have something stashed away here. A bag of stale crisps, a melted candy bar, a tin of bait would do. Hard to see though with the sun almost gone in the cave-like cabin. Not even room for both of them in there though it looks like it is intended to sleep at least four. Dom pokes around the cabin while Orlando is outside, hoping to stumble upon a tin of biscuits. Orlando comes back in the cabin to take his seat again and hands Dom another beer.
"Hey," Dom says and cocks his head in the darkness.
"Hm?"
"Turn the light on will you?"
"Nah. It's on battery power. You don't waste that on lights. Need it for the radio and such."
"I just want to see something. Just for a second."
"What?"
"I thought I saw something."
"Where?"
"Over there, toward the back, er front. What is that?"
Orlando is silent a few moments and watches.
"What....what's moving back there." Dom's heart picks up the pace a little. He doesn't understand at all what he is seeing. There is definite movement unless his eyes are playing tricks. "Is that...is that a reflection off the water I'm seeing? Coming through the windows?"
Orlando makes a disgusted noise and Dom expects he's said something completely foolish. He also expects Orlando will enlighten him to that fact in his next breath. "Um. Come on, let's go up top and look at the stars," Orlando says instead.
"The stars? Can you see stars out here?" Dom is still watching the writhing blackness in the cabin, but follows him out.
"Yeah sure, a few."
They go up top and sit on the hard deck. It's less comfortable than the cabin seats but the night is cooling off and the breeze is heavenly. Dom looks up. There are a few. A few more than normal.
"Cockroaches."
"What?"
"That was cockroaches you were seeing."
Dom takes a pause. "Uuuhg!" He's glad he didn't find anything to eat.
"Yeah. Fucking wanker Giaconi doesn't take the boat out at night. Probably doesn't know he has 'em."
Dom feels a little sick to his stomach. "Will they come up here?"
"Nah."
Dom peers down into the cabin from above and sees by the last glow of dusk a cockroach of truly stupendous size nonchalantly mosey over one of the seats.
Dom leans back on his elbows on the hard deck and looks up at the sky again. No moon, just a few stars and some streaks of clouds that look oddly light against the black beyond. Orlando does the same, and for a long time they sit there on their own sides of the deck, the boom is a low barrier between their lower bodies. They could turn their heads and see each other easily but they don't. The twinkling drama above is more than enough in these minutes for Dom. He wonders why they're here. Thinks that maybe this was it right here. Orlando maybe just has a little human in him somewhere and he just wanted a mate to come with him so he didn't feel completely alone under the endless night sky.
"Hey, Dom."
"Hm."
"You bent?"
Cold washes over him. They're alone on a boat in the middle of the God damn ocean. There is no one out here but them. Why Dom wanted to go at all he doesn't know now. "What kind of a question is that?" he squeaks.
"A fair one I think." comes the defencive answer. "I didn't think you were at first, but we've got two months to go. I'd like to know who I'm working with. And now I think you are."
Dom is sweating and starting to tremble. "I..."
Orlando sighs heavily. "I'm askin' cuz I am. And I thought you and me could have a little fun this summer. If you haven't already got a guy. And if it's a yes, I don't want to waste a lot of time on getting to know yous and feeling each other out to find out if we're straight or gay or fucking martian. It's bollocks if you ask me. I say just come out with it."
Dom gapes a second and then laughs out loud.
"What?"
Dom is doubled over laughing, can't answer him at all.
"What?!"
Dom gasps, sighs, swallows, and finally speaks. "Yeah. I'm bent Orlando," he chuckles.
Orlando is quiet a moment, just eyeing him suspiciously and Dom gets nervous again. In the distance, a loud speedboat skips across the water. "Good. So what do you say?" Orlando is leaning over him grinning, getting very close, and Dom can't help but titter some more. Orlando scowls. "What is it?"
"I thought you were going to toss me off the boat or something."
Orlando only gets a chuckle out of it though, and Dom looks at him and sees his brow crinkle up in what looks like astonishment. "Really? You thought...? Do I really come off as that much of an arse hole?"
"...Yes!" Dom says emphatically.
"Really?"
"You called me Squash Face from the moment I met you. You tease me, you play tricks on me."
"I was kidding! I was trying to get you to laugh or smile or something! I tried making fun of other people, but when that didn't work and there weren't anybody else around, I tried you. You don't seem to have a sense of humour, Dom. No offence, I still like you, mate, I still think you're cute, but you got to lighten up."
"...Cute?"
"Yeah. Jesus. I think you're cute. I was kidding calling you Squash Face. You know, kidding, joking? I like you because I thought you had a loaf in your head, Dom, but maybe I was wrong," he says with a small devilish smile and cocks his head. Orlando licks his lips and bumps his nose against Dom's jaw, takes a tiny nip from it. Dom smirks. "Oi, you got that one. You finally learning to tell when I'm kidding and when I'm not?" Dom's smirk becomes wry. Orlando plants a couple feathery kisses on Dom's neck. "Dom," Orlando whispers seductively near his ear, "I want to suck your cock." Dom's cock cheers and Dom himself swallows hard. "Am I joking?"
Dom bites a lip. "No."
"I want to shove my cock in your arse, if you're game for that as well. Am I joking?"
Dom goes a little hot and cold in various places and feels more than a little dizzy despite being perfectly flat on his back. He shakes his head.
"And when I'm done with you... I want to fuck your mum, too. Right in her arse."
Dom's laugh bursts out of his mouth and rocks his body, and Orlando's beautiful smile above him turns him fully to horny, damp goo.
"Hey listen. I'm sorry if I was a bit of a prat. Got to defend yourself somehow, you know? I didn't think you'd take it all personal."
Waves are slapping lasciviously against the side of the boat and making Dom thrum inside. He wants to believe him. Really really does. It still all seems too good to be true. Seems impossible that the hottest man he's met in a very long time is not only gay, but is interested in him, and every snide remark from him in the past was meant in jest? He must be dreaming. Dom doesn't get to pinch himself though, because the boat is suddenly rocking hard side to side beneath them in the wake of the long-gone speedboat and Dom is rocking too, rolling, rather, and before Orlando can scream his name in its entirety and uselessly snatch at his clothes, Dom is shaken off the boat like a flea off a dog, snagging a safety line with one foot, which, ironically, only serves to plunge him into the water face first.
The shocking cold, the panic, the knowledge that the boat is right there and tethered only once, he flails with shaking limbs conservatively in the blackness and gasps as soon as he feels air.
"Dom!"
Dom breathes a second and then stops voluntarily. The boat is only a few meters away, but he is paralysed with fear. He is surrounded by blackness in so many directions, his limbs go numb so quickly and stop working, only they aren't numb enough. Slime and teeth and stinging polyps touch him all over in the cool, empty water.
"Dom! Fucking. Dom answer me! Are you ok?"
That's the last he hears as he curls in on himself and slips down into the water. Disturbance in the water near him grips him and he balls up. He feels he is being electrocuted. All over his body his muscles spasm. His lungs ache for air but they can fucking wait.
"Dom!" Orlando yells next to his ear. Something has grabbed him and he clenches his jaw tightly. "Dom!" he hears again, heavy breathing. "Dom!"
Orlando slaps him in the face and Dom is shocked out of his panic. Orlando struggles with his weight while treading water for them both.
"The fuck! Dom what's the matter with you? You hit your head or something?"
Dom looks at him and the boat behind him and is finally breathing again. He shakes his head, and finds he has a purpose suddenly. To get back on that fucking boat. He is ready to live. Dom escapes Orlando's bewildered grasp and makes for the boat with every ounce of swimming skill he doesn't have.
"No! Stay away from the boat it'll fucking cut you to shreds. Giaconi hasn't had it scraped in years." A large hand grabs him by the collar and pulls him back. Dom is breathing heavily though he's only been treading water for a minute or two. "Come on. Other side." Orlando leads them in a wide arch around the back of the antsy boat. It looks mammoth from the surface of the water, dangerous as hell as it comes swinging across the waves toward them. And it has a name. Moon River. Orlando approaches the side of the boat, the lowest point near the back and tries to grab the railing. He has it a couple of times but lets it go again and again and finally with a yelled "Fuck!" Orlando backs off from it while Dom numbly treads water and tries not to loll off into the black again. "I'm barefoot. Fucking barnacles. Give me your shoes."
"What?"
"Your shoes, take them off, careful, don't let them sink."
"Your... your feet are bigger than mine."
"I don't care we have to get back on this boat, Dom. It's a long fucking way to shore."
Dom treads water in an amusing circle with one hand and one foot and gets one shoe off, then the other and hands them to Orlando. Orlando gives one back to him to hold, holds the one shoe in both hands, takes a deep breath and falls backwards into the water to get his foot in the air for some leverage. His arms work at smooshing his big foot into it and the nylon slips and squeaks. He comes back up , does the other one the same way only his fingers slip and the shoe pops off his foot and splashes into the water. They both make a grab for it and Orlando tries again, sinking completely under the water this time, leaving Dom's stomach churning before he comes up and heads for the boat again. Dom's cheap shoes squeak and slip on the fibreglass. Orlando is running up the side of the boat for a second before growling at the air and hauling himself, panting, out of the water. A moment later he has the ladder in the water and Dom is shakily climbing up.
Dom is still breathing like that marathon runner he always wanted to be and is shaking all over.
Orlando catches his own breath a moment, a short one, while he pulls Dom's tight shoes off, and eyes Dom standing there. "It wasn't that cold, was it? You're shivering." Orlando scowls and peels Dom's shirt off over his head and yanks his shorts down without so much as a 'May I?'. He brings a blanket from below up to the deck and hands it to Dom who takes it with a grimace and holds it by a corner, expecting the bugs to come out of it's folds and crevices and consume him. Orlando takes it back, seeing Dom's inaction and probably his look of disgust, shakes it out and wraps it around him roughly. Then Dom is over Orlando's shoulder with little more than a grunt, and he plants him on the upper deck, mortified, ridiculous in his little underwear and feeling like Jane just rescued by Tarzan,except far less masculine than Jane. Orlando sits up against the main mast, dripping from his hair and clothes, with the sail half tucked in and carelessly ruffling in the gentle wind.
"Fucking lunatic. They aren't supposed to go that fast in the canal. Course we aren't supposed to be parked here either." Dom has one hand wound around the corner of the blanket, and another tangled in a stray line, wrapped round and round his whitened fist. His eyes and nose burn with salt. He continues to tremble a little. "Did you hit your head or something? Why did you just sink? Obviously you can swim."
He might as well tell him. What's he going to do, throw him overboard? "I'm afraid of the water. The ocean."
There is a silent pause. "Well no wonder you fucking hate me. I made you get in it your first day."
"Fourth day."
"Whatever."
"Like really afraid? Like an honest to God phobia?"
"Yeah."
"And you got a job at a marina?"
"I was planning on staying above the water. Where the boats are. I like boats."
Orlando chuffs a little laugh. "C'mere."
Dom stands up warily and closes the two steps that were between them, reaching for the main sail for balance and security. Orlando takes his other hand and pulls him forcibly down toward him, turns him awkwardly, and sits him between his knees. Orlando's big arms are around him, bizarrely, strangely, so God damn unexpectedly. "You're all right, Squash Face. I promise I won't throw you off the boat again," he says rubbing Dom's arms. He hunkers down behind Dom and rests his chin on Dom's bare shoulder, the blanket falling down between them, and they sit there in silence for a long time. Dom's spine prickles when he hears another boat go by in the distance, but it's very far away, and they never notice a wake. Orlando kisses his shoulder a few times and runs his nose up the back of Dom's neck, breathes into his hair in a way that makes Dom's eyes drowsy.
"Who are you and what did you do to Orlando?" Dom mutters in pleasure.
He feels Orlando smile against his skin. "Am I different than you thought?" Dom doesn't answer. "It's not me. It's...out here. It's different. There's nothing else, just me. I don't need anything when I'm out here except what I've got. It's relaxing."
"Relaxing, yeah," Dom says but the sardonicism is only half real.
"I'm glad you're here Dom."
Dom blinks and shakes his head, baffled. "Why? You don't know anything about me? Why do you suddenly care? Are you just...playing with me right now?" As he says it the fear of it runs through him like a poison ink.
Orlando sticks a finger in his ear and it squelches. "Suddenly? I know plenty about you, mate. You show up for work. You don't leave me hanging when I need you. You're studying veterinary medicine. You like salt and vinegar crisps which is revolting but I don't hold it against you. Why is it so hard to believe? I told you, I'm sorry if I came off badly, I just protect myself until I get to know people a little. You're the one that started the job hating it and hating me. Why do you think that nobody could like you? Why do you persist in thinking that as soon as something goes good it has to go bad again?"
"It always does," Dom says quietly.
"Well fuck. I know that, but it doesn't do any good thinking about it all the time. What goes up must come down and all that shit. You and me, we might have a really nice couple rolls between the sheets, and then it's bound to go tits up after that but who cares? Let's fucking enjoy the good part instead of spending the whole time thinking about the bad parts coming up, yeah? Maybe we'll get lucky and die before the next bad part."
"You mean like I almost did just now?" Dom asks turning to face him a little more.
"...Yeah, except more impressively than falling off a boat in three and half meters of water."
"Three and a half?"
"Mostly. There's a sand bar a little over that way. You can stand up on it and freeze your bollocks off in the wind."
"Fuck's sake," Dom says and slumps in Orlando's arms, helpless to not laugh at himself with his head on his knees.
"And you're already naked. So what the fuck?"
"Are you still going to respect me in the morning?"
Orlando smiles. "What's to respect? A guy who looks like his face got squashed in a refrigerator door when he was an infant?" Dom smiles a little too. "It's all crooked....Though it didn't affect your eyes."
"Oh spare me. The world will implode on itself if you start waxing poetic about my looks."
But Orlando's smile is mostly gone. His hand comes up to Dom's wet face, and brushes his hair back a bit. He leans in finally, finally, and takes Dom's lips softly between his own. Three hours ago Dom never would have thought Orlando would be capable of a kiss like this. Not for him, not for anyone maybe. He took him as he seemed, a contemptible fucker, and was too afraid of him to even try to get a little deeper. Dom tastes his salty mouth and warm inviting tongue and finds himself getting lightheaded. He reaches out and grabs hold of Orlando's arms because he doesn't want to take another swim and Orlando returns the grasp, then tightens it, pulls him in to press against him as he delves deep into Dominic's mouth. Dom lets out a pathetic little moan because he can feel Orlando's cock through his wet shorts.
Orlando pulls away from him long enough to yank his shirt off (a seam rips a little somewhere in the struggle) and toss it wetly to the lower deck. He takes the coarse blanket away from Dom, haphazardly lays it on the deck and kisses Dom again. His chest is so smooth and gorgeous. Dom almost wishes he would stop kissing him so he could look at it. Orlando's hands rub up Dom's flanks. Their skin sticks and stutters with the brine and heat. Orlando pulls at Dom's straining underwear and Dom lifts himself up to help. Orlando tosses them as well - into the bloody ocean.
"Hey!" Dom squeaks but Orlando just snickers and continues kissing him. Dom doesn't have it in him to remain affronted and weakens further as Orlando's kisses move away from his mouth and down his chin, neck, chest, stomach. Orlando's rough hands on his cock are startling, but he's gentle enough with them. Dom feels his face slacken and his brow pinch as he watches Orlando's brief strokes to his cock and then his mouth come down onto it, and the corresponding signal of warmth and slick wetness. Dom groans and his head clunks back to the deck.
That mouth. Lascivious, crude and filthy, and so good applied in the right place. His rosy lips and tongue surround Dom's cock,and squeeze and lick and flutter over his yearning skin. Dom cranes his head up to look every thirty seconds or so but can't keep it there. Whenever he tries it seems Orlando pushes him back down to the deck with a wicked suck deep in his throat or a hard rub from his tongue around the head. Dom keeps lifting his long hair and tucking it behind his ear so he can see his face, but it isn't quite long enough to stay there yet. Dom writhes under his hands and mouth and he keeps going. His inexhaustible energy is displayed once again. His neck must be getting tired by now but he keeps going, dipping down on Dom fast and hard for so long. He doesn't stand a chance against him really. Dom doesn't want to come now. It's too soon. This has the potential, if he examines the weight of the night and the smell of the breeze, to be important, to be changing. He wants to let it happen slowly so he can appreciate it.
Dom is fidgeting and trying to distract himself from the finish line. He wants to outrun Orlando this once at least. Wants to defy his will. Dom growls, "Oh God. Ihr Mund ist das schmutzigste, was ich jemals gefühlt." He pants and with need rising in his voice tells him, "Mein Schwanz wird explodieren. Es wird explodieren, und ich werde nicht haftbar gemacht werden für die Folgen!"
Orlando sucks him hard and long and drags his lips up Dom's shaft and then off. He wipes his mouth and moves his hair away again to look at Dom who is panting in the pause. "Well. That's one thing I didn't know about you."
Orlando runs a hand down Dom's heaving chest and then up his thigh. Then he reaches behind him and takes his wallet out of his back pocket. He makes a face as he opens it, seawater dripping out of the folds. Orlando pulls out a condom, tossing his wallet below. He waggles it at Dom with a lifted eyebrow and Dom nods still taking breaths through an open, disbelieving mouth and watching Orlando with dilated pupils.
Orlando gets out of his own shorts (no underwear) and Dom watches him roll the condom over his cock. "No lube. You ok?"
Dom nods. He doesn't care as long as he gets it finally.
Orlando kisses him another minute, running a hand through his hair. "Don't be surprised if this burns a little."
Dom smirks. "I'm not a virgin Orlando. I know what it feels like-" Orlando nudges against his entrance once and then slides home. Dom gasps. "Holy mother of fucking-!" It burns alright. He was just swimming in the fucking ocean; of course it burns from the fucking salt. Dom laughs though. It burns and Orlando warned him, he did. Orlando is chuckling with him.
"You ok?" Dom nods again, biting a lip and biting back more expletives.
Orlando starts to move a little, slowly, and it gets a whole lot better very quickly. Dom moans pathetically, and at least this time, Orlando is with him. He hears him make the same noise in his ear. Dom chuckles again and Orlando nibbles his earlobe, apparently because it was there and available. His cock is so thick inside of him. He hasn't had sex in a while - a long while - so he feels huge and fantastic and new. Orlando starts to sweat on top of him, on top of the seawater still sticky in his hair. Orlando fucks him and whispers epithets in his ear, the fruits of that mouth again, but so lovingly applied here they feel wonderful to Dom. Orlando moves him a few times. He has him turn over on his front and Orlando straddles his thighs. He has him stand up and lean on the boom. Dom shouts and moans with every deep thrust in that position they learn, and at some point, they go back to the deck because it is easiest, and Orlando snatches the blanket out from under Dom and shoves it under his hips so he can pump at him without holding him up so much. Orlando just keeps going. Like the God DamnedEnergizer Bunny with a huge cock and a nice set of balls that slap against Dom's arse. He wonders faintly how long a condom is supposed to stand up to this kind of friction, but he suspects that his arse is going to wear out first. Orlando is panting heavily and he looks like he's in pain, probably is with his hard knees rolling on the hard deck, and Dom can't moan any louder nor gasp any faster.
"Fick mich Orlando, meine geheimnisvolle ox. Ihr Schwanz fühlt sich an wie Magie. Fuck me, fuck me hard, Geliebte." Orlando moans and actually looks close now so Dom continues. "Oh schöne Mutter im Himmel werden Sie töten mich mit Freude. Ich werde sterben Einstich-gleich hier auf Sie. Sie sind hing wie Pferd, Orlando! Sie sind gut bestückt mein Freund."
Dom pulls Orlando down to him again, down face to face. He kisses him haphazardly, gasping for breath and making high little needy sounds. Dom takes his head in his hands and whispers every last filthy thing he can think of into his ear. He tells him how good he feels, how much he has wanted him, how beautiful his cock is. He admits to him that Orlando is everything he wants in a lover, and that he wants this to go on for more than 'a couple nice rolls between the sheets.' Orlando presumably can't understand a word of it, and Dom hasn't spoken German in quite a while so he's probably a little rusty, but it didn't seem to matter to either of them. Finally, long after Dom's arse has gone numb, Orlando starts to gasp like he means it. He sinks his teeth into Dom's neck and convulses, slams his cock into Dom as hard as that tough body can, and the sound of his pleasure and Orlando's now clumsy hand on Dom's cock bring Dom to climax as well. He holds Orlando's sweaty body to him as he spills over both of them.
They lay there a long time just breathing. Sweat and seawater trickle off Orlando onto Dom and down his flanks and hips to pool beneath him and make him stick to the fibreglass uncomfortably. Orlando is a limp, wet pile of skin and bones atop him, and he feels so good there.
Eventually though, he does move. He slithers off of him and then rolls to his back. They lay there for a few more moments just breathing again, and then Orlando sits up. He looks blearily around him, then staggers to stands, and dives off the boat. Dom sits up in mild panic, but Orlando climbs back up the ladder a second later and stands naked like a dripping wet God on the deck.
"Water's nice," he says with a small smile and flicks Dom's wet underwear at him. Dom looks at Orlando and the underwear with confusion. "Gets the goo off."
"Where did these come from?"
"They were stuck to the ladder. We could leave them there if you want. Give Giaconi a mystery to solve."
Dom smirks. He's not about to jump in the water again, though he is covered in sweat and come. He climbs down to the lower deck on wobbly limbs and sits on the edge. With Orlando quite safe up above, he reaches down for a scoop of seawater at a time to wash himself. It's still a bit too black to set foot in for his taste, and even being this close makes him a bit nervous. When he is finished, he climbs back up and finds Orlando sprawled on the deck half on the blanket, half off. Dom sits on a corner of the blanket and stares drowsily at the water.
"I'm fucking knackers."
"Knackers?" Dom asks with a laugh.
Orlando grins with his eyes softly lidded. "Apparently. I don't think I can sail us home right now. You have anybody waiting for you to get home?"
"No not really. My flat mates won't miss me."
"Oh yeah?" Orlando says with half an eye cracked and the devil in his smile, like he's not really awake, but he's awake enough if the fishing looks good. "So then nobody will miss you if I toss you off the boat again?"
"Orlando."
"I'm only joking,"
"I know you are. I was going to say that right now I bet I could toss you off the boat and pull up the ladder."
"You might be right. I just need a couple hours sleep," he says through a big yawn, "Then I'll bring us in."
"Giaconi won't be waiting for us?"
"On a Tuesday? No way." Orlando yawns again and feebly tries to stretch the blanket out for them.
Dom feels odd lying down next to him and stands there for a bit feeling naked and weird. Orlando takes his hand though, and none too gently pulls him down to the deck onto the blanket, wraps his arms around him and pulls the blanket over Dom as well bundling him in. Orlando smiles sleepily at him and kisses him over and over. Dom has to smile too. He's almost unconscious and yet he's still going, has to get one last thing in before the darkness. Dom is also just barely clinging to his mind and somewhere between kiss seventy six and seventy nine he drifts off.

~*~

The sky is mild and green in the east when Dom wakes. Orlando is shivering slightly. He had wrapped Dom up in the blanket and left himself sleeping on a thin strip of it. Dom isn't exceedingly warm in the damp blanket either, but it's better than the nothing Orlando has. Dom worms his way out of Orlando's grasp and stands. He covers Orlando up with the blanket then and tucks him in. His feet poke out the bottom but he shoddily be a little warmer now. He's still shivering but that should subside. Dom is cold now and shivers his way down to the lower deck, feeling a bit exposed now that the sun is coming up again. He investigates the clothes situation. He finds his clothes have dried quite a bit during the night just exposed to the wind. They are stiff with salt and still damp, but wearable. They're cold as he puts them on, certain places being less dry than others depending on how the flung articles landed on the deck.
When he shivers his way through the wind back up to Orlando's lovely form, he finds Orlando's eyes are cracked open a little and he has stopped shivering. He reaches a hand up toward him the way he did last night like a baby wanting to be picked up and Dom goes to him with some sort of instinct driving him. "Come here," he whines a little, hoarsely. Dom takes his hand and Orlando pulls him down to the deck again as if he were made of putty. Orlando opens the blanket and tucks him down under his chin. Dom feels drowsy again instantly, and thinks that he could really get used to this if given the opportunity.
"What time is it?"
"I dunno. I leave my watch and my wallet in my car at work."
"Ah. I would have too if I had known I'd be jumping in the ocean to rescue the man I'd later fuck into the deck."
It's been many hours now that he's spent getting to know this other Orlando, it shouldn't still be surprising, but it is. He supposes it makes sense though, in a way. Everybody needs affection. Everybody needs someone to touch and hold on to. He doesn't know where Orlando lives, who he lives with but if he had to guess he'd say alone. He probably fills that gap between sex and love with whatever he can get out of the people he brings home. Gay men so often being what they are, sex-mad and emotionally distant or fragile out of fear, Dom has dated a few, if Orlando needs this kind of contact and closeness, he's come to the right place. Still it's a shock, and as Orlando kisses him and crushes him against his own body, Dom smiles, grins helplessly.
They settle in and doze a while, not really sleeping because it gets too warm and yet the breeze is numbing the exposed parts, and the deck is just hard. "We should get going, Orlando mutters and hauls himself to his feet. Backlit by the sunrise, Orlando looks lovely and soft. He hauls up the anchor and sets them on their way without even getting dressed. He turns the boat in a direction Dom wouldn't have guessed was correct, they must have spun several times in the night and he has lost all sense of direction. How Orlando knows he isn't sure either.
He does climb into his shorts as they near the marina, buttons them with one hand and drops the sails with the other. They slow to a crawl as he lines them up in the narrow channel and turns on the motor pulling them into the slip. They tie off the boat, pick up their beer cans, the ones that didn't roll off the deck during the little incident, put the place back the way it was, and Orlando steals some petrol from the shed to fill upGiaconi's tank. Dom is dragging, some three hours sleep already bogging down his body and mind, although there is a freshness to everything too that is nice; that burning-eyed feeling that comes from an early start in the morning and the tender fatigue of of a night spent in very good company.
It's as Dom is helping Orlando put the unfinished beer in the trunk of his car that his hands start sweating. He doesn't know what happens now. The suspicion gnaws in his gut that things are going to go back to the way they were ten hours ago because Orlando hasn't said a word since they headed back in never mind touched him. Dom isn't expecting too much, not yet. He doesn't need reassurance every other second, but it's nerve wracking to think that either Orlando will continue to be a prick or that Dom in his paranoia will interpret his natural cantankerousness as hate again.
Orlando closes his trunk and leans on the bumper of his car looking beat. "You have class this morning?"
That's a normal question. "No. Just Monday and Wednesday."
"Oh right. I knew that."
A car pulls into the lot and the crunch of the tires on the sandy pavement alarm Dom for some reason, as if they can see by his body language that he is trying to get close to him, as if they could hear what he is thinking.
"Charlie." Orlando says.
"Huh?"
Charlie gets out of his car with his lunch and a fishing rod and tackle box. Not going to be doing too much work today it looks. He approaches them at a pace that would be leisurely for a seventy year old blind man. "Good. You're both here early. Time to take down that shed. There's pry bars in the tool box. Get to it. And don't use the sledge hammer. I want to reuse some of that timber and I don't' want people complaining about the noise. Just dismantle it.. Dominic. You're lighter I think so you should probably do the roof. Don't leave a mess. Haul all the wood to the other side of the marina so we can start putting the new shed up." Charlie walks off toward the office to prepare for a hard day's fishing. Orlando turns and looks at Dom mournfully.
"Fuuuuck," he groans.
The shed comes apart in five hours of sweating and hauling. They end up running the hose from the nearest slip all the way to the shed because, one, they're parched from drinking, sex, sweating, and swallowing sea water, and two, to flush away about a thousand spiders and other nasty things living in the roof. They spend the time working in silence and Dom is getting tired of his stomach clenching and tired of thinking about it, tired of wondering if he's going to ignore him tomorrow. Getting angry that it is exactly the way it was before. He doesn't want a fuck buddy that he can't talk to. He doesn't want to sleep with someone who is too good to be his friend, too. He bites his lip trying not to feel cheated or accept that what happened out on the boat should stay on the boat.
There is just one and a half walls left plus the cinder block foundation, Dom is spraying the wood down to wash away the crud when Orlando speaks up for the first time in all those long hours.
"Oi. Squash face. Need the hose over here."
Dom bristles and turns to Orlando a few metres away, looking through the exposed studs of the wall. He doesn't move or speak.
Finally Orlando turns to him as well to see what is taking so long. That's when Dom pulls the trigger on the hose. It smacks him in the chest and Dom re-aims and sprays Orlando's shocked face and open mouth with icy cold high-pressure water. Orlando puts up his hands and turns away yelling garbled curses. Dom lets go and watches. Orlando looks much more like a drowned rat than a merman or mythical God when he's been affronted and assaulted rather than diving dashingly into the water to a fair lad's rescue. Orlando breathes, and drips, rubs his eyes clear and stares at Dom.
"You are so dead," he says with as much malevolence as a pretty face like his can muster with a grin splitting it in two.
"Oh shit," Dom spits, drops the hose, and runs.
Orlando catches him without even trying, grabbing the band of his shorts and tumbling him to the ground. Dom is laughing and scrambling away but Orlando slogs his way back to standing with his wet feet squeaking on the grass and drags him back toward the framework of the shed, and the hose. Orlando puts him in a headlock while Dom squeals and struggles.
Orlando puts the hose on him on the crown of his head point blank, soaking Dom and himself in the process. "You like that? Are you still thirsty Dom? All that seawater you must be."
Dom manages to wiggle free and knocks the hose from Orlando's hand and scrambles away. Orlando grabs him by the belt loops. Dom flips over to defend himself, but Orlando, wet and now muddy and full of grass clippings climbs up his body and kisses him solidly. Dom melts a little with temporary, guarded relief.
"Are you trying to get my attention?" Orlando asks after separating their faces a few centimetres.
Dom hates it when people who aren't nerds outsmart him. "No," he chuckles.
Orlando kisses him again briefly and maybe slightly grinds his hips against him but that could have been unintentional. "I am so fucking tired I could sleep right here," he sighs and lets his body become dead weight on top of Dom. Dom coughs and slaps at him weakly "Fucker. You're heavy. Get off!" Orlando just smiles like a sloth.
"What did we sleep like three hours?" Orlando lifts off of him a little and just sits on Dom's thighs. Orlando looks with puffy eyes up into his skull. "And we left about nine, came back about five. Hour there hour back. Hour drinking and trying to drown you. Means we were fucking for about two hours." he says with a coy little tilt to his head. Dom tries not to blush but thinks he probably is a little.
"Nah," he says.
"Yeah I think so."
"Um. Someone is going to see us."
"So?"
"So we'll get fired."
"They can't fire us for being poofs."
"I think they can fire us for being poofs while were supposed to be working."
"Bah. Semantics," Orlando says and dismounts.
They finish up the shed, then drag themselves into the shade for a rest. Dom sits and thinks, wonders if this is how it's going to be, silence interspersed by wild and flagrant flirtation for the rest of the summer. His balls will fall off if so.
They have boats they could be scrubbing right now, and any other day that is what they would do, to save them some work at the end of the week, but they're both drained, and they sit there for long odd minutes. They could go home but neither of them makes a move to do so. They could go back to work but neither of them has the initiative. They could go sailing perhaps, but who knows ifGiacnoi will come for his boat this afternoon. Finally Orlando speaks and it's the best thing Dom has heard all day, despite his fatigue, despite the extremely hard and long fucking he got last night. It just doesn't matter.
Orlando turns to him, crushes his empty cup of water and says, "You want to go see my boat?"

LOTRPS: DM/OB: Between the Sheets

2008-07-01T11:34:00.000-05:00

LOTRPS: EW/OB Remix: Pretty Babies

2008-06-25T15:48:00.003-05:00

Title: Pretty Babies

Orig. Author: Geniusartist

Orig. Link: Pretty Babies

Remix: Hermit9

Pair: OB/EW

Rating: R-ish for a couple bad words and some clothed undulations

Warnings: none

Disc: Made up. Not only is this not true, I didn't even make up the lies!

Notes: Written for the 2007 lotrips_remix. Much thanks to kissing_athelas (LJ) for the beta.

Changes: No longer an AU except in as much as it is still totally made up. Starts a bit before the original story. Gave some of the other guys something to do, filled it out a bit here and there with trivial stuff, a ball of lint that crawled in my ear while reading the rules for the challenge itself. Changed it to present tense because I can't write in past tense anymore for some reason, and I made Orlando kind of a twat. Kept the dialog almost exactly the same because it was really the meat of the original story. Orig. Word Count: 1600 Remix Word Count: 3900

Sean is squatting on the lawn, face icy and concentrated under the pouring rain and dingy light of sodium lamps. He has a pile of soaked laundry in front of him on the grass. A dozen or so little socks in a rainbow of colors have been fished out and scattered on top of the pile, Ali's socks, and he has a burlap bag full of dried beans nicked from the caterers or who knows where sitting leaning against his thigh, probably sprouting by now.

"What are you doing?" Dom yells to him over the drumming rain, numb fingers holding his hood over his head as the wind tries to blow it back.

"They're in there again," Sean says coolly after a damning pause, continues his baffling activity.

Dom looks at the house. Smoke scuffles in the wind around the chimney top, rain batters the crosshatched windows just meters away. Dom feigns nonchalance, as if it was normal to be standing out in a downpour in front of your mate's house in the middle of the night filling socks with beans. "So what?"

"So I'm going to make sure they know they're not alone," he growls acidly.

"Oh for Chrissakes Sean." Dom's car is puttering in the driveway next to Sean's. He shrugs and sighs, exasperated; keeping Sean sane is Lij’s job. "If they want to bugger each other up the arse, let them."

"No!" Sean stands to face him; his words spit rain from his drenched face into the air. "Orlando is a prick. I'm not going to let him-"

"He's not a prick. He's just a... twat. There's a difference."

Sean glares at him and crouches on the ground again. "I know the difference, but apparently Lij doesn't," he mutters, but Dom still catches it.

Dom gapes. "Of all the petty, imbecilic, hateful..." He flusters and can't come up with anything more to say. He shouldn't need to. Sean is a great guy, salt of the earth, but subject to the dark side when his emotions get entangled. Dom knows this and it settles him. He takes a few breaths between raindrops and makes a tiny little whine, petulant because he doesn't want to be here. "Why the socks, Sean?" he gripes. If he can figure that out maybe this will make a little more sense on the whole and he won't feel so wretched.

Sean ties the last of seven of the socks filled with dried pintos across the top, hefts it in the air gently. "I don't wanna break anything," he says like it should be obvious. Dominic chuffs. "I just don't want him getting hurt." Sean says then, suddenly, pointing a purple toe at Dom. "I don't want Orlando to use him and spit him out. He's...."

"I know. They're just kids." Sean is collecting his bean bags off the ground, dirty and dark, and rises to his feet again, looks tired and stripped. "If you go in there, Sean," he says it slow but loud and clear so Sean doesn't miss a single word, "you're just going to make it worse. Like...reverse psychology or something, you know? You're going to tell him it's a bad fucking idea to get involved with Orlando and you're going to make him want to all the more. I'm telling you, just stay out of it. You're too wound up about it, you'll end up doing something stupid that will just launch them into bed together even faster." Sean just looks at him now with almost three meters separating them, looks at him with sad Samwise eyes. Dom thinks he must be mirroring that look just on Sean's behalf.

~*~

“I’d bet we’d have really pretty babies.” The fire snaps once and Elijah looks up from his script and blinks huge eyes at him a few times. Orlando wonders what fate would befall the Universe if Elijah had to wear those Coke bottle glasses that make everyone's eyes huge on top of their existing hugeness.

“What?”

“You and me, Lij,” Orlando strokes his jaw once, thoughtfully. “We'd have pretty babies.”

Elijah just rolls his eyes, by this point immune to the things that come out of Orlando’s mouth. Mostly. “Alright, whatever you say.” Nutball. Elijah refocuses his attention on the script in his hand.

“Don’t you find me attractive?”

Elijah carefully extricates his glasses from his face and sets them on the little table between his chair and the couch. Before he answers, he sighs affectedly and leans his head back, folds his script beneath his arm, and counts to five in a whisper that Orlando should be able to hear. Elijah is playing, of course. He doesn't come over to Orlando's place to get work done; he comes because Orlando has a talent for distraction. Whether Orlando is playing, too, Elijah is not yet certain. If he isn't playing, though, and Elijah continues to, tomorrow will leave him alone and bored without anyone to entertain him with absolutely inane ideas and random musings. Plus, someone else will get to enjoy Orlando’s pout for the entire afternoon, Sean, maybe, or Dom, and the day will end with him crying on Sean's shoulder (because Sean’s the only one with the patience after a full day of Orlando in a pout) in the middle of the pub, burbling about how everyone thinks he's a twat. So it bears consideration.

“What’s this sudden obsession you’ve developed?” Elijah waggles a hand dismissively at him. “You, me, babies?”

“I don’t really want to have babies with you,” Orlando says with a half-smile and half-eye-roll, admitting without saying that he half-thinks that is what Elijah thought.

“I’m heartbroken.” Elijah smiles and almost, almost feels it. A broken candy heart, maybe.

”I know.”

“So?”

“So.”

Elijah sighs. “Now you play hard to get.” He scowls at himself for a millisecond for phrasing his comment in that particular fashion. He looks at his drained rum and Coke and scowls again. Captain and subtlety don't mix apparently.

“I was just thinking…”

“Against your better judgment," Elijah cuts in, modestly, because what he was thinking was despite over two decades-worth of anecdotal evidence suggesting it is a bad idea for Orlando to use his brain unsupervised.

“Ha-ha. Been hangin’ around Dominic too much. Sarcasm doesn’t really suit you.” Orlando rolls his eyes again.

“Jealous?”

“What if I am?” Orlando says automatically.

Elijah narrows his eyes, a mockery of a suspicious glare, because he isn't, not for a second. “You’re not, so stop yanking my chain.”

“I can yank something else if you’d prefer,” Orlando says with a proud smile.

“I would, actually, but since you’re nothing but a tease and you won’t, this entire conversation is a useless exercise.”

“You know me so well?”

“Unfortunately, I do.”

Orlando lets the silence stretch a moment. “Pity.”

“It is.”

…

“Babies?”

“What?”

Elijah's still curious. What the hell had he been thinking for all that silent time before this conversation started? If you can call it a conversation without lying by omission. “What about you and me and babies?”

“Why, Elijah,” Orlando puts a limp hand to his fluttering heart, “I thought you’d never ask,” and flops onto the couch.

“Answer the question, you fairy!” Elijah laughs and throws a crumpled sheet of loose leaf at his head. Orlando bats it away with pleasure and grins. Something about the way Elijah laughs makes him excited, something about the way his eyes dart away immediately. Something about the way he says fairy all nasally and hard, with that 'r' just right there, not all light and high the way the Aussies say it. He doesn't know how he says it himself, tests it out silently on his lips but he can't hear it. It just sounds like it is supposed to.

Orlando clears his throat. “I was just thinking - Shut up and let me finish. I was just thinking. Y’know, if, say physiologically, either of us were able to have babies, and say we, as in you and I – ”

“There’s no one else in the room, but thank you for the clarification.”

“ – COPULATED,” Orlando cuts back in with a boom, “and one of us were to be gifted with the miracle of life - , oh stop rolling your eyes, it’s really not that attractive up close and personal. Ow! Stop throwing things at me, I bruise easily. We’d have really pretty babies. That’s all.” He shrugs and looks up at Elijah, who, by virtue of being to the left of the sofa arm he is draped across, is 'up' for Orlando.

“Well, that was devastatingly disappointing.” Elijah wonders when he started using adverbs in every fucking sentence. American's don't do that.

Orlando stretches back a bit more to look at Elijah totally upside down, his mouth opening wide with the stretch in his throat, and Elijah has to stifle a giggle because Orlando’s hands are pulled up and limp, and as he talks he looks like a hungry baby bird waiting for Elijah to regurgitate into his mouth. “There’s that scientific theory about the underpinnings of sexual attraction," Orlando says. And yeah, Elijah is so attracted to bird vomit. Then Orlando rolls over and the illusion is happily destroyed and replaced with puppy Orlando, his paws beneath his chin. Orlando's face goes fuzzy a second, his brow flat and eyes clouded as he thinks. "Eh, chemistry, it’s called," he says, but doesn't look entirely convinced. Then he putters out. He picks at the arm of the sofa distractedly, glassy-eyed from just one drink.

Elijah remains still but looks around the room with just his eyes. When no more on the "underpinnings of sexual attraction" is revealed, after a moment's patient wait, Elijah leans forward, elbows on his knees, face inches from Orlando's. He writes rapt attention on his face, a little too much to be real. “I’m slightly intrigued. Continue.”

Orlando grins bashfully, found out. He may have been waiting for encouragement to continue, and Elijah did want him to continue for some reason, but he didn't have to give that attention to Orlando for free.

Neither does Orlando have to reciprocate on the house. Smiling still, he sits up, stretches long and leisurely, then crosses one leg over the other and presses his lips together prudishly, hiding a larger smile, and takes Elijah's glasses from the table, tries not to let his eyes water putting them on. Elijah doesn't think it's likely he can see a thing right now, so when Orlando then takes his own script from the crease in the couch and places it delicately on his knee, folding his hands on top, Elijah doesn't stifle the bite to his own lower lip that in turn stifles the urge to...do so many other things. Orlando is making him pay.

Orlando smirks a little through his act and then straightens and puts on an Oxford accent. “Well, supposedly, where mutual attraction derives from hormonal impulse, pheromones," he says with a twirling hand gesture, "such a coupling is ideal in reproducing the most attractive offspring.”

Orlando’s pupil nods once, deeply, eyes closed briefly above a smug frown. “Ah. I have heard of that theory," he adds.

“Certainly.”

“What’s the antithesis to that?”

“Pardon?”

Elijah sputters laughter through his teeth. “I thought you’d been brushing up on your vocabulary.”

“Wanker.”

“Indeed you have!” Elijah also pulls off an Oxford accent, badly, twirls his own hand in the air and laughs, catching the pillow thrown at him, but not before it hits his face.

“People forced into coupling wouldn’t have as aesthetically pleasing results," Orlando says with finality.

Elijah's mouth forces down a smirk. “That implies that said people wouldn’t be chemically attracted to each other, regardless of context.”

“True.”

“But if they were, then they’d still produce lovely babies, whether the act of sexual congress was consensual or otherwise.”

“Hmmm. I suppose.” Then a funny thing happens to Orlando's face, kind of puckers a little, then he shivers and the look is gone.

“Cold?”

“No, just wigged out. Let’s keep the conversation to people fucking in voluntary circumstances.”

“Language, tsk, tsk,” Elijah says and smiles at him with softly lidded eyes.

“You like it dirty.” Orlando mirrors the look.

“You wouldn’t know.”

“I’ve heard…”

“Right. Well rumors are so called for a reason.”

“So you like it not dirty?” Orlando licks his lips quickly and raises a brow in his direction.

“You’re like a dog with a bone!”

“Woof-woof," Puppy Orlando says with his paws on the furniture again.

“What’s the sudden interest in my sex life?”

“Sudden? I’ve always been interested in your sex life.”

“Intellectually.” Elijah adds with a nod.

Orlando nods back.

...

“Do you find me attractive?” Orlando takes the glasses off his face with a wince and sets them back down on top of his curled and mangled script. He stands, puts his hands in his pockets, realizes he's fidgeting. He picks up his drink from the table; it has left a round puddle that seeps into the pages of his script.

“That’s just stating the obvious.”

“Obvious?”

“I thought you were the quicker one here.”

“Indulge me, then.”

“I told you, we’d make pretty babies.”

Elijah nods and raises his glass to Orlando in a toasting gesture that Orlando immediately reacts to, goes to put his own forward as well before he realizes they're both empty. “You’re already up," Elijah says with an expectant smile. He keeps the smile on his face as he awaits Orlando's return, and his ears prick and pick out a murmur behind the crackle of fire and ice and the soft glub and fizz of the soda coming from the kitchen. “What’s that?” he calls to him.

Orlando comes around the corner again, hands him his drink. “What if my interest isn’t purely intellectual? Cheers.”

“It’s murkier,” Elijah says with his eyes on his glass.

“Two parts cola, one part rum. Just followed the recipe.”

Elijah smiles lightly and takes a sip. “Wasn’t complaining.”

~*~

"Listen, Sean. It'll be fine. He'll be fine. Elijah's not thick. He knows what he's doing, and Orli isn't all that bad. Bit of a twat, yeah, but he means well. He wouldn't hurt Elijah on purpose. I mean, what are you really worried about?"

Sean slumps. He's soaked through and shivering. So is Dom, and he wishes Billy was here. He'd have Sean smiling and placated in two seconds flat. "I just. I just can't stand the thought..."

Dom smirks just a little. "Of what."

"Of him and..."

"Orli? Naked? Together?" Sean grimaces and Dom lets the grin spread across his face. Poor bastard. He's going to pay for making Dom stand out in the freezing rain all night, and for the head cold that is now inevitable. "Can't stand to think of them kissing, and licking each other's sweat-soaked bodies?" Dom sidles a bit closer to him.

"Dom."

"It must be unbearable to think of them grinding and huh huh huh huh, breathing heavy and stroking each other to a blissful, mind-blowing climax," Dom emotes with as much gristly enunciation as he possibly can, letting his eyes flutter closed and licking his lips.

Sean edges away. "Dom. Stop it." Sean can't even look at him.

"Or what about-"

"DOM!"

They both get a little wide eyed and look to the nearest window of the house, realizing how loud that was as it echoes down the street and fearing they've been discovered, but they sit and watch for a few moments and nothing happens.

"Listen, Sean. Just because you don't like the idea of men having sex is no reason to stick your nose where it doesn't belong. You and I both know Elijah isn't a child. He doesn't need protecting, certainly not from Orli. Guy can't kill an ant without feeling guilty."

Sean wavers, physically and emotionally, if the look on his face is any indication, and then finally slumps one last time.

"Come on. Let's pick up your socks and go home."

They gather Sean's laundry and his beans slowly, sludge through the wet grass and puddles and head toward their cars. Dom turns, halfway there, just to look back at Sean behind him because he doesn't hear him, doesn't feel him back there any more. Sean has stopped. His laundry is on the ground at his feet and a home-made bean sock is clutched in his hand, his head turned to the window like a moth to a flame. Dom spills the beans and runs straight at him, collision course.

~*~

A startling bang against the window makes them both jump, jolts them away from their laced conversation. The window, a huge old style casing with soft hinges, takes the blow from the bird or whatever it was that met its end there and swings gently with the cold breath of the wind, letting the heat out and the rain in.

“Eh, fuck,” Orlando mutters. He crosses the room quickly, one arm ineffectually shielding him from the deluge. Elijah watches his tee-shirt flap and ripple over his thin torso in the wind. He fumbles with the latch a moment and then turns and leans against the pane, dramatically dripping. Then his eyes fall on Elijah, still sitting dry and comfortable in his chair, drink in hand, and he scowls pertly. “Lot o’ help you were.”

Elijah beams. “I was admiring the view.”

“You just didn’t want to get your hair wet, princess.”

“And you look rather dashing with yours. Wet, I mean.” Orlando’s waxy mohawk resists the water and glitters supernaturally. Elijah would think it was intentional if he hadn't seen it happen.

“Don’t I always?”

“Look dashing? Well, yes, actually. You might as well be named Orlando Dashing Bloom.”

Orlando chuckles, lets his scowl go, and picks his way carefully back across the wet floor toward his friend. “Might as well.” He shivers. “Now I’m cold.”

Elijah pops up, leaving his drink behind. “Be back in a mo’. Try not to miss me too much.” Winks and blows a kiss behind him and returns promptly with a hand towel.

“Well, that should sufficiently dry my neck, thank you,” Orlando chuckles and takes the proffered cloth.

“It was the only thing hanging in the bathroom. I’m not going on a scavenger hunt.” Barely has any hair anyway, Elijah thinks privately. Not like it could hold more than a teaspoon.

Orlando rubs his head and face dry and then tries to twist the tiny towel up around his head like a turban, but it really is too small. Won't stay there for more than a minute, especially with no hair. “Still dashing?”

“More.” Elijah giggles, hiccups, then blushes.

Orlando laughs. “Lightweight.”

“Fairy.”

“Kettle. Black.”

“Yes, well.” Elijah reaches up to tug at the hem of Orlando’s water-dappled t-shirt. “Best if you take this off, you know.” Gestures with his head toward the fireplace. “Sit there for a bit and dry off.”

“If you want to see me naked, all you have to do is ask.” Orlando's hand circles that wrist and pulls Elijah up out of his seat to stand toe to toe with him. That’s it for the towel; it unravels and lies limply over Orlando's head with the fringe poking out all over. Elijah looks down and around, doesn't look at their joined hands, doesn't look him in the eye.

“I don’t…I’m not…” he stutters. Elijah being coy is ridiculously frustrating. Mostly because Orlando can't tell if he's acting or not.

“It isn’t.” Fuck him if he doesn't have boldness on his side though.

Orlando creeps his fingers in on Elijah's arm, walks them up to his elbow and Elijah has to shuffle forward to keep himself upright. He looks up finally, calling upon a tiny back-up reservoir of bravery. “What?” he squeaks and feels hot all over because his voice isn't supposed to sound like that ever.

“My interest…it isn’t purely intellectual.” Orlando says quiet and personal, and leans in closer, almost imperceptibly, with his head tilting with elven gentility. “More speculative, I’d say.”

Elijah almost wants to laugh and make a crack about the unfathomability of the word "intellectual" ever passing Orlando's lips; that should be the thing to do right now. A little smirk tugs there, but all he can do is parrot back to Orlando because quick quips are not within reach when he is pressed so close he can feel body heat. “Spec…” Orlando swallows the rest of that word with sweet lips pressed to Elijah's and revealing a searing hot tongue at odds with his rain-cooled skin. Elijah makes a little noise and exhales harshly, feels it on his upper lip as Orlando responds in kind. His mouth falls open and Orlando takes that opening and presses deeply onward. Elijah just lets him. His fingers come to rest on Orlando's ribs and he dips his head back to let Orlando in deeper still. When Orlando snakes a damp arm around him only a second later to lay at the small of his back, and then presses him full length to him and grinds once against his hips, Elijah's arms flail upward to link around the back of his neck. He hops, he actually hops then, and Orlando catches him under his backside turning the kiss almost bruising. The towel finally slips off Orlando's head and flops unnoticed to the floor.

Eventually though, Elijah starts to slip. He slides down Orlando's slim hips an inch at a time, feet finding the floor once again, sneakers squeaking just a little on the damp wood, and the kiss, blazing hot still and making their lips raw, finally breaks. “Babies,” Elijah gasps, eyes wonky and blinking. Still huge.

“Babies?” Orlando repeats through a fuzzy smile and gets sucked in by the soft skin of Elijah's neck, kisses, licks. “Mmmm. Kind of tangy.”

“Uhhhhh…” Orlando's breath right there is tickly and a shiver runs up Elijah’s back. “I’m…right, that’s good… Convinced.” Sean is not going to like this. Whatever Elijah wants, really, really wants to do, Sean objects to. Considering how much he wants this right now, he's surprised Sean isn't here yelling and throwing things and telling him how stupid he is for wanting it. He reaches up and kisses Orlando again. “Our offspring would be quite aesthetically pleasing.”

“Quite,” Orlando whispers across his lips.