Timeline: after «The Wire».
It was one of their ordinary lunches in the replimat. During the last few weeks Julian reconsidered what they meant to him and to the one whom he was lunching with. Two cups, intelligent talks about literature and everything around became something natural to both of them long time ago. They were acting like nothing had changed, though this mutual pretending had unlike origin. Julian tried to look at his friend from the different point after having known something so much personal about him, and Garak... was Garak. Yet today their usual subtle rhetoric unintentionally led them to some unexpected ground once again.
"I can't probably imagine you having a crush on someone."
Julian smiled archly, sipping his tarkalean tea.
"It may seem quite inconceivable to you, my dear doctor, since you know me as a man, alien to any strong passion besides fashion and a good literature," he made an almost unhearable pause, "but actually I had a crush once," Garak took a sip as well and shook his head. "However, it ended nowhere."
Julian opened his eyes wide and seemed to be eager to know all about it.
"Who was she?"
Garak smiled.
"As curious as always, are you, doctor?" Julian managed to catch some strange expression in his eyes that vanished in an instant as it had never been there. After a short silence that followed, while he was trying to seize something from the tailor's unflappable face, Garak proceeded. "She was the daughter of one of the Tein's best officers. Unbelievably naive for her age," he glanced Julian in the eyes with the look that was overtly telling "exactly like you, doctor".
Julian listened to him, trying to guess, which part of this story should be true or is there the truth in it at all. Nevertheless, what he had learned from their friendship was that every story that Garak plotted had its hidden meaning that the doctor almost always failed to understand. All of them seemed so sincere and believable that Julian felt himself half being enchanted and half being fooled. It bothered him, but at the same time he liked his stories. The enigma of Garak's past appeared unsolvable and yet he could try.
"I fell in love for her and for some short amount of time even dared to fancy that she felt the same. Obviously, I was flattering myself." Garak made a long pause, and Julian already opened his mouth to ask what happened next, when he heard him laughing faintly. "First I was thinking that one day she would notice me, but her father didn't seem to wish her a husband with uncertain roots," he took another sip of the rokassa juice. "I was desperate, could you imagine? He chose a good old friend of his to take the place beside his daughter. But that wasn't all, doctor," he made an accent, staring through the space. "She fell in love for him."
Julian swallowed due to a sudden unease. Garak's gaze seemed absent.
"And I started hating her."
"Why?" Julian's voice came out sadder than he intended.
Garak smiled vaguely. "My dear doctor, you're asking quite odd questions. There might be many reasons for starting hating her, but none of them I would like to sound." He tilted his head. "You wanted me to tell you who was she. I guess I gave you a proper answer."
"But was your story true?" Julian asked thoughtfully.
"All of my stories are true, doctor."
Julian had nightmares. They didn't come often, but life on Deep Space Nine wasn't easy, seeming devoted to add more reasons to wake up sweating at night. And it wasn't the first time when Julian woke up because of Garak coming to his dreams. The pain that twitched his face, the stubbornnes which with he rejected his help, the confidence that Julian can do nothing hurt him. The lines of their conversations recured to the memory, sharp as knives, as if it could help him to understand.
"And so they exiled you." A statement, not a question.
"That's right! And left me to live out my days with nothing to look forward to but having lunch with you."
There was so much bitterness in these words. Too much for someone to bear. The nightmare made them even worse, with his senses acute Julian felt himself intoxicated, drowning, breathless as if he could actually feel what Garak experienced while living on this station or saying these words.
"Well, I'm sorry you feel that way. I thought you enjoyed my company."
Another bitterness, his own now. That was so unfair of Garak to put it that way. Julian considered the circumstances, but it still hurt, knocking him off balance. He remembered how they first met. Was that just another lie?
"If you should require any apparel, or merely wish, as I do," the tailor said about two years ago by now, smiling blandly, as he used to smile, "for a bit of enjoyable company now and then, I'm at your disposal, doctor."
And then.
"Oh, I did. And that's the worst part. I can't believe that I actually enjoyed eating mediocre food and staring into your smug, sanctimonious face."
So much disgust and anger as Julian could never expect from someone with Garak's composure. Nary a hesitation to express what was hidden behind all the civility he used to address to the one he called a friend the very day they met. It froze Julian's heart, although he knew that all this fury was the result of an illness.
"I hate this place, and I hate you."
It just couldn't be true. Julian refused to admit that Garak's real feelings were these. How much regrettable one could tell when desperate and suffering as he was. All their civil talks, all this flirting and casting glances that day by day became a routine but the pleasant one. Were they that abhorrent?
Garak, always telling lies. Garak, claiming that he hates him while he doesn't. Something clicked in Julian's head, and the hot surge run down his spine.
Garak's eyelids were swollen and heavy. He looked tired and obviously displeased by the sudden interference that deprived him of sleep.
"Doctor, what an urge brought you here?"
A polite question. That disarming and yet impenetrable politeness was all he ever seemed to have for anyone on this station. Just politeness and an unflinching gaze. Julian looked anxious.
"Don't think that I'm not clever enough."
Garak blinked, appearing perplexed. He tilted his head to the side ever so slightly, examining Julian's face.
"If you came here to discuss some issue that involves your perception of what I may consider you to be, then why won't you just put it on during one of our next lunches?"
Tousled, improperly dressed, the doctor glared at him with frantic eyes as if he had just found out something essential.
"I solved your puzzle."
But actually there were so many puzzles that Garak offered him to solve during these years, taking into account that his good doctor can't even realize their very presence, that this shout looked quite ludicrous.
"You're talking quite enigmatically, doctor. I can't remember myself giving you any kind of puzzle that would bring you up here at this hour."
His voice sounded weary, but Julian seemed too excited to pay attention.
"You don't have to hate me."
Garak stiffened at recalling. The incident with the implant wasn't the one he would like to ever touch again.
"I guessed we discussed it all over."
He half-turned, ready to ask the doctor to leave and let him have some rest.
"Elim." Garak froze at the sound, staring him right in the eyes. "Yes, I know, it's your name. The first one." There was confidence in Julian's gaze.
"What do you want, doctor?" the tailor said calmly with some sort of inscrutable coldness underneath.
"I just came to tell you," Julian gave him a piercing look, "that your feelings are not unrequited."