Sisko pressed his fingers together. He opened his mouth to speak, drawing a deep breath, then stopped. Instead, he reached for the baseball – then stopped again. A smile threatened to form, and came out more as a bare, humorless grin as he eyed the trio standing before his desk.

Jadzia, first to the right, made no such attempts to hide what was, for lack of a polite term, a shit-eating grin. Twice, she caught Sisko's eye, knowing full well that he'd be the first to break contact, and twice, he did, knowing that if he continued down this path, he'd end up with one more unspeakable anecdote from the Old Man.

Instead of dooming himself to this path, Sisko switched his gaze to Bashir – who would not bring his eyes down from the ceiling. His lips were drawn in, and he slowly rocked up and down on his heels. Squirming, that was the word. The man was squirming with discomfort, an affliction that was worsened tenfold by the third present in the lineup: Garak. Garak, who carried that same, wide-eyed, polite smile that came just shy of Cardassia's own blend of shit-eating grin.

Sisko drew another deep breath.

"Would someone like to try explaining this?" he offered slowly.

"It's really quite simple, Captain," Garak replied. "You see, I've been reading a great many fascinating tales regarding the, shall we say, more private affairs of human existence."

"Sex, you mean."

A strained snort came from Sisko's left. He did his best to ignore it.

Garak blinked once, amiably. "Quite."

Sisko sighed through his teeth. "Start from the top, Mr. Garak."

"With pleasure! Ah... poor word choice."

The next snort was not quite as successfully restrained, as Major Kira, attempting to stand stiff as a statue, broke into a loud coughing fit.

(earlier, on the Promenade...)

"Julian! Just the person I wanted to see."

Bashir smiled and turned in his seat, setting down his utensils. "Garak. I didn't expect to see you here today."

"Well, I admit, I hadn't quite planned to drop by, but a discovery has put my tailoring services on hold, for the moment," Garak said, as he took the seat opposite Bashir. In his hands, he grasped a data pad – which, Bashir, noticed, he had pressed to his chest.

"Afraid of spilling your secrets?" he nodded at the pad.

"Secrets? Your head is still teeming with conspiracy theories about my past, Doctor. In fact, I had wished to share this particular discovery with you."

Curiosity piqued, Bashir leaned forward. And there, in that tiniest of movements, he knew he'd made his first mistake. The second Bashir shifted, Garak had that smile on: the one that promised unfathomable levels of complex, half-teasing conversations, the likes of which would generally end with Bashir either chastised, or confused.

"Garak..." he cautioned.

Garak said nothing, but slowly lowered the data pad, pushing it across the table, before sitting back slightly in his chair. He looked far too comfortable. Sighing inwardly, Bashir picked up the data pad in one hand, while taking a calming sip of his drink from the other.

The drink that, a second later, was inhaled sharply and spluttered out, as the contents of the pad revealed themselves. He spent several minutes hacking, and dabbing awkwardly at the front of his uniform to remove his 'calming sip' from his clothes. When he'd gotten at least an ounce of his breath back, his wide eyes met Garak's.

"Yes. Well. Perhaps, ah, perhaps we'd be better off discussing this in my office-"

"Nonsense, Doctor! It's all perfectly natural. Really, I never expected such a reaction from you, with your profession. You work so closely with anatomy."

"Yes, but this is really not appropriate..."

Bashir trailed off, his face flushing as he glanced down at the pad again. Suddenly, Garak's indignation tapped at his conscience. Of course he was a doctor. What was he doing? He couldn't get flustered over this, not when he'd seen a lifetime of patients with related emergencies enter his ward. He straightened up, missing the growing smirk on Garak's face as he stalwartly began to read further.

It went well, at first. That is, it went well until Garak began to comment.

"You may not know this, but on Cardassia, this plethora of content is absolutely unheard of! I have to applaud humanity for your endeavors to make their reproductive activities so versatile."

Several heads in the Replomat turned. All of them were human. Bashir felt his face warm considerably, and Garak was now making an effort to calm his expression.

"At first, I had assumed the 'Kama Sutra' to be some form of ancient religion – and my, what a surprise that turned out to be. But I was naive, you see, so naive. I realize now that I've barely scratched the surface! How do you maintain so many positions and keep your stamina?!"

"Garak-"

"The human capacity to mate with every conceivable object they come across is truly remarkable. There is, you'll find, quite a fantastic description there, of a gentleman's keen interest in an Earth fruit known as a watermelon."

Bashir slid slowly down in his seat, yet was unable to tear his eyes away from the pad. "H-how, er... how... long did you spend looking at this?"

Garak tilted his head. "As long as I spend on any project, naturally. If I'd skimmed I would have missed so many interesting facts – such as the delicate art of inserting one's entire hand into-"

"GARAK!"

"Now, Doctor. Professional attitude, remember."

"You are doing this on purpose."

And there it was. Garak didn't reply, and finally, Bashir caught the smirk. He scowled in response. "People are watching us," he muttered through clenched teeth.

"I've heard that also excites members of your species."

Bashir now matched the innards of a pomegranate in color. He tossed the data pad onto the table with slightly more force than necessary, folding his arms and fixing Garak with a glare. Whether he had somehow miscalculated his throw in flustered distraction, Bashir would never know, for the data pad slid to a stop at the edge of the table – and toppled to the floor with a noticeable clatter.

Garak made as if to recover it, then halted, looking up just behind Bashir's shoulder. His smile broadened once more.

"Jadzia! Would you be so kind...?"

Bashir jumped so badly that he became in danger of falling out of his chair, for there, making her way for the data pad, was Jadzia Dax.

"Jadzia! Lovely to see you, you needn't worry about picking that up, just leave it, Garak's merely making a joke-"

Jadzia cast him a suspicious glance. "You seem awfully jumpy about this, Julian. Is this another report that Sisko's not going to like?"

"No! It's nothing. Don't look. DON'T-"

She ignored him, turning over the pad to examine the contents. There was a heavy pause,where Bashir suddenly noticed that the entire Replomat had fallen silent. Garak looked practically predatory, staring not at Jadzia, but rather at Bashir.

"Oh! I see," Jadzia concluded, breaking into a coy smirk. "You should know better than to leave this lying around, where anyone could look."

"That much is my fault, my dear," Garak said pleasantly. "It was to the Doctor here that I intended to show it, but he became so excited by the prospect of it that he lost his grip."

"That is NOT true, Garak, and-"

"'Busty Shemale Gangbang,'" Jadzia read thoughtfully, as if naming a plant. "Hmm. You know, I remember a time, back on Trill, when a party of humans landed-"

Even knowing it was childish, Bashir clapped his hands to his ears, unsuccessfully trying to drown her out. "No. Absolutely not."

"This is very comprehensive, Garak," Jadzia continued, scrolling through the text. "Oh! A dominatrix. 'Mistress Teaches Slave a Lesson.' Interesting."

"Aren't humans simply magnificent?" said Garak happily. "Why, there are even cases of pleasure derived from their own bodily secretions!"

Several chairs screeched on the floor, as their occupants scrambled out, appearing green, and casting mortified glares in Garak's direction. Garak waved the tips of his fingers cheerfully to them as they departed, and within minutes, half the population of the Replomat had scattered to the four winds. Both Garak and Jadzia exchanged a devilish look. Bashir lowered his head to the table.

"I never want to speak to either of you, ever again," he groaned into the surface. "Yes, I acknowledge – in an entirely mature and scientific manner – that the human race is very, erm, creative when it comes to sexuality. Are you happy? You're going to drive the entire Promanade into the wormhole with descriptions like that!"

"Descriptions like what?"

All three of them turned abruptly, like schoolchildren caught misbehaving. Not five feet away, standing with his arms folded, and a look of disapproval on his face, was Odo.

(Sisko's office...)

"-which is how we find ourselves in your company, Captain," Garak finished.

Kira gave up. Sisko shut his eyes for a good ten seconds, as the Major burst into horrified laughter, planting her hands on the desk for support.

"You... let me get this straight," she gasped, "Odo escorted you from the Promenade for lewd public disturbance?!"

"That sums it up nicely, yes," Garak replied.

"Oh... oh, this is good. What did he say? There had to have been a comment about humanoids in there somewhere."

"Now that you mention it, we did try to persuade him that he could be just as flexible with some of the positions as so many of the lovely specimens in the videos-"

"If we could get back on topic," Sisko barked, "I'd like a report on this incident, from all four of you. Something about officers needing to maintain a mature and professional conduct. Let's say, a nice, long report."

Garak raised a brow. "Officers? I assume that, since I do not count as one of that number, I may select a different subject," he drew out a data pad from his shirt, "Perhaps you'd like to read my original research?"

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"Wait a minute, four of us?" Kira stopped laughing abruptly.

"Four of you, Major," Sisko repeated flatly. "Dismissed!"

"Look on the bright side, Julian," Jadzia whispered, as they left Sisko's office, "I think you opened a whole new door for Garak. If I know Cardassians, they don't seem to get a lot of open action... Julian? Hey!"

Bashir quickened his pace, and didn't look back. It was a fact, however, that if any of them had looked back, they might have glimpsed Sisko. The Captain was leaning all the way back in his chair, and covering his eyes, as he, too, tried – and failed – to avoid succumbing to hysterical laughter.

A/N: This is simultaneously the best and worst thing I have ever written, and frankly, I never thought that this was how I'd end up writing a Star Trek fanfic. This dumpster fire of a troll fic was inspired from a post from crisisoninfintefandoms over at Tumblr, which reads as the following:

"There are several fanfics out there that deal with a smitten Bashir trying to research stuff about both Cardassian courting and sexual practices, and running into that famous Cardassian obfuscation/secrecy. Like, there's probably is Cardassian porn out there, it's just…really hard for him to get a hold of, y'know? And I love those stories, they are hilarious. But has anyone considered Garak trying to research human sexuality and running into an…opposite problem?

"Like, instead of there being an absence of information, there's just…so damn much that it becomes impossible to sort it out and make any kind of sense of it. After all, surely ALL of these can't be common human sexual practices. Right? Right?"