That Thursday was the two year anniversary of Elizabeth having begun her store, Miscellaneous. She smiled fondly around at the shelves and displays that, two years ago, had either been empty or had not yet been replicated. Those days had terrified her. The entire store had begun with a half-formed thought and when it had begun to look like it might actually happen she had succumbed to a panic born of her own stupid thought that she could do any of it.
It was when she was sampling her way through some of Quark's less expensive liquors that she met Garak. In later weeks she had found herself nearly obsessing about his appearance in the bar, but that night all she could do was stare at him as he took the seat next to her. He ignored her until he managed to procure his own drink from Quark's brother, Rom.
"Why are you staring at me?" he muttered without even looking at her.
She kept looking at him but her eyes widened slightly. He had taken several drinks from his glass before finally looking at her and she was still staring.
"Well?" he snapped.
"Sorry," she replied in the closest she had ever come to a breathy voice. "I don't know why I'm staring, but I can't seem to stop."
Silence (which was not actually silent, but just an isolated stillness surrounded by the noisy patrons of Quark's) stretched between them until Garak pulled his gaze away to continue drinking. It was hard, but Elizabeth finally managed to tear her eyes away from him and stare at her hands before her. Now that she was looking away it was a lot easier not to look at him. But that was probably the power of alcohol.
Even as she had that thought she suddenly became a lot more uncomfortable with only being able to see him out of the corner of her eye. She was fairly certain that he was not looking at her, but she couldn't help feeling that his attention was still somehow focused on her. Before she could stop herself she blurted out, "I'm opening a store and I don't think I can handle it."
If she had been looking at him she thought she might have caught him laughing at her, but when he replied his voice held only a very vague amusement.
"Mmmm... I heard there was a new store opening on the promenade. Something rather unremarkable, wasn't it? Selling random trinkets?"
Elizabeth's spirits sank. "That would be it."
"What in the Universe made you think that was a good idea?" The amusement in his voice was more pronounced now. "Who would buy junk on a space station?"
"Tourists. People that travel like to bring stuff home to show the culture of where they visited."
Out of the corner of her eye she could see Garak shaking his head. "You're thinking of humans. Only humans are that sentimental."
Now that she was getting annoyed she found it easier to look at him and not stare. Of course, glaring probably wasn't much of an improvement.
"I've seen aliens from all over the Quadrant buying cheap crap from Quark all the time, and they paid a lot for it!"
A sly smile spread over Garak's face as he turned towards her. "Quark is a Ferengi. He would be an embarrassment to his species if he couldn't sell cheap trinkets to people for three times their worth." He gave a snort. "Most of the time he is an embarrassment, you must have been catching him on his good days."
Rom was serving someone two stools down from them and out of the corner of her eye Elizabeth could see him glance quickly at him and look away again. She felt her anger crumple away as quickly as it had come and looked away again, this time picking up her own drink and downing the rest. There was another pseudo-silence as Garak turned away from her.
"You can't handle running a store if you give up on the first person to criticise it."
She frowned at her empty glass as if Garak's voice had come from it instead of beside her. "I'm drunk and I don't need to explain anything to you," she replied tightly, addressing the glass.
"But I am a potential customer. How can you sell things to me if you don't convince me that your store is the one thing I must visit on my trip through the Alpha Quadrant?" His amusement was back.
"I'm not a sales person. I'm a customer service person. I don't want to force things on people if they don't want it."
Elizabeth's recollections following that weren't very clear, but she knew he must have offered to look over her store because they ended up there at some point and the next morning most of her sales items had been moved around. There was also a very hazy memory of him yelling at one of her shelves, but she always assumed it was a dream or something along those lines; every time she had seen him afterwards he had always been far too composed for that memory to make any sense. Not that yelling at a shelf made sense in anyone anyway.
It wasn't until three weeks later that she'd learnt his name when visiting Odo and it was another five weeks following that that they saw each other again. The somewhat friendship that had grown between them was entirely accidental through random encounters and would probably never have started if she hadn't been drunk that night in Quark's bar. In fact, she was willing to bet that he had become inebriated as well and their association probably wouldn't have begun if it wasn't for that either. It was all a big coincidence that had landed her the only acquaintance she had.
Elizabeth frowned at the shelves in front of her. Part of her frown was from the fact that thoughts of her business had now turned into thoughts about Garak. The rest of her frown was aimed at the shelf itself now that she realised she was looking at the one in her memory. Despite the fact that she had been drunk at the time, despite the fact that it was hazy and unreal enough to be a dream, some part of her always felt that the memory had been real and he had been yelling at this shelf.
The real problem was that she could never remember what had been on it at the time.
A/N: Published under threat of Tribbles. ;-)