Garak was settled rather comfortably into his seat as he worked, hand-stitching the hem of a gown that had been ordered by a Bolian quartermaster; she was serving on a Vulcan merchant ship bound to travel through the wormhole, and he had already completed the orders placed by the Vulcan members of the crew.
His shop, of course, was cold, and too bright, the seat beneath him with too soft a cushion that made his very skin feel uneven and uncomfortable. With the wire, of course, uncomfortable was all it was: a few years ago, he would have been quite pained, and wouldn't have been able to complete such delicate work with the ease and speed he did now, wouldn't have been able to concentrate for such a period of time on it.
It had been a pleasant, enjoyable week – one of the most enjoyable, in fact, since he had been exiled to the station. He had not relished the thought of being abandoned to Federation rule, forced to live amidst not only Bajorans and assorted traders, but more than that, live under the Federation's particular, democratic ideas, its insistent philosophies, its infectious spread, so much more insidious than the simple imperialism of Cardassia's Empire, or that of the Klingons, the Romulans. He had not feared it, had not resisted it beyond what was proper, but he hadn't relished it, and yet…
The Federation was not entirely what he expected.
He had been correct, of course, in many of his assumptions, but there were benefits to the Federation presence, small pleasures, if only in the variety that their presence offered to life.
Ha. Variety.
If only Tain could see him now and pass his judgement, fascinated by a young man, naïve and foolish, perfectly fit to be taken in as a Cardassian bedwarmer and not much else, and yet—
It had been quite some years since Garak had had anyone else in his bed, and while he'd bedded non-Cardassians before – a Vulcan, here and there, a Klingon or two, a few Andorians – he'd never taken a Bajoran to bed, and had never taken a Human, either.
He was not so arrogant, for all his confidence in his own reputation, his own skills, to think himself above simple loneliness, the natural scale-song of one who wanted another's touch against his body; that weakness accepted, he also allowed himself to acknowledge why the young doctor, in particular, held such unique appeal. Oh, he was handsome, yes: that burnished, brown skin, its texture so very smooth and its weight so soft, thinner even than a Vulcan's thin flesh; those bright, brown eyes, shining and wide, and that alien face, so very expressive and so very revealing; that body, slim but athletic, laid all over with sculpted muscle that one knew was present even beneath his ugly Starfleet uniform. More than handsome, though, he was naïve. Naïve and innocent, so used to Federation ways, and yet the doctor showed… Promise.
Intrigue.
Garak had laid eyes upon Julian Bashir and his body had made the first bid of interest in him, and he was realistic enough to recognise that – he had considered, as was only natural, what a charged delight it might be to pin the handsome young creature over the nearest surface and fuck him witless, thought of the most prurient anecdotes told by other Cardassians of the way that Bajorans and Humans could be moulded about a Cardassian cock, envisioned impaling young Doctor Bashir and watch him bulge with the strain of Garak inside him – but it was not only his body that felt a certain intrigue, a certain curiosity.
Julian Bashir was just out of Starfleet Academy, a new graduate in his field, and he had been assigned Chief Medical Officer upon Deep Space Nine. This was not, in itself, particularly revealing – from what Garak could understand, with DS9 being such an unpredictable experiment, it seemed Starfleet had no desire to dispatch a more established medical officer with immediacy, and would have selected a new graduate even if Bashir had not taken the role – but what was revealing was Bashir's standing with the other medical staff.
Doctor Girani, who was one of the militia doctors, was a rather commanding woman – she had a way of disguising her commands when given so that they almost seemed like suggestions, and Garak had always been impressed, in years past, by her ability to impress her medical advice upon even the most stubborn and superior of Cardassian officers – and yet she did not, as he expected, complain to her wife in Quark's over the new Starfleet invader. Nor indeed did Doctor Ritahl, Girani's junior, who had only come up to the station in the past year; he had not heard complaint, either, from Jabara or Tagana, the Bajoran nurses on staff.
He had expected to. What was more than that, they expected to, as well – he recalled overhearing certain conversations between Girani and Aroya, not to mention other gossip that moved through the station's halls, that showed a certain commitment to a coming show of force. Girani had told her wife, several times over, that no matter how badly the Cardassians responded to their expulsion, no matter how much aid the Federation gave them, she would not be cowed by a Starfleet doctor with no understanding of Bajoran physiology, whose desire was to bark orders and expect her and her primitive medical staff to hop to it if he told them how high.
Garak well-remembered, having settled quietly for a drink in Quark's the first day of Starfleet's newly instituted routine, the way that Girani had slowly come to meet Aroya for their usual drink together after their respective work days were completed, the bemused expression on Girani's face, the way she slowly sank into her chair.
"You seem out of sorts," had said Aroya, touching her wife's hand and looking at her with her eyebrows raised, her lips curving into a surprised smile. Garak remembered feeling a curious emotion, seeing her so freely express that affection in such a public place – under the Cardassian officers, they had rarely touched one another except for in the most chaste of ways, knowing that any more clearly displayed affection would prompt cajoling and harassment. They knew the two of them were married, of course, but the most salacious displays of their curiosity could be more easily avoided, if they were given no reminders. "Were the Starfleet doctors really that bad?"
"We have two new doctors and a handful of nurses," Girani had replied. "The junior doctor, Polkiss, is going to be going between their runabouts and the planet proper – she won't always be here on the station – and the new CMO is a young man, not yet thirty. His name is Bashir. He's… very young, over-eager, energetic."
"You hate him?" asked Aroya.
"The first thing he asked us for was a list of Bajoran holidays," said Girani.
Aroya had blinked at her, tilting her head in surprise. "Holidays?"
"Holidays," Girani repeated, "and he asked when each of us had last taken leave to rest from our duties. He said that himself and Doctor Polkiss, neither of them observed any particular ceremonies of note, and that he was aware that Cardassian rostering wouldn't take such things into account. He said that in preparing the duty roster, he would like to prioritise us before the Starfleet medical personnel – our holidays, celebrations for ourselves or our children, anything we had not previously been able to attend to. He gestured to his own staff, all of us crammed into one of the few suites that would fit us all, and said they had agreed that for at least the first year, it was crucial that we were accommodated with priority – that later on, we would each discuss our own needs for leave accommodation amongst ourselves, but for now…" Garak had sipped his drink, taking in the expression on her face, thoughtful, surprised. "I wanted to believe, in the first instance, that Major Kira had advised him to do so, or one of his juniors – or that it was a condescension on his part."
"But?" asked Aroya.
"But then he came to me with a document on a PADD. The document laid out standard Starfleet medical procedure – he had separated it into four columns. Required Starfleet procedure, suggested practice, standard practice, and his own preference."
Aroya furrowed her brows, the ridges of her nose shifting with the movement, and she leaned her elbows on the table. "For patient treatment?"
"Partly, but not from a medical perspective," said Girani, shaking her head and chuckling. She gave her order to the Ferengi waiter who came by, and as she returned to her description of her day, she clutched Aroya's hand between her own, brushing her lips over the back of her knuckles. "No, this was for… Paperwork. Patient intake. Storage organisation, laboratory formation, administrative order, safety procedure. Everything from required questions in a medical history to the preferred order of medical instruments on a surgical tray. He said that before he'd even taken the job on DS9, he'd written it up – to make the transition smooth, he said. He said, I know I can be persnickety, he said."
"Persnickety."
"It's not in the translator."
"It's not."
"It means… particular. Controlling. Focused on minor details. He said, I've laid this all out very carefully, and if you have the time, Doctor, I'd like to discuss the changes I want to institute. I'm sure you might have objections to some of the changes. He wanted to make sure we could compromise – he wanted to make sure I would tell him specifics. In the same breath, he assured me that he did have medical experience and some command experience outside of simulations, but also that he knew he didn't know much about Bajorans or Cardassians, the infrastructure we preferred, that we worked under."
"I'm waiting for the but," said Aroya. "You were ready to butt heads with the new Starfleet doctor."
"I was," said Girani. "It looks like I'll have to find something else to butt heads over with him – it won't be over this."
The laugh they shared wasn't really about the young doctor, as yet a relative mystery to Garak: it was about relief, freedom, change. It was about a life shared together, the two of them holding hands, their marriage on the edge of a new and exciting precipice, a safe landing awaiting their fall.
Garak had taken his leave, when their conversation had turned from useful to grating, but he had kept an ear out for word of Julian Bashir, in the weeks that came after.
Much of the rest of command, so he heard, found him grating – he was overexcitable, a romantic, talked too much, was too arrogant, too certain of his own abilities. He was stubborn, sometimes inflexible – he was persnickety.
He had had words with one of the junior engineers after he used his command code to override the default controls in his living quarters: he had adjusted his lighting parameters, changing their brightness and changing the tint of the colours to match his preferences. It was important, he had told the irritable young ensign, to allow him to maintain his routine, to let him sleep.
He played racquetball, and he liked sports. He liked women, and women liked him – every other night, he could be seen in Quark's or in the Replimat, flirting, dating casually. A few times, he'd gone to bed with them – with dabo girls, with merchants on their way through, with Starfleet members not planning to stay on DS9. He was not unadventurous in his tastes, but he did not gorge himself on new foods, and nor did he take to inebriating himself.
When Garak had made his first contact with him, he'd been quite inviting, so polite, so obedient, and yet so curious, so full of suspicion, so desperate to search for double meaning, triple meaning. The young man had, it seemed to Garak, a certain fascination with spies that went beyond his interest in Garak himself – and by no means was he less excited by Garak's attentions than he was by that of the young women that caught his eye in the bar.
Many of the Federation planets thought nothing or very little of homosexual relations, and he believed there were certain requirements in Federation law that required its member planets not discriminate against such unions. It was plain that Bashir was not discriminating.
With Garak's hands on his body, how he had responded – he had acted as though he had scarce ever been touched before, arched his back, made such beautiful, hungry noises, clutched at Garak as charmingly and beautifully as a bedwarmer ought. He was the sort that might have established himself as a desirable pet, were Earth under threat of Cardassian rule – if he found himself able to steel himself to do so.
Garak had suspected based on the scent of him, but sliding a hand between his legs had confirmed that suspicion – that Bashir did not have, as most Human men had, a cock between his legs, but a cunt.
Transgenderism was not a concept that found itself well-digested by the Cardassian mode of thinking, but it was one that triggered in him a certain familiar curiosity, as so many non-Cardassian ideas did. Garak had always liked to learn, liked to explore, to consume what knowledge he could, and this…?
Well.
In the meantime, his exploration would be of a personal and intimate nature. The time for considering the wider philosophical and cultural impacts of such things might be left until later on: for the time being, he had only to understand that which would apply to Bashir himself.
Bashir, who irritated his fellow officers, and yet had gained the respect of a medical team fully expecting to despise him with immediacy; Bashir, who was overeager and talked too much, but came over so quiet when faced with Garak, the unexpected; Bashir, who seemed innocent and naïve and almost gormless, when caught by surprise or faced with the unexpected, and yet had all that medical schooling under his belt, and more than that, seemed to know enough to head off a conflict looming at the pass.
Garak smiled to himself as he finished off the last loop of stitching on the hem, and set it aside. It had been a very good week, this week past, juggling the Klingons, juggling young Doctor Bashir.
It had given him—
Something to look forward to. Bashir was, in himself, something to look forward to. A treat that he would savour, when it came down to it – and yes, a likely source for intelligence, an accessible lever within Deep Space Nine's command structure, but more than that, a handsome face, a desirable body, a young mind in need of moulding, a puzzle in need of solving.
He had invited Bashir for lunch, and it was very nearly thirteen hundred hours. When he stood to set the Bolian's dress into a box, he saw that Bashir had already stepped inside the shop, and was playing his fingers over the surface of some of the dresses, feeling the different fabric textures under his fingertips.
"Am I too early?" he asked.
"No, Doctor, you're right on time," said Garak.
"We could eat in my quarters, if you like," said Bashir, leaning over a rack of dresses, standing on his tiptoes to look at Garak properly, and Garak laughed.
"The replicator in your quarters, I take it, has a better selection than that in the Replimat?"
"I can promise you, Mr Garak," said Bashir with a warm and honeyed confidence, his eyes glittering, "I can offer a far more exciting menu."
"An enticing invitation, Doctor," said Garak, "but I think the Replimat will serve us well for today."
Bashir released a dramatic sigh, huffing out the sound, and pouted out his handsome brown lips.
Garak clucked his tongue in disapproval, wagging one finger disapprovingly. "Now, now, young man," he said sternly. "Such impatience will hardly serve you well. I shall have to work to train it out of you."
Bashir's lips parted, his eyes widening: his features were all the more handsome for that. There was something electrifying, truly, in being desired for precisely what one was, at Garak's age, amidst cultures who so fetishized the appeal of youth – it was easy to hold onto one's fantasies of retaining one's youthful vigour, but his was increasingly behind him. Bashir was not looking at Garak and imagining him as a young man brimming with ambition: he was looking at Garak for what he was, middle-aged and plumping at the waist.
Like a Cardassian – like a Vulcan or a Romulan, like a Klingon – the extent of his experience appealed; their age differential added to his appeal, augmented it.
"Is there anything else you plan to train me in, Garak?" asked Bashir.
"Oh, a great many things, my dear," was Garak's reply as they went to the door, and Bashir let out a breathless, eager noise.
"I hope you're not making idle threats."
"I never make idle threats, Doctor."
"I'll be making a list, you know, and checking you tick them all off, when it comes down to it."
Garak couldn't help but laugh at that, at the flirtatious smile that curved Bashir's lips as he said it, and he pulled the shop's shutter down, his BACK IN 1 HOUR sign already affixed in place.
Something he refused to name, consider, or acknowledge fluttered in his chest, and he watched Bashir's arse as the young man led the way to the Replimat.
