Garak didn't even stoop to undo his boots as he came slowly to settle on the edge of Bashir's bed, which had a slightly harder mattress than he was expecting, but was still very unlike the fare he was used to, more comfortable with, from Cardassian suppliers.
Bashir's quarters were darker than Garak expected, and remembering the way that the Vulcans had lowered the brightness for Garak's benefit, Garak almost asked if this was the same, but that wasn't so, was it? As soon as Bashir arrived, he lowered the brightness levels in his quarters and changed the environmental controls, too – it was warmer in here than it was out in the corridors, the air slightly more humid, and while it wasn't anything close to the Cardassian normal, there was a small bit of humour into the fact that Bashir's preferences leaned in that direction.
He had adjusted more than the environmental controls, of course.
Garak was aware, looking at the different bulbs and lighting panels, that Bashir had done something to change them – it was a subtle difference, one that perhaps someone might not notice if they weren't looking for it, but the bands and tones of the light emitted were slightly different, their light not quite as bright, and not quite as cold in their colour.
It was the difference between the bulbs that lit one's domestic quarters and those that lit an interrogation chamber, even if they were calibrated to the same brightness, and Garak only wished he was able to comment on it, wished he could ask why Bashir would care, when he knew that other Humans didn't.
Bashir's pyjamas, strange, full-bodied things that would cover him from his neck to his ankles, were hanging ready to be worn; the blankets underneath Garak's arse were not the silken weave that were Starfleet standard-issue, but a slightly rougher fabric more like cotton. They were cool where Garak touched them, smooth without feeling shiny, and he knew by the very weight and texture of the fabric how breathable they would be, how they wouldn't stick to the skin or slide in Human sweat, as the standard-issue ones did.
Bashir had no art on his walls, no curtains, no aesthetic accommodations. He had a small, stuffed toy on his bedside table, resting beside a spare tricorder and a PADD, and that was all the sign of personality Garak could see.
How funny, that he should adjust such practicalities as the nature of his light bulbs and the weight of his sheets, but not customise what every other officer in the fleet no doubt prioritised – the personality of his quarters.
How Cardassian, Garak thought, though it was very self-indulgent of him, and almost wistful in its tone.
It had been some time since a young man – since anybody – had undressed so eagerly for Garak's benefit.
Bashir wriggled out of his clothes as though they were burning him, discarding the ugly uniform shirt that Garak had torn "by accident" to the ground but laying the rest of it – the undershirt, his finely tailored trousers, his socks, his underclothes – on the back of his chair.
His skin was beautiful, a burnished brown that seemed all the warmer under the warm light of Bashir's quarters: it was smooth and unmarred by tear or scar or mark, and it was lightest in colour on his palms and the soles of his feet, a little lighter on his inner forearms and his arse, the backs of his knees, but a more uniform colour everywhere else. Garak observed with interest the hair that trailed down his arms, dusting Bashir's chest between his pectoral muscles, trailing down his navel and gathering in a slightly thicker patch over his groin. There was hair dusted over his thighs and his calves, and Garak saw when Bashir turned to get a glass of water from the replicator that there was a little hair on his shoulders, as well, but not much – his lower back and his arse seemed a good deal barer than the rest of his body, and Garak smiled.
He expected Bashir's nipples to be the same colour as his lips, a brighter brown than the rest of his skin with a tint of red and pink, but it wasn't so: his nipples were a darker brown, and the bud of his clitoris between his legs, as large as Garak's thumb where it sprouted out from the neatly groomed thatch of hair over it, was a similar colour.
"Do you want some?" asked Bashir as he came closer, young and handsome and utterly unthoughtful of his nakedness in the way that some youths were. Garak reached out, resting his hands on the lines of Bashir's hips and tracing upward, feeling the warmth of Bashir's flesh, and feeling at once both its vulnerability – no scales, the skin so thin, and even by Human standards, with so little fat to armour and defend what lay beneath! – and its curious strength – all that muscle so easily glimpsed even from the surface of the skin, tensing and moving so that you could feel it beneath your very fingers, with no hardened carapace to hide it.
"Not the water," said Garak, and swallowed Bashir's laugh as he came to straddle Garak's lap, the empty cup set aside.
They kissed for quite some time. Cardassians did kiss, no matter that many species often assumed that wasn't the case, that they kissed purely for the benefit of whomever they were embracing, but kissing between Cardassians was so different, Garak ordinarily found.
Cardassians, after all, had more sensitive noses, more sensitive tastes, too – their tongues were stronger, more dexterous, their teeth stronger, and not in the way of Klingon or Ferengi teeth, but as far went the pure strength of their jaws, the muscle that packed along their necks and about their skulls.
A Cardassian could bite clean through a Human neck, if it suited them (although why should it? All that mess…) and kissing another Cardassian never required one to be aware of this strength, as one did with a more fragile species.
Julian Bashir felt tremendously fragile in Garak's arms, in his lap, moaning breathlessly whenever Garak played against his tongue or sucked at his lip or grazed him with his teeth, and as the minutes ticked by, he became more and more impatient. There was a sublime pleasure in feeling that impatience simmer under Bashir's skin, brightening and burning hotter like a flame gaining heat – Cardassian sex was not like that of the other humanoids in the sector.
People knew it enough to joke about it, to laugh at the idea that Cardassians began foreplay with the first harsh word between them and didn't end it until some weeks after their graves were cold, but they didn't comprehend it, and why should they? This was a pleasure all of its own, Bashir eagerly rubbing the fat, swollen nub of his little cock against Garak's belly, evidently stimulated by the rough weave of the strengthened tunic, and oh, how Garak could smell him, scent the thickness of that wetness on the air, slick in a way Cardassian arousal was not.
"Garak," Bashir begged him, and Garak chuckled, squeezing his waist, his fingers sliding down the curve of his arse – there was more fat on it than he'd expected, what with the cushioning that Bajorans and Humans carried in this area, and the flesh was smooth, with one or two marks and scars marring it. Garak squeezed, and Bashir gasped: Garak almost imagined he could hear the clench of his cunt around the air.
Bashir licked into Garak's mouth, and the tip of his tongue traced the border of the organ behind Garak's teeth, on the roof of his mouth—
And then he paused.
Bashir leaned back slightly, his arousal forgotten, although his cock was twitching, and Garak almost laughed as he resisted the urge to tell him not to before he tried it – because Bashir, a moment later, with all his youthful exuberance and medical curiosity, but his hands on Garak's cheeks and tilted back his head, the better to peer into his mouth at the unfamiliar bud of flesh.
Garak almost did laugh, when he forgot himself and tried to put his fingers in Garak's mouth, and Garak gripped his wrist so hard that Bashir gasped in pain, his eyes widening, and then he downcast his gaze in a way that made Garak hungry for his submission. What a pleasure it might be, to put Bashir on his knees and demand his service, knowing how intelligent a creature he was, how defiant he was even when he didn't wear that defiance on his face – Bashir would be such a well-behaved pet at first glance, and yet with the correct education, he might be wonderfully lethal.
"Sorry," said Bashir, before asking, "that is a vomeronosal organ, isn't it? The bud there, on the roof of your mouth? I thought it was just behind your teeth, but it isn't, is it, it's corded so that there's also a spongey bud above your front gums so that you can brush your tongue against it like a…"
He trailed off.
Cardassians did, as many species did, vasodilate in the face of embarrassment or anger – it was an ancient bodily response, allowing blood to flow throughout the body in the face of a threat, to better ready one. It was seen as immature or uncontrolled, for a Cardassian to display such things in public, allow the ridges of his neck or his chest, if on display, to darken in their colour as blood flowed beneath them, and it was rarely seen outside of art or erotica, where the blood flow served to clearly represent the strength of its subjects.
Bashir's cheeks and the sides of his neck flushed out of embarrassment, and to Garak's mild pleasure and delight, his skin did not turn pink as a paler Human's or Bajoran's might have – there was too much pigment in his handsome skin for that. The increased blood flow under the skin served only to darken and enrichen the colour of his cheeks.
"Sorry," he said again, more softly now.
"You think I'm offended, my dear?" asked Garak softly. "Do I seem angry at your enthusiasm, your excitement, exploring a body so unlike your own?"
"You don't seem angry or offended," said Bashir. "But I bet you're thinking what a naïve and ridiculous young man I am, trying to push your lips apart so I can better examine your palate. I hope you don't think it means I'm less excited, I just…" His cheeks darkened further, and he squirmed rather beautifully. In the dim light of his quarters, his eyes seemed tremendously wide and dark, hints of gold and hazel flecked through the pigment of his irises. His voice was sweetly beguiling as he asked, "Would you let me, Garak? Examine you?"
"No," said Garak pleasantly, and slid three of his fingers up and into Bashir's wet cunt.
Later on, he would examine it properly, he thought – he wanted to look at it, to part Bashir's legs and examine the folds and flesh of the organ there. Bashir's cock was adjoined at its base to the wrinkled lips about his entrance, and there was more fat than expected either side of these lips, too, so that there was a whole handful to grip at, if it suited one – Garak had only gotten a glimpse, but he had been quite enchanted at the stark colour contrast between Bashir's folds, their handsome brown colouring, and the contrasting brightness of the pink inside.
Cardassians did not engage in oral sex, as a rule. Their organs weren't exactly compatible with the practice, but Humans… Garak could happily make an exception to bury his face between Bashir's thighs, slide his tongue between each and every fold and delicate roll of tender flesh, taste the sweet, musky saltiness of Human skin, the slickness of his arousal and the musk of that, too, and scent—
Bashir was whining breathlessly, his impromptu oral examination of Garak forgotten: his eyes were half-lidded, his head tipped back and his mouth open, as he bore down as best he could on Garak's fingers. He was incredibly hot inside, slick and smooth and easy, and Garak crooked his fingers toward himself to better push on the spongey flesh inside him. The Bajoran clitoral organ wasn't precisely the same as the Human one, particularly not one as large and pronounced as Bashir's, but they were not wholly unlike one another, and Garak knew that even as he pressed his thumb hard against the shaft of Bashir's cock, trapping it against his belly, he was squeezing it from the other side with his curving fingers.
He squeezed a little tighter than he would have expected Bashir to enjoy, and then squeezed as tightly as he dared, scissoring his fingers further apart that Bashir would have more to thrust down upon, and Bashir sobbed out an eager noise.
He was breathless and gasping, his whole body tense and eager, his cock twitching against Garak's thumb. He'd brought his hands up to rest on Garak's shoulders, and he was squeezing Garak's shoulder ridges through his tunic in a very pleasant way. It was a distant, buzzing pleasure, not direct enough to give any satisfaction, but that tease was a delight all of its own as Garak began to rub his thumb against Bashir's cock in small circles.
With Bashir's cock so large and engorged, compared to what he had been trained to expect of these organs, it wasn't as easy to strum the bundle of nerves it represented against the pubic bone as he wanted to – he would be better off, really, stroking and pulling at it as he might another man's cock, but to do that he'd have to take his other hand off of Bashir's arse, and he was enjoying squeezing it under his hand far too much for that.
Bashir's skin was misted all over with glistening sweat, and his hips kept stuttering up and into Garak's hand: slick arousal was all but dripping over Garak's palm, his wrist, and Garak wondered how easy it might be to press a few more of his fingers into him, his whole hand, perhaps – would Bashir cry out like this, so eagerly, with so much want, with Garak's fist inside him?
"So quiet," purred Garak, gently scratching the flat of his nail up below the hooded head of Bashir's cock, and Bashir's sharp, high-pitched noise might almost be labelled a squeal. "Is this all that is required, Doctor, to render that mouth of yours dumb?"
"Can't think," grunted Julian. "No talki— Oh, Garak," he moaned, spreading his thighs wider and gripping the sides of Garak's neck, his back arching very handsomely indeed.
Cardassian cunts were hardly made for this – Cardassian women had multiple canals to their entrances, twisting and tangling with false endings and impossible tightnesses, so that a Cardassian cock had difficulty finding its way to the entrance of their wombs, and they weren't so smooth inside either. The ridges within a Cardassian cunt could be stupendously pleasurable against the ridges of one's own cock, so long as one was with a good partner, but equally, they could prove an additional obstacle to coupling, and Cardassian arousal was thicker than Humans', too—
But this was pleasant.
Bashir's orgasm was as handsome as he was, and surprisingly loud – the best thing about it, Garak felt, was the fact that it didn't mean he had to stop. He wasn't sure Bashir would have let him, even if he'd wanted to.
Garak's wrist ached a little by the time Bashir tipped forward, and Garak reclined beside him, studying the handsome lines and planes of his body where he sprawled, utterly lax, upon the bed. He was breathing heavily, and after Garak sampled the taste of his wetness still slick on his fingers, wiping his hand neatly off on a cloth Bashir exhaustedly handed him, he drew two of his fingers down Bashir's back, tasting his sweat too.
Funny, how the taste of salt and musk was more concentrated in his sweat than in the slick from his arousal, the tang of it stronger, more affecting.
"Where the fuck did you learn that?" asked Bashir, mumbling the words against his own forearm, against which he was collapsed.
"I took a class at my equivalent of university," said Garak – it was a very silly lie, but one that amused him. "An elective module, if you believe it."
"It's all your usual bollocks, Garak, but I almost do," grunted Bashir, and Garak chuckled, tracing an idle pattern through the wetness gathered between Bashir's shoulder blades. He sat up suddenly, looking at Garak with his lips parted, and then he reached out, sliding his hand over Garak's chest, down toward his abdomen. "You must think me a rude and insouciant thing, not offering anything in terms of reciprocity."
"Rude and insouciant," Garak repeated thoughtfully, feeling the warm, pleasant weight of Bashir's fingers over his torso and considering what they might feel like, actually touching his skin, his nails digging into Garak's scales, pulling at his ridges, gripping tight at him. The thought almost made Garak's mouth water, but if he was going to fuck Bashir, he was going to do it the Cardassian way, and he was going to work him over until he fell apart – or more likely, was stuffed full. The time would come for that, and Garak intended to savour every moment along the way. "That does sound rather like you, young man."
"Insouciant I might be, but I have my uses," said Bashir, and Garak's lips twitched. "My mouth has received rather glowing reviews."
"Your mouth?" repeated Garak, and Bashir sat up on his elbow, resting his chin on the heel of his hand.
"Don't tell me you haven't fantasied of sliding your cock down my throat, Garak," said Bashir with a warm and honeyed confidence – and a charming, beautiful naivety. "There are some lies even I won't swallow."
"And yet other things you will swallow, it seems," said Garak.
He allowed himself to consider the idea for a few moments. Out of the question, of course, because he was almost guaranteed to cause the young doctor injury even if he escaped causing injury to himself, but he did allow himself to think about it. Bashir on his knees, tears streaming from his handsome eyes, fingers digging into Garak's thighs, throat bulging, stomach bulging—
"I'm rather satisfied with what I've witnessed tonight, my dear," said Garak softly, squeezing Bashir's arse again and smiling at the way he pleasurably sighed. "How could I want for anything more?"
"How indeed," said Bashir, and reached with sinewy grace across the mattress, stretching himself out to do so, and he picked up the PADD on his side table, passing it over.
"What's this?" asked Garak.
"I don't need your co-signature, but it's advised on the first form if possible," said Bashir. His eyes were half-lidded with sleep, and as Garak lifted up the PADD to better examine it, Bashir leaned in toward him, pressing his forehead against the side of Garak's shoulder, his other arm settling once more about the curve of Garak's belly.
He'd almost thought Bashir had been joking, prattling on about the forms he had to fill in, but Garak could see now that it hadn't just been idle humour after all.
"Are you experiencing any itching, burning, tingling, or prickling?" asked Garak.
"Mmm, no," said Bashir. "Why, are you?"
"Did you expect to?" asked Garak, scrolling down the document and examining more of the page, and Bashir let out a low sound in the negative.
"Cardassians are a non-Federation species, and we have very little information about the complexities of your biological make-up in Starfleet databases, especially from a biochemical perspective, but those questions aren't really for you – they're more for second or third contact species, or if I started fumbling about with a relatively unknown visitor from the Gamma Quadrant. You're not unknown, after all – plenty of Humans and Cardassians have had sex, and it's not as though Cardassians have never had children with Humans, or— Well, with Vulcans, more than Humans, obviously." He squeezed tighter, rolling his shoulders, and his cheek was pushed quite solidly against Garak's upper arm. "For all that, though, individual genetic profiles can still combine unexpectedly. True, my sweat isn't going to send you into anaphylactic shock, and it's reasonable to assume that your semen isn't a contact poison from my perspective, but we could still have unexpected mild allergic reactions, chafing, an unexpected sexual accident… The form is just proof we've acknowledged the risks and that it's unpredictable, so that if anything did go wrong, there was a paper trail, and the Cardassian government couldn't hold me responsible for… Oh, I don't know, if your cock gets stuck in my arse and we die that way."
Garak couldn't help but laugh at the very idea, but Bashir yawned, and there was something rather sweet in it, the vulnerability in it. He was curled right against Garak's body, radiating heat.
Yes, three years ago, he would have made a very fine bedwarmer indeed.
"Are you planning to become pregnant?" asked Garak idly. "It seems to me it might be a most effective way of pressuring me for truthful answers as to my past or Cardassian intention, if you were to interrogate me whilst carrying my child."
"Well, Garak, much as I appreciate your desire to educate me in creative interrogative method, I regret to inform you I have no intention of becoming pregnant with your or anybody else's child in the immediate future."
Garak pouted out his lips, retaining a parodied innocence as Bashir looked at him flatly. "Even for the good of the Federation?"
Bashir's laugh was half-yawned. "Even then."
Garak didn't sign the form, but he did examine the others Bashir had mentioned. These documents were more familiar, discussing governmental and command intersection, the control of privileged information, cultural exchange… It was plain to Garak that the purpose of the forms was, as Bashir had said, to establish accountability and liability – not for the benefit of the state, as it might be on Cardassia Prime, but for Bashir and Garak's respective protections.
There were a few curious footnotes about such things as induced heats, impromptu marriage rituals, parasitic pregnancies, semi-permanent bonding of respective life forces. Whenever Garak questioned one of these footnotes, Bashir would sleepily cite an occasion where a Starfleet officer had entered into one such occasion by mistake.
"You don't need Commander Sisko's approval to submit these forms?" asked Garak.
"If you were a Legate, I would," said Bashir, sitting up and seeming to come awake a little bit. "If you were a Gul – possibly if you were a Glinn, but it would depend. Because I'm the CMO of Deep Space Nine, I hold a certain command rank, and therefore get a good bit of leeway, I suppose you might call it. If you outranked me, I'd need Sisko's sign-off, or another commander, because it could be more of a concern for intergovernmental relations – if you were a serving member of any of Cardassia's military forces, officially, there's actually a fourth form I'd have to fill out."
"Officially?" Garak questioned, and Bashir's smile had a handsome knife's edge in its curve.
"Believe it or not, Garak, there's not a section where you write in your suspicion that the innocent businessman is probably still in contact and potentially exchanging orders with his government, no matter that both he and the government would deny it upon questioning."
"There's no form for that?" asked Garak, and Bashir's arm went from about Garak's belly to about his legs, gently squeezing his high, the side of his knee.
"I'm not hiding it from Sisko," said Bashir. "I'm not quite so stupid as I'm sure it pleases you to think." There was no ire in his tone, but perhaps that was why it grated quite so much, and Garak raised his eye ridges, looking at him seriously.
"You think it pleases me to think of you as stupid?"
"I know it does," said Bashir. "I'm not the only one between us with an ego, Garak." He moved forward, sliding one of his knees between Garak's, his hands resting either side of Garak's hips. He was smiling, his eyes shining. It was infuriating, and so arousing that Garak almost reconsidered his restraint, imagined what it might be like to fuck Bashir this evening, fuck him full enough that he should waddle when he went to his shift tomorrow morning. "I might not know as much about Cardassians as I would like, but I know enough. All that nonsense about Cardassian superiority, for example, all that rot about how you're just better than any of the rest of us, genetically, evolutionarily. As stupid as it pleases you to think I am, Garak, I'm not quite so stupid as to forget who and what I have in my bed. Are you?"
The anger was sudden and surprising, and all the more exciting for that. If Garak fought him now, would Bashir fight him back – properly now, properly? Would he aim to wound, to overpower, until Garak had him pinned to the ground, until fucking him open was as good as impaling him with any other weapon, until Bashir begged him for mercy?
(Or until, a little voice hummed, so often quiet but so often magical in how it rang in his imagination, he overpowered you?)
"Perhaps you ought more keenly consider, my dear, the tone with which you speak to your elders."
"Oh," said Bashir, pouting out his lips and looking very sarcastic indeed. "Have I hurt your feelings, Garak? The big, frightening Cardassian spy, and you picked me, of all people – why, I should be flattered, shouldn't I? You didn't just pick me because of my sex appeal, what it might be like for you to bounce my stupid, pretty little Human twat on your cock, but because of all the leverage I might offer you." He was wide awake now, cheeks blushing dark with blood, and his handsome smile had more than an edge in it – there was a savagery to it, a sharpness to his teeth, and Garak wished Bashir only had proper instincts, real instincts, and could be incentivised in this moment to stop talking and bite. "I mean, just look at me – look how eagerly I feed back everything you tell me to my fellow commanders, barely acting like an officer myself. So intelligent, so youthful, so naïve, so useful – but listen to me go. How dare I? Oughtn't I be grateful? Oughtn't I be on my knees and saying how thankful I am that a Cardassian, the most superior race in all the known quadrants of space, is so kind and so charitable as to—"
The sound of the slap rang out in the room, bouncing off not just the walls, but also against the ceiling. Garak felt the ghost of Bashir's cheek linger on his palm, its hot imprint on Garak's skin.
Bashir was breathing heavily, his head turned to the side.
"On Cardassia," said Garak pleasantly, deciding to treat the young man to the truth for once, "that sort of outburst would have been an invitation for a slap like that – more than an invitation, it would have been the desperate cry of a young man in need of correction. In the spirit of cultural exchange, my dear, won't you tell me if I've misjudged?"
"I should spit in your face," said Bashir.
It was not an answer, but for that, it was an answer. Garak raised his hand just slightly higher, a more obvious, more blatant communication, just in case he wasn't understood, but he could see that he was. Apart from Bashir's blood-flushed cheeks and neck and plump lips, his pupils had dilated, and he was breathing heavier. Garak could taste on the air that he was growing even more wet than before.
"Try it, my dear," whispered Garak. "See what it gets you."
Bashir didn't even gather saliva in his mouth – it was too far for his delicate sensibilities, it seemed, to even pantomime his actually doing it – but he did lean back as though he were about to. When Garak threw the PADD aside and grabbed him by the hair, hauling Bashir over his knees and sitting up to keep him in that position, bent over Garak's lap without the comfort of the bed to soothe him, he allowed space for Bashir to struggle, but Bashir didn't.
The first smack came down so hard that Garak felt its echo throb through his own cock, and Bashir's bitten back moan was rapturously enticing, but that was nothing compared to the way that Bashir's legs, still shiny-slick with sweat and his own lubricant alike, spread apart.
That anger was real, Garak had no doubts about that, and he was very curious about what had caused it, what had triggered it, how he might go about triggering it and exploring it in future, but—
In the meantime?
He brought his hand down against Bashir's arse, laid blow after blow to where he was vulnerable and wanting, and the young doctor submitted to the punishment as though he had been aching for it all his life.
