Chapter Text
A lie told often enough becomes the truth – Lenin
You should never tell the same lie twice – Garak.
Revolutionary Etude
Introduction: Surface Detail
Chapter 1: An everyday coincidence
‘’Foreign places yield more to one who is himself worth meeting’ – Beowulf.
Dr Julian Bashir made his way distractedly through the pressing throng in the Central Plaza, heading out towards East Quarter, and the house he shared with Elim Garak. With any luck, his erstwhile friend and lover, sometime advisor to the provisional government, would be there already waiting for him, hopefully with good news concerning his formal application for parliamentary candidacy. He quickened his pace slightly, anticipation rising again (he muttered a few stern words to ‘anticipation’ under his breath and told it to stop being so impatient and disgraceful in public).
He soon left the crowds behind and slipped into the quieter residential streets. Rare it was to see a crowd at all; a heartening sign of Cardassia’s slow but sure recovery. Although Garak would grumble. He smiled to himself.
Lost in his thoughts, he didn’t see the woman stepping out of the pharmacy on the corner until it was too late, and collided gracelessly with her.
“I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed, contrite, helping her up. She ducked her head in embarrassment.
“No, it was my fault,” she protested demurely, “I should have been looking where I was going.” She looked up and he found himself fixed with a frankly assessing, though friendly, gaze that produced an insistent tug of memory.
“It’s Dr Bashir, isn’t it?” she questioned, tilting her head to one side slightly.
“Professor Lang,” he remembered at last, and she smiled. He smiled back. “I’m glad to see you well,” he ventured, “I know many dissidents didn’t escape both the Central Command and the Dominion.” A shadow crossed her smile; she had a striking face, but, like so many, it bore its marks of grief and strife.
“That’s true. Rikellen and Hoag, for example.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, sincerely.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, then her mood brightened, “Still, Cardassia is at last free, and we can hope for the best from this new democracy…speaking of which, I hear your…friend, Mr Garak, is running for office.”
“Yes, that’s right,” he said, surprised she knew, “To be honest, I don’t know if he’ll succeed, given his past and connections with the old establishment.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure,” Lang said confidently, “Hardly anybody on Cardassia can claim a stain-free past, and he did play a key role in bringing down the Dominion, after all.
“Well, I hope so,” Bashir replied, heartened – and a little intrigued – by her friendly attitude. She squeezed his arm suddenly.
“I told all my students at the university that I’d be voting for him,” she said, with a twinkle in her eye that showed some of the spirit of the young woman she must once have been, “Of course, I’m biased, for he did save my life.” Bashir stopped dead, struck dumb, and stared at her. She laughed again. “Oh, didn’t he tell you about that?”
“No, not exactly,” Bashir replied drily. An idea struck him. “But I’d love to hear all about it. Would you care to get a drink?” She seemed to hesitate a moment, then,
“Yes, why not?”
#
Julian stepped quietly over the threshold of their house, mind awhirl and abuzz with what he’d learned from Professor Lang. Garak was waiting for him. He’d been reading, but when he saw Julian, put the book down and rose in one smooth motion, crossing over to Julian and greeting him with an affectionate smile and warm embrace, which Julian returned enthusiastically.
“I thought you would be home an hour ago,” Garak chided gently, “You’ve forced me to read dreadful human literature for all that time.” A sidelong glance, a twinkle in the eye, “Now was that a deliberate ploy on your part, I wonder?” Julian chuckled.
“I’m terribly sorry,” he replied, with whimsical insincerity, “I bumped into this intriguing and attractive woman.”
“Attractive, was she?” Garak murmured, lighting little kisses across Julian’s face; Julian was struggling to take his boots off at the same time. “I see I’m going to have to escort you everywhere if you’re going to be so distracted by every pretty woman that happens to cross your path.” The kisses reached Julian’s mouth.
“Actually, she was an old friend of yours, well, sort of,” Julian told him, pulling away a moment.
“Oh?” Garak sounded mildly interested, though clearly, by the roving exploration of his hands, not as interested as he was in other things. Bashir dropped his bombshell.
“Yes, Professor Lang.” It was only for the slightest moment, but he felt Garak pause, motionless, before resuming his attentions. Hands slipped in his coat and slipped it off in a swift, lazy gesture.
“I think you’ll find she’s more an old friend of Quark’s,” Garak countered, the merest trace of amusement in his tone.
“Yes, I did tell her he was still running the bar on DS9 and would appreciate a call.” Garak gave a throaty chuckle.
“Really my dear, you’re becoming an even more shameless matchmaker than Lieutenant Dax.”
“You must have brought out the romantic in me,” Julian said, smugly.
“I suspect it’s more the other way around,” Garak replied with a slight smile, before stealing another kiss. His hands were wandering in earnest now, though unhurried as ever, his eyes heated. “I’m certainly feeling romantic now,” he added, snaking his hands under Julian’s shirt and grazing his fingertips across his nipples, causing their owner to gasp involuntarily.
“This isn’t romance, it’s lechery!” Julian retorted, laughing.
“I’d gladly promote it to buggery,” Garak whispered in his ear, sending a shiver down his spine.
“Elim,” he protested, despite himself, and fending him off with some difficulty. Garak looked at him, amusement and desire salient in those steady blue eyes.
“How uncharacteristically coy you are tonight,” he observed, clearly knowing exactly why.
“I was wondering why you helped her escape,” Julian said, trying to sound as if it was an innocuous question, and wishing he’d found a more subtle way to frame it. Garak seldom appreciated the direct approach, well, not with questions anyway. “I didn’t think you had dissident sympathies,” he added, deliberately outrageous, and was rewarded with a bark of surprised laughter.
“I don’t – well, didn’t – if you excuse the fact that I’m now applying to work for the government they helped bring into existence.” He was advancing minutely upon Bashir again.
“Oh gosh, I forgot to ask, how did it go today?” Julian asked abruptly, feeling a twinge of chagrin that he hadn’t asked straightaway.
“Oh, all right,” Garak replied, disinterestedly, “I cleared the preliminaries.”
“Elim, that’s wonderful!” Julian exclaimed, delighted. “We should do something to celebrate.”
“Oh believe me, I’m trying,” Garak said, heavily ironic, and closing in again. Clearly Natima Lang had already been dismissed from his mind as a matter of no consequence.
“Lechery,” Bashir accused, teasing, and grinning nonetheless.
“Oh, can’t we just call it exercise? You approve of that, I recall.” He was pulled in for a lingering, demanding kiss. Damn the man, but he was too good at this.
“So you weren’t secretly a dissident then?” he inquired nonchalantly, a last-ditch effort. Another derisive laugh.
“My dear doctor, you really do have an overactive imagination!” The eyes were dancing with merriment, and, for that one moment, it was as if Julian was seeing him as he first had over ten years ago; closed-off and inscrutable. Then the affection came flooding back; that incongruous openness of feeling he had never quite been able to resist, and he was seized in another passionate embrace. “Come now, Julian, put those creative talents of yours to better use,” Elim murmured enticingly in his ear, and really, it did seem terribly silly now that he thought about it again. All consideration of his carefully martialled questions flew from his head; all the threads of his argument picked neatly apart before he had even voiced them, by those nimble fingers unravelling him so dexterously from his clothes.