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And then, one time, the stars align.
Garak knows it the first time he sees the EMH. Like the multiverse itself had brought down a hand to point the way for him. Nothing about this strange adventure aboard the Anaximander has made sense, until this. He understands this.
“I lost you once,” Garak tells him, thumb and forefinger pressed right at the base of Julian’s ring finger, because the hologram has no need for jewelry but he does enjoy touch, has installed subroutines to improve his tactile feedback receptors. “I shall not let you slip through my fingers twice, my love.”
There is no question of whether they should or can. The captain is vocal about photonic rights, Julian’s version of Starfleet has long since recognized his personhood, and Garak is certain – beyond certain – that what he felt for flesh-and-blood Bashir is what he feels for this digital one.
“You’re deluding yourself if you think I would let you,” the good doctor says with his lopsided, boyish smile. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me, Elim Garak.”
They hold the wedding in the Anaximander’s mess.
The captain officiates, dress whites replicated just for the occasion. He still has a bit of the old light in his eyes as he speaks, some vestigial part still giddy with fanboy enthusiasm that he is presiding over this unlikeliest but most inevitable of unions.
Curzon Dax, pregamed on synthehol and moaning about his love life, at one point raises an objection. The Kims have to drag him off before the ceremony is able to continue.
(He makes it up to Garak and Julian a week later with a case – an entire case! where was he even keeping it, in the torpedo bay? – of Mirror Universe kanar. But he reserves the right to still grumble when he spots them holding hands. Which they do. Frequently.)
The Kims keep needling about the wedding night, but Garak would not be Garak if he weren’t skilled in keeping secrets. Some things are best kept between the two of them.
“I like to think,” the hologram says one evening, slotting their fingers together just so, “that there are other Garaks and Bashirs out there who have made it.”
Undoubtedly, Garak thinks, but he can’t resist a little tease.
“Oh no, I’d say the chances of this recurring are as close to a zero as one may care to estimate. Surely you’ve calculated the odds yourself.”
Julian bristles adorably. “As a matter of fact, I’ve run a hundred and three separate simulations based on the Nax’s records,” he says with a haughty tilt of his head. “And in fifty-three, you and I become friends.”
“Just friends?”
A hologram does not need to blush, which makes it all the more charming when he does. “Not just,” he says. “In seventeen of them.”
“My, thirty-two percent. It seems I was mistaken: our union is as common and unremarkable as the Tarkalean flu.”
“Don’t say it like that,” Julian quails.
“Yes, yes,” Garak says, soothing, giving up his game for now. “Forgive me, my darling. But you must have noticed the flaw in your methodology.”
The kiss gives him a static shock. A hologram’s version of a little nip, as Garak’s discovered.
“I tried to build a statistical model for interdimensional crossings,” Julian admits as they part. Always so reluctant to end the embrace, always needy for one more touch. “But it crashed the sick bay computer.”
“I see! That would explain why, when I went to check my medical logs this morning, I found a week’s worth of corrupted files instead.”
“You can’t pin that one on me.”
“Oh, but I very much can.”
“You’re always saying you have backups for every contingency!”
“And so I do. What I can’t abide is untidiness in my sick bay.”
“Your sick bay? I thought it was our sick bay!”
And so it goes.
Whatever the odds are, he decides, they must be astronomical.
END