the greek upon the stars
trying to read the Greek upon the stars
the alphabet of feeling
~ The Indigo Girls, "The Language Or The Kiss"
Julian Bashir is a physician, and he knows that the body does not lie. It can fail you and betray you when you need it the most, and its messages when deciphered can translate into something entirely different from what you first believed, but it does not deceive. He tries to remember that when he thinks about Garak.
The tailor's past is a riddle, his guarded mind an enigma, and the more Julian has learnt, the more he has wondered. Over the years he has come to realize that he will never know Garak, never be able to explain the man to his own satisfaction, the way he can with Miles, or Dax, or even Odo. And he understands, too, that if Garak ever allowed himself to become explicable, he wouldn't be bothered to hear the explanation. It was always the mystery he wanted, not the solution.
Still, he was never able to keep himself from resenting the lies, from being hurt by the subterfuge and the distrust. Garak wouldn't open up to anyone, of course not, but surely Julian should have been the exception, Julian who... He laughs at himself before that thought (childish, hypocritical) is completed, reminds himself that perhaps he does know the truth, despite everything. He has held it in his hands, felt it palpable beneath his fingers, and though he isn't sure he understands it, neither does he doubt the veracity of the text. Beneath the complexities of words, beyond the mysteries of action, he knows Garak, and if there is an answer to be had, he has traced it again and again with the tip of his tongue.
The body does not lie.
His own human skin is smooth, an even surface only lightly sprinkled with dark hair, unmarred by any scar despite the times he's been wounded. Simple, ìf you will. Straightforward.
There is nothing simple about Cardassian skin. The surface of Garak's body is a shifting landscape of planes and ridges, a relief pattern for Bashir to interpret. A text written in Braille for one fumbling in darkness, and he has studied it, read the words with his touch until every sentence was committed to memory. He can recite it now, scroll through it in his mind, looking for the clues he fears to find. Trying to reach a decision.
"Who would want to kill me -" Garak says, his tone supremely incredulous, "- a simple tailor?"
His head is turned away, allowing the doctor to treat the cuts left on his cheek by the explosion. There is no real emotion in his voice at all, and Julian has the sudden urge to grab his face, force the tailor to look him in the eye.
"Don't you care?" he wants to demand. "Don't you even care that you could have died?"
But he knows that Garak's gaze will be unmoved, the same chilly blue as always.
He busies himself with the medical and holds his tongue, lets Odo be the one to question the lies. There will be no reaction, anyway.
Garak's kisses are the winning speech in a harsh debate, every sweep of his tongue another convincing argument. A flawless rhetoric of seduction delivered with calculated precision, confident of achieving surrender. Then Julian scrapes his teeth against the tailor's upper lip, across the fading ridge where the handle of the spoon comes to an end, and Garak's breath hitches, a sudden gasp that makes the stars dim. There is no trace of detachment in the hands that fly up to tear at the doctor's clothes, pulling him closer.
"Ah," Garak says, a gasp of pain as he staggers back against the wall of the tunnel, putting his hand to the wound on his neck. His fingers come away streaked with blood. When he looks up, his eyes are full of disbelief.
"You'll be fine," the doctor assures him. "It's just a flesh wound."
It couldn't be anything else, because at this distance, Julian's genetically enhanced precision allows for no errors, not even with the ridiculous spy-movie gun he still holds in his hand. But Garak has no way of knowing that.
"That was awfully close," he says. "What if you'd killed me?"
He shouldn't have had to come this close, shouldn't have been forced to make the choice, and the anger is cold in his voice as he replies.
"What makes you think I wasn't trying?"
Garak smiles, then, despite the blood staining the collar of his tuxedo, despite the fact that they may be about to die inside an illusion because Julian would not let him risk the lives of others to save himself.
"Doctor," he says, "I do believe there's hope for you yet."
What sickens Julian is that, for all its perversity, a part of him treasures that praise.
Garak's mouth is drier than that of a human, fine sandpaper velvet travelling over Julian's skin. The doctor's hands clench the sheets above his head, stay put where Garak has placed them, but every muscle in his body strives upward to meet that peculiar, tantalizing touch. Between endless kisses, a stream of words flows from the tailor's lips, appreciative murmurs only half audible as they fall on heated flesh.
Julian has always known that looks are in his favour. Only now does he feel beautiful.
"I must tell you," Garak says, "I'm disappointed, hearing you mouth the usual platitudes of peace and friendship regarding an implacable foe like the Romulans. But I live in hope that one day you'll come to see the universe for what it truly is, rather than what you'd wish it to be."
If he had a strip of gold-pressed latinum for every time they've had a conversation along these lines, Julian would be richer than the Grand Nagus, and he can't keep his lips from curving with fond amusement at the familiarity of it. He wipes the smile away, though, composes his features in an expression of mock solemnity.
"Then I shall endeavour to become more cynical with each passing day," he declares, "look gift horses squarely in the mouth, and find clouds in every silver lining."
Garak shakes his head - the exasperation of a teacher who knows that his favourite pupil will never grasp the importance of what he's trying to impart.
"If only you meant it," he says.
In the darkness of the doctor's quarters, Garak's skin is a pale grey, clearly visible as he moves about the room, retrieving his scattered clothes. There is no lunar light on Deep Space Nine, but Julian sometimes imagines how the translucent shimmer of an English moon would play across the tailor's body, touching it with silver. Vaguely, he wonders what colour a Cardassian night would paint it, but he has never seen the skies from that perspective, and he isn't sure how to picture the moonlight. The thought is silly, anyway. Even here, the two of them never share a bed till morning; beyond the walls of this station, what nights could they possibly have?
Still, when Garak approaches the bed again, extricating his shirt from the tangled sheets, Julian kneels up, reaches out. His own olive skin is a deeper hue among the shadows, dark against the planes of Garak's chest. When he presses his lips to the hollow of the Cardassian's throat, the shirt falls to the floor.
"I've been a fool," Garak says. Their conversation is animated, though the tailor's voice is low as always, and one of the guards turns to look at them. Julian barely notices. He is used to the Jem'Hadar by now, to their constant, intimidating presence, but he will never get used to Garak. Something inside him is still quivering from the unexpected sight of him in the cell. "Let this be a lesson to you, Doctor," the Cardassian continues, "perhaps the most valuable one I can ever teach you: sentiment is the greatest weakness of all."
His eyes are piercing, sharpened by the absolute, passionate cynicism of a man who's been hurt to the core. Behind him, a window reveals the vacuum beyond the dome, a barren wasteland lit by distant stars. For the first time, it comes to Julian that they may not be able to escape. That they may be stuck here forever, with only each other for warmth. He doesn't know if that would be enough.
"If that's true," he says, trying to stare uncertainty down, "it's a lesson I'd rather not learn."
Buried inside Garak's body, he can see the spinal ridge bend and compress with every thrust, stretch thin when Garak arcs to force him deeper. At the small of the tailor's back, it splits in two, twin serpents reaching outward along the curve of his ass, fading into nothing before they touch his hips. When Julian presses his thumb to the place of divergence, Garak shudders, a hoarse cry torn from his throat to fill the room. An animal in heat pushing back for more, and Julian fucks him harder, faster, loses himself in the rush of their moving bodies. Sometimes, if he rubs that spot again, Garak will growl his name. Not "Doctor", but "Julian". After that, neither of them lasts much longer.
"You know," Garak says with a wistful sigh, "I envy you."
The near-non sequitur takes the doctor by surprise. He can't imagine what a layman could find to be envious about in a burn treatment seminar on Klaestron IV, much as he enjoyed the trip himself.
"How so?"
"When I was younger, travelling was a bit of a passion of mine," the tailor explains. "There are few things in life that compare with the thrill of immersing yourself in the culture of an alien world, meeting the inhabitants, earning their trust. But, aside from our brief excursion to Bajor, I don't think I've been off this station in nearly three years."
The idea of the unsuspecting people of a distant planet accepting Garak into their midst, like a viper into paradise, is almost comical. Except that Julian is sure he has been a trusting alien in the Cardassian's eyes himself, easy to string along with the promise of a bite at the forbidden fruit of knowledge. He is in too good a mood today to express that thought, though.
"What's stopping you?" he asks, addressing the second part of Garak's statement instead of the first. "Ships are leaving Deep Space Nine almost every day."
"Space is dangerous, Doctor," Garak replies, not quite answering the question. Dangling the apple just out of Julian's reach. "You never know what might happen."
From the edges of Garak's hipbones, thin ridges dip towards the centre of his groin, delicate trails for Julian to follow, kissing, licking, caressing his way down, pulse ragged with anticipation. When he worries the pale protrusions with his teeth, he has to use his hands to hold Garak still beneath him.
Cardassians have no hair on their bodies, but the skin between these ridges is different, patterned dark with crescent lines of brownish grey that glisten in the faint light of the wormhole through the window. Not scales, but the shadows of scales, a dragon's hide brushed smooth by time, worn by evolution into a texture gravel-rough and sheer as silk, unlike any in the universe. When Julian lingers there with lips and hands, Garak breathes his encouragement, a hungry "yes" like the whisper of a snake. The sound is as far from human as the sensation; he doesn't know which one of them makes him whimper.
"Now, good day to you, Doctor," Garak says, rising from his seat across the table. Leaving as suddenly as he appeared, without really having said anything at all. It's almost a relief to be released from the confusing intensity of his presence, but then the tailor pauses, lingers behind Julian's chair, and his hands come to rest for a moment on the doctor's shoulders. The gesture is disturbingly intimate. Possessive. "I'm so glad to have made such an interesting new friend today," he adds.
Before Julian can scramble a response together, he is alone again with his glass of Tarkalean tea. The warmth of the Cardassian's touch still haunts him long after the drink has gone cold.
A torturer's hands, he thinks, tracing the lines in Garak's palm with his fingertips. The old Earth superstition has it that you can tell all about a man by reading those lines, learn his past and his future. Sometimes Julian wonders, if he had that gift, would he be able to feel the pain these hands have inflicted, see the atrocities they have committed? He is glad that he will never find out.
Besides, Garak's hands are the hands of a tailor, too, and Julian tries to think of them that way. Makes himself recall the steady precision with which they measure a fabric, the gentle touch reserved for the finest of silks - reassuring images to wash the taste of fear away, and the bitterness of self-disgust.
Still, when Garak's hands slide up the insides of his thighs, there is nothing the doctor would not confess to.
"Genetically engineered, indeed," Garak says. The words are muttered under his breath, but Julian still catches the tone.
"Excuse me?"
"Well, look at you. You act as if you haven't a care in the world. It's exactly that type of smug, superior attitude that makes people like you so unpopular."
He can't believe he's hearing this, can't believe that Garak of all people would find fault with his behaviour. Garak who is the most superior person he's ever met, and who practices cold calculation as an art form.
"Are you trying to insult me?"
"'A 32.7% chance of survival'," the tailor quotes. "I call that insulting."
"Don't take it so personally, Garak. It's striclty a matter of mathematics."
"No. It's strictly a matter of our lives. You're not genetically engineered. You're a Vulcan."
For a second, he wants to tell Garak about the endless stream of wounded that pass through his hands every day, about the human, Klingon, Vulcan lives he tries to keep from slipping away. So much is falling apart, and each time a soldier leaves his care, he knows the exact likelihood that he will see her again, cut open on his operating table. No one else might want to hear them, but he can give the odds with decimal accuracy. What good would it do if he allowed that knowledge to affect his emotions? But there are no words to express any of that. He turns on the charm, instead, and makes a joke to change the subject.
When Garak is inside him, he can feel the pelvic ridges press against the cheeks of his ass, feel them stretch along the hard length that fills him, converging at its head, deep within his body. If Garak holds still, he is aware of each separate section, and he has counted the indentations between them, biting his lip while the pain of penetration faded away. When Garak starts to move, such clarity becomes impossible.
Lying on his back, knees drawn up to let him take it all, every last solid inch of it, his prostate cradled by those ridges, sliding between them as Garak claims him, marks him, he knows nothing but need and hunger, nothing but the fire that subsumes him. If the words he screams have any meaning, his mind has no idea how to decipher it.
"Stop watching her," Julian says, keeping his own gaze focused on the springball court where Major Kira is making short work of her opponent.
"I thought the whole point was to watch," Garak retorts, blatantly feigning innocence. But at least he drags his eyes away from Ziyal.
"The point is to watch the game, not the spectators. Especially not that spectator."
The sound of the ball is loud as it bounces off the walls, and the crowd isn't exactly quiet, either. If Julian has raised his voice a bit more than the subject calls for, it's only to make himself heard.
"Well," Garak says, "what does she expect? She's the only Cardassian woman on the station. She must know she is bound to attract some attention."
There are about a million reasons why staring at Gul Dukat's daughter is not a good idea, and Garak shouldn't need to have any of them spelled out for him. Just because she's a beautiful young girl of his own race, that doesn't mean...
"Some, yes," Julian says. "Yours, no."
When Garak's mouth closes around the tip of his erection, Julian sinks his fingers into the Cardassian's hair, gripping his head to hold it in place. Taking what he wants. Garak makes a strangled noise and opens wider, gives himself up to Julian's thrusts, to the hard, relentless rhythm of his pleasure. Beneath his thumbs, he can feel the raised arabesques of veins at the tailor's temples, the pulse beating fast, almost too fast for comfort. Garak is never truly submissive, but having him on his knees like this, the doctor is sometimes certain that he holds every part of him in the palm of his hand.
Then Garak lifts his gaze, blue eyes shockingly steady, and he swallows once, the muscles in his throat contracting just so. Julian comes with a curse, convulsing in sudden, devastating rapture. When the room spins back into focus, Garak is licking his lips with an expression of smug satisfaction. Julian's hands are still clenched in the tailor's hair, a grip so tight it must hurt, but the man himself has already slipped through his fingers.
"I hate this place," Garak says, stepping closer, dropping the words like poison in the doctor's ear, "and I hate you."
Anger, loathing, hurt. Not shouted, but carefully enunciated - the sharper burn of ice, not fire.
It's the abstinence talking, he knows that, not Garak's rational mind, but if the statement held no truth of emotion, could it make him feel this cold?
He doesn't want to consider the answer.
The edges of the spoon on Garak's forehead are hard and forbidding, finely chiselled cartilage beneath the thinnest layer of skin. Julian almost believes that he could cut his fingers on them, but when his caresses stray there, Garak is the one who pulls away. There is an intimacy in the touch that the tailor will not grant.
There have been nights, though, after the urgency of need and the heat of fulfilment, when Julian, already fully dressed and ready to leave, has bent down over the bed and brushed his lips against that concave shape. And Garak, half asleep or seeming so, has breathed a gentle sigh, and smiled, and not turned from him at all.
"We both know that the Cardassians are a strong people," Julian says, grasping blindly for some shred of hope, something that might help. "They'll survive. Cardassia will survive."
Garak actually laughs at him. A familiar show of incredulous sarcasm, but this time the near-hysteria of shock is present in the sound.
"Please, Doctor. Spare me your insufferable Federation optimism. Of course it will survive, but not as the Cardassia I knew. We had a rich and ancient culture; our literature, our music, art was second to none. But now so much of it is lost. So many of our best people, our most gifted minds."
Eight hundred million dead, and counting. Each one of them a person who loved and dreamed, a unique thread in the fabric of the universe. Julian's mind comprehends the figures, but he can't make it wrap around the consequences.
"I'm sorry, Garak," he says, reaching out to touch the tailor's shoulder, an awkward attempt at comfort. "I didn't mean..."
Garak turns around, then, faces him with a smile on his lips and sorrow in his eyes.
"Oh, it's quite all right, Doctor. You've been such a good friend. I'm going to miss our lunches together."
The frank tenderness is so unusual it takes him by surprise, and he has no idea how to respond.
"I'm sure we'll see each other again," he says, though of course he doesn't know that at all. Garak is home now. It changes everything.
"I'd like to think so," the tailor replies. "But one can never say." His hand comes up to rest on Julian's shoulder, and they both know that if the doctor should want it that way, then this will be the last touch. No obligations, no commitments. Whatever they've had, it has always been just for the moment. "We live in uncertain times," Garak says, the warmth of his touch slipping away as he turns to leave.
Julian says nothing more. The moment is past, along with so much else.
They all live in a new world now, a post-war reality that Julian has yet to make sense of. But he is older and has less to prove these days, and he can admit to himself that despite his more-than-human brilliance, there were always things he failed to understand. Not a few of them had to do with Garak.
And so he pulls the text of their shared past from its shelf in his mind, flips through it again and again, looking for a truth that can determine the future. The spoken words are indecipherable, and he has no faith in them, but when he opens the deeper memory of their tangled bodies, sometimes he is certain of what it is he aches to find.
He has been to Cardassia now, as part of a conquering army, but when he raised his eyes from the ruins towards the sky at night, all he could see was the smoke of destruction. He still doesn't know the colour of the moonlight. One day, he will have to satisfy his curiosity.
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