Chapter Text
The next day was a blur of travel, first on the shuttle back to San Francisco, and then up to the spacedock above Earth, where Julian and Garak were surprised by a pair of familiar faces.
"Dax! Commander Sisko!" Julian exclaimed joyfully as he spotted the two officers waiting for them outside the docking area. He bounded towards them. "I can't believe it! What are you doing all the way out here?"
"We're here to make sure you make it back to DS9 in one piece," Sisko said.
"...And because Benjamin had a meeting with the Admiralty he couldn't weasel his way out of," Jadzia added, looking fondly at the commander. "The timing worked out nicely. And you get to tell me all about your trip on the way back!"
Julian looked down at the floor. "I didn't win the Carrington, Jadzia."
"Oh, I know. I wasn't talking about the Carrington." Her eyes sparkled with mischief.
"Though we do offer our condolences," Sisko tacked on diplomatically. "If it had been up to any of us, we all would have voted for you."
"Thanks, Commander. It's alright though—I've mostly recovered. Garak was excellent moral support."
"I'll bet he was," Jadzia said, looking over Julian's shoulder to where Garak was lurking. "Come on, the Defiant's just about ready to head home."
"By all means, lead the way."
The mood aboard the Defiant was relatively sedate. There was a minimal crew aboard—just the four of them and a little gaggle of operations officers that scuttled around, updating hardware and checking systems—so everyone had one of the little sleeping cabins all to themselves. Garak was sufficiently distracted by Julian's perpetual presence that the tight space didn't bother him all that much.
The two of them killed time in much the same way as they had on the way to Earth—with books and games, both of the board and verbal variety. (Commander Dax joined them for exactly one game of kotra, during which she trounced Garak so thoroughly that the game lasted less than an hour. She lost none of her pieces, and Garak lost all of his. He still couldn't quite piece together her strategy. She had smiled sweetly and left, amid Julian's laughter, before he could ask her to enlighten him.)
Two days of travel passed, and they didn't talk about the kiss.
Garak had just about chalked it up to temporary insanity on Julian's part and left it at that. Disappointing, but understandable under the circumstances. Human emotions (even those of an Augment) were terribly messy, and he didn't want to embarrass the doctor further by bringing it up.
Much to his surprise, it was Julian himself who finally addressed it.
They were sharing the lower bunk in Garak's room as they would a sofa, finishing up a discussion of a new Cardassian novel, when Julian suddenly became very interested in smoothing the bedding of the cot.
"Um, Garak, I..." Julian faltered. "I wanted to ask—er, I just wanted to say, about what happened."
Garak feigned incomprehension. "There was no way you could have predicted the Legate's motivations at the end of The Gilded Circuit, not to worry. I've already forgotten your misjudgment of his character."
Julian exhaled sharply, half of a nervous laugh. "No, I mean, the other day. When...when you tried to stop me from leaving and I...well, you remember."
"I do. I was there." And it would be rather impossible to forget. Julian's limbs shuffled awkwardly.
"Yes. Um. I want you to know that your companionship is more important to me than I can say, and I know your boundaries are important to you, and I...I'd never want to do anything to make you uncomfortable. So, I'm truly very sorry if I did."
Garak breathed slowly out through his nose, ignoring the sinking feeling in his gut in favor of a measured response. "It's alright, my dear doctor. You needn't worry about damaging our friendship."
Julian nodded, and managed one of his warm smiles. Garak thought he looked a little sad, but perhaps it was just embarrassment.
"Thank you."
"However, I'm afraid I can't forgive you so easily for your analysis of Marin's symbolic rebirth at the end of chapter twelve..."
"So? What did he say?"
"He said he wanted to still be friends."
Jadzia sent him a deeply unimpressed look over her raktajino. Julian could sense every one of her spots judging him. "What did you say to him, exactly?"
Julian sighed and slumped over their table in the Defiant's mess hall in defeat. This was the trade-off of asking for relationship advice from a 300-year-old entity: she was nearly always right, but one did have to go through the humiliating ordeal of explaining the issue first, and Jadzia always demanded details. But by God, Julian was going to get his relationship with Garak figured out before they docked on DS9, one way or another.
Of course, he couldn't tell Jadzia the exact circumstances of their unexpected first kiss—instead, he'd said something vague about being stressed about the Carrington, which had spiraled into some inexplicable conflation of panic and lust in his mind. It all amounted to the same thing.
"I told him that I was sorry, and that under no circumstances did I want to make him uncomfortable around me. I think I also said that his companionship was very valuable to me, or something to that effect."
The Trill nodded slowly. "Okay, I think I see the problem. That would have been the perfect thing to say if you'd kissed him by mistake and didn't want to repeat the experience. You see, at no point in there to you mention what you actually want—which is, presumably, to have him bend you over a biobed in your infirmary."
Julian flushed, and muttered something noncommittal about sanitation standards.
"My point is, you gave him an easy way out of the conversation without either of you admitting anything. It's Garak, Julian—you're going to have to show your cards, because there's just no way he'll fold first."
"Ugh. You're right. Of course you're right."
Jadzia toasted him and downed the last of the raktajino. "That's what I'm here for. Now, I don't want to see you again until you've confessed your undying love. Go on, get out."
Julian let himself be herded out of the mess hall with minimal protests. He turned back to her as the door slid open, brow furrowed in worry.
"You're absolutely sure that he—"
"Julian."
"Right. Sorry."
"Attention all crew, the Defiant will be arriving at Deep Space 9 in one hour. Please make your way to wherever it is you need to be."
Commander Sisko's announcement over the ship's comms was a welcome one—he couldn't wait to be back on the station, with his projects and adventures and not a single person that was related to him—but Julian was on a mission. He'd timed all of this very carefully; if his plan ended poorly, they'd be on the station within minutes and he and Garak could avoid each other until the whole ordeal was forgotten (Julian didn't like the idea, but it was a distinct possibility nonetheless). And on the off-chance that it didn't end poorly, well....
He pressed the door chime on Garak's room. "It's me," he called through the door, probably unnecessarily.
"Come in."
Garak was sitting at the computer console, but stood when Julian came in. "I was just about to head for the airlock, if you'd care to—"
Julian cut him off, unwilling to waste the Jadzia-induced bravery he'd managed to cultivate on the way over, which was liable to evaporate at any moment. "Actually, before we go, I had something I wanted to say."
Garak's eyes widened in polite interest. "Oh?"
"I don't think I made my point about our relationship very well yesterday."
"I thought you expressed yourself clearly."
"No, I didn't," Julian took a few steps into the room, closer to Garak, who held his ground, inscrutable as ever. "What I meant to say was that I don't want to make you uncomfortable if you don't feel the same way I do...but I'd really like to kiss you again."
"Is that so?" Garak walked—no, prowled—towards Julian, till their faces were only inches apart. Julian wet his lips automatically, hypnotized by the intensity of Garak's gaze.
"I'm not interested in being one of your flings, my dear doctor."
"That's not what I want either," Julian murmured, then leaned forward and caught Garak's lips in his own for the second time.
It was nothing like their first kiss in Julian's bedroom, when Garak had stood stiffly, immobilized by shock. He was not still now. Strong arms wrapped around Julian's waist and walked him back until Julian felt his shoulder blades hit the wall behind him. Garak kissed like he argued, without mercy or compromise, and Julian fought back, as he always did.
When Garak's mouth left his lips and moved to his neck, Julian was lightheaded and breathless. His hands tangled in Garak's silky hair, then travelled to the scales of Garak's neck, eliciting a low rumble.
"Oh," he gasped, when Garak nibbled at the underside of his jaw, just hard enough to send a delicate spark of pain through Julian's nerves.
Garak pulled away from Julian's neck slowly, reluctantly. "How long until we dock?"
"Forty-nine minutes and twenty seconds. If I had to guess."
"Well, that's not nearly enough time for everything I want to do to you," Garak hissed, his eyes boring into Julian's. He shivered and arched his back away from the wall, into Garak, whose grip on his waist tightened.
"You know, I still have the rest of the day off."
"I think you might be on to something, my dear."