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"Five more minutes," Julian murmurs into Garak's hair. "I'll use my transport privileges to send you straight there, I promise you won't miss the boarding."
He's going to end up at the docking bay looking as ruffled and disheveled as a hatchling, and he can't bring himself to care.
"That's very good of you," he says. His tunic is wrinkled under his arm, wedged up against a pillow. Everyone at the docking bay will see him arriving at final boarding call with rumpled clothes and mussed hair and they're going to think they know why, but they'll be wrong.
All they have done this morning is lie together like this - with a brief interlude for Garak to dress and get ready for his flight back, but then the takeoff was delayed by half an hour and he found himself persuaded back into the doctor's arms.
All things considered, he is very lucky. They both are. The reconstruction efforts on Cardassia have been going so well, under Natima Lang's firm guidance, that Garak can leave for a few days, even a week, without worrying things will fall apart in his absence. Similarly, Julian's research into ketracel-white and Jem'Hadar physiology is moving along such that he's able to actually take a few days' leave every other month.
But that is all they have. A few days, here and there. Stolen weekends. Painstakingly coordinated visits that are frequently interrupted by comms and messages from back home. It is enough. It has to be enough.
Everyone knows. At first they kept up a pretense - Garak had to visit the station to oversee a supply shipment, Julian was needed to consult on some difficult cases at the Lakat Hospital - but none of their friends are quite that stupid. Two visits ago, Julian warned him that Commander Kira had figured it out, and Garak half expected to be thrown against the nearest bulkhead and threatened at phaserpoint. Instead, Kira thanked him. Something about how much happier Julian seemed now, the happiest she had seen him since the war. (The threats did come, but much later than Garak expected, and with considerably less ire.)
Six meetings. Six months. It's enough. It has to be enough.
This little tryst has been very similar to the others. On the first day they fucked furiously and had a very spirited fight, which Garak frankly can't recall the substance of, but asking about it was a sure way to start the whole thing over. The second day there was a tentative ceasefire, make-up sex, and a few tears (best not to ask who does the majority of the crying in their relationship). They agreed, for the hundredth time, that the distance was taking its toll on them, but that it simply wasn't possible to commit to a permanent solution that wouldn't involve one of them uprooting something that was too delicate, too important.
It's painful, just as Garak knew it would be. It's exactly what he wanted to avoid when he almost deleted Julian's message, a year ago almost to the day, even though it made his heart soar and beat impossibly fast with a long-dormant hope.
I know this isn't the right time, but there never really was a right time for us, was there?....
It was so very like something from one of Garak's sickeningly sentimental fantasies that he had to pinch himself on the ridges to make sure it was real.
And now -
"I've changed my mind," Julian says, his lips pressed against Garak's temple. "I'm not letting you up. You'll simply have to catch another shuttle."
"My dear, you are only delaying the inevitable."
"Hmph."
"You're acting as if we won't see each other again next month."
"I know . Just let me be a little sentimental, will you?"
"Don't I always?"
"Is that a trick question?"
"I can't believe you would accuse me of being insincere."
Julian groans. "I'm glad you're leaving, actually."
"Clearly." Garak tries, halfheartedly, to free himself from the deceptively strong embrace. Julian's arms tighten ever so slightly. "You know, Dr. Beyan was even more polite than usual when I ran into him at the replimat yesterday. I can only assume that's a sign he poisoned my ration bars."
"Dr. Beyan took the same oath I did," Julian muttered, finally pulling back a little. "Don't start this again."
"My dear ." Garak tries to close the distance between them, but Julian sits up and turns away. "Surely you are aware it was a joke."
"Yes, very funny." Julian gives him a deadpan look. "Ha ha."
"Julian -"
A timer beeps on some PADD or other, and Julian slaps it with a lightning-quick reflex. "You're going to miss your shuttle," he says flatly, turning his back to Garak again.
"Damn my shuttle. I'll get another."
"Don't be ridiculous."
"Julian, I'm sorry." It spills out, wild and desperate, and he hates how his voice almost trembles with the need to be understood. "It was a thoughtless thing to say."
A bit of the tension in Julian's back seems to relax, but he doesn't turn. With a sickening feeling, Garak remembers every snide comment he's made about the Vorta doctor that has acted as Julian's closest research assistant on his project. Julian always scowled, but said nothing. Garak thought it was just part of their repartee, like when Julian teased him about his supposed infatuation with Dr. Parmak. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
"Julian - please." He reaches out to touch that familiar shoulder, so warm even through the fabric of his drab gray undershirt. "I only meant that he must hate me for how often I pull you away from the research and leave him to do the work of ten people alone."
Julian still doesn't turn around, but he scoffs quietly. "Ten people?"
"Typically he does the work of three, you do the work of seven. I've run the calculations."
Finally, a slight twist in that elegant neck. He's looking to the side now, letting Garak see his face without making eye contact. "I know you didn't mean anything by it, Garak. But you have to understand how often I have to defend his value to the project against people who think he can never be anything more than a product of his genetic engineering. I don't think I have to explain -"
"You don't," Garak says quickly. Of course he just sounded like another one of the naysayers implying Dr. Beyan was, by nature, conniving and treacherous. (Privately, he does have concerns about a Vorta working so closely on the project, but Beyan is clearly a very dedicated researcher, and he has more knowledge of ketracel-white than the rest of the team combined. Worth the risk, certainly.)
More importantly, he ought to have known how it would sound to Julian. How it would feel.
Six months, and he's still fumbling his way through this. He can still hurt Julian entirely by accident.
This, too, was the sort of thing he was trying to avoid when he almost deleted that message.
He could have simply pretended he never saw it. That it was lost in subspace and never reached him, and Julian likely would have played along to spare them both the painful conversation.
Garak's PADD beeps, and he glances at the screen.
"Two more hours," he says, more to himself than to Julian.
"What?" Julian finally turns around. "Two more hours of what?"
"Another delay," Garak says through a disbelieving laugh. "Two hours. They failed one of the safety checks."
Julian laughs too, then shakes his head. "Just delaying the inevitable."
"All the same." Deftly, Garak flicks open the fastening of his tunic and shrugs it off. He'll be more comfortable without it, and it's not as if he will get cold. "Shall we?"
Julian sighs and curls around him again, like some tentacled creature.
"It's going well," he says absently, after a long silence. "I think we're close to a breakthrough. Of course after that there's going to be the implementation, the distribution, and that's going to take another year at least…"
"Six months," Garak says. "And I think our government will have stabilized enough -"
"Elim - stop ." Julian squeezes him tighter. "I won't - I can't ask that of you. You know that."
"I don't mean permanently. A year at most, and then we'd be fully equipped to build you the research laboratory you so richly deserve, so I could bring you back home with me. And it's not the same as exile, at any rate - I can go back any time I like."
"Don't be ridiculous. I wouldn't ask you to leave Cardassia any more than you would ask me to leave my research."
"Sometimes I do wonder if I could," Garak confesses - something about the idea of these extra few hours of lying here wrapped in Julian's heat, his scent, making him drunk. "If you could be convinced to abandon it all, to come with me, to stay."
"Honestly?" Julian's hot breath gusts past his aural ridge. "I doubt it."
Garak can hear the rueful smile in his voice. And he feels - not the disappointment he expected, but impossibly fond of this man. "That Federaji stubbornness," he says.
"Oh, but you love it." Julian wriggles a bit, then settles. "Honestly, I've wondered the same about you. Like I said, I never would . I'd hate myself, and you'd grow to hate me too. But…"
There was a time when the knee-jerk answer would be clear. Admitting that you value anyone above the state is still taboo among most Cardassians, and Garak cannot help the way he was raised. Now, the question gives him pause.
Julian's impossible beauty, his warmth, everything about him so obviously unattainable and yet so freely given. Nothing less than Cardassia herself could pull Garak away from him, and even then -
He thinks of the housing projects, the new irrigation system he's supervising, the endless council meetings where their future will be decided by so many mundane votes. It could be the building blocks of their future, it could be a death by a thousand cuts, and he knows he cannot turn his back on it all. Not now.
"I don't believe my answer would surprise you," Garak says. "Though it is a considerably more difficult choice than it has any right to be, for a good citizen."
"Ah, well. Cardassia needs you more than I do, I suppose." His tone is light, but Garak can hear the tightness in Julian's throat. His eyes begin to sting in response, and he shuts them tightly.
"You always have been fiercely independent, my dear," he says quietly.
"You make me sound like a particularly spirited horse."
His knowledge of both Standard and Earth culture is now keen enough to make innuendos, and he can't help but reply: "And nearly as much fun to ride."
That surprises a laugh out of him. " Garak ."
"What?" Affected innocence - one of his best performances.
"Oh, nothing." A heavy sigh. "Don't you ever get tired of being so responsible?"
"At times, of course. But there is something noble about sacrifice, isn't there?"
"Of course there is. I just think at some point it has to end. There needs to be a reward."
"And there will be." Garak tilts his head down to kiss the hand that's closest to his mouth. "I do believe that. Don't you?"
Julian pauses for a little too long. "I have to," he says at last, with a catch in his voice.
"I promise," Garak says, and perhaps for the first time in his life, he means it fully, sincerely, without conditions.
It's enough. It has to be.