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Julian is actually relieved to see the dark bruise spilt over Garak’s right ocular ridge: yes, he’s heard his healthily annoyed voice over the comm, yes, he’s decided Garak’s trauma wasn’t urgent, yes, he’s told him to wait for his turn and actually managed to squeeze a fight about it over the comm in between tending to broken ribs and bloodied faces, but it doesn’t mean he wasn’t worried about him.
He is glad to see him, really.
If Julian didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought the sentiment was lost in translation: Garak is outperforming himself in terms of snide remarks.
“You are not genetically engineered, you are a Vulcan.”
“If I’m a Vulcan,” Julian sighs, shutting the scanner closed, “then how do you explain my boyish smile?”
He proceeds to demonstrate the smile in question. Judging by Garak’s unimpressed face, he’s doing a piss-pour job.
“Not so boyish anymore,” Garak teases, and he is actually trying to cheer Julian up, get his mind out of the ‘repair if wounded, list for a post-mortem if not’ mode and into generating some playful banter instead, and it is the only reason Julian doesn’t snap at him.
“You carry on like that, you’re going to have to make do without me kissing it better, you know,” he warns instead, going over the bruise with a regenerator. Garak pretends to be scandalized; it’s kind of endearing.
“Now, Doctor, you wouldn’t leave your patient without such a crucial part of the treatment, would you?” He is making his most unrealistic innocent face, and at that Julian is actually able to genuinely smile. Garak seems borderline smug when he does.
“Not if you go first,” Julian says, putting the regenerator down. Garak pretends to look him over, supposedly in search of wounds to kiss better, and lifts his eyebrows: “But Doctor, you don’t seem to be injured in any way.”
“Maybe not physically, but you’ve been driving stakes through my heart ever since I walked in,” Julian says in the best wounded voice he can currently muster. Garak opens his mouth for another round of arguments, and Julian suddenly feels he can’t take any more at the moment. He just needs Garak to drop his games and… touch him. Any touch would do, really, so he says: “Elim, please,” and Garak closes his mouth and smiles at him softly and silently instead.
He takes Julian’s face in his hands and pecks him gently on the lips, then rests their foreheads together, stroking his cheek with his thumb. He never did that in the beginning—apparently, it isn’t something Cardassians recognize as a gesture of affection—but he picked it up in a few months, probably without even noticing, and it felt special for Julian to be touched like that ever since. Garak kisses him again, soft and feather-light, and Julian takes his head in his hands, kissing his cheeks, nose, forehead—right in the chufa, making him shiver—and tracing the ridges around his eyes with the tips of his fingers, then his petal-shaped ears, his chin. He rubs their noses together, and Garak makes this small sound of his, half sneezing-half snorting, half annoyed-half content.
“You look tired, my dear,” Garak says softly, arms circling Julian’s neck, and Julian wouldn’t trade this feeling for anything.
“Not as tired as everyone else, I imagine, what with my genetically enhanced stamina,” he says, and Garak rolls his eyes. Julian doesn’t let him cut in: “You, on the other hand, could definitely use some sleep. I doubt the captain would need you any time soon, they say we finally got away.”
“Oh, I’m sure I can find a way to make myself useful,” Garak protests, earning a skeptical look and a kiss on the temple.
“And I’m sure everyone can manage without you for a few hours,” Julian says pointedly, almost in his Don’t Argue With Your Doctor voice, and Garak makes seemingly the last attempt at staying up and about: “But who would keep you on your toes with all that genetically enhanced smugness of yours?”
Julian chuckles. Garak gives him a victorious look as if he had just won one of their literary debates and not made Julian laugh for the first time this week.
“I know you are trying to cheer me up, and you are succeeding, and thank you very much for that,” Julian says. “But I really can manage and you really should get some sleep while you can.” And, seeing that Garak is trying to protest again, interrupts: “I mean it. Doctor’s orders.”
“And nobody should argue with their doctor,” Garak sighs and steps back. “But you do need to get some rest as well, my dear, despite this renowned stamina of yours. You are known to overexert yourself.”
“What I need is to check in on everyone once again and go through the casualties from the Rotarran, their sick-bay is practically nonexistent,” Julian sighs, too, and gives Garak a small smile. “But I’ll come as soon as I can.”
“I’ll be waiting,” Garak says, turning to go.
“I think you’ve got a few letters mixed up, it’s ‘sleeping’,” Julian calls after him. Garak smirks at him on his way out.
*
The Rotarran is in a better shape than he’s anticipated; their doctor managed to patch up almost everyone, except for their helmsman, who crashed his head on a burning console, and Martok. Martok’s arm is an in and out kind of deal, the helmsman has to be put in stasis for five hours at the very least, and everyone else seems to be doing just fine, snoring or whispering to one another in the overpacked sick-bay. Nurse Kozhan insists he should go and have at least a nap and promises to comm him as soon as something happens, and Julian finds himself too exhausted to put up a fight. She can manage without him: she has been able to nap for a couple of hours while he was patching up those who were less seriously injured and running around with Rotarran’s wounded and worrying about Sisco’s irritability and the Seventh Fleet.
Oh, the Seventh Fleet.
Fourteen, he thinks, taking the turbolift. Fourteen, pounds in his head all the way to their quarters, when he opens the door into the dark room and leans on it as soon as it hisses closed.
Fourteen.
He doesn’t move for a few moments, unable to pull his mind away from the figure. Fourteen out of one hundred and twelve. It’s 12.5%. If they are going to lose ships at this rate there will only be the Defiant, the Rotarran, and an eighth of the Excelsior left of their formation—or any other 2.125 ships if any of them is less lucky. Four—
“I take it this is the kind of night when I sleep on the edge?” Garak’s gentle voice asks from the darkness, and Julian takes a deep breath to tell him, to explain, because this is—for some reason he doesn’t know how to begin to process it, but Garak shuffles on the lower bunk, sitting up, so that Julian can crawl over his legs and settle between him and the wall, and warns: “Don’t even start. If you came here, it means you have at least a couple of hours to sleep, and if you’re allowed to sleep, whatever it is you have on your mind can wait these few hours. Come here.”
Julian breathes out and unzips his uniform. It is only when he gets out of it that he realizes how filthy it is and how much he needed to change.
“That’s better,” Garak murmurs, when Julian settles into the generously offered space by the wall—Garak doesn’t like to sleep on the edge very much, but he likes Julian tossing and turning even less and is very good at choosing the lesser evil. He scoots closer, draping Julian’s arm over himself, and presses a kiss to the top of Julian’s head. Julian grunts absentmindedly, and Garak sighs, starting to unusually purposefully run his fingers through Julian’s hear.
“What are you doing?” Julian says, trying to make out Garak’s face in the darkness. “I mean, I’m not complaining, it’s nice, but… kind of weird?”
“I’m looking for the ‘stop’ button for this unnatural brain of yours, it whirrs so loudly I won’t be able to sleep,” Garak says in a very focused voice, and Julian snorts, burying his face in Garak’s neck.
“Don’t worry, I think I’ve found it.”
“Good.” Garak says, still stroking his hair, but now in the familiar, tender and lazy kind of way, tracing his fingers down Julian’s neck and back all the way up to the crown. “Now go to sleep. I’m sure everyone can survive without your tender care for a couple of hours.”
“Only if you sleep, too,” Julian protest weakly; the bed is softer than his desk in the sickbay, Garak is pleasantly cool and even softer than the bed, and holds him just the right way, and Julian can barely keep his eyes open.
If he could stay this way for the rest of his life, he would.
“Oh, I sure intend to,” Garak informs him with pretended annoyance, “so if you could please quit stalling and be so kind as to allow us both to rest…”
“If you insist,” Julian murmurs, half asleep, and Garak pulls him a little closer, resting his cheek on top of Julian’s head.
“Sleep tight, my love,” is the last thing Julian hears before everything goes blissfully blank.