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DS9 - More holosuite adventures and relationship repair [2/3]
Title: Clearing Skies
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Romance
Rating & Warnings: PG (reference to alcohol)
Beta: tinsnip
Words: This part 2273, 6225 overall
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Summary: As a way to make up for continually running out on Garak at lunch, Julian invites him along to one of his holosuite sessions with Chief O'Brien as a way of patching up their friendship. It doesn't work out quite the way he expected. This chapter: Some changes are made to the program, and to Julian's perceptions.
Author's Notes: Not a lot to say about this one, except that I had a lot of fun writing it, and that this chapter contains the scene that sparked the whole fic.
The credit for the image in this chapter (which is used with permission) goes to petaq, art journal at dziwaczka. If you love the picture half as much as I do, I'm sure praise would not go amiss. <3
It wasn't for a few weeks that the three of them had another holosuite session together. Over that period, Julian was very careful with his schedule. He and the Chief wasted time together with their usual darts and holosuite adventures, and he and Garak met most days for lunch and spent a couple of evenings in each other's company. He even managed to squeeze in time for drinks with Dax and for the occasional infirmary social night.
This left him extremely busy, it was true, but the effort he put into timetable management was worth it. He didn't have to squirm over running out on Garak the one time it was unavoidable (emergency surgery was difficult to postpone), and in turn, Garak seemed happier—at least as far as he could tell, anyway. Garak was an expressive man, yes, but the emotions he projected tended to be at angles with the way he was actually feeling. All the same, this time Julian felt justifiably confident in his diagnosis.
He hadn't been planning on inviting Garak along with him and the Chief again for a while yet, but one evening, he was very much surprised when Miles said, "See if Garak is free tonight, too, will you? I finished modifying the program—I doubt he'll be flying circles around us now."
Suddenly buoyant, he replied, "I will—I imagine he'll be able to come. His tailoring business has fallen off a bit lately, unfortunately."
"Huh. Maybe if he got his sleeves the right length, he'd be doing better."
Julian eyed his friend's perpetually rolled-up sleeves. "How would you know if they weren't?"
"I just do, all right?" Miles said crankily, which told Julian he'd scored a point. "I'm off here. See you tonight, Airman."
Julian waved a salute of sorts at him as Miles strode to the turbolift. Only another hour before lunch, when he could find out if the three of them really were about to fly again. That sounded like very little time at all, but he didn't doubt that the waiting was going to be dreadful.
*
As he'd expected, Garak was indeed available for more airborne adventures and he agreed readily to the suggestion. That put Julian's mood somewhere in the exosphere (had he been planetbound, at any rate). He was so glad that Garak seemed to have completely changed his mind about the holosuite since the previous year, and he was just as thrilled that Garak and the Chief seemed to be putting their conflict behind them. Of course he wasn't so naive as to expect them to get along simply because he was close to both of them, but he would much prefer his best friends to at least tolerate each other. Now it seemed that his wish was finally coming true.
That evening, he was the first to arrive at Quark's, though not by much. He hadn't even the time to decide whether he wanted to order a drink while he waited before the Chief strolled in, dressed and ready to go.
"All set for takeoff, Julian?" Miles asked over a delighted cry of "Dabo!"
"Of course! I haven't seen Garak yet, but as soon as he's here, we can start. Are you going to warn him about the changes to the difficulty setting?"
"Do I have to?"
Julian nudged him with his shoulder. "Come on, Chief, it wouldn't be fair to just toss him into the deep end."
"Don't worry. I'm pretty sure your friend can swim," Miles muttered.
About to answer back, Julian stopped when he noticed Quark approaching them. "Are you two looking for Garak? He told me to let you know he was going to be waiting inside the program for you and to come in when you were ready."
"I believe that would be now," Julian said with a quick glance to the Chief to confirm. "Thank you, Quark."
Quark made an impatient gesture of acknowledgment and hurried off, no doubt to fleece yet another customer.
"All right, then." Miles started up the stairs, humming. Within a bar, Julian recognized the melody of "Jerusalem" and happily joined in.
The holosuite doors opened on a brilliantly sunny day at Biggin Hill, warm even for an English summer. Julian could already feel himself begin to sweat beneath his heavy jacket, though he didn't bother to remove it. He'd be cool enough once he was in the air.
He scanned the area, but there was no sign of Garak. That was a bit unusual; the last time, meticulously dressed Garak had stood out amidst the dashing Human pilots as clearly as a blackout violation. Today, though, he seemed to be doing a great deal better at blending in.
He did, however, catch the eye of Airman Brown, a kindhearted recurring character. Brown didn't stop, though, but only called out, "The flight lieutenant's waiting for you at your hangar."
Julian raised a hand to wave in thanks, but distractedly. Flight lieutenant?
"Flight lieutenant?" Miles asked, echoing his thoughts. "We weren't supposed to meet with any officers today, were we?"
"As far as I'm aware, we were just supposed to get into our Spitfires and fly out, the same as always."
"Guess we'd better check it out. It could be something the program does when you've logged enough hours."
"That could be," he agreed, only partly convinced. Still, you never knew.
When they entered the hangar, naturally the sight of their two trusty airplanes caught his attention first (. . . not three?). But then he noticed a figure in officers' uniform inspecting one of the Spitfires.
An officer with decidedly non-period chin-length black hair.
And grey skin.
"You're the flight lieutenant?" Miles demanded.
Garak turned, showing off the most innocuous of his collection of innocuous smiles, and as he did, Julian got a proper look at his costume.
He was wearing a collared white shirt and perfectly knotted tie. Black gloves drew attention to his hands, and while Julian was hardly an expert, he was positive Garak had hand-tailored the blue-green jacket and trousers—no standard-issue uniform ever looked that trim. Finally, Garak had topped it off with an officer's cap, its brim precisely centred.
The effect was. . . .
Well. Last time, when Garak had been wearing an airman's flight uniform, the word that had unavoidably come to mind had been "adorable." That word no longer fit. Instead, the only one Julian could think of now was "attractive."
It wasn't the first time that he'd found himself unable to avoid noticing Garak's appearance. As a matter of fact, he had been aware of it for some time. Garak's looks weren't the sort that knocked you over the head, like Jadzia's or Major Kira's. In their cases, it was immediately obvious that they were both gorgeous.
By contrast, Garak was more subtle. His attractiveness crept up on you. And it hadn't been until some time into their friendship that Julian had realised as much.
Once he had, he'd done his best to ignore it, the same way he ignored things with Jadzia and the Major. Some of your friends were good-looking and some weren't. That was the way it was.
He wasn't so sure, however, that he was going to be able to ignore the way Garak looked right now.
"Yes, I am," Garak answered the Chief, and that should have redirected Julian's thoughts, but Garak's expression had turned so satisfied that it really wasn't helping anything. "I thought this position—and its uniform—was better suited to me, so I did a little tinkering with the program. I hope you don't mind."
That explanation was enough to at last get Julian to transfer his gaze to the Chief, away from Garak. The look on his face was every bit as entertaining as he'd expected.
"Of course we mind—we didn't come here to be bossed around by you!" Miles came just shy of shouting.
Garak of course appeared completely unconcerned. "Is that true, Doctor?"
"Well . . . as long as you don't take advantage of your position, that should be all right."
After all, it was clear Garak had put a lot of work into his part. It would be unfair to tell him to scrap it in the first two minutes.
"Julian!"
Garak smiled, his eyes only on Julian. "Of course. I'll be perfectly reasonable."
"I can't believe this. . . ." the Chief grumbled; they both paid him no mind.
"Now," Garak said briskly as his already straight posture somehow straightened further. "Intelligence reports have indicated that the Luftwaffe are en route to London to launch a particularly devastating strike. You'll be taking to the air in fifteen minutes to intercept them."
Julian glanced at the Chief again. Already, he could see his friend's ruffled feathers settling as he allowed himself to be immersed in the scenario. Good. Maybe this was going to work, after all.
Naturally, this was the moment Miles' combadge decided to interrupt.
"Kira to O'Brien."
His sigh was a work of art. "Go ahead, Major."
"Chief, the entire communications array has just gone down. We need you up in ops immediately."
"Oh n—how the hell did that happen?"
"We've got some teams looking into it now, but no answers. You'd better come see for yourself. Kira out."
Miles turned upon them the look of a condemned man. "Don't bother waiting for me. Ten to one I'll be up all night with this."
"Hard luck, Chief." Julian clapped his shoulder. As CMO, he could understand his friend's pain over inconvenient emergencies all too well. "Maybe it'll turn out someone just nudged it out of alignment a bit."
"Or perhaps it's sabotage," Garak suggested helpfully and received a glare for his trouble.
"Whatever it is, I'm about to find out. See you later—I hope."
Gloomily tugging his aviator's cap from his head, the Chief called out, "Computer, exit." A door opened in the middle of the hangar. He walked through; the door closed behind him and vanished from view.
Julian looked back to Garak. "Now what? Do you want to continue or shall we go for a drink at Quark's?"
"Not dressed like this." Garak gestured at his uniform and Julian's attention was once more brought back to just how well it suited him. "We've already invested this much time. We may as well continue."
"Should I reset the parametres for two participants?"
"There's no need. I'll take Chief O'Brien's place and fly his airplane. No doubt our brave ground crew will find it highly irregular, but given they're fictional, they'll adapt."
"True enough." He started for his airplane, but then Garak interrupted.
"A moment, Doctor, if you would."
Julian faced Garak, curious. The request didn't have anything to do with the simulation or Garak would have called him "Airman" —unless, of course, he thought it too silly. What was it, then?
He received his answer immediately. Garak stepped forward a few paces, the click of his shoes echoing down the hangar, and took hold of the ends of Julian's scarf.
"Garak?" What in the world was he doing?
"I can't possibly allow you to go out with a scarf as poorly tied as this."
Julian chuckled a bit breathlessly. Leave it to Garak to think about appearances even now.
He wanted to make some sort of response, but at the moment, nothing was coming to him, not a single word. Garak's fingers were stark black against the white of his scarf and skillful despite his gloves. The brim of his cap hid Garak's eyes from him; all Julian could see was the turn of his lips as he undid the knot. It was an odd but fascinating sight, the way one part of Garak was so isolated, so put into focus. It was also a sight driven completely from his mind the moment he felt the slide of silk along his neck.
He swallowed with a dry mouth, now more conscious than ever of Garak's fingers so close to his throat. There was a clear association with that sensation. The only other time he had felt cloth move at his neck in that manner, pulled by another's hands, was in a different holosuite program. Julian Bashir, Secret Agent, pursues a dangerous woman of mystery once more. After a bit of mutual seduction, she leads him to bed, beginning to undress him by sensuously slipping his tie from his neck.
Feeling that coming from Garak was—strange. But, in all honesty . . . he couldn't say it was a bad thing.
Nowhere near soon enough (or possibly "too soon" he couldn't help thinking), Garak finished his tidying. He wrapped up by patting down the now even ends of Julian's scarf—sending awareness sweeping through him of the touch of his hand on his chest—and of course by straightening his collar.
"There. Much better."
"Ah." Julian cleared his throat. "Thank you."
He'd tried to disguise the change in his voice, but his lowered tone must have caught Garak's ear, because the other man gave him a sudden sharp look. Julian held his gaze as best he could, until Garak relented. He stepped back and Julian very nearly moved forward to close that gap again, and what the hell was going on with him today?
"Shall we be off?" Garak asked, his own tone made of nothing but lightness and uncomplicated cheer.
"Yes, um, let's, shall we?"
Julian finally walked to his Spitfire to begin his takeoff preparations, blowing out a long breath as he did. One thought in particular rose above the sudden cacophonous blur in his mind:
It said a great deal about your life when you were looking to a war to give yourself an uncomplicated escape.
Fandom: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Romance
Rating & Warnings: PG (reference to alcohol)
Beta: tinsnip
Words: This part 2273, 6225 overall
Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Summary: As a way to make up for continually running out on Garak at lunch, Julian invites him along to one of his holosuite sessions with Chief O'Brien as a way of patching up their friendship. It doesn't work out quite the way he expected. This chapter: Some changes are made to the program, and to Julian's perceptions.
Author's Notes: Not a lot to say about this one, except that I had a lot of fun writing it, and that this chapter contains the scene that sparked the whole fic.
The credit for the image in this chapter (which is used with permission) goes to petaq, art journal at dziwaczka. If you love the picture half as much as I do, I'm sure praise would not go amiss. <3
It wasn't for a few weeks that the three of them had another holosuite session together. Over that period, Julian was very careful with his schedule. He and the Chief wasted time together with their usual darts and holosuite adventures, and he and Garak met most days for lunch and spent a couple of evenings in each other's company. He even managed to squeeze in time for drinks with Dax and for the occasional infirmary social night.
This left him extremely busy, it was true, but the effort he put into timetable management was worth it. He didn't have to squirm over running out on Garak the one time it was unavoidable (emergency surgery was difficult to postpone), and in turn, Garak seemed happier—at least as far as he could tell, anyway. Garak was an expressive man, yes, but the emotions he projected tended to be at angles with the way he was actually feeling. All the same, this time Julian felt justifiably confident in his diagnosis.
He hadn't been planning on inviting Garak along with him and the Chief again for a while yet, but one evening, he was very much surprised when Miles said, "See if Garak is free tonight, too, will you? I finished modifying the program—I doubt he'll be flying circles around us now."
Suddenly buoyant, he replied, "I will—I imagine he'll be able to come. His tailoring business has fallen off a bit lately, unfortunately."
"Huh. Maybe if he got his sleeves the right length, he'd be doing better."
Julian eyed his friend's perpetually rolled-up sleeves. "How would you know if they weren't?"
"I just do, all right?" Miles said crankily, which told Julian he'd scored a point. "I'm off here. See you tonight, Airman."
Julian waved a salute of sorts at him as Miles strode to the turbolift. Only another hour before lunch, when he could find out if the three of them really were about to fly again. That sounded like very little time at all, but he didn't doubt that the waiting was going to be dreadful.
As he'd expected, Garak was indeed available for more airborne adventures and he agreed readily to the suggestion. That put Julian's mood somewhere in the exosphere (had he been planetbound, at any rate). He was so glad that Garak seemed to have completely changed his mind about the holosuite since the previous year, and he was just as thrilled that Garak and the Chief seemed to be putting their conflict behind them. Of course he wasn't so naive as to expect them to get along simply because he was close to both of them, but he would much prefer his best friends to at least tolerate each other. Now it seemed that his wish was finally coming true.
That evening, he was the first to arrive at Quark's, though not by much. He hadn't even the time to decide whether he wanted to order a drink while he waited before the Chief strolled in, dressed and ready to go.
"All set for takeoff, Julian?" Miles asked over a delighted cry of "Dabo!"
"Of course! I haven't seen Garak yet, but as soon as he's here, we can start. Are you going to warn him about the changes to the difficulty setting?"
"Do I have to?"
Julian nudged him with his shoulder. "Come on, Chief, it wouldn't be fair to just toss him into the deep end."
"Don't worry. I'm pretty sure your friend can swim," Miles muttered.
About to answer back, Julian stopped when he noticed Quark approaching them. "Are you two looking for Garak? He told me to let you know he was going to be waiting inside the program for you and to come in when you were ready."
"I believe that would be now," Julian said with a quick glance to the Chief to confirm. "Thank you, Quark."
Quark made an impatient gesture of acknowledgment and hurried off, no doubt to fleece yet another customer.
"All right, then." Miles started up the stairs, humming. Within a bar, Julian recognized the melody of "Jerusalem" and happily joined in.
The holosuite doors opened on a brilliantly sunny day at Biggin Hill, warm even for an English summer. Julian could already feel himself begin to sweat beneath his heavy jacket, though he didn't bother to remove it. He'd be cool enough once he was in the air.
He scanned the area, but there was no sign of Garak. That was a bit unusual; the last time, meticulously dressed Garak had stood out amidst the dashing Human pilots as clearly as a blackout violation. Today, though, he seemed to be doing a great deal better at blending in.
He did, however, catch the eye of Airman Brown, a kindhearted recurring character. Brown didn't stop, though, but only called out, "The flight lieutenant's waiting for you at your hangar."
Julian raised a hand to wave in thanks, but distractedly. Flight lieutenant?
"Flight lieutenant?" Miles asked, echoing his thoughts. "We weren't supposed to meet with any officers today, were we?"
"As far as I'm aware, we were just supposed to get into our Spitfires and fly out, the same as always."
"Guess we'd better check it out. It could be something the program does when you've logged enough hours."
"That could be," he agreed, only partly convinced. Still, you never knew.
When they entered the hangar, naturally the sight of their two trusty airplanes caught his attention first (. . . not three?). But then he noticed a figure in officers' uniform inspecting one of the Spitfires.
An officer with decidedly non-period chin-length black hair.
And grey skin.
"You're the flight lieutenant?" Miles demanded.
Garak turned, showing off the most innocuous of his collection of innocuous smiles, and as he did, Julian got a proper look at his costume.
He was wearing a collared white shirt and perfectly knotted tie. Black gloves drew attention to his hands, and while Julian was hardly an expert, he was positive Garak had hand-tailored the blue-green jacket and trousers—no standard-issue uniform ever looked that trim. Finally, Garak had topped it off with an officer's cap, its brim precisely centred.
The effect was. . . .
Well. Last time, when Garak had been wearing an airman's flight uniform, the word that had unavoidably come to mind had been "adorable." That word no longer fit. Instead, the only one Julian could think of now was "attractive."
It wasn't the first time that he'd found himself unable to avoid noticing Garak's appearance. As a matter of fact, he had been aware of it for some time. Garak's looks weren't the sort that knocked you over the head, like Jadzia's or Major Kira's. In their cases, it was immediately obvious that they were both gorgeous.
By contrast, Garak was more subtle. His attractiveness crept up on you. And it hadn't been until some time into their friendship that Julian had realised as much.
Once he had, he'd done his best to ignore it, the same way he ignored things with Jadzia and the Major. Some of your friends were good-looking and some weren't. That was the way it was.
He wasn't so sure, however, that he was going to be able to ignore the way Garak looked right now.
"Yes, I am," Garak answered the Chief, and that should have redirected Julian's thoughts, but Garak's expression had turned so satisfied that it really wasn't helping anything. "I thought this position—and its uniform—was better suited to me, so I did a little tinkering with the program. I hope you don't mind."
That explanation was enough to at last get Julian to transfer his gaze to the Chief, away from Garak. The look on his face was every bit as entertaining as he'd expected.
"Of course we mind—we didn't come here to be bossed around by you!" Miles came just shy of shouting.
Garak of course appeared completely unconcerned. "Is that true, Doctor?"
"Well . . . as long as you don't take advantage of your position, that should be all right."
After all, it was clear Garak had put a lot of work into his part. It would be unfair to tell him to scrap it in the first two minutes.
"Julian!"
Garak smiled, his eyes only on Julian. "Of course. I'll be perfectly reasonable."
"I can't believe this. . . ." the Chief grumbled; they both paid him no mind.
"Now," Garak said briskly as his already straight posture somehow straightened further. "Intelligence reports have indicated that the Luftwaffe are en route to London to launch a particularly devastating strike. You'll be taking to the air in fifteen minutes to intercept them."
Julian glanced at the Chief again. Already, he could see his friend's ruffled feathers settling as he allowed himself to be immersed in the scenario. Good. Maybe this was going to work, after all.
Naturally, this was the moment Miles' combadge decided to interrupt.
"Kira to O'Brien."
His sigh was a work of art. "Go ahead, Major."
"Chief, the entire communications array has just gone down. We need you up in ops immediately."
"Oh n—how the hell did that happen?"
"We've got some teams looking into it now, but no answers. You'd better come see for yourself. Kira out."
Miles turned upon them the look of a condemned man. "Don't bother waiting for me. Ten to one I'll be up all night with this."
"Hard luck, Chief." Julian clapped his shoulder. As CMO, he could understand his friend's pain over inconvenient emergencies all too well. "Maybe it'll turn out someone just nudged it out of alignment a bit."
"Or perhaps it's sabotage," Garak suggested helpfully and received a glare for his trouble.
"Whatever it is, I'm about to find out. See you later—I hope."
Gloomily tugging his aviator's cap from his head, the Chief called out, "Computer, exit." A door opened in the middle of the hangar. He walked through; the door closed behind him and vanished from view.
Julian looked back to Garak. "Now what? Do you want to continue or shall we go for a drink at Quark's?"
"Not dressed like this." Garak gestured at his uniform and Julian's attention was once more brought back to just how well it suited him. "We've already invested this much time. We may as well continue."
"Should I reset the parametres for two participants?"
"There's no need. I'll take Chief O'Brien's place and fly his airplane. No doubt our brave ground crew will find it highly irregular, but given they're fictional, they'll adapt."
"True enough." He started for his airplane, but then Garak interrupted.
"A moment, Doctor, if you would."
Julian faced Garak, curious. The request didn't have anything to do with the simulation or Garak would have called him "Airman" —unless, of course, he thought it too silly. What was it, then?
He received his answer immediately. Garak stepped forward a few paces, the click of his shoes echoing down the hangar, and took hold of the ends of Julian's scarf.
"Garak?" What in the world was he doing?
"I can't possibly allow you to go out with a scarf as poorly tied as this."
Julian chuckled a bit breathlessly. Leave it to Garak to think about appearances even now.
He wanted to make some sort of response, but at the moment, nothing was coming to him, not a single word. Garak's fingers were stark black against the white of his scarf and skillful despite his gloves. The brim of his cap hid Garak's eyes from him; all Julian could see was the turn of his lips as he undid the knot. It was an odd but fascinating sight, the way one part of Garak was so isolated, so put into focus. It was also a sight driven completely from his mind the moment he felt the slide of silk along his neck.
He swallowed with a dry mouth, now more conscious than ever of Garak's fingers so close to his throat. There was a clear association with that sensation. The only other time he had felt cloth move at his neck in that manner, pulled by another's hands, was in a different holosuite program. Julian Bashir, Secret Agent, pursues a dangerous woman of mystery once more. After a bit of mutual seduction, she leads him to bed, beginning to undress him by sensuously slipping his tie from his neck.
Feeling that coming from Garak was—strange. But, in all honesty . . . he couldn't say it was a bad thing.
Nowhere near soon enough (or possibly "too soon" he couldn't help thinking), Garak finished his tidying. He wrapped up by patting down the now even ends of Julian's scarf—sending awareness sweeping through him of the touch of his hand on his chest—and of course by straightening his collar.
"There. Much better."
"Ah." Julian cleared his throat. "Thank you."
He'd tried to disguise the change in his voice, but his lowered tone must have caught Garak's ear, because the other man gave him a sudden sharp look. Julian held his gaze as best he could, until Garak relented. He stepped back and Julian very nearly moved forward to close that gap again, and what the hell was going on with him today?
"Shall we be off?" Garak asked, his own tone made of nothing but lightness and uncomplicated cheer.
"Yes, um, let's, shall we?"
Julian finally walked to his Spitfire to begin his takeoff preparations, blowing out a long breath as he did. One thought in particular rose above the sudden cacophonous blur in his mind:
It said a great deal about your life when you were looking to a war to give yourself an uncomplicated escape.