AU that takes Garak and Bashir from their escape from Camp 371 to a relationship – though the beginning is unconventionally framed. But it really fits the situation. Thoroughly clever and enjoyable.
Excerpt
Julian sits down on a bunk, although it’s less like an act of will and more like the force of artificial gravity. “I don’t know if I can sleep.”
Garak sits down beside him. “You can.”
“Do you know, I dreamt every night in that awful place that it was only a dream, that I wasn’t really there. I think I’m afraid that if I go to sleep, I’ll be there again,” Julian confesses, almost below a whisper.
Garak doesn’t look like he thinks that’s a ridiculous fear, or an unimportant one. And instead of saying anything, he leans forward and softly, deliberately kisses the underside of Julian’s jawline, near his ear.
It’s a weird place for a first kiss, Julian thinks. Even if Garak had been wanting to give a gesture of affection more platonic than passionate, the underside of his jaw would not have been his first guess. The forehead, perhaps, or the maybe the cheek, but under his jaw? Or maybe Cardassians had vastly different ideas of what could be considered a platonic touch.
Either way, he is sufficiently distracted that Garak is able to maneuver him to lie down on the bunk next to the wall, and Garak stretches out beside him, their knees and elbows touching. Much later, he’d decide that had been the point of that strange kiss – to let his mind chase after a problem more benign than all the others before him.
“Sleep,” Garak says. “I can’t sleep until you do.”
And still wondering about that odd kiss, Julian drops off between one moment and the next with no difficulty whatsoever.
Metadata:
Title: Opacity of Paradise
Author: thehoyden
Year Posted: 2010
Approx. Word Count: 10,000
Chapters: 1
GB - Slash or Platonic: Slash
My Rating (1-5): 5
Keywords: AU, “By Inferno’s Light,“ Hurt-Comfort, Marriage, Genetic Revelation, “Doctor Bashir, I Presume”