"Dodge"
By Viridian5
9/24/00

RATING: PG; Garak/Bashir. If m/m interaction bothers you, walk away now.
SPOILERS: "Doctor Bashir, I Presume?"
SUMMARY: After Julian’s past catches up with him, Garak is even more intrigued....
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Please ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com
DISCLAIMERS: All things Star Trek: Deep Space Nine belong to Paramount Pictures and Rick Berman & Michael Piller. No infringement intended. Suing me would be a waste of time.
NOTES: Thanks to Te, who encouraged me to write this and even helped me with a title once I realized that my favored title of "Performance" had already gone on an X-Files story of mine.

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"Dodge"
By Viridian5
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I waited a good interval of time before I walked into Quark's establishment. I didn't want my quarry to realize he was being followed, and I certainly didn't want him to hear my discussion with Quark. As I'd guessed, he wasn't in the bar, gambling, or dining areas, which meant he'd gone into a holosuite. Now I had to speak to Quark.

"Garak! What can I do for you this evening?" Quark asked.

"Can I speak with you privately for a moment?"

The Ferengi smiled. "That sounds promising. Of course." He led me to a secluded corner and pressed something behind a wall hanging. "The sound buffer is operating. How can I help you?"

"I know that you have your holosuites under illegal surveillance, and I'm thinking of letting Constable Odo hear about it."

Quark looked nervous for a moment before he blanked his face of all expression. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"If that's so, I'm sure you won't mind if I bring him here to take a look."

"That won't be necessary. He'll find nothing."

"In which case I will apologize to you and the constable."

"You'd incriminate yourself."

"I think he'd be so happy to have this information that he'd let me be as to how I knew of it."

Quark's eyes narrowed. "What do you want?"

"I want to use your equipment."

"When?"

"Now actually."

"Dr. Bashir, eh? I'll admit to some curiosity myself, though I don't understand what the fuss is about. Humans could use more enhancements. But who would have guessed?"

I had. I hadn't guessed what Julian's secret had been, but I'd known he had one. "Who indeed?"

Julian knew that word traveled quickly and the whole station was now aware of what he was. Lunch today had consisted of him steadfastly speaking lightly of nothing of any consequence as he ignored the stares. Neither his body nor his voice had betrayed any reaction, not to anyone who hadn't studied him as I had.

It often amused me, when it didn't annoy me, that Federation officers had no sense of subtlety or style, but the heavy-handedness on display at the Replimat had angered me. I understood their interest, but surely they could have satisfied their curiosity without leaving its subject feeling like a specimen for dissection. A Cardassian would only be that obvious in an effort to induce fear and a feeling of isolation. These Federation officers made it hard to tell if they did it to ostracize Julian or if they simply didn't know how blatant their stares were.

Amazing how the famous Federation love of diversity proved to be a sham. What a surprise.

The Ferengi looked almost thoughtful suddenly. "Do you think that others might want to watch him--"

"If you start charging admission for others to spy on him, I will let Odo know about the illegal surveillance of your holosuite customers."

He sneered. "Why? Because it's wrong?"

"I'm simply protecting the interests of someone I have lunch with now and then."

"That's why it's just fine to watch him yourself."

I smiled. "I'm doing it out of concern."

"I don't really care what your reasons are." A blatant lie. I could see him shaping a few theories. "Take a right into the first door down the corridor. It will lead you to another corridor, and the room is through the last door. The equipment--"

I doubted he knew how to use it half as well as I did. What he knew, he had to have learned by trial and error. "Is familiar to me. I need no help."

Quark grumbled as I left him. I had no doubt he was already thinking of ways he could turn a better profit from the holosuite surveillance while avoiding Constable Odo's attention. It didn't matter to me as long as no one spied on Julian.

Except me, of course.

I had no difficulties operating Quark's Cardassian antiques. Soon I had different views of Julian's holosuite room up on all the screens. His current program lacked the elaborate detailing of his usual ones. It made only a featureless closed room. Julian wielded a primitive racquet like a bludgeon against an equally primitive ball. Instead of the usual titillating skintight suit he wore for most of his games involving a racquet, he simply wore loose, shabby clothing. It looked completely out of character for him.

But he'd recently proved that none of us knew him as well as we thought we had, hadn't he?

He moved with a speed, grace, and strength unusual for a human, his enhancements in full display as he obviously pushed himself to his higher performance levels. Letting his inhibitions go and revealing himself. He... growled a little at times, a sound slightly lower than the bass thump of the ball against the room's surfaces and the huff of his breathing. I could see the strain his ferocity put on the racquet, ball, and walls in the gouges and scuffs that already marred each of them. He fired the ball around the room at wild angles that he should never have been able to follow, yet he was always there to return the volley for every single one.

He had the safeties off. If he miscalculated and the ball hit him, it might even break a bone from the speed he'd put behind it. But he didn't miscalculate.

When word had reached me that he'd been unmasked as an illegally enhanced human--an object of nearly superstitious terror to other humans--my appreciation of him had only deepened. What an intricate deception he'd perpetrated! Any slip or lapse in control on his part or his parents' could have sent him to prison; it would have this time if his father hadn't given himself up in Julian's place. Every moment of Julian's life after the enhancement had to have a judgment of how smart, how fast, how graceful he could afford to be to escape detection, forever holding something back. Every moment. A life of carefully coming in second place. A life of isolation in which he had to keep a large part of himself to himself. It went against every precept the Federation supposedly believed in.

The hypocritical reactions of his fellow officers provided no end of amusement for me. They told themselves and him that they were upset with him and that he'd have to "earn their trust" over again because he'd never told them--utterly ignoring that he didn't dare jeopardize himself and his family by revealing himself as a recipient of illegal bio-engineering--when, in truth, they were obviously afraid of what he was. They enjoyed "diversity" until it meant that someone they once thought they knew might be physically and mentally superior to them. If what little I heard of his mental faculties was true, the structure of his thoughts and memories was nearly Cardassian.

It only confirmed my own suspicions of Julian. When we first met, his appearance of utter guilelessness had interested me even beyond the possibility that I could pump him for information. How could an adult creature of any race possibly be as ingenuous as he seemed? Yet I sensed something else in him.... Thus I chose him as the Federation officer I would work on, befriend, ingratiate myself with. More time with him only deepened my belief that his appearance of guilelessness was as deceptive as his soft and fragile seeming looks, but I never would have guessed what he actually hid.

No wonder he'd been so interested in socializing with someone thought to be a spy no matter what his fellow officers, particularly Chief O'Brien, had to say against it. My life of perpetual subterfuge would have seemed like the closest experience to his own of anyone on the station. Having O'Brien sneer that he followed me around like a puppy--a description I'd thought quite apt once I looked it up--must have seemed like an acceptable trade-off to him for some sense of connection that he must not have been able to find anywhere else.

But perhaps I'm projecting my own isolation and loneliness upon Julian.

Now, to my chagrin and delight, I had to wonder how much of what I knew of him made up his facade. Not that I disapproved of facades, not at all, but I prided myself on identifying the different layers the people around me had.

I've never respected him more. I've never wanted him more. He might be strong enough to survive me after all.

This time the ball smashed through the mesh of his racquet. Julian dropped the broken racquet and dodged the speeding, dangerously ricocheting ball until it finally spent its momentum. As the slowing ball listlessly bounced in ever decreasing arcs, he briefly leaned against the wall and closed his eyes before briskly walking out of the suite.

Once again I waited before leaving. I doubted Julian would approve of my actions. When I walked out of the holosuite section, I saw him standing outside of Quark's. Watching me.

Couldn't be. Then again, perhaps it could.

Julian let me walk to him and said nothing when I stopped at his side. I took advantage of the silence to overcome my visceral reaction to his presence. The sweat that sheened his skin and hair made his aroma impossible to avoid, unlike the more carefully sanitized, muted, and contained scent he usually gave off when dressed in his uniform. Sometimes I still had difficulties dealing with how humans smelled, their... moistness, but Julian's scent consisted of a melange of elements I wouldn't find pleasurable if I didn't connect them to good memories, to him. He'd ceased being human to me and simply became Julian. The heat he currently threw off felt like home, easing some of the station's perpetual chill.

"Did you enjoy the show?" he asked.

I had no idea how he'd guessed what I'd been doing, but I refused to give him confirmation. When caught, deflect and admit nothing. "You must be thrilled, Julian. You gave a superb performance, but it's over now. You no longer need to lie or judge your every move. You're free to be exactly what you are, honestly and openly, just as the Federation preaches. You must be pleased." It would be the human reaction. My own kind would find such a speech hopelessly naive, rescued from ridiculousness only by the sarcasm in which it had been delivered.

Julian stood and stared silently at me. His eyes seemed unguarded, showing the rush of his thoughts and emotions, but they had always seemed unguarded, even as he'd lived a lie that would have done a Cardassian proud. The weariness I saw in them might not be genuine. I started to wonder if he would answer at all, yet I merely stood there and looked back at him, basking in the heat pouring off his body.

When his voice finally came, it sounded rough and even softer than usual, suffused with emotion. "I'm scared to death."

It was beautiful. Or it was a lie, what he thought I wanted to hear. Correctly, it turned out. I couldn't tell. Which made it equally beautiful.

I really had chosen well.