"Drama"
By Viridian5
10/9/00
revised: 9/12/02

RATING: R; Garak/Bashir. If m/m interaction bothers you, walk away now.
SPOILERS: "Our Man Bashir" and "Doctor Bashir, I Presume."
SUMMARY: Will the real Julian Bashir please stand up? Does Julian even know where he is?
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: Sequel to "Dodge" in a series I’m calling To Tell the Truth.
Thanks to Te for help on improving the ending.
9/12/02 - I hadn't seen "Doctor Bashir, I Presume" in years when I first wrote this, and watching it recently showed me that I'd misremembered a few things, so I did some revisions to better fit canon.

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"Drama"
By Viridian5
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Once upon a time there was boy named Jules. He was simple and honest, and he loved his mom and dad with all his heart.

Then, one day his mom and dad sent Jules to the hospital and he never came back.

In some stories that would be "The End," but here it’s not... quite. Because some parts of Jules lived on in me. In some ways I could be considered a changeling, but where most changelings had to be substituted for the real children in stealth so the parents wouldn’t know, the child I’d replaced had been set out on a doorstep by his parents next to milk, cookies, and a sizeable bribe.

How bitter I sound. Maybe the main reason why I still defended Jules as if he’d been a dead brother was that I could never forget that I lived only because he’d died. Because he hadn’t been smart enough or good enough and so hadn’t been loved enough by his parents. Yet I was him, which meant that I hadn’t been smart enough or good enough or loved enough.

The counselors at the hospital had been far more concerned with making sure I knew that I would have to lie to everyone for the rest of my life than with helping me deal with my emotions or reconcile the boy I’d been with the one I’d been made over into. While they never told me exactly what it was that had been done to me, they said that the truth could hurt me and my parents, that they could go to prison for "helping me" as they had, and my parents would never survive prison. Who knew what the Federation would do with me, the evidence? People would be jealous of a little boy who had improved so quickly.... It hardly escaped my enhanced brain that the counselors worried for themselves more, but I recognized that our fates had been tangled together.

Taking vengeance on them in my anger would hurt my parents and me as well.

Thus I started my acting career immediately after my enhancement, with my parents as the first recipients. My increased intelligence, grace, and strength thrilled them, but they worried that my personality had changed, even if they never said it outright. Jules had been a demonstrative child, sometimes too demonstrative. By contrast, I was withdrawn, seeming shy as I watched everyone around me for clues on how to behave and what was expected of me. If my parents had been aware of the pain, anger, and confusion I couldn't bring myself to express, they would have worried more, but they never thought. They never thought. Once I realized what they wanted, I became that bubbly child again, the Jules Plus they’d wanted and thought they’d get.

In some ways it made my life easier that I had to lie even at home.

When I returned to school, though in a different city, I slowly but steadily improved my academic performance. The counselors had warned me to avoid standing out too much. In my quest for verisimilitude and safety, I spent a great deal of time trying to decide which questions I should miss to make my cover perfect. I didn't dare let anyone see how easy it was.

The teachers and administrators held me up as an example of what hard work could do for a child’s progress, as if Jules hadn’t tried hard and worked to the fullest extent of his abilities. I wanted to smash their smug faces against something. My falsified records mentioned an illness, so I simply said that private tutoring during my hospitalization had helped, and I’d had little else to do during my recovery.

I became accustomed to disguising my talents and living with the perpetual fear of being discovered and caught. You can become accustomed to anything eventually. I was never sure if my parents knew about the counseling I received at the hospital, but I could never bring myself to ask them.

When I found out at the age of 15 exactly what had been done to me, it all made sense. Everyone knew the history of why and how such enhancements had been made illegal and the harsh penalties for flouting those laws.

While I had always known that I was no longer the Jules I vaguely remembered being, knowing that I had been changed so thoroughly, that I was not "Jules" at all, inspired me to finally call myself "Julian" instead. I had stolen his body; I didn't need to steal his name as well.

The urge to confide my secrets in someone faded over time, especially once I learned the truth. Who could I tell? Better, who could possibly understand? I was one of a kind.

My cheerful affability settled into a perfect mask. If I’d let my true feelings show I would have been one of history’s most toxic adolescents, and that would be saying something. The lies made it easier for me, until I felt so detached from my own darker emotions that they didn’t touch me anymore. I lied so often and so well that the lies nearly became true.

Sometimes people asked if it irked me that I so often won only second place, but I remained too good a sport for something so petty to bother me. I congratulated everyone who finished ahead of me.

Aside from the need for secrecy and a fear of exposure, I still felt like a cheat for what I had. Why should I compound it by taking honors away from those who had come by their skills through hard work?

One year Ian asked me to take drama as an elective with him. I told him that I couldn’t lie worth a damn. When he said that I had to be able to lie since my parents didn’t know about him, I told him that they were different, they were easy.... We broke up a month later, because he’d gotten so close to me that he started to realize that I held back a great deal, and I tired of him picking at me. By the end, he began to deliberately wound me in the hopes of exposing something honest.

I learned a great deal from that relationship and never let someone in that close again.

Starfleet became my inevitable destination. Aside from being the perfect hiding place, in plain sight, it would give me the opportunity to practice the kind of medicine I’d find challenging. Deep Space Nine appealed to me for similar reasons. Frontier medicine in a location far from anything I’d ever known. That I would have excuses to avoid my family... that was merely a pleasant side effect.

I met such interesting people here too. I supposed it was inevitable that I’d be drawn to Garak. I wanted to see another actor at work and hear his stated philosophies. He occupied a unique position on the station. How odd to live a lie, have people be certain you lived a lie, yet still be hidden because no one knew what the truth could be. He challenged me in ways few people did.

I never once felt the urge to tell him. Not even once, no matter that he might understand.

He no doubt guessed that I wasn’t what I seemed, but he could have no idea what I hid. No one did, until that bastard Zimmerman found me out by luck. Thank you so much, Father, for continuing to be such a fool that you would blurt out, in an almost public place yet, the secret I spent my life protecting to keep you safe. That he gave up two years of his freedom to save my career left me no less angry but complicated the anger. I loved him so much, but in so many ways I still couldn't stand him.

Now everyone knew. Most of them have even forgiven me over the last two weeks, as if I’d done anything I needed forgiveness for. I didn’t have to hide anything anymore, they told me. Yet I behaved almost exactly the same as I had before. I’d been pretending for so long that at some point the person I’d pretended to be had become the person I was. I let myself show my enhancements more, which entertained my fellow officers as if I performed parlor tricks for them, yet I still held back at times, battling instincts I spent years developing. I still hesitated. I still couldn’t believe that my burden was gone and sometimes woke sweating at night from panic dreams, certain that the authorities were coming for me.

Maybe I simply needed time. But I felt so naked like this....

Fortunately, I gained a new secret to clutch to myself not long after I lost my old ones. He strode through the door right now.

"Julian, you’ve redecorated. Surely this is no longer period?" Garak asked. Amazing how he looked so comfortable in a tuxedo.

I glanced around the Hong Kong apartment of Julian Bashir, superspy. "I used some more... tasteful antiques as replacements. A jetsetter like Julian Bashir can afford to indulge a love of old, expensive furniture if he cares to. It still works."

We met here because the holosuites were one of the few places on the station Odo didn’t have under surveillance, while Quark didn’t dare try to make use of it, not after Garak had threatened him. People had suspected that Garak and I had been involved far before we’d actually become involved, but we hardly had to give them confirmation. Besides, I noticed Odo and some others watching me more closely now that my secret was out. I supposed that it made me seem less reliable and more likely to intrigue, thus rendering my friendship with a Cardassian spy more suspect. I swallowed my offended feelings the same way I always had.

If Odo found out we were lovers, things would go badly. Especially if he discovered that it started not long after I’d faced full disclosure. I could only imagine the intervention my fellow officers would initiate if they thought that Garak had preyed on me while I was vulnerable. I doubt they’d believe me if I told them that not only had I made the first move, but that I’d nearly ravaged him in it. Of course, I couldn’t tell them that he’d been spying on me as I worked out in a holosuite only an hour before. With only the best intentions and my welfare in mind, they would rip away one of the few things that made me happy lately. I could hardly allow that.

Thus, a new secret, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

"It’s a bit of an improvement," Garak said.

I leaned closer to him. "I’m sure you’d do better."

"Fabrics and color are my life. I’m a tailor after all."

"Of course."

"I appreciate it that you turned up the heat as well."

"A proper host makes his guests as comfortable as possible."

"Indeed. I also see such sentiments at work in your lovely dinner spread."

"My second Mona is a master chef as well as a master of whatever else my character needs her to be a master of, but I’m afraid I’m not hungry at the moment."

His eyes darkened. "Oh no? Is there any way I could help sharpen your appetite?"

I stroked one finger down his neck ridges, enjoying the play of smooth skin versus the rough edges of his scales. His skin felt cool now, but it always warmed the longer I touched it. "Perhaps some exercise." I backed away until only one fingertip touched him, then withdrew even that. "Though I’m not sure if you can help me."

Garak’s smile deepened. "I think I might." I only flirted with him in the style reminiscent of his people’s when I wanted him to be rough with me. We both found it a relief that we could be wild with one another without harm. Sex had been another thing I’d always had to hold back on. "I daresay that conversation may be exercise enough, since you work so hard to try to match my effortless witticisms."

"I think not." I was on him in seconds, my tongue teasing the edges of his neck ridges.

"Julian, you shock and appall me."

I let him grab him. "Yet who’s the one sitting me on the table?" I pushed the platters away and lay down on the table while hooking my legs around his waist and grinding. The ability to do multiple things at once no matter the circumstances always proved useful.

As he attacked the buttons on my tuxedo, Garak said, "I refuse to incriminate myself."

I smiled darkly. "Me either."

He didn’t care what I was, only who I was, and I could be whomever I chose to be in his presence. No one else had ever come as close to understanding me, and I enjoyed talking to him. We played the same games. I found it comforting to know that I couldn’t trust him. Nor could I underestimate the rather juvenile pleasure of knowing how everyone would disapprove if they knew.

Comfortable. I felt comfortable.

"Julian." Garak sounded as if he couldn’t decide whether to feel amused or annoyed.

I smiled. "Oh. Hi."

"Is it a private party?"

I had a Cardassian draped all over me, so I should pay more attention. "Not at all."

"If I’m boring you, I could stop."

"Then you’d have to climb down off the table."

"Which I could do."

"Not if I’m holding on to you, you can’t."

"Are you quite done with what else you were doing?"

"Quite. I’m here, and I’m staying here." Maybe if I told myself that often enough, I’d start believing it.