There are three levels to what Garak watches. The first is what he watches when Julian is around – the news, symphonies, ridiculous political dramas that Garak ridicules for their inaccuracy more than he watches them. The second is reality t.v., but things like Cardassian Big Brother where everyone is trying to stab everyone else in the back and alliances are made and destroyed by the second. This is what he’ll quickly change away from when Julian comes home and look sheepish about until Julian confronts him and tells him it’s ok to watch trashy television if that’s what makes him happy.

When he’s sure he’s absolutely alone, and you can’t convince me that he doesn’t have some way of tracking Julian, he uses an encrypted padd to watch Cardassian Hallmark movies. Most of them are about the tension between love of family and love of state with the peculiarity that oftentimes family wins out in these dramas. The general will abandon his political career to go make kanar with the woman of his dreams. The famed scientist will leave her studies behind to go planet hopping with a burly ship captain. He keeps tissues nearby and will occasionally indulge in a box of Delavian chocolates as he watches the whirlwind romance. 

Julian has caught him a total of once. Garak had been hard at work pushing some new bills for housing reform through the senate and thought he could catch the tail end of The Uzantine Promise before Julian came home. Julian came home early and found a passed-out Garak sleeping on a padd that was portraying a drawn-out love confession between a Cardassian Glinn and a baker from a small fishing town. When Garak woke up, the padd was off (apparently out of battery) and a blanket was draped over his shoulders. 

Julian is still saving his husband’s fondness for romances for a day when Garak gets upset with himself and declares himself as a heartless cog in the political machinery – something which happens about once a year at this point – and he can’t find another way to prove to him that he does have a heart.