Icon by @ThatSpookyAgent. Call me Tir or Julian. 37. He/They. Queer. Twitter: @tirlaeyn. ao3: tirlaeyn. 18+ Only. Star Trek. The X-Files. Sandman. IwtV. OMFD. Definitionless in this Strict Atmosphere.
today’s Concept: Julian getting involved with reconstruction efforts and medical relief on Cardassia, occasionally getting summoned to Prime and getting put up in one of the remaining luxury hotels in the capital that hasn’t been repurposed for housing. at first, Garak joins him to hang out in the hotel bar and then later on, his hotel room, to save Julian the stain of being seen coming and going from Tain’s mansion in the administrative sector where Garak has been living. eventually this turns into Garak, who isn’t getting much more than four hours of sleep a night while trying to write the new Cardassian constitution, passing out on the bed and Julian leaving him to sleep. Garak wakes up at 0300 as the little spoon with Julian’s hand clamped on his hip and has an entire existential crisis about enjoying it. he wakes up again at 0700 hrs and says nothing about it to Julian. lather, rinse, repeat until they realize they’ve been playing relationship chicken for a year and Julian’s been offered an eighteen month contract on Prime to help the Ministry of Health build a nationalized pediatric well-baby and well-child program. they have sex in a fancy shower. the end
additional thoughts: it’s Julian’s second or third trip to Cardassia since Garak’s accidental sleepover, and they’ve gotten very good at Not Talking About It but Garak has definitely been spending every night at the hotel, just sleeping. it’s become comfortable. routine. a source of much needed solace and intimacy for them both. they both know it’s becoming too close to Becoming, but if they don’t talk about it, that’s enough. if it only happens once a month, that’s enough. if they don’t look at it too closely, that’s enough. one night, Garak rolls over in his sleep and brushes against Julian’s side, jerking himself awake, heart pounding. Julian mutters in his sleep, grabbing Garak’s hand and pulling him closer, until Garak is wrapped around him. he’s warm and soft and smells like everything Garak knows he can’t have, not really. but it’s three in the morning and that’s what things that happen in the darkness are for, to exist in the liminal space between having and not-having
today’s Concept: Julian getting involved with reconstruction efforts and medical relief on Cardassia, occasionally getting summoned to Prime and getting put up in one of the remaining luxury hotels in the capital that hasn’t been repurposed for housing. at first, Garak joins him to hang out in the hotel bar and then later on, his hotel room, to save Julian the stain of being seen coming and going from Tain’s mansion in the administrative sector where Garak has been living. eventually this turns into Garak, who isn’t getting much more than four hours of sleep a night while trying to write the new Cardassian constitution, passing out on the bed and Julian leaving him to sleep. Garak wakes up at 0300 as the little spoon with Julian’s hand clamped on his hip and has an entire existential crisis about enjoying it. he wakes up again at 0700 hrs and says nothing about it to Julian. lather, rinse, repeat until they realize they’ve been playing relationship chicken for a year and Julian’s been offered an eighteen month contract on Prime to help the Ministry of Health build a nationalized pediatric well-baby and well-child program. they have sex in a fancy shower. the end
feeling insane bc it’s such a common fan interpretation, so common that i in fact have fallen prey to it myself, that julian is unaware or unreceptive of garak’s advances. i mean you can read it that julian is just a flirty guy, and he is, and that’s fine, but he does NOT act Like That with everyone. he does make eyes at people sometimes but the overall body language is different. i had forgotten until rewatching some of the classics that he initiates the flirting a lot, or at the very least he is responding to Cardassian flirting with human flirting to demonstrate that he Gets It (I think the boyish smile scene is a PRIME example, and it’s tragic that this scene seems to go down as “wow they’re clearly going through a rough patch in their friendship” when we canonically know how Cardassian flirting works and garak’s parting jab is either a straightforward needling about the fact that he’s aging [weird for them], a playfully sad acknowledgement of how war has changed him [writer intent probably], OR a reference to the fact that something else in their relationship has changed w/r/t julian’s perceived wide-eyed innocence. hhhhhhhhhhhh the subtext baby the subtext)
