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.
it’s about how garak and bashir are inverse mirrors of each of their deepest fears and insecurities. it’s about how julian is young and beautiful and idealistic and on track for a glorious, righteous career and admired by his colleagues while garak is aging, plain, bereft of former glory, bereft of citizenship, forced to make a living mending clothes on a station full of disdain for him. it’s about how they remind each other of the things they’ve lost, the things they can’t have, the things they’re secretly afraid weren’t worth the sacrifices they’ve both had to make. it’s about how garak is defined by secrecy and obfuscation and a shadowy past and how he inhabits that greyness with panache and dignity while julian has spent all his life cultivating an image of openness and golden success to hide the ugly secret of his augmented dna. it’s about how they’re mutually envious of and drawn to each other’s methods of dissemblance. it’s about how being in the other’s company is dangerous because of how that proximity can draw out the truth of who they are, but also seductive for that exact reason. it’s about how they can be themselves, their most debased and shameful selves, with each other, and the solace and beauty and tenderness such painful honesty enables. it’s about
Garak, as an expert undercover agent, would be comfortable adapting himself to what was needed and expected of him. Not enough fics where he and Julian move in together and it’s going TOO smoothly until Julian realizes Garak is trying to be amenable by 100% fitting some suspected model of Julian’s preferences. And then he’s like oh god I thought we had a natural fit but he’s doing that purposefully no matter how he actually feels about my massive piles of discarded tennis shoes… I bet he doesn’t even like shredded wheat…
