Chapter Text
Kukalaka’s fur, however mangled by time, is still soft under Julian’s touch. He clutches it, in the dark of the morning, and draws himself together.
He’s only been awake for a few seconds, it’s already shaping up to be a spectacular mess. There are quite a few nonsensical intricacies Julian considers when calculating whether a day will be Good or Bad. Logically he knows he doesn’t have nearly enough data to be making such a hypothesis, but the nature of his brain is sometimes so fucking illogical.
The sheets scuff and rustle to his side. “A bear?”
Julian looks over his shoulder where Elim Garak’s dark, shining eyes stare at him with curiosity and no malice. Julian’s jaw still clenches. He can always imagine malice in places when he needs to. Maybe today can be of those days.
“Dear?”
Garak looks confused now.
“Oh, right. Sorry, I was...distracted.” His hand opens and Kukalaka falls to the ground. Julian winces internally. “Just a toy. I don’t even know…”
His voice trails off, Garak lays a hand on his shoulder.
“Are you feeling alright?”
Julian ignores this, and chooses instead to stand up and start getting dressed. “Have you ever felt like some inanimate objects have feelings? And that you can hurt them, just like people?”
Garak pauses a moment to stare at him, it’s half loving amusement and half calculation. “You have quite the imagination, my dear Jules.”
This time when Julian flinches it’s detectable, especially by Garak’s trained eye. The mood in the room chills and grows stale in an instant. Kukalaka lays abandoned on the floor, alone. Julian picks him up, running his fingers over some of the raw stitches, before placing him back on the shelf next to his side of the bed.
“Julian.” It’s somehow still a question.
Julian swallows hard, refusing to meet his boyfriend’s eyes. “I’ve got to go to work.”
“I just want to know if you’re okay, you obviously have something on your mind, something bothering you. I want to apologize.”
“Ah,” Julian scoffed, “It’s not...It’s not your fault. I really do have to go, we’ve got some early surgeries today and I’m the only specialized in--”
“Can we talk about it after work, then?”
Julian looks up and realizes Garak is more than genuine. He shuffles over to the edge of the bed and clasps Julian’s thin, nimble hands in his own.
“It’s...a third Friday, Miles and I have the holosuite booked for after work…” Julian looks up at the ceiling and bites his lip. He doesn’t really feel like doing all that now, but he knows it might cheer him up.
“After?”
Garak squeezes his hand.
Julian sighs, and pulls away. “I’ll probably have completely forgotten by then.”
“I love you, my dear, I’m guessing that won’t be the case.”
Damn. That’s what you get when you start dating the ex-spy, lizard hunk, who’s heart is far bigger than he’ll ever admit, Julian supposes.
“Maybe.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“Mm.”
Garak kisses him on the forehead before he leaves.
Julian’s body feels empty.
It’s fine. He’s made his first decision to see malice. In his own body and it’s fucking constant needs. There’s an empty space between his two hands that his toy bear usually fills but now it’s just a space filled with nothing but a feeling that grows more numb the more he pushes against it.
It’ll start to feel good soon. He thinks, his uninterrupted, unchallenged thoughts already borrowing deep into forbidden territory. He’s already skipped breakfast, once he gets past lunch the chemistry in his body will catch up with this horrible feverish hole he’s throwing himself against and it will start to feel good.
There’s a cardiopulmonary endoscopy scheduled at noon, he already has a good excuse.
Deep Space Nine’s Hospital Sector is a glory to behold in it’s own right. Julian served on a few ships and did his externship time in medical school but he’s never seen an orbiting hospital as large and specialized since he started here. Besides being the most remote outpost at the time, it was part of the reason Julian chose the job. He fucking loves this.
Halfway between being pushed by his parents and utilizing his remaining non-tennis skills, Julian had discovered medicine stuck to his brain and stayed there. He was always thinking about it a little bit. It made him happy. It made him happy to stay up late, obsessively reading the lastest off-world medical journals. It made him happy to gush about everything he was constantly learning, as is the nature of the field, even if Miles had no goddamned idea what he was talking about.
For instance, the cardiopulmonary endoscopy he’s scheduled for this afternoon was on a bajoran patient. Bajoran heats are horizontally mirrored. They have upper and lower ventricles and atriums as opposed to left and right. Julian has always thought that was just absolutely fascinating. They even sound slightly different under a stethoscope.
“Dr. Bashir.” A nurse cuts off his train of thought. “You’re wanted in suite 13.”
Time to go to work. In the room a couple of familiar faces wait for him, fellow surgeons and doctors, as well as a new one; a bajoran woman who instantly sticks out to Julian because of the embroidered gold and red designs on her lab coat. They’re gorgeous and for a few moments, words fail him and he can’t tear his eyes away.
“Morning doctor,” a friend greets him, “allow me to introduce you to Doctor Brekka Aiko, our patient’s cardiologist out of orbit.”
Dr. Brekka smiles and holds out her hand, “still the same up here I’m afraid. I’ve been seeing Rairja since she was a teenager, we’re hoping the decreased gravity and fresh eyes helps.”
Julian's body clenches and he nods to her instead. The colors on her lab coat sting his eyes now. Her face is recoils somehow, all Julian can think about is how it reminds him of mashed clay. Just a shape with no discernible meaning.
His overseer steps in and laughs, his voice a buzzing fly in Julian’s ear as a torrent of self-hate rips through him. Say something! What the hell is wrong with you? His thoughts spin helplessly.
“He isn’t too keen on handshakes, Doctor.”
She raises an eyebrow.
Julian’s skin burns.
“Yes, sorry.” He finally manages. “Germs. Pleased to make your acquaintance, looking forward to working together.”
Lying is so much easier than the truth. Today easy is something Julian desperately needs.
She squints. Julian remembers this one. He’s made such a fucking fool of himself.
“Well, you must be a damn good surgeon, Doctor.” She says, which gets a laugh out of everyone else.
Julian doesn’t get the joke.
-
The water is always cold on the station. A horrible side effect of most of it being stored in the shell of the station to protect against radiation. Heated water is stored elsewhere and it takes a damn long time to get to the sink outside the surgeon’s suite. As Julian washes his hands post-endoscopy it’s so cold he can’t feel his fingers.
He made it past lunch, a gentle feverish sensation has settled on his skin, cold and hot, wet and dry. His brain has begun to actively block any pain away. Leaving only numbness and cold static.
The patient was a young Bajorian woman who’d been living with a rare heart condition ever since she was a girl. The endoscopy allowed Julian to obtain several samples of tissue and measurements. He thinks about it as he cleans up. He usually does. It shouldn’t take very much time at all to map out a treatment plan.
You must be a damn good surgeon, Docter.
Had she been making fun of him?
His heart drops into his stomach, filled with freezing liquid.
“I can’t thank you enough for allowing us to come to your facility.”
Julian starts, flinging soapy water all over the floor. Brekka Aiko turns up the corners of her mouth in thin amusement. The patterns of her lab coat gleam in the electric light.
“Sorry, thought you heard me come in.”
“No no, my bad, I was lost in thought.” Julian rinses his hands off.
“I see, I just wanted to tell you Doctor Danvers was giving me a quick tour when I found this in one of the exam rooms. She seemed to think you would know what to do with it.” She holds out a brown paper bag. “It was shoved between one of the decorative plants and a lovely model of the eye.”
Julian doesn’t get the chance to respond before she leaves. Leaving him alone with a strange paper bag that smells...not great. He doesn’t want to open it. Julian opens it anyway. There’s nothing in there but a heavily oxidized apple slice.
Then he gets a hunch.
Julian walks into his office and throws the bag away. Judging from the state of the fruit it couldn’t have been more than four hours old. He pulls up the schedule at his terminal and reasons giving the amount of time the visiting cardiologist spent on her tour there were only about two or three exam rooms she could have been referring to. Julian sees exactly what he’s expecting to see, a completed routine physical for one Miles O’Brien. He had that appointment this morning. Then Julian sees his friend has been scheduling weekly physicals for the past month.
The keys are cold beneath his fingers. He turns the temperature up five degrees and reaches for a sweater. He wasn’t expecting to get the chills so soon. But his body knows what a depraved creature he is and is already preparing for the worst. Which means it’ll start to feel good soon.
Julian glances over to his desk drawer, which is slightly ajar. When he pulls it open, he’s met with the side of another brown paper bag. He didn’t put it there. This time he tears it open and a dozen or so supplement bars fall onto his desk with sharp cacophony.
He stares at them, and sees violence. He reads the labels and the nutritional information, but the most striking are the numbers. Sodium, protein, sugar, vitamins, calories. Calories. They’re loaded with them, a snack that only people who hate food could bear because it means the most sutinace with as little eating as possible. Julian loves this part. The adrenaline of relapse leaves him high. He knows what even percentage means and what it would do to him if he ate the entire pile. He knows what a fucking pig it would make him. He can’t bring himself to look away.
A chime breaks him out of his trance. He’s been summoned to his next appointment. Before he leaves he sweeps the entire pile of supplement bars into the trash. He walks out the door with only those terrible numbers buried deep in his heart.