Title: Natural Decline (Or Lack Thereof)
Series: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Pairings: Garak/Bashir
Word count: 2363.
Rating: PG-13.
Warnings: None I can think of. Mentions of a lot of sex.
Beta:
tli whipped this into shape for me. Thank you, mistress.Feedback: Yes please.
Disclaimer: I don't own any connoisseur Cardassians or drained Doctors. *sigh* Not mine. At all. Oh I only wish.
Summary: After more than a decade of sleeping with Garak, Julian finally gets a little break.
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This fic is also available as a podfic.
Read by: me.
Duration: 16:32 mins.
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Natural Decline. (Or Lack Thereof.)
At last. I thought we would never get to this point. Honestly, this past decade or so has been exhausting. Either that or age is starting to catch up with me. It's certainly not catching up with Garak. I used to think that the cooling of passion was swift and merciless and that I should take what I could get while it was there. Probably one more reason why none of my previous relationships ever lasted long. I'm still unsure whether it's a question of age, race or gender, but Garak of course had to challenge this misconception of mine, just as he has so many others in the past. Maybe it's just Garak. Nothing more. Plain and simple. It wouldn't surprise me.
But now, finally, I can undress for a shower without an immediate sexual response from either him or myself and most nights are actually spent predominantly sleeping. As amazing as it was, it was also draining being constantly so keyed up. Garak seemed to think nothing of it, but only six months or so into this incredible thing we have I was already feeling a little strained.
Not that I would ever complain. Oh no. It just required some... adjustments on my part. Like always setting off extra time in my schedule for otherwise innocent tasks and changing my diet to one that could sustain the frankly surreal amount of energy spent on this.
The few times I've brought it up with Garak, he has simply made some offhand comment about racial differences and the natural decline of libido with age- which I've come to understand is a foreign concept to Cardassians. They never really lose the urge, merely shifting their focus elsewhere. Like their careers or family.
I, of course, was full of stupid assumptions when we finally crossed that last, flimsy boundary we had between friendship and... more. One of the major ones being that since Garak was older than I was, I would have to go slowly and accept that sometimes he would not be able to keep up. A natural assumption, since I am actually quite a bit younger than him in years and especially taking my enhancements into account. But here we are, eleven standard years later and he's still proving me wrong.
When his first grey hairs started showing, I 'd half hoped this would herald a change for the calmer, but it was around this time he started educating me on just how little the ageing of his body had to do with the strength of his desires. Or mine, for that matter. Annoyingly, I still have no idea exactly how old he is. I even did a complete DNA scan once and despite providing me with a few other important bits of information about his physique, the computer seemed endlessly baffled by the question of his age. “Unable to determine age of subject. Estimate between forty-five and sixty-five standard years.” Hoorah. I could have guessed that myself merely by looking at him.
I have, however, finally discovered why he never finished a meal in all the time our relationship was building around meals but never really got any further. The first time we ate after making love, he ordered himself a double helping and finished everything, plus some of mine. And since then he has continued the pattern, clearly needing extra sustenance as much as I do to keep up his strength for this unbelievable marathon of physical pleasure, which at long last seems to be drawing to a close.
I confess, there have been times where I have simply had to eat my pride and refuse his advances. Being a young man with more than average stamina and a universe full of willing bed-partners I have always considered myself to be overly preoccupied with sex and very easily aroused. Any time and any place, if the offer was there, I was good to go. As many times of day as was physically possible. I had yet to find my limit when Garak finally decided to stop dancing around the idea of us. Without going into too much detail, I can safely say that he helped me find my limit and even pushed me over that limit a few times. Not that I ever asked him to stop. Not back then, when I was still holding on to my rapidly crumbling image of the ever-ready, healthy Human male. Having to admit that I with my younger body and enhanced... everything wouldn't be able to keep up with an older partner was a hard truth to swallow.
Without being crude, my best theory to date is that it has something to do with the Cardassian lack of sexual climax. Refractory time was a completely new concept to Garak and I can only attribute it to his endless patience that he learned to live with it as quickly as he did. Meaning, of course, that he promptly found out how to keep me on the edge forever, not letting me over until he was good and ready to end it.
It's not that he can't hold back. I've seen him stop dead in the middle of the most amazing round of sex and be ready for any given emergency in five minutes flat. A skill I greatly envy him, especially given my profession. It's more the fact that when time and opportunity is there, no force in the universe will be able to persuade him that “now isn't a good time”. Now is apparently always a good time when we're alone together for more than ten minutes.
Which brings me to another crucial point. As I deduced from his lengthy speeches on the virtues of taking your time with everything from meals to books, he is something of a connoisseur of hour-long lovemaking. What I didn't expect, though, was his equal passion for what I would label 'quickies' and he would not label at all. Suffice it to say the idea of getting me off as fast as Humanly (or otherwise) possible kept him easily as satisfied as hours and hours of sweet torture.
This meant that even though I would think there was no way we would be able to squeeze in anything more than a quick kiss in any given situation, he would prove me wrong, as if to dare me to argue the point, time and time again. Which I never did. Because arguing always takes longer than just going with it, even though I'd have to live with his smugness afterwards.
There is something to be said for this state of affairs, though. As draining as it is, constant sexual satisfaction is a miracle remedy against stress. Headaches are a thing of the past in our lives. Plus, it does wonders for one's fitness. Within months of our progression from friends to lovers Garak had to take in several of his best outfits. I, on the other hand, had to have new measurements taken for my uniforms, because I was suddenly more muscular than ever before. A fact I was by no means unhappy about. I've always been self conscious about my skinny limbs and even Chief O'Brien commented on my new-found self appreciation, grudgingly admitting that this thing Garak and I had going perhaps wasn't the end of the world, after all.
In fact, the reactions of the people around us, as Garak and I slowly made our new status known, have been eerily predictable. Miles spent months looking like a walking aneurysm and wasted no time in telling me I was making the biggest mistake of my life, at least until Keiko finally exploded and told him to man up allow me to be happy. He might not listen to me, but he'll listen to her, every time.
Jadzia found the whole thing endlessly amusing and has been making jokes on our account from day one. Kira is understandably somewhat disgusted by the idea, but I've found new admiration for her self restraint, because she has never openly objected to our relationship. Not even once. Odo was initially suspicious, but then, when is he not? I suspect he might have accidentally walked (or slithered, more likely) in on us in the middle of something very passionate, because from one day to another his attitude changed and he suddenly seemed happy for us. Completely unable to look us in the eye, but approving.
Captain Sisko was the biggest problem, both because of his duty as my commanding officer, but also due to a certain sense of paternal protectiveness, which he has adopted since my father went off to prison. I appreciate this. I really do. However, it only made things more awkward in the beginning and it was a very long time before he finally gave up on talking me out of it.
Quark spent the better part of a week grumbling at me, because he seemed to think it was my fault he lost the bet on how Garak and I would finally end up in bed. Perhaps it was my pride or maybe it's simply because it's Quark, but I was very unwilling to offer any details on how things had gotten to the crucial point and never disabused him of the notion.
Between you and me? It was all Garak's fault. Hands down. Personally I had given up on being more than friends a while back when he apparently decided one day to suddenly interpret my snippy annoyance as flirtation and cast all caution to the winds. To this day he insists that I knew deep down what I was projecting. I just don't think he likes to admit that he acted on a complete misunderstanding. Whatever the case, I'm not about to look this gift horse in the mouth, even though I get the distinct impression that I've shaved years off my life from pure overload of sexual exhaustion.
It's been a few weeks now with a steady block of sleep every night and the novel pleasure of kisses not leading anywhere. I thought I would never say this, but I, Julian Subatoi Bashir, have finally grown up. I'll be forty-five next year and while I'm probably more physically fit than most of my peers, I think I currently relish the comforts of quiet home life more than people twice my age. Not that we've stopped making love, it's just not every single opportunity we get. It's wonderfully relaxing and somehow it's made the sex we do have even sweeter.
I finally dared to mention our new circumstances to Garak last night and after frantically assuring him that I was more than fine with the decline of passion in our daily life, except perhaps the feeling of growing old, his only response was one of amusement. “Doctor, if you're feeling old, then what does that make me?” I confess I got a little snappish after that, since I still have no clue how old he might be. Infuriating as he is, he of course decided to take my snapping as an invitation and for a while all was back to its old self.
This morning is calm, though. Being able to get up in the morning without first having sex is a new and thrilling notion and I smile into my tea as Garak pokes his breakfast. It's almost like old times. Almost.
“What are you grinning about, Doctor?”
He never stopped calling me “Doctor”. Even in bed. However, I knew even before we were lovers that nobody says that word quite like he does. In the tone of his voice and the subtle differences between each mention, “Doctor” can translate to anything from “sweetheart” to “whore”. And I'm not saying that to be crude, because even when he says it in the way that means “idiot” it's always said fondly.
“Oh, nothing. Just... pondering.”
He glances at me over the rim of his mug. “Anything I should know?”
In a moment of wickedness I decide to be brutally honest. I do so love Garak's look of exasperation when I do that. “Well, it just suddenly occurred to me that for the first time in years, I don't have to go to work wondering if today is the day someone will notice a love bite or hickey and point out to me how utterly unprofessional it is of me, not knowing of course that there are always marks on me somewhere.”
As expected, Garak rolls his eyes at me, but then he smirks. I get worried when he smirks. “Have you looked in the mirror this morning, Doctor?”
Nearly dropping my tea I jump up and run to the nearest mirror. “You're joking?!”
“Yes I am,” he snickers. “Although, why anyone would express anything more than envy at the sight of such marks of love is beyond me,” he continues while I sit back down and mop up the tea I spilt in my horror.
We share a heated look before I go back to my tea and he to his abandoned meal. Checking the timepiece on the wall, I realize that we're way ahead of schedule and suddenly I don't care any more that I might drive myself to an early grave from too much sex. I don't care if my superiors lecture me for hours about proper decorum, for showing up looking like I lost a fight with an octopus. I don't care about comforts of home or growing old or anything other than the man sitting across the table from me.
When I crawl onto the table and scramble towards him, scattering teacups and padds everywhere, he meets me halfway and somehow I realize that he hasn't been following some natural course of decline. He has deliberately slowed down, giving me a chance to catch up. Have I mentioned that I love him? No? Well I do. Fiercely.
Oh well. The more things change, the more they stay the same. But I think I've finally learnt to live with it.
End.