In these two linked stories (Taking in Trouble / Letting in Love), set one year after WYLB, Bashir visits Garak on Cardassia Prime with the intention of rekindling their relationship.  However, the doctor's entanglement with two
street urchins threatens to derail his plans.

WARNING: These stories make reference to consensual sexual relations between a brother and sister. They do not depict such relations, but if the subject makes you uneasy, you might prefer not to read.  I'm assuming that m/m slash doesn't make you uneasy, or you wouldn't be reading Strange Fits of Passion.

DISCLAIMER: Paramount Pictures owns these characters and situations,
except for the ones I made up.

Thanks to Mark Stanley and Una McCormack for beta-reading.

These are for Merrie...

**************

The two moons orbiting Cardassia Prime stood high above the horizon, casting grotesque shadows onto the winding paths of the ruined Park of State Heroes.  Now, a year after the end of the Dominion War, most of the rubble to which the planet had been reduced by the Jem'Hadar had been vaporized or recycled.  The new ruling council had decreed that the blasted statuary of the looming war memorials here remain as they were, however. The purpose, the plaque at the park's entrance stated, was "to remind all Cardassians of the consequences of our past."  The only addition took the shape of a new statue, honoring Damar as the martyred leader of the Cardassian Resistance.  It stood at the center point where all the paths converged.  Surrounding it were a grove of bacherben
bushes, their silver petals and waxy green-black leaves glistening in the moonlight.

Dr. Julian Bashir paused to contemplate the memorial, as the heavy, warm breezes of Cardassia Prime rattled through the foliage.  He'd often felt the urge to tear off his suffocating Starfleet uniform during the past five weeks that he'd been in the Cardassian system.  Thankfully he was off-duty now.  He had changed into the open-weave turquoise Tholian tunic and navy blue silk shorts he'd bought the last time he and Ezri had been on Risa.  But he wasn't thinking of Ezri now, or of the victims of the Cardassian holocaust, but of his old friend Garak.  More precisely he was thinking of a certain path their relationship had appeared destined to follow, and the detour it had taken instead.

Bashir had known from the minute they met that Garak was interested in a sexual relationship, and he had also known that there would never be one unless he himself made the first move.  That he had not done, for a host of reasons, not least that someone with a very dangerous secret in his own past didn't need to invite the stepped-up Starfleet intelligence scrutiny that a liaison with a former Cardassian spy would inevitably bring about.  Many times he told himself that he should simply back off from the friendship, since he wasn't prepared to take it through to a physical level.  Jadzia used to chide him frequently about "leading poor Garak on," and he had to agree that she was right.  Yet he had persisted in their lunches, a relationship by appointment only, feeling that the absence of any spontaneous invitations to get together on other occasions would give Garak fair warning that any further intimacy wasn't in the offing.  Did Bashir himself desire further intimacy?  He resolutely refused to consider the question, since it couldn't happen, no matter what he desired.

Then the secret of his genetic enhancements came to light, and everything changed.  But Garak changed, too, mocking him as computer or Vulcan and spending ever more time with Ziyal.   *What did you expect, Julian, old man?* he had thought. *It's the rare person who isn't put off by the idea of sleeping with some unnatural freak, re-invented in a laboratory.*   So he had taken comfort in the acceptance shown by Miles and both Daxes and consigned any longing for Garak to the category of transient fantasy.

Recently,  however,  that longing had ambushed him in a very odd fashion.  After the Cardassian holocaust, Starfleet Medical had rushed in personnel to treat the survivors, and the Cardassians had at long last made all  their  medical, biological, and physiological databases available to outsiders.  Bashir kept finding himself drifting away from the sections on infectious diseases and the effects of cold and hunger, and instead studying in great detail everything he could download on
Cardassian sexuality.  He recalled his surprise, given the strict Cardassian prohibitions against  "non-procreative practices," that both Cardassian males and females came equipped with self-lubricating anal passages lined with highly sensitive nerve clusters quite as capable of producing pleasure as those found in their genitalia. *What a waste!* he  mused.  And then came the further realization: *You've wanted nothing these past eight years, Julian Bashir, so much as to aim your dart
squarely at  the center of  that inviting, round Cardassian backside of Garak's.*

Bashir had cursed himself for arriving at this realization only after Garak had left the station, but he knew that physical distance wasn't the main obstacle to their becoming lovers.. He and Garak had in fact been together a number of times since Bashir had returned to DS9, leaving behind the tailor, spy and Resistance fighter to begin the mammoth task of restoring his devastated planet.  The ruling council had appointed Garak its special envoy to Bajor, and he often came to the
station en route to various contentious meetings with first minister Shakaar and the new Kai.  Twice Julian and Ezri had joined him and Col. Kira for dinner.

No, it wasn't physical distance, it was emotional distance. Garak and Bashir had replaced their weekly lunch appointments with weekly subspace conversations.  Yet Bashir always felt a certain awkwardness between them in these instances, as if they were going through the motions of having once been friends, but were friends no longer.  This awkwardness  convinced him that he had irretrievably lost the moment at which  he and Garak might have consummated their relationship.  Therefore, when the doctor was assigned to assess whether the Cardassian medical infrastructure had recovered sufficiently for Starfleet to reassign the many physicians, nurses, and health technicians it had stationed throughout the system during the past year, he almost hesitated to inform Garak that he would be "in the neighborhood."  Bashir had considerable doubts whether the Cardassian would welcome him.

As it turned out, the doctor was glad he had informed him, because the announcement brought a warm invitation to visit Garak on Cardassia Prime if he could find time to take "a little vacation" between performing his inspections and returning to Deep Space Nine.  The Garak who greeted him at the spaceport, however, was the same distant Garak of the subspace chats.  He had no sooner taken Bashir  to his house and shown him the guest quarters, than he announced that he would be involved in long discussions with a Klingon delegation until late into the evening.

Bashir had killed some time exploring Garak's new dwelling.  The Federation had rebuilt the house of Enabran Tain upon its old, ruined foundation, an acknowledgment of his friend's great service during the Dominion War.  They'd worked from the original plans, but Garak complained that "Federation utilitarianism" had crept into the design, and that the beauty of the original had been lost.  Julian studied the architecture carefully, so as to be prepared for the debate about the
Federation's lack of taste that would no doubt accompany their dinner. Then he took a very long sonic shower, changed into his civvies, and, feeling restless and not a little apprehensive at soon being alone with Garak, went for a walk that brought him here to the memorial park.  Part of him felt that he had judged correctly, that it was too late for intimacy. Another part, though, more stubbornly hopeful than the first, knew that it wasn't only the Cardassian heat that had made him put on
this particular outfit.

"Hey, Terran, want some scales?"

Bashir jumped.  It was as if someone had just been reading his thoughts. The voice came from behind the bacherben thicket.  Bashir instinctively reached for his phaser.  Garak had warned that the catastrophe had obliterated the once vaunted safety of Cardassian streets.  "Who's there?" he called out in his sternest tones.

"Don't ruffle yourself.  This studder's no robber."  Two figures emerged from the shadows.  Both had unkempt, shoulder-length hair and nearly identical height, build and features.  They looked to be only a year or two past puberty. That they were a boy and a girl became apparent only from the trousers on the one who was speaking, and the dress on the one who was not.  As they slowly approached him, the boy kept talking in what were obviously meant to be seductive tones.

"Any sport that appeals, we can do."  He grabbed his crotch and gyrated suggestively.  At the same time, the girl fondled her breasts through the thin material that revealed her utter lack of undergarments.  "Want a girl, Moxh is game.  Want a boy, Kadz is ready.  Or we'll do each other and let you watch.  Only one strip of latinum.  Want us both, that's just another strip."

Bashir gazed at them horrified.  They were little more than children. He'd read about abandoned urchins selling themselves on city streets on hundreds of worlds throughout hundreds of centuries, but he had never come up against the sordid fact of it like this.  All he wanted to do was get away from them.  "Sorry, not interested," he said, turning and heading swiftly for the path out of the park.

But the boy ran after him, persisting in his sales pitch.  "You know you're curious how the Cardies do it.  We always leave our sports satisfied."  He stationed the girl in front of Bashir, blocking his way, and began to raise her dress over her head.  "Don't go before you see what you're missing," he cajoled, giving the doctor a lewd wink.

"I told you I was not interested," Bashir repeated,  pushing both of them aside.  As a result, the girl lost her balance and fell, triggering a spasm of gasping and coughing.  The doctor halted, raising her to her feet and taking a good look at her for the first time.  Her eyes were red, and the tips of the scales on her neck looked white and brittle. He'd seen the symptoms often enough in the Federation resettlement centers for homeless Cardassians.  In the crowded conditions a fairly
minor respiratory virus had mutated into a potentially fatal disease. Many Cardassians had perished before a combined Federation-Cardassian research team developed an anti-viral agent.

"Listen," Bashir said to the boy, "your friend--"

"My sister, my pouch mate..  Pretty game sportin' with two of a kind, eh?"

"Your *sister* is very ill."  Bashir resolutely put to one side the fact that the boy had offered to "do" his twin for a customer's amusement. "She shouldn't be out . . . sporting. . . in her condition."

"Don't ruffle.  Kardasi sick-bugs don't bite Terrans."

"Some of them do, as a matter of fact." Bashir couldn't suppress a grin at the boy's expression of medical certainties. "But you're right, azmeri fever doesn't jump from Cardassians to humans."

"How do *you* know?" Kadz asked suspiciously.

"I'm a Federation doctor, and I'm telling you that you should get your sister to the nearest hospital immediately."

"Oh, no. Hospitals don't take accies, ‘less it's to cut us up." The boy grasped  his sister's hand and began to lead her back to their lair behind the statue.

Suddenly Bashir found himself doing the following, as he pursued the retreating pair.  "Wait, What do you mean? What are accies?"  His universal translator didn't seem to be coping  very well with the boy's slang-filled street-patois.

Kadz stopped and looked at him as if he were extremely stupid. "Acci-dentals, you know."  Bashir shook his head, still not comprehending.  "Kids not meant to be born, accies with no parents," the boy explained with a world-weary air.

Ah, now Bashir understood.  Garak had long ago told him that children without parents had no place in Cardassian society.  Somehow the doctor had never considered thoroughly just how appalling the end results of such a social policy could be.  "Well at least take her home, put her to bed with lots of blankets, and give her plenty of liquids to drink."

"How long you been on Prime, Fedder, you think accies got homes and blankets?"  The boy inquired sarcastically.  "Half the gitters is homeless these moons.  Me and Moxh live in those bushes there.  And we'd best go back to them and wait for some sport that's eager."

"She could die if she doesn't get the proper care, " Bashir implored. "Back where I'm staying, I've got some medicines that can help her. What do you say, Moxh?  Will you come with me?"

"She might, for the overnight rate," Kadz replied, his expression showing renewed interest in the possibility of profiting from the "Fedder."

Bashir had to restrain himself from punching the insolent street urchin in the mouth.  "I want to help Moxh, not sleep with her.  And I'm talking to your sister, not you.  Let her answer," he insisted.

"Can't.  Doesn't talk.  Doesn't hear.  Born that way.  But Kadz takes care of her, he does."

*Take care of her, by turning her into a whore?* Bashir thought to himself.  Could the situation get any more dismal, he wondered, torn between pity and revulsion.  "Fine.  I'll pay the overnight rate.  Both of you just follow me."

"That's more like it, sport.  Good time guaranteed.  Coulda saved lots of time if you'd just said you wanted to do it at home in the first place, though," Kadz said in reproachful tones as he fell in behind the doctor with his sister in tow.  Bashir ignored him, except to sigh a very deep sigh.

***

"Tell your sister to lie down on that sofa there," Bashir instructed Kadz, once he'd accomplished the considerable feat of getting Garak's multi-access-code-encumbered front door to open and ushered the two young people into the Cardassian's living room.  "I'll go get my medical bag."

Retrieving the bag from the guest room, Bashir also picked up a blanket that was folded at the foot of the bed.  When he came back to the living room Kadz was sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, while Moxh had herself posed seductively on the couch, totally naked.  Just as Bashir had suspected. It was the reason he'd brought the blanket.  The doctor quickly covered her with it, took out some of his medical scanners, and began his examination.  He immediately ascertained that his diagnosis of azmeri fever had been correct, so he filled a hypospray with the antiviral agent and put it to her neck.

"Don't have to drug her up to make her willing," Kadz offered.  "Unless playing doctor gets you excited."

"Look, I am not *playing* doctor.  I am a doctor.  I am treating your sister for an illness, and I have no intention of having sex with her."

"Sure, sure," the boy replied, totally unconvinced.  His sister was evidently of the same mind, because she grabbed Bashir's hand and pulled it under the blanket to rest on her breast.   He snatched it away and turned to the boy.  "Please tell her just to lie still and keep her hands to herself."

"If that's the way you like it," Kadz said, making gestures in his sister's direction. "She'll be as quiet as the dead now."

Bashir leaned down and ran his scanner over the boy, who amazingly showed no infection from the virus.  He refilled the hypospray and pressed it to Kadz's neck. "Hey, hey," the boy squealed, rising to his feet and putting several meters between himself and Bashir. "Kadz don't need drugging up either."

"This will simply help prevent your catching what Moxh has," Bashir reassured him. "Now, why don't you come into the kitchen and get something to eat while I finish my examination."

"Thought you'd want privacy at some point."

Bashir stifled an angry response and led the boy to the replicator in the adjoining kitchen.  "Just tell the computer what you want."

"Heard of these.  Never used one."  For the first time, the boy actually seemed somewhat uncertain of himself.  "Two zabu steaks?"  When they materialized, he jumped back a few centimeters, then  laughed and removed the food to the table.  "A dozen regova eggs.  A larish pie.  A cup of yamok sauce.  A bottle of kanar."

"That's quite an appetite you have," Bashir grinned.

"Got to save some for Moxh."

"I'd go easy on the kanar, though.  Aren't you a little young for that?"

"Been drinking it since I got my second molars.  Moxh too. Helps on cold nights."

"Well, cheers and bon appetit, then," Bashir said darkly.   The boy only raised a quizzical eye-ridge and fell to with relish.  The doctor returned to his patient.

Moxh was indeed lying as motionless as the dead.  Bashir's scanner hummed as its data readouts told the depressing story.  Malnutrition, no surprise.  Complete absence of the auditory nerve, a congenital deafness that no advanced medical wizardry could fix.  A number of ulcers and topical infections, a secondary effect of the azmeri fever.  He pulled down the blanket and treated each one in turn with a sonic debrider and a dermal regenerator.  There was a particularly nasty accumulation of peccant matter around the hinge of her birthing pouch, and after he had cleaned it out, he knew why.  The two lips of the pouch were still about
a centimeter apart.  Bashir cursed inwardly, tried to give the girl a smile that conveyed reassurance, and charged straight ahead to where Kadz was wolfing down his feast.

"Your sister's had a baby recently.  Where is it?" Bashir hissed.

"Mff," Kadz hastily swallowed half a regova egg. "Don't ruffle. Came early, came dead," he responded matter-of-factly.  He took  a mouthful of kanar and looked up at the doctor's scowling face. "Good thing. Saved me getting rid of it.  My mate Zanto showed me with his girl's first acci, how to cover up the nose and mouth till it stops breathing, but turned out I didn't have to."

"I'm sure you were terribly disappointed at not being able to show off your skills at infanticide."  Bashir made no effort to conceal his disgust.

The boy glanced away, but not before the doctor thought he spotted a flicker of genuine emotion in the until-now hard, bright eyes and belligerent features. "No.  Wasn't looking forward to it."  Then Kadz glared back at him in defiance.  "Would have done it, though, don't you doubt it.  No choice in bad times.  But Moxh would have been hard to manage after.  Had herself set on keeping it.  Must have caught some of our mo-mo's soft-headedness.  I mean," he continued expansively as the kanar took effect, "Can you grab it, two accies at once, and the girl a dummy besides, and she don't throttle either?"  The boy shook his head in bewilderment and took another drink.

"Where is your mother now?" Bashir asked.

"Gone.  One, two moons after the Jemmies came.  Went out to find sporters, never came back.  Maybe she got grabbed by sec, maybe she got cracked by a bad one,  maybe she found a keeper with no taste for accies hanging around."

"Surely you don't imagine that your mother would just abandon you to become some man's mistress?"

"Why not?" Kadz shot back.  "Moxh and me was earning our keep.  Good for mo-mo, if she finds a keeper ‘fore her sporting days are over."

In the unforgiving street life the boy had been born into, his sentiments were perfectly logical, Bashir reflected.  The fewer children born into such a life, the better.  "I'm going to give Moxh another injection, one that will make sure she doesn't have any accies for at least a year," he told the brother.

"You got that stuff, Fedder?"  For the first time, Kadz seemed to take him seriously as a doctor.  "Ara Beldon on Kheramka Square sells it, but most of us studders can't pay her price."

"It's free of charge from me," Bashir returned with a smile.  "You finish your meal here, and I'll go inject your sister with the contraceptive and offer her a few eggs and a slice of pie.  Then I'll give her something so she can sleep--alone."

When Bashir returned to the girl, she'd made a good start toward falling asleep without requiring  any of his healing arts.  Her eyes were half closed and her breathing regular.  He put the hypospray to her neck and then shook her gently.   She blinked and flashed a sleepy smile.  The provocative seductress was nowhere to be seen.  This was only an exhausted child.  Bashir helped her sit up and offered her the plate. She snatched at it eagerly and began cramming in the food with both
hands.  The doctor patted her on the head and turned back toward the kitchen to keep his eye on Kadz.

Kadz had left the kitchen, however, and Bashir's eyes met the boy striding toward him, barechested, his tunic cast over one shoulder.

"If you've not jumped Moxh yet, I'd say it's the boys that gets you worked up, eh, Fedder?" the young Cardassian smirked, as he sinuously stepped out of his trousers.  "Kadz is ready to pay for the meal, he is." He displayed himself front and back to Bashir.  "Is the coin to your liking?"

"Don't be ridiculous.  Put your clothes back on at once!"

"You've not said how the scales and ridges strike your fancy."  The boy had moved to within half a meter and was undoing the fasteners on Bashir's shorts.  Whatever protest the doctor was preparing to make next died in his throat, however, as the door slid open and Garak walked in. *Good God, there go my hopes for a romantic evening* the doctor thought, dismayed.
 

On to Part Two