***

"Uh . . . this isn't what it looks like, Garak." Bashir stammered.  The Cardassian's understandable expression of surprise had not turned into amusement at Bashir's plight, as the doctor had expected.  His features were tight with anger, more naked anger than Bashir had ever seen him display. He hurriedly poured out further explanation, "Or rather it *is* what it looks like but . . . you see Kadz's sister there has azmeri fever and when I brought her here for treatment, Kadz got the wrong idea and . . . oh, for heaven's sake, Kadz, put your clothes back on."

Still Garak stared at the two of them in anger and did not speak.  The tense situation did nothing to curb the ever-voluble Kadz, however. "Didn't tell me you had a keeper, Fedder," he said as he lazily stepped into one trouser leg, "And a jealous one too, by the look of him."

Garak fixed the boy with a malevolent stare of the most icy imaginable blueness.  "I am not Dr. Bashir's keeper.  He and I are old friends, and I am offering him my hospitality while he is on Cardassia Prime as part of his duties to Starfleet Medical."  The words were all cordiality, the tone all threat.

Kadz appeared oblivious to the danger.  "Sure, sure, all you twofie gitters got some story."  He finally pulled his trousers all the way up, but, remaining shirtless, approached Bashir and draped himself over his shoulders. "You're a bit of an old one to keep him all to yourself," the boy remarked to Garak.  "Sure you're not going to rob him of a nice young pretty like Kadz. You can always join the fun too, or just watch, if that's your sport."

Bashir hastily disengaged himself.  "Kadz, how many times do I have to tell you that you've got this all wrong--" Suddenly Garak sprang, like a razorcat, grabbed the boy by the shoulders and shoved him up against the far wall. "Dr. Bashir is in no mood for your street boy impudence, and neither am I," he hissed.  "Is that understood?"

Kadz thrashed and kicked in Garak's grasp, earning a knee to his groin. He gasped in pain and fell still.  "Is that understood?" Garak repeated.  The boy nodded vigorously, eyes wide and struggling for breath.  Garak continued to hold him pinned to the wall, a look on his face that reminded Bashir of Miles's account of the time Garak had lost his reason on Empok Nor.  The doctor moved to the Cardassian and put his hand on his shoulder.  "Garak," he said, trying to sound calm.  "Let him go."

Garak took a couple of deep breaths and then favored Bashir with his customary urbane smile.  "Of course, doctor."  He released his hold, ambled over to a chair, sat down, and crossed his legs, the picture of casualness. Yet Bashir saw clearly that he was trembling with rage.

Kadz had scurried over to where his tunic lay on the floor.  He pulled it over his head, retrieved his sister's dress, and then grabbed Moxh up off the couch, where she had huddled in terror while the confrontation was in progress.  "Can't say that Kadz stays where he's not wanted," the boy whispered to Bashir as they headed for the door.

"You can't go," Bashir implored him.  "Moxh still needs more treatments."  Kadz glanced sideways at Garak and shook his head.  Bashir turned to Garak also.  "Please, Garak, she's very ill."

"She may stay if you think it best, doctor."  The Cardassian's tone hardened.  "But not him."

The boy shook his head again.  "Kadz and Moxh is a team--unless you're meaning to keep her.  Kadz wouldn't stand in her way, if you make it worth his while."

"You'd sell us your sister, just like that?" Bashir exploded, but Garak rose calmly and addressed the boy. "Wait here," he said.  He disappeared into his bedroom and emerged a minute later carrying a bar of latinum. "I think this will more than compensate you."

"No lies!" Kadz exclaimed, his eye-ridges rising half way up his hairline.  "Just let me give Moxh the score."  He began to communicate with his sister in their private sign language, at some length.  She nodded several times and signed back briefly.  "She's game," the boy said to Bashir and Garak and then walked out of the house without looking back.  Moxh returned to the couch, crawled under the blanket, and appeared to settle down for a nap.  No teary good-byes, no last embraces,  just a business deal concluded to the satisfaction of all parties.  A Ferengi couldn't have done it better, thought Bashir.

***

Garak rubbed his hands together and turned to his friend, all smiles. "Ah, now that we've settled that delicate matter, I'm taking you out to dinner.  There's a charming restaurant at the Federation recreation compound on the third moon of Cardassia Five-- the place all the dedicated relief workers repair to when the dust and the stench become too much for them.  We heroes of the Cardassian Resistance have honorary guest privileges, of course."

Bashir stared at him in disbelief, at the mood change, at his decision to act as if nothing out of the way had happened.  "But Garak, surely you don't think we should go off and leave the girl here alone?"

"Of course we should.  She's asleep already, probably won't even realize we're gone.  She'd doubtless prefer not to be disturbed by strangers in any event."

Bashir would have thought it impossible for Garak to grow any more inscrutable than he had been on the station, but clearly it had happened. The doctor had no idea what could be motivating him to treat the presence of a naked and feverish child prostitute on his living room couch as a matter of no importance.  But he'd violated Garak's hospitality by bringing the two of them here in the first place, and he had no choice but to go along with what his host had planned.  "I suppose I should change clothes before we go to this restaurant," Bashir asked, "something a bit more formal?"

"That would be appropriate," Garak concurred.  "Oh, and while you're changing, my dear doctor, a cold sonic shower would also be advisable." His gaze halted deliberately at the decided bulge barely masked by the silk shorts.

"Uh, right, it won't take a minute," Bashir replied, blushing furiously.

"Take all the time you need, doctor," Garak purred.

***

They travelled to the moon in the runabout that the ruling council had assigned to Garak to facilitate his diplomatic efforts.  All the way there, and  through the appetizers, and the main course, and the dessert Garak made relentless small talk.  He regaled Bashir with pointed barbs about Klingon intransigence and Bajoran grudge-holding and inquired about Kira and Ezri and Miles and the recent progress of the Sisko baby.  Bashir numbly returned equally superficial answers, feeling more and more that he was in one of his holosuite programs talking to a mere simulacrum of his Cardassian friend.   The doctor waited for some acknowledgment of that rage he had seen in Garak's eyes hours before and some kind of explanation for it.  None was forthcoming.

Finally, on the return trip, he brought the subject up himself.  Walking back from the replicator with a cup of Tarkalean tea in hand, he said. "I'm sorry for bringing those street children into your home, Garak.  I never should have done it without your permission."

"No, you should not have, doctor.  But when you see healing to be done, you don't ever stop for social niceties, do you?  At any rate, there's no permanent harm done."

"You certainly seemed angry at the time."

"That little vermin's insolence could try anyone's patience.  I was angry at him, not at you," Garak replied, in a manner that suggested there was nothing more to say.

Bashir tried another tack.  "You know, those two have very odd names. Kadz and Moxh don't sound like any Cardassians I've ever encountered."

 "They aren't names in the ordinary sense of the term.  Sometimes these trash haven't even been given a name, just dumped on the street with no identity. Most of them usually pick up some slang nickname and use it, as our young visitors have," Garak chuckled.

"Why do you laugh?" the doctor asked, perplexed at Garak's complete lack of feeling for the twins' plight.

"‘Kadz' and ‘Moxh' are particularly vulgar street terms for male and female genitalia."

Bashir practically choked on his tea.  "My God!  I suppose they believe in truth in advertising."

"Apparently."

"That slang of Kadz's is pretty impenetrable.  Half the time I didn't know what he was talking about.  When he called us "twofie gitters," for instance."

Garak let Bashir's comment hang in the air for several seconds.  To explicate it apparently meant committing himself to discussing the incident in depth, and the doctor had concluded from all the evening's evasions that he decidedly did not want to do so.  Garak shifted in his seat uneasily.  At length he spoke in subdued tones, staring out the view screen.  "A twofie gitter is a bisexual of legitimate birth, the class of men that makes up the bulk of Kadz's clients, the class to which the boy erroneously presumed you and I belong, doctor."  Then the Cardassian sucked in his breath and looked Bashir in the eye, "At least I presume that he is in error?"

"Garak, you can't believe that I wanted that boy, that I brought him back with me for any other purpose than to help his sister?" Bashir hadn't expected the conversation to take this turn.

"No, I never thought *that,*" Garak smiled enigmatically.

"I know that's what it looked like when I became aroused," Bashir rushed on.  "But I can assure you I felt no attraction for him whatsoever."

"Of course you didn't.  Kadz makes his living arousing the bodies of men who have no attraction whatsoever toward him.  I'm sure his hands are very skilled--"

"No, Garak, it wasn't like that--"

"I once knew a pain technician in the Order, Groblo," Garak continued, as if he hadn't heard the doctor's denial. "He had grown up like Kadz, servicing men on the streets.  Sometimes when interrogations were dragging on and getting nowhere, he'd put down the instrument, pass his hands over the subject's body a few times, and bring him to arousal and climax, just like that.  These were men in agony, mind you, an agony this fellow had inflicted.  Yet he could get their bodies to respond
just as if the touch were that of a lover rather than a torturer. Groblo always said these little exercises of his helped ease the tension.  Although I'm afraid I always thought them in questionable taste.  An interrogation room is no place for parlor tricks, wouldn't you agree, doctor?"

"I'm afraid I have little use for anything that goes on in Cardassian interrogation rooms," Bashir returned with some heat.  Why had Garak told him this chilling anecdote?  Was this his friend's revenge for broaching the subject of Kadz and his advances?

"I was simply trying to show you that I understood the effect our young visitor could produce," Garak explained amiably, "not to defend my former profession."

"I'm surprised that someone with an ‘acci's' background  would be employed by the Order," Bashir pushed the point.  "You've told me that these street children have no legitimate place in your society."

"Ah, the Order was always a special case.  These accies have no scruples, as you've seen.  That can make them very useful as informers, assassins  or torturers.  Of course, there was never a question of trusting them with any of the higher-level activities, those involving sensitive state secrets. Anyone that would sell his mother--or his sister--without qualm, wouldn't hesitate to sell out Cardassia if the price were right."

Bashir nodded, but did not otherwise comment.  The conversation was too depressing to continue.  Apparently any hope he'd had of restoring his friendship with Garak to its previous level of intimacy had vanished at the moment Garak saw Kadz standing there naked. He set his teacup down and idly glanced over at the navigational array.  They were only a few minutes from entering orbit around Cardassia Prime.  It was going to be damned uncomfortable with the girl still there in Garak's house.  Once the reality of her situation sank in, she was bound to get agitated, and neither of them even knew how to communicate with her.  What a mess he'd made of things!

"It's hard to believe that Moxh won't panic when she realizes that her brother really has abandoned her for good," he said softly, thinking aloud.

"Oh, don't concern yourself about that," Garak replied while making some course adjustments.  "He hasn't abandoned her at all.  The minute we were out of sight, she will have opened the door for him, and the two of them will have spent an hour or so looting my house.  I made sure to secure anything of real value, but you'll have to get Starfleet to reimburse me for a depleted replicator power unit, which I'm sure they've quite used up in provisioning themselves."

"What?" Bashir exclaimed.  "How can you know that?"

Garak smiled one of his patented infuriating smiles. "It's a very old street trick.  That's how Mila ended up becoming Tain's housekeeper. He'd  brought her home for an evening's pleasure and found her unconscious inside his front door the next morning, still grasping a bag full of the contents of his safe.  She'd not anticipated his disrupter field that triggered every time anyone tried to exit the house without giving the proper security code.  When she failed to divulge the identity of her accomplice, despite Tain's most *persuasive* entreaties,  he decided that someone who could keep a secret that well might be of use to him.  So he let her stay rather than turn her over to the security forces."

"So you think we'll return to find Kadz and Moxh unconscious inside *your* door?"

"Not at all, doctor.  We'll find them gone. I deactivated *my* disrupter field."

"But the girl is ill, she can't just go back to the streets," Bashir protested.

"I'm sorry to annul your generous impulse, but I can't allow either of those creatures to remain in my house.  They will at least leave better-supplied for survival than when you found them." Garak's tone left no doubt that the subject was closed.

Bashir had no intention of letting the matter drop, however. Nevertheless, he judged that a slight change of tactics was in order. "You seem to know quite a bit about the way these ‘creatures' operate. Did Mila share the secrets of her past with you?"

Garak glared at him. "You are one of the most infuriatingly persistent young men I have ever met," he said. "No, Mila did not care to speak of her past with me, and no, I did not engage in long conversational sessions in which Order operatives who came up from the streets reminisced about the good old days." His features hardened, as he went on, "It was Tain who made sure that I was intimately familiar with the kinds of lives that children lived on the streets, so that I would
appreciate what he had spared me by taking me under his protection. Of course, there was always the implied threat that he could send me out there to fend for myself  if I didn't please him."

*I should have suspected that Tain had something to do with this,* Bashir thought, *whenever Garak starts behaving irrationally, it always seems to go back to Tain.*  "I can see why having those ‘accies' in the house disturbed you then," the doctor murmured.

"Good, I'm glad you do--at last," Garak replied.  "Now, we've achieved docking orbit, and we're going to beam down to my residence.  I trust that as a thoughtful guest you will *not* bring up this subject again."

***

The place was a shambles, or at least the kitchen and living room were. (Garak had not disabled the security system that blocked off the other rooms with force fields upon attempted unauthorized entry.)  As Garak had predicted, the replicator's power cell was completely exhausted, the blanket and sofa pillows gone and every drawer opened and looted, with items of no interest tossed all about the floor.   The Cardassian went back to his bedroom and returned with a replacement cell.  "Doctor, if you would go into the replicator menu and reproduce my couch cushions and the blanket, I'll tidy up the rest."

After the pillows materialized, the doctor repositioned them on the sofa.  As he backed up to see if they were properly aligned, he inadvertently brushed his buttocks against those of Garak, who was bending over to pick up some of the items from the floor.  The physical contact produced an overwhelming desire that astonished Bashir with its force.  No matter how unpropitious the evening had been thus far, he had to disclose his true feelings to Garak.

The Cardassian was returning several PADDs to a drawer in his computer workstation.  Bashir stepped in front of the desk and leaned forward. "Garak, it wasn't Kadz's skills that gave me an erection earlier," he began.

"My dear doctor, I told you I don't want to talk about Kadz any further," Garak said, his voice rising.

"Just hear me out.  What aroused me was seeing how angry you were, how jealous of him, because that told me that you wanted me again."

Bashir saw a dozen subtle changes come over Garak's posture and features, as if he were a vessel that had suddenly lowered its shields. "Wanted you *again,* doctor?" he said in a whisper.

"You can't expect me to believe that you didn't want me once.   But after you found out about--" Two elegant gray fingers were suddenly pressed to his lips.  "Shh, shh.  I'm not denying that I had once wanted you, I am telling you that I've never stopped wanting you."  Garak caressed Bashir's lips with a brush of the fingertips and stepped back a few paces.  "But am I now to understand that you want *me*?"

Bashir broke out into a broad grin.  "Of course!  Why do you think I brought this up?"

Garak cocked a skeptical brow-ridge.  "And what do you think Counselor Dax will make of all this?"

"A month ago Ezri told me that she wanted to put our relationship on hold till I properly sorted out my feelings for Miles and for you.  Now, the thought of making Miles my lover, it was ridiculous.  I couldn't even begin to imagine myself in bed with him.  When I thought about you that way, however, the scenario seemed perfectly logical.  After all, for weeks before I'd been reacting to Cardassian anatomical schematics as if they were pornographic pictures." Bashir stepped to the side of the desk while the Cardassian moved out from behind it to meet him. The doctor took Garak's head in both hands and kissed him hard, reveling in the leathery texture of the lips and then the sensations of the strong and agile tongue that soon thrust itself inside his mouth.  At length the Cardassian broke off the kiss, and when Bashir caught his breath and leaned forward again, Garak pushed him back with a soft touch of his hand to the doctor's chest.

"I've thought about this moment for so long, my dear boy," Garak began a little hesitantly.  "And I'm afraid I've constructed a rather elaborate ritual fantasy of how I would want us to begin.  Will you humor me in this?  I think you'll find it very pleasurable."

Bashir paused to consider for a split second.  What would it be like to live out one of Garak's fantasies?  Immediately the answer came, *it will be bliss--you wouldn't have kept longing for him all this while if you didn't trust it to be so.*

"I am completely at your disposal," Bashir replied, smiling.  "Just tell me what you want me to do."

Garak took his hand and led him into the bedroom. "Why, doctor, I don't want you to do anything at all."  The Cardassian helped him out of the white linen jacket Bashir had put on over the oatmeal colored, open-necked shirt that Garak had made for him for a birthday present when he turned thirty-five.  He folded it neatly on a chair, then unbuttoned the shirt and slipped it off Bashir as well.  Placing each of his hands on his partner's shoulders, Garak applied to each a series of brief patting motions, as if he were straightening a garment on one of the mannequins in his tailor shop.  He stared into the younger man's eyes with an expression of tenderness Bashir had never seen on his face before.  Slowly one hand moved down Bashir's breast-bone and continued on to his navel, while the other massaged each of his vertebrae in turn.  Bashir inhaled sharply at the intense and totally unexpected pleasure these motions produced in him.  Soon Garak was covering him with light caresses to all sorts of places that Bashir had never considered very erogenous--the flesh inside his upper arms, the hollow at the base of his skull, his collarbones.  With every touch the pleasure grew more and more exquisite.  He moaned softly, and his legs felt weak.  Garak put an arm around his waist to keep him from falling
and guided him expertly to the bed.  Bashir sat down and leaned back, balancing himself on his forearms and elbows.  Garak deftly relieved him of his linen trousers, made a soft sound of surprise when he found no underwear beneath them, and then used a few vigorous strokes of his hands to relieve him also of the pressure that had built up in his eagerly awaiting cock.  Bashir groaned with delight as he reclined fully on the bed.

"Did you find my little fantasy enjoyable?"  Garak whispered as he leaned over and kissed Bashir lightly on the lips.  Bashir reached up and pulled the Cardassian down beside him.  "Indescribably so," the doctor said.  He was, and was not, telling the truth.  Certainly the pure physical sensations had been breath-taking.  Garak was a master of technique.  Yet there was something distant and remote about the whole experience--Garak making him stand there like a mannequin while the
Cardassian remained fully clothed, receiving no stimulation himself, using only his hands, not his mouth or his cock.  *I suppose it's meant to be a special gift, giving all the pleasure and taking none yourself. And Garak does like to control situations.  Still, I'd expect any man's fantasy to involve pleasure for himself, first and foremost.*

Bashir's own fantasies were definitely less refined and predicated on more mutual satisfaction.  Well, his moment had arrived.  "Now it's my turn, Garak," he said, breathing heavily.  "I can't promise to do it quite so   . . . artistically as you."  His eager hands  pushed up Garak's tunic till it gathered just above the breast ridge. Then he thrust his thumbs under the fourth rib bones on either side.  There he felt the small patches of scaleless skin his research had told him were there..  He pressured the area again and again with his fingertips while his mouth worked the scales on Garak's neck-ridges.  The Cardassian gripped him hard across the back and thrust his body up to meet his lover's touch.  Bashir kept on until he felt Garak grow hard beneath him.  He slid off the bed, pulling down the Cardassian's trousers and loincloth as he went.  His tongue worked the delicate edges of the softer scales at the base of the cock while his hands returned to the even softer skin beneath the ribcage.  "Ah ... doctor .... uhh . . ." Garak groaned, "I see . . . you . . . ahhh . . . studied the schematics . . . ohh . . . very well."

Bashir raised his head.  "Elim, don't you think it's about time you called me Julian?"

"I think you have a point, Julian," Garak nodded and pushed the human's head down to his crotch.  Bashir took the Cardassian's cock into his mouth and slid his tongue up and down the shaft. "Oh, yesss, Julian, ohh yess," Garak repeated as he writhed beneath his lover, while gripping him tightly with strong calf muscles.   His climax came quickly thereafter, all in a rush of gray foam that made Julian pull back a little as it streamed against the back of his throat.

Garak gave a contented sigh and  released the grip of his legs, letting them dangle over the edge of the bed.  The doctor rose to his feet, gratified that his efforts at pleasuring Garak had reinstated his own ability to act out his long-cherished fantasy, what he had been so impatient to do that all that had gone before seemed mere foreplay.   He trembled at the thought of sliding his organ between the rippling scales that fanned out on both sides of the Cardassian's buttocks.  Julian launched himself with a little spring onto the bed, rolled the panting Garak over, and climbed astride him, hands reaching inside the cleft--only to find himself flat on the floor a second later, expertly tossed off with one motion of Garak's left leg.  He gave an inquiring look at his partner, wondering if this were some kind of Cardassian love
play.  Garak had sat up and was looking back at him with a serious expression.  "No, Julian, there will be none of that," he said, calmly but firmly.

"None of what?  Do you mean no fucking?" Bashir asked incredulously.

"Precisely.  In Cardassian culture, no man would ever even consider fucking a man who was his equal.  Such impulses are generally worked off with the assistance of little vermin like your friend Kadz."

Bashir clambered up and sat beside Garak.  "It doesn't mean that in my culture at all.  I had no intention of trying to assert my superiority over you.  To me it's just the way of achieving complete closeness, getting inside your lover--figuratively as well as literally.  If it will make you feel more comfortable, you can fuck me first."

"I would never take what I was not prepared to give, Julian."  Garak sighed.  "Because I have always kept my origins . . . mysterious . . . many of the Cardassian men with whom I became involved believed that they had a right to master me.  None of them ever succeeded.  It is a violation I could never allow, no matter how desperately I wished to satisfy a lover.  The situation became so frustrating that I had resolved to restrict my sexual partners to women. Then I saw you sitting
there in the Replimat, my dear boy, and my resolve evaporated.  But even for you, this is something I cannot tolerate"

Julian struggled to hide his massive disappointment.  He would *not* try to manipulate the situation by playing on Garak's fear of displeasing him.  Now that they were finally lovers, the last thing he would risk was to hurt Garak through insisting on his own kind of gratification, no matter how fervently his cock was calling out for it.  "I would never ask you to, Elim," he said, running his fingers through the Cardassian's sleek black hair and planting a kiss on his "spoon."

Garak responded by tracing the outline of Julian's right ear with his expert forefinger and flicking his tongue over the doctor's slightly parted lips, making the doctor's erection ache even more.  "Don't despair, my dear. I can guarantee you that you will nevertheless not lack for pleasures while we're together."  And with that he bent down his head and proved his point.

--End--

Will Bashir remain content to have a no-fuck relationship with Garak?

Have we seen the last of Kadz and Moxh?

OF COURSE NOT!  These questions are resolved in Part II, "Letting in
Love"
 

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