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“I beg your pardon?” Garak cocked his head slightly, regarding his friend with a little frown. “You want me to do what?”
Bashir took another sip of his after-dinner kanar. He was gradually coming to enjoy the the taste, although it had taken a few weeks of persistence on Garak’s part to get him to stay the course. “I want you to turn off the universal translator here in your quarters,” he repeated, then went on to explain: “Seeing Kardasi written is one thing, but I think actually hearing it spoken would aid my comprehension tremendously.”
Now Garak smiled with a touch of self-deprecation. “My dear Doctor, surely you don’t expect me to believe that you require any assistance in comprehending an alien language? Besides, what makes you believe that I can do as you ask?”
Bashir nearly rolled his eyes. “Surely a man who dabbles with isolinear data subprocessors is capable of turning off a simple device?”
“It’s scarcely that simple. However...” He tilted his head again with the appearance of considering that matter. Bashir decided not to challenge the deception. “Very well,” he conceded, rising from the couch where they both sat. “I’ll give it a try, but —” and he held up an appeasing hand, “don’t be surprised if I’m unable to do as you’ve asked.”
Bashir grinned and set aside his glass. “I promise I’ll forgive you,” he said, and followed Garak over to the bulkhead which contained the room’s environmental controls, situated close to the replicator.
The Cardassian removed a small panel with suspicious speed and looked inside for a moment, then handed the panel to Bashir before reaching in and touching swift fingertips to the console his efforts had revealed. Bashir could actually feel the quality of air around them change, a subtle shift in the station’s constant background hum. He stilled a little thrill of anticipation. The few audio files he’d been able to dig up on Kardasi pronunciation had been stilted and mechanized; to hear it from Garak’s own mouth would be much more educational.
Garak replaced the panel and turned to face his Human guest. His lips parted and the most extraordinary vocalization emerged, a kind of gliding clicking hiss, fluid and strangely accented and utterly enchanting. Bashir couldn’t help himself: his eyes widened and he stared as Garak studied his reaction in turn.
“S’h’iosr’ha?” Even through the strange pronunciation Bashir could recognize the inflections of Garak’s own term for him: Doctor. That act of comprehension seemed to permit Bashir to break up the next flow of syllables into discrete units: “N'nur h'sarr al k'ross nar'vsss? K’s’haar etok’ra?”
He'd flattered himself that he'd known something about Garak's nature, but now he realized how little he'd really experienced. This was a window into Garak's soul, the lyrical yet primal sounds of his native tongue, elegant and playful and subtly harsh and undeniably reptilian. Even though the Cardassian was speaking in a dialect he couldn't translate on the fly Bashir swallowed, his mouth suddenly gone dry. He’d expected to gain new insight into how Kardasi sounded in a living mouth — he hadn’t anticipated it affecting him like this, the exotic sound seeming to reach right through his clothing and touch him as effectively as a cool and alien hand. His cock stirred powerfully.
“That’s... remarkable,” he stammered through his general confusion. For once words failed him. “Quite — remarkable.”
Garak smiled at him. With the translator off he certainly couldn’t understand Bashir either, but no doubt he found his companion’s reaction easy to decipher. Not for the first time, Bashir cursed the fact that Garak seemed able to read him with unerring and uncanny accuracy. And if that was the case... well, his rapidly growing erection was undoubtedly screaming for some sort of attention. Heaven knew the standard Starfleet uniform had never been any good at hiding such things, a lack that Bashir had rued more than a few times in the past, but never in a situation quite like this.
The smile turned wicked under its veneer of politeness. “L'resk tor r'rass v'karr,” Garak continued in a tone of innocence that didn’t fool Bashir for a nanosecond: it was too smooth, almost... no, make that definitely caressing. The Cardassian began to approach him and Bashir instinctively backed up, only to be stopped by the small table their dinner had recently been cleared from. “N’rass t’akt evor’hsss, se’shar S’h’iosr’ha...” Ignoring the Human's startled expression, he kept right on coming, his eyes gleaming with a hot and predatory light. Bashir marvelled at how swift and complete the transformation had been from solicitous host to hissing sidewinder, but Garak was like that, as nimble as a dancer.
“Garak,” he managed to protest as the last centimeters of distance separating them disappeared, “it’s late, I really should be —”
“Hsssst, Ju-lian.” His own name had never sounded more beautiful than it did now, spoken for the first time by an alien tongue. Garak was so close that the Cardassian’s breath, cool and scented with something like anise, teased Bashir’s lips as strong grey hands caught hold of the small of his back and ran slowly down over his trim buttocks with complete confidence that their caress would be welcomed. Bashir gasped and squirmed once, a token gesture toward the concept of escape. And still Garak continued to purr at him with that maddening silken voice like the voice of the Serpent in the mythical Garden, if snakes had magically been granted the power of speech: “F’rert kos’sertok norak, etok’ra al n’nur se’shar... l’s’sa, erok l’s’sa...”
As those powerful hands gripped the backs of his thighs and lifted him up to sit him down on the table with effortless ease, Bashir had time for two last coherent thoughts.
First, that Garak could be reciting a list of his shop’s current inventory and it wouldn’t matter.
And second, that he’d have to remember to ask later on about the precise pronunciation of the Kardasi word for “seduction”.
THE END