InsaneJournal

    Julian's mind keeps wandering off to the sculpted ridge of his neck.  He wants to know where it stops exactly, and what begins after it.  He knows where it ends, he's studied Cardassian anatomy, but seeing a picture of some random, long-dead Cardassian model is not seeing Elim.

    He keeps himself busy the rest of the day with some spur of the moment training activities.  As long as he stays out of his office, forces himself into action, the day seems to go by a little faster, and there is less opportunity for his head to fill up with pictures and unexpelled feelings.  He can only divert himself in the infirmary for so long, though.  It is a finite amount of time that even his staff will endure him patiently, humor his good intentions and play along with unnecessary, tedious drills and exercises.  Marcia is even quiet and humorless after about three hours.  She and the other four nurses just don't seem to see the need in his face, behind his smile, nor the need for yet another lesson in the minutiae of naso-orbital-ethmoid fracture treatment.

    When he finally gets back to his quarters, the door shuts behind him with a sigh mimicking his own.  What follows is a burning itch and a tremor in his limbs like an electric shock.  No word yet from Elim.  He wants to know when.  How.  Where.  When.  He checks for messages on his computer terminal, then checks again.  Then checks to make sure his messages are getting through.  He considers calling him again, then fidgets as he eats a creole dish he barely tastes before it's gone.  It's not really late yet, but Julian is ready for bed, ready to get the day done with, though he doubts it will go quietly.

    He gets in the shower with the sonic off and just stands with his head under the spray, letting the water like a million tiny fingers tapping him in the face and forehead drown out as much of his thoughts that he can hear.  The water deafens him, but it doesn't stop his mind from racing from one possibility to the next, stress amplifying in the echoey chamber of his bathroom.  Maybe Elim is stalling.  Maybe he never intends to do anything more than tease him.

    Julian shakes it off and washes perfunctorily from head to toe before taking a slick hand and running it around his groin from left to right, then sliding gentle fingers through the hair and under to cradle his balls.  He sighs, and his brain shuts up for a moment.  That was all he was really looking for.  Some peace in between his ears.  If rubbing himself raw between his legs will achieve that, so be it.

    Julian leans forward to prop himself up against the wall, forehead to the cold tile, running an achingly slow hand down his length.  His thoughts butt in once, wondering if Elim does this in the shower too.  His cock jerks a little in his grasp and he pets it down again.  His bones and muscles don't seem to want to support him anymore now that no one is looking.  Everything feels as heavy as his cock in his hand and Julian slides into the corner of the shower, brow against the wall, hips canted to let his arm rest on one.  The other arm comes up to cushion his head.  Not terribly comfortable, but his back is lax and enjoying the warm water snaking like rolling strings of beads down his flanks.  Steam rises around him and when he closes his eyes he stops seeing it, but he can feel it come in disorderly puffs into his face, fuzzing against his nose like a bubbling drink, then gone again, leaving cool, crisp air in its place while it springs up in the space between his arm and ear, tickling and burdening the hair on his forearm, brushing his face featherlight, sending a shiver up his back.  Julian squeezes with his right hand and the steam seems to pass right through him this time.  The heat rises up from heel to groin, then slows as it loses momentum, crawling with blushing fingers to his cheeks before his head starts to swim in it and his cock throbs in response.

    He stands like this, body bent and limbs twisted hard into a knotty shape like a tree embroiled with vines, such that the water finds a favorite path to travel along his body and warms those parts red and leaves the rest of his skin cold and exposed.  The raw distinction in those places is distracting, but he can almost imagine fire and ice in the lines where they meet.  The slight involuntary movements of his frame under the spray change the path of the hot water and it singes his skin in the cold spots.  He breathes open-mouthed as water has broken over his hair and is running over his nose.  The pull of it on his lips is subtle but with his eyes closed and the focus of his senses lying at the surface of his skin, he can feel the weight change and the pressure drop around his face as the water trills off of him.  He wets his tongue in the stream.  The water has long since washed away any trace of sweat or salt from his skin.  All he can taste is water, and it makes him realize he is thirsty.  He tips his stiff neck up to take a sip from the spray.  Hot water always tastes thin to him, unsatisfying, but it is enough for the moment.

    Realizing how long he has been just standing there, he concentrates, feeds the pictures in his head, some of Elim, some of other people, people he has imagined once in a while just for this purpose only, but the sound of the water starts to take on patterns in his ears, like voices and music.  Distracting, enchanting, lulling.  He can snap his attention forward again to his cock, the skin rolling over the shaft and the rough skipping of his wrinkled fingerprints on the head, but it startles him away from that pinnacle too, and he has to build it up again.  So he does, and lets his mind slip away to nights long past, to skin he's touched before, lips he's sucked between his own.  His mouth waters, indistinguishable from the hot water except in density.  Then he is sliding in drunken slow motion in a dark cluster of bodies.  Naked skin glittering, maybe it is his own wet skin he sees, maybe not.  Dancing hips halt on the apex of their swing before turning away and snaking back with a tantalizing curtain covering what he wants to see and feel.  Then he slips too far.  The water is spattering at his feet yelling nonsense syllables and commands over and over.  It is tinkling on the metal bar at his waist, sounding like a marching band drawing ever closer but never reaching him, and it is dribbling from the shower head to the drain in a perfect arpeggio, sounds like a burbling whistle below the thousands of voices crowding his ears.  He tries to make them out, any of them, but they are like forgotten faces in a dream; there but ethereal.  He shakes his head again. 
    He keeps slipping into this meditative state too soon.  While interesting and relaxing, it does not seem like it is going to help him get off.  At least not here where the stimulus is so chaotic.  By the time Julian gets out of the shower he is waterlogged but no closer to alleviating his frustration than before he got in.

    Naked, still damp, and too hard to sleep, Julian slips down into his cool sheets to try again.  The only thing wrong with masturbation is that it's a closed system.  You have to provide the stimulation and receive it as well.  Even a genetically enhanced human can't do anything to improve that situation.  Even Julian fails to clear his head enough to get off now and then.  He really really hopes tonight won't be one of those nights.

    He knows what he wants, at least.  These days it isn't nameless, objectless arousal.  He wants the man a few floors up and down the hall.  The man with the evil bright eyes that haunt his thoughts even when they're nowhere around.  He wants those strong hands on his hips, and for now, his own hands can press down on the bones there and he can pretend they are Elim's light touch.  He still can not imagine much more of his body than he has seen.  Putting the image of someone else'e body there seems odd.  A bad idea since, hopefully, he'll have a real mental image to finish the puzzle pretty soon.  So for now he wants what he can see.  He wants those elegant ridges against his own face.  He wants to feel the bony curve against his cheekbone and jaw and the kiss of skin on skin between, and he wants soft lips to tease with kisses down his chest just as he does with his own fingertips now.  Then he gasps a little, and smiles at the improvisation of his own imagination as he sees Elim behind his eyes rub those ridges against his cock.  It sways and jerks up to meet his face, and Elim rubs an eye ridge beneath the glans, then runs his nose down the underside of his cock to press the head against the relief of his rebec.   Julian rubs his knuckles against the shaft and hears a tiny wanton noise escape his own throat.

    He remembers the other day.  Tries to remember just those few minutes instead of the whole day.  Elim's mouth was cool.  Cooler than he expected simply because he was taken so completely off-guard.  If he had thought about it for even a minute, it would have made more sense.  Elim had been at work all day in the cold station.  His body temperature would be relatively low.  Julian opens his nightstand drawer and gets a handful of gel, smooths it on with a sigh.  It's cold, but only briefly.  Elim's mouth warmed up quickly too.  Friction he supposes, maybe a burst of epinephrine, a reaction to arousal.  Julian turns at the shoulder and wrist to put the web of his thumb and forefinger down around his cock first, a tight opening into the softer chamber of his hand.  He hums low and listens to the reverberation of his own voice in the room.  Down and up like Elim did, then he runs his thumb around the head and tries to recall his tongue.

    He remembers a flash of Elim's face, lips tight around him, eyes shut lightly.  He can't quite pull out any more images.  He knows he ended up laying down at some point, but the memory is fuzzy, and swells of heat come to his cheeks because he remembers how good it felt, even if he can't remember seeing much after that.  Julian tries to make his palm drag up his cock the way Elim's tongue did, flat and soft.  He urges the uncomplicated pleasure up and over, shaping it like soft dough in his mind with the same strokes his fingers use to attempt to shape his cock to encompass his whole body.  That is what it feels like at the best of times, when he can make the rest of him just an extension of that part of him that seems to give him so much easy and simple pleasure, connects him to life. 

    He can remember making love with Leeta too.  Some nights were perfect and unscripted and she would be uncharacteristically quiet.  All that would transpire between them for communication was the gentle pat of skin, and Julian would sweat as he held himself on stiff arms, head up and eyes closed, imagining himself reduced to nothing but a swollen organ, loved and adored by the part that was made to love him and treat him with a soft, yielding touch and sweet slickness over ribbed, smooth muscle.

    Julian's hips rotate seemingly without his volition, and he eventually turns over to give in to their desire to move and direct these more primitive functions of his body, relieving his sophisticated and literate hands.  They were made for other things.  He lets his face be smashed against the pillow as he keeps his body awkwardly posed on one hand, while the other coils tightly, ready to receive him.  He rocks his hips forward, pushing his cock through a tight grasp and hums a little into the pillow.  It's easier, this way, to feel like he's there.  His hips connect with his fist, and though it nearly topples him occasionally, the illusion is nice.  Gravity pulls the blood down in his cock to the head, tightening the skin and making that slip over his fingertips a little sweeter, a little sharper.

    He wants Elim.  He whimpers a little into the pillow and that want beckons him forward into the frustrated plateau he knows so well.  His hips and hand work in tandem now, slapping wetly but quietly under the sound of his breathing.  He can not conjure images of Elim's body or the look and feel of his sex, but if he listens, and he does now, deep enough into the heat and fantasy to let his mind go, eyes shut lightly against the faint light from the bathroom, sweat starting to break out across his back; every little sound can become something else.  The slap of his skin and the friction of his fingers on his cock, the slight murmur of the bed, the air rushing past his teeth; they can all whisper Elim's words if he lets them.  "I want to hurt you.  I want to bite you.  I want to scratch you."    

    Julian rumbles deep in his chest and things seem to quake around him or within him.  He shifts then, because this can be better, he knows.  He's very close, and he got there pretty quickly once he set his mind to it, so he isn't quite ready to let it go.  He lowers his chest to the bed and rests his weight on knees and shoulders.  It makes that delicious thrusting of his hips almost impossible, but it frees up his other hand which goes to his mouth.   "I want to hit you.  With my hands."

    He wants Elim.  Wants him like there is no tomorrow, wants to know finally what he will do to him.  Wants to know what it's like to be possessed by such a person, to let him take control and see where he leads them.  Julian's fingers wet, he reaches back and slides them down his tail bone to the heated space there both begging for and leery of attention.  He rubs a wet finger across the sensitive skin and delights at how easy it is to imagine it is not his own.  He sees little more than flashes behind his eyes now, skin, sex, sweat.  Hears words in the rhythmic pants coming from his lips, though in another man's voice.  "When we make love..."  He imagines Elim's face gritted fiercely through his orgasm as if he had seen it before, detailed and believable, and Julian presses a fingertip at his opening, feels it give and then resist minutely, and then comes.

    He's moaning nonsense and his body jerks over and over, abdomen and back pulling him in and springing out as he rolls over, unable to maintain his posture.  His cock throbs and seems to send pulses of white light along an invisible line up the front of his body to the back of his eyes.  He distantly hears the sound of his own dry gasps and doesn't stifle them, lets them ring out loud because he knows Elim will want to hear him.  The urge to force air through his vocal chords and between tightly clinched teeth would not usually overwhelm his urge to keep his voice down, but tonight, he lets a melancholy growl escape half into the pillow in three or four bursts. He has enough sense to catch his mess in the palm of his hand, but his hips rock without his consent into his fist a few times, smearing it over his cock.  Julian cracks his eyes open just a hair, still sparkling along the last half second of orgasm, and on reflection, hot come on his cock doesn't sound like such a bad idea, so Julian pants and slicks his hand down his whole length, reminding him of Elim's devilish tongue once more.  Julian strokes himself for only half as long as Elim managed to before he can not make himself do it anymore.  Just too damn much.  Somehow, it's too good, so good it hurts.

    He's sweaty and messy and parched again.  Perhaps moreso now than before he got in the shower.  Hair is still wet from the first one.  And it's late.  Really late.  He managed to far overspend his early night trying to get his head back on top of his shoulders.  And now he needs another shower.

    Julian rolls out of bed after a moment of drowsy consideration and stumbles toward the pale light of the bathroom.  The shower comes back on with a sound like an echo of an explosion from light years away.  He washes again, quickly, and climbs into bed bemoaning the small amount of sleep he has allotted for himself now.  He's had nights like this before, too.  He rolls over under the sheets, yawn-grumbles and thinks it may yet be one of those nights he just can not find any peace simply because he will be thinking about how little sleep he is going to have to function on tomorrow, dreading the long day ahead so much that he won't be able to close his eyes much less....

~*~

    Julian hears the comm chime suddenly at ten AM through his open office door from his post at an exam table.  He hears it loud and clear but doesn't move a muscle in that direction.  His hands work steadily, eyes focused and narrow.  It chimes again, and he could swear his ears tic at the sound.  A Bajoran child of less than ten probably wouldn't appreciate the restraint Julian is exhibiting, not leaping for that door the instant he heard that Pavlov's bell, but she probably wouldn't appreciate it either if he slipped with his dermal regenerator and accidentally erased her freckles instead of the scrape on her cheek.  Going around each tiny caramel colored spot with the regenerator on the finest beam, he knew it was gong to take a while, and he knew it was gong to be a thankless job, and he knew it was going to take a ream of patience to keep her still for that long.

    But he didn't know it was gong to make him miss the call.

    That is Elim.  He knows it is.  For one thing, the timing is impeccably wrong.  While Julian has waited four long days to hear that sound and prepared himself for the inevitability of it coming at an inopportune moment, he has still managed to catch him during the only ten minute span in that whole four days that he has been genuinely and irrevocably occupied.  And there is just something about the tone of the chime that makes Julian completely confident that it is, in fact, Elim.  It just sounds sneaky.

    Julian fights back a stupid smirk and hopes little Tayor Amra can't see it in her peripheral vision.  She sniffles just a little, the remnant of a few tears in her eyes when she came in, and his thumb comes off the trigger, then back on when the minute movement has ended.
    At least the little boy who pushed her down got what was coming to him.  Marcia saw the whole thing, and Julian saw Marcia.  That will the be the last time in a long time that boy picks on the girls.  She stands at the door to the infirmary now, waiting for Julian to finish so she may escort the girl back to her quarters.
    He finishes the delicate work moating around all her freckles, and then changes the setting of the regenerator to do the freckles themselves.  Finished, he puts the instrument down and runs a gentle thumb over the spot.  She doesn't wince, and he can't feel a thing, like there was never anything there but perfectly ageless skin.  Like an illusion.  He's surprised too, that the freckles have no palpability either.  He doesn't know many people that have freckles.  He knows they aren't supposed to be raised, but it's still surprising somehow that a surface so extravagantly dappled with color could be so soft and smooth.  This too, illusory.
    "Good as new," he says, and the big-eyed child looks at him, touches her face.  Julian smiles because she doesn't, but then loses control of his facial expression when she silently, fast as a rabbit, leans in and kisses him on the cheek.  Before he can say anything or respond in any way she is sliding down off the table and prancing toward the door.  Marcia is there, a sentinel.  She is just as visibly surprised when the girl reaches up for her, though not too far, because it is Marcia, and kisses her too when she comes within range.
    Well.  Julian doesn't know everything, does he.

    The two just look at each other from across the room with weird smiles, and for almost a whole second, Julian forgets about the call.  "I'll be right back," Marcia says, and takes Amra by the hand.

    As soon as they're out the door though, Julian is bounding into his office and bringing up his message.  The text reads simply and enigmatically, "Good morning, Doctor."  Julian calls back and realizes he has begun to sweat a little in the time it takes Elim to answer.

    "Ah.  There you are."

    "Hi.  Sorry, I was tied up."

    "Not a problem, my dear.  I wanted to ask you..."  Elim looks around inside the small view screen image.

    Julian gets the hint and smiles faintly.  "There's no one here."

    "Would you like to have dinner with me tonight?"

    An innocuous question, yes, but Julian's response is not, at least not internally.  He is glad they are alone.  He grins and replies softly, "Yes.  I would."

    "In my quarters?"

    Julian's smile slips, but then he picks it back up again even as his heart starts skipping.  "Sure."  He wasn't expecting that at all.  That invitation comes with an implication, whether Elim intended it or not.  It means he needs to bring something.  He also never expects to have no ideas whatsoever when it comes to things like this, but none are immediately forthcoming as Julian stoops, looking wide-eyed at the screen.

    "When will you be free?"

    "Um..."  His shift ends at nineteen hundred.  He could conceivably run the distance to Elim's door in about a minute and a half - or even use the transporter - but, as he smiles at Elim who is undoubtedly thinking his friend has gone mad over the past few days, why else would he be grinning like a skull, he thinks he might want to shower and get changed at least before sprinting to his door.  And there is still the matter of finding something to bring with him.  "How about twenty-one hundred?"

    "That sounds fine."  Julian nods and doesn't know what else to say.  Someone could walk in the door at any moment.  "I'll see you then," Elim says softly, and something about that softness in his voice, both gentile and somehow ominous, turns Julian's head to mush.
    He's smacking the heels of his hands together before he knows it as he paces aimlessly through the infirmary.  He has a highly complicated and vital process to plan, and he thinks better on his feet, dammit.  Marcia asks him, advises him to go read a book or something after about fifteen minutes of that.  At least she still seems convinced that it is mere boredom causing his behavior and not something else.  Something she could be grilling him about to dispel their ennui and give her material with which to entertain their future guests.
    He has hours to go, and really nothing to fill them but thinking.  He realizes the danger of over-analysing this, but when he pulls his prion research up on the screen in his office, he can't keep his mind focused on it long enough to even fully review his last results never mind make any progress. 
    Instead he finds himself trying to decide what he is going to wear.  When in doubt, Julian always just showed up at any kind of social event in his uniform.  Living on Starfleet property, it's perfectly acceptable in all but the most formal occasions, and certainly the most casual.  Plus if you are always in uniform, it makes you seem more dedicated.  Not that he needs a facade, but rather he needs to live up to the extraordinary expectations of his coworkers.  Elim...has no such expectations, and in fact, he being a tailor, sort of, probably has some other expectations of him.  Julian doesn't think he owns more than a handful of things from Elim's shop, nor is he certain that Elim would like to see him in those things.  Some of them are quite old now, some of them inappropriate for the occasion.  He thinks it might be just tacky or overexerted on his part to go out of his way to wear one of those items.  He'll have to scour his closet when he gets home.  Maybe he'll find some gem at the bottom that he forgot he owned.
    And there is the friction issue.  Julian feels slightly dizzy thinking about it.  He thinks when he gets home he is also going to try to take care of that, but he wonders what Elim's reaction might, or will be when he sees the change.  It will be obvious why he did it.  He just doesn't like his motivations to be laid bare like that.  It seems he has no choice though but to do the things he needs to do to make this as perfect as he can.  In the process he is going to be exposed in more ways than one, but it will be worth it.
    The only thing left to decide then, is the gift.
   Naturally the first thought is to wine.  It's the traditional offering when invited to someone's home for dinner in many cultures, not just Earth, Cardassia too.  He just doesn't want to do that again right away.  The last bottle of wine...was complicated.  He doesn't want to conjure that night even if it did in a way get them to where they are now.  Elim will have something anyway, and if he thinks it is appropriate, they'll have wine.
    Then there is music.  He could bring over some Chopin.  He doesn't think Elim has heard much of him.  But the truth is, Julian's stomach clenches at the idea of walking through the door and handing him a data rod, chit-chatting about Chopin's influences and how he compares to Bach and Gul Grisin.  As if this is an ordinary dinner date.  As if they could hope to have a discussion on an unheated, unloaded topic at this point.
    Julian has to calm his breathing every time he thinks about how close, how far away tonight is.  It's approaching.  It's not approaching fast enough.  It's approaching.  Julian feels himself breaking a slight sweat and he wonders how he smells.  Elim smells fantastic.  God he smells fantastic.  He inhales deeply but all he smells is the infirmary and the Klingon restaurant.  Flowers.  Flowers smell good.  Flowers?  He tests that idea mentally as well.  The door slides open, Julian grins above a bobbing bouquet.  No.
    There are shops on the promenade, the contents of which he knows by heart, the inventory never changes, but he runs through each one during his lunch break anyway in vain hope.
    He can only blame himself for not anticipating this.  And maybe it isn't the end of the world, but if tonight is going to be everything it can be, he is going to have to shrug off a little pride and ask for help, but quickly.

.......

    "Doctor.  How can I help you," Sisko purrs from his desk chair, bitten apple in his hand at the moment instead of his baseball.

    "If you were invited to dinner with someone, a private dinner at their quarters, what would you bring?  As a gift."

    "A bottle of wine?"

    Julian purses his lips.  "Anything else?"

    "A smile," Sisko says with one, gleaming, though slightly evil because he knows he's not being helpful, and though he doesn't know why, he also doesn't care why.  It's fun, Julian knows.  He has a little evil in him too.  Julian returns it tight-lipped and nods.

    The door whisks quietly open then closed again.  Julian's steps are light and percussive on the stairs down to the busy ops pit.

    "Dax," he hails.

    "Julian," she acknowledges.

    "Gift."

    "Yes."

    "For a dinner host."

    "Wine."

    "No."

    "No?"

    "No."

    A pause.  "...Nothing."

    "Why."

    "If I'm not comfortable bringing the party, it must be because the party is already there."

    Julian laughs as he sinks down the turbolift shaft.

.......

    "Good evening, Colonel."

    "Good evening Doctor how can I help you in ten words or less."

    Julian counts on his fingers.  "I-need-a-gift-idea-as-a-private-dinner-guest."

    "Bottle of wine."

    "Something else."

    "I'm sorry Doctor you've exceeded your word limit."  Kira grins as she furiously punches at the padd strapped to her forearm.

    "Come on."

    "No idea."

    "Come on."

    "I don't know.  Why not wine?"

    "It would be...inappropriate in this case."

    "Who are you having dinner with, your grandmother?"

    "Noooo," he whines and continues standing there.

    Kira sighs and stops working.  "Flowers?"

    "Ick."

    "That's all I have.  Why don't you ask Odo.  He's the romantic one."

.......

    Julian aims for the door of the Security office, then diverts his course suddenly and heads in another direction, randomly.  You don't have time for this, Jules.  Then he turns on his heels and back at Odo's door.  Then he stops, pivots twice, and indecisively sidesteps toward the door again until it opens automatically and he is committed.  Odo looks up and addresses him with his sly curious gruff.  "Doctor?"

    Julian doesn't like hiding things.  Especially from Odo.  It's hard.  Even for Julian. 
    "What can I do for you?" he asks plainly.
    "Um.  Just a question."
    "Alright."
    "If you were invited to dinner at someone's quarters," and as he says it he realizes how ridiculous and strange it is to ask Odo this, but continues because he is definitely committed now, "what would you bring?"
    Odo pauses long.  "I don't know.  Who's quarters are we talking about?"
    "Anyone."
    "Well is it Colonel Kira, is it the Captain?  It would all depend on the host and the other guests-"
    "No other guests."
    "Ok.  Who's the host?"
    Julian knows he's stupid.  At least he has that.  "No one.  Never mind.  Thank you."
.......
    Lunch over, the infirmary welcomes him back with not so much as a bump on the head or an aching Ferengi earlobe.  Marcia is reading when he comes back in, and watches him from the corner of her eye as if Odo had managed to brief her in the time it took to walk back the forty meters from Security.  He thinks about asking her too... 
    Julian may be stupid but he knows enough not to approach a woman with a look like that on her face.  And he gets to look at that face scrutinizing him for the next four hours.  Maybe the review on Romulan stomach acid chemistry was taking it too far today.

~*~

    He is out the door at nineteen hundred on the dot and begins his journey on the promenade.  There is even less to look at now than there was at the peak of the day, unsurprisingly.  Most of the shops are closed this time of night, and it doesn't seem that a fairy tale merchant is going to approach him and offer him some otherworldly item or curiosity for a pittance that will be exactly what he's been searching for.  Julian stops outside a darkened jewelry store with Betazed pearls in the lighted display case, and spins around in a slow circle.  He doesn't even know what he is looking for.  The only place open besides the restaurants is Quark's, so lacking another plan, that is where he goes. 

    It's busy inside.  Many people have the next few days off, the weekend approaching, and the gratitude festival right around the corner.  Miles is laughing with some of the boys from the day shift engineering crew over glasses of something blue and fizzy.  Leeta smiles at him as she passes by the doorway on her way back to the bar, swiftly and deftly navigating the flow of patrons with a tray dangling from one hand.  Morn does not hide his appreciation when she leans over the bar directly to his left to fetch an ale, but she is gone in a flash and he resumes what sounds like his three hour version of the story of the time he accidentally married a Flaxian.  Julian sneaks past and occupies a clear spot on the floor nowhere in particular between the bar and the small stage in the center of the establishment.  Here he continues to look around like a man setting foot in a Gothic cathedral for the first time.

    The smell of spilled alcohol is stronger today than usual.  It probably indicates a recent visit by a party of Klingons.  Or Quark is having trouble keeping waiters with good reflexes.  Or both.  The music piped in from the box behind the bar is cheerful and inane.  The dabbo table is spinning and busy as a beehive.  None of this is inspiring him.
    "You look lost, Doctor," Quark says, nudging the air in his direction with his chin.

    "I think I am," Julian replies, absently.

    "Have a seat, what can I get you?"

    He takes a warm seat at the bar and straddles it.  "I need...an idea, Quark."

    "An idea," he says, disbelieving.  "Ideas are a dime a dozen--and you can't drink an idea."

    Julian makes a noncommittal noise and looks around, grasping for something.  Anything.

    He hears Quark sigh.  "Fine.  If I give you an idea will you order a drink?"

    Julian looks back at him, studies his blank Ferengi face.  Seems like an odd but fair exchange.  "Alright."

    "What kind of idea do you need?"

    "I need to get a gift for someone."

   "Oh," Quark perks up.  "Well that's easy."  Quark bends down behind his bar and produces a tall red bottle in an impossibly complicated shape, adorned with green and blue labels and tassels, a gift tag, and and antigrav suspender to keep it standing upright as it would not be able to do without it.  "This is from Lissepia, 2365, a very very good year for Lissepian wine.  Right, Morn?  Just one single strip of latinum, for you Doctor.  A special price, just for you."

    Julian makes a face.

    There is a distinct pause in which Julian does not react.  "Well?"

    "No, thank you, Quark."

    "Well.  I tried.  Now what will you have?"

    "I'll have a glass of water."

    Quark rolls his eyes and pours the water, leaving him without a word.  Julian doesn't touch it.  Instead he gets up after Quark has found another person to throw his pitch at, a young couple on a date at the corner table.  Julian wanders over toward the table where Miles is sitting.  Miles spots him approaching and ushers him over.  "Julian!  Come join us."

    "No, that's alright Chief, I'm just here to say 'Hi.'"

    "Don't be ridiculous.  Sit down.  Have a drink with us."

    "No, really I..."

    "Come on come on."

    Julian sits at an empty spot that appears for him, muttering quiet thanks to the young officers who move to make room for him.

    "Now, my friend Julian here is a perfect example," Miles continues, apparently, with the conversation he had been leading before Julian arrived.  "The only man I know who can calculate, in his head, the inertial dampening field necessary to stop a comet fragment in the shape of a sixty meter Klingon targ, using the deflectors on six separate shuttles all with varying degrees of phaser damage and unstable main power grids, while being chased around the room by a mad Bolean with a pair of clippers.  The rest of the table is fit to burst with laughter, but they hold back because they know that he has not yet reached the punchline.  "He can do all that, but he can't remember the second verse of 'Jerusalem.'"  Then they start laughing, and few just titter because they don't know any of the words to Jerusalem, or they've never heard of Jerusalem because they are Bajoran or Benzite.
    "I remember the words!  What are you talking about?"  Julian says through a laugh, wondering how long Miles has been here and how much of that blue stuff he's had.

    "Then why do you always sing it wrong?"

    They laugh again and Julian smiles and shakes his head.

    "But seriously," Miles says, addressing an ensign Julian does not recognise, probably fresh from the academy, "Despite his flaws, a finer doctor, a finer man, you'll never find in all of Starfleet."  Julian smirks modestly and Miles claps him on the shoulder.

    "You're in a good mood," Julian says privately to the man.  The others are filtering out, refilling their drinks.

    Miles shrugs.  "Gotta live life while you can," he says, and smiles, takes another swig of his drink.  He's been like this ever since Captain Cusak's funeral.  Julian isn't sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing, but he isn't worried just yet.

    He tries to change the subject.  "That any good?"  he motions toward the blue drink. 

    "I dunno.  I've only had five of them.  Haven't decided yet," he says with another silly half-smile.  "What brings you here if you weren't planning on staying?"
    "I'm...lost."
    Miles blinks at him once.  "The station directory is right over there..."
    Julian smiles at him patiently and Miles returns it.
    "I need an idea.  I really good idea."
    "Self-replicating beer," he says immediately.
    "Chief, are you drunk?"
    "I'm Irish.  I can't get drunk."
    Julian tries again.  "I need a really good idea-" he stops the chief's imminent interruption with a wide gape and a deep expectant breath, "-for a gift."
    "For whom?"
    "Just a gift to be presented to a host at dinner."
    "Bottlawine."
    "No."
    "Flowers?"
    "Definitely not."
    The chief pauses.  "Chocolate?"
    Julian huffs a little.  "Replicated chocolate?  That's classy."
    "Not replicated."
    "The dinner is tonight.  I need something now.  None of the promenade shops are open.  They wouldn't have anything good anyway."
    The chief turns then, reaches behind his chair to the tiny wall bar where Abdon has his drink precariously perched with nearly thirty percent of the bottom hanging off the edge.  Julian watches as he bumps the drink a little, watches the yellow liquid slosh within the confines of the glass, miraculously not fall off the counter nor spill outside of the full glass, and then continues to watch with interest as Miles pulls a little box from the space out of Julian's sight.  He tosses it to land in front of his doctor friend and picks up his drink again.
    Julian can smell the chocolate.
    "Kira got Keiko hooked on Rigelian chocolate."
    "Oh," Julian says.  "Why aren't you giving these to Keiko then?"
    "Because these are Rigellian chocolates."
    "Oh," he says again.
    Miles shrugs.  "Rigelian, Rigellian, Terellian, Xyrillian.  I don't know.  She knows the difference and she doesn't like these."
    Julian opens the little box to reveal a small stack of hand made chocolate pieces.  Miniature ingots in glossy sorrel.  They smell fantastic, and Julian grins and stands.  "Chief!  You're the greatest."
    Miles chuckles as Julian runs off with his prize, and says into the waiting mouth of his glass, "That's why they call me The Chief."