felix knightly, julian's much-mentioned friend felix, comes to the station, and he's this dashing and effete and supremely successful older human man. he wears excellent fabrics and dedicates his life to constructing beautiful fictions.
he calls julian darling and sweetheart all the time. he speaks often of how they met - something about old hardcover books and competitive bidding in a san francisco auction house for history and literature lovers.
so it went: a long chat that turned to a long night haunting bars, showing this bright young thing the best old spots in the city, where real bands play real songs, history clings to the walls and a holoprogrammer could see nearly into the past, the future, the heart of things.
we walked the bridge with dawn on our shoulders, spent the night without losing reasons to keep talking together, and i knew this was a very special young man i had just befriended, he says.
and julian bashir, chief medical officer, war-tried and brave, looks at him through his lashes, a little bit twenty and awe-struck at being liked still.
felix speaks often about how so much of the reliable realism in his holonovels depends on having his own clever doctor to give him accurate medical information. how his gifts of custom-made programs are nothing, barely anything in comparison to the pleasure of making sweet julian enjoy himself in his intervals between wonderful adventures and admirable medical work.
he is flighty and shameless and self-satisfied and he never fails to make julian flush and brighten - something flickering open around his eyes.
he kisses the back of his hands, and plays with his hair. as if it easy and natural; as if he should be allowed always to lay a hand on julian's shoulder, and smile down at him with a conspiratorial look.
it would be easier, perhaps, if it were more sordid. but they tease each other endlessly, argue like old friends, there is history between them and not only old infatuation.
to watch him is to see an image repeated. there is the twist of the wrist doctor bashir does, the way he raises his chin and picks a glass with elegance and flirts relentlessly, as he himself had been flirted with until he relented.
it is clear enough that knightly has been a guiding figure to him, a teacher in some fashion in the arts of playing the gentleman.
a mildly chiding word from him in a specific tone, and julian straightens his back and pays attentions, rethinks his position, eases back the strain in his shoulders, lets himself be challenged, seduced into a proper debate. so perhaps he was the one who taught him that, too; to argue without spite, with wit, brash but not bull-headed.
it is clear enough julian bashir trusts him fully with his fantasies, and does not fear any mockery.
it is clear he is a weak man, a man of vice, an hedonist with no sense of responsibility, who cannot stand to live outside his programs. he drinks prodigiously and gambles recklessly, enjoys the sort of mind-whirling substances the federation permits only in careful dosages -
he is not the one to mention how it was that a medical student came to be well-versed in treating withdrawals, in dealing with hateful words said in dire states. doctor bashir himself, of course, would never breach patient confidentiality. but one may guess; one may assume.
his presence is temporary, he will go away to do research on another singular and distant place, he'll leave his friend behind for the hundredth time and send back a consolation game whenever he remembers he exists at all.
anyone can see it, in the doctor's eyes. he is has been wounded many times, he has been trained well to be expect to be liked but not wanted long.
in unrelated news, garak of garak's clothiers has had to cite complications to explain the delay of his present and forthcoming commissions. several of his needles and sewing machines have taken unexpected tumbles against the floor, and a remarkable amount of his fabric has appeared shredded to rags, almost as if a vole or beast of some sort had laid furious claws on them.
well, so it goes: life is not an holonovel. in real life, sometimes accidents can't be avoided, and mistakes have consequences.
someone ought to remind felix knightly of that, perhaps.
annaxmalina
romaincrisis
snowghoul
kaledo-art
janainaart
