So I had this thought, about how Garak is kind of allergic to talking about and naming his feelings. And just because he and Bashir get together post-canon, that doesn't change. So Garak has all those ways of calling Julian special, "my dearest", "my darling", "my dear husband" - but for all of that, he never actually manages to tell Julian that he loves him. "I love you" is just something that can't make it out of his throat. He keeps telling himself that he'll figure it out one day and then it just keeps not happening.
("Would it kill you to say it?" Julian asked, once, not angry, not exactly upset, but also not teasing. Just--resigned, maybe.
"I don't know," Garak replied truthfully, because some days he felt like it could, like it would suffocate him, this love that he felt, and oh, putting that in words would be impossible. "Would you like to test that?"
And then, one day - Julian dies. It's a stupid freak accident of the kind that happen every day but you always think they happen to other people. Julian kisses him in the morning, grabs an ikri bun and goes to work, and then never comes back. And it's all so sudden, with no way to prepare oneself, one minute he's there and smiling, the next minute there's law enforcement at their door and someone with an appropriately sad expression is telling Garak that they're so very sorry for his loss.
Their house is so cold and empty and quiet now, and Julian is dead and he died without ever hearing that Garak loved him. He--he knew though. He knew, he must have known. Surely. Surely he knew. But it's one thing to know, to infer from evidence, and a whole different thing to be told. To be confessed to.
Garak clutches Kukalaka to his chest as he sits curled up in Julian's favourite armchair, trying to ignore the house's oppressive silence.
"I love you," he whispers into the bear's threadbare and wet fur, "I love you, I love you."
It's no longer hard. He doesn't know why it ever was. Or if.
And, as it turns out, it doesn't kill him.
