bironic

Nostalgia, a fic-writing dry spell and a random encounter with a fellow Alexander Siddig fan (jeez, I still want to type "Siddig el Fadil") on someone else's LJ all converged this week and compelled me to read some Deep Space Nine slash for the first time, almost all of it Garak/Bashir. I've read DS9 fic before -- mostly Odo-centric, mostly gen -- and, heck, the first big fanfic I wrote back in the day was for that series -- but I never ventured far into other people's adult-rated stuff. I grew up with those characters (the series launched when I was about 11), and until recently it was too uncomfortable for me to imagine them with genitalia, if you know what I mean. I still can't do it with the characters in the original series or Next Gen, both of which I watched when I was very young, and possibly will never be able to. But the Cardassians have always exuded sexuality with an edge of dominance and violence that I love in villains, and in the last year or two I've become quite the explicit slash fan, so I suppose I've been primed to enjoy good stories with the DS9 characters I like.

I've always said that if I were to slash anyone on that show, it'd probably be Bashir and Garak (close seconds being Dukat/Garak and Dukat/Damar), so it's no surprise that that's where I've jumped in. babel (*waves*) has a nice collection of G/B fics at her journal as well as a recs page that have gotten me started.

Note to self & anyone interested -- favorite fics so far, and do heed the authors' warnings, as some of these contain disturbing content:

babel:
- "Incomprehensible": Weyoun watches Damar with a woman and wonders about sexuality. Excellent Weyoun characterization, which I imagine is hard to achieve. Weyoun/Damar undertones.
- "The Traitor": AU fic in which Tain forces Garak to interrogate Bashir.
- "A Perfect Stranger": Three-part (but not lengthy) AU version of "The Wire" in which Bashir and Garak meet for only a moment but sense afterwards that they could have had much more. Mournful. Parts told from the POV of Garak, Bashir and Mila, respectively.

penknife:
- "Veritas": Garak murdered Bashir. Or did he?
- "When The Lights Go On Again": Post-series, Garak on Cardassia pining for Bashir and failing to find comfort at a brothel.

thehoyden:
- "Literacy": Bashir reads a novel in the original Kardasi to Garak during his recovery from events in "The Wire," not realizing it's erotica.
- "Letters from the Northern Continent": Sweet post-series fic in which Garak's running the Cardassian government and a more mature Bashir takes a leave of absence to work in a medical facility there. Excellent character voices and an intriguing look into what Bashir didn't see all those years before he became more familiar with Cardassian culture.

"Images in a Broken Mirror" by Kathryn Ramage: Hurt/comfort with two adventures in the mirror universe. Begins with Bashir and Kira over there, Mirror!Garak disposing of the Intendant and assaulting Bashir. Real!Garak's characterization is off, and for long stretches so is Bashir's, but the rest of the story is good enough to compensate for that and a few other weaknesses.

"Condemnation" and sequel/conclusion "Guilt" by Elizabeth Helena: Lengthy story exploring issues of (mis)trust, Garak's shadowed past and Bashir's attraction to it, and an all-too-brief affair. Gets lost in itself sometimes, but very good otherwise. The juxtaposition of the flashbacks and seduction in the first part are particularly well done.

(Please, if anyone has recommendations of specific stories, authors or archives for good DS9 fic, particularly Garak/Bashir, point the way. I've only gone through babel's stuff, her recs page and the Garak/Bashir Fuh-Q Fest over at garakbashir.tripod.com.)

There's a surprising similarity to House/Wilson in a lot of the Garak/Bashir I've read so far. Some of it's the basic fanfiction and slash tropes, of course, but it extends beyond that. There's the young, handsome, intelligent, eager doctor with large brown eyes and a series of unsuccessful relationships with women under his belt. There's the older, jaded man with insurmountable trust issues, walled-off emotions, keen observational skills and an addiction he only managed to overcome with the help of the doctor; a man who's intrigued by puzzles and mysteries and enigmas, who lives to play with truths and lies, who is disliked and/or mistrusted by almost everyone around him. His only friend is the younger doctor, who challenges and entertains him, with whom he engages in shameless flirtations, and whose naiveté he is amused and charmed by and also tries to corrupt. The young man believes in the other's intrinsic goodness despite the other's dissuasions (and simultaneous encouragements). There were some lines in the fics I read today that could have come straight out of a House/Wilson fic: stuff about Garak moving from addiction to the wire to addiction to Bashir, or Bashir lecturing Garak on his inability to open up and trust him. It jars, too, when either calls the other by his first name, just as it usually does when "Greg" or "James" shows up in a H/W story without explanation, though that's a minor point.

It's not that I like G/B for the moments where it reflects H/W, or vice versa; I appreciate them both independently. It's just been interesting to notice what they have in common.