Previously in this series.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d know how to play cricket. You’d own matching sweaters, which you’d wear when his and your families got together for a game.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d make breakfast together in a well-coordinated dance: he’d set out the eggs and butter up the pan while you put in the toast and set out the plates. Then you’d switch places — you would grab a pan to fry the eggs while he got out jam and grabbed the toast as it came out of the toaster. As he made the coffee, you’d take a second to butter up the toast before you returned to the pan. He’d be smothering the toast with jam while you added the fried eggs to the plates, and you’d be pouring coffee while he got out the orange juice, sriracha sauce, and utensils, before you both sat down. All without saying a word.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you would come up with amazing couples’ costumes for Halloween. But they would be ones that also worked independently, so you wouldn’t have to stick to the other person’s side all night.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d always fill up every page of your sketchbooks and notebooks and journals. You’d stop worrying about the pages of dialogue that doesn’t come out quite like it sounded in your head, or the drawings of feet that look more like hoofs with little corn niblets on them.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he wouldn’t mind you going on about the technobabble in Star Trek. “Come on, ionospheric interference again?” you would say. “Positively tricky things, ions,” he’d reply, with a smirk that would make you want to hit him in the face with a pillow. Lovingly.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d slyly refer to that one thing he does as “the Cardassian neck trick.”
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d be the diplomat to your blunt talker. Together you would be excellent at negotiations, whether you were discussing a car payment or the price of earrings at a bazaar in Turkey or charming the sales lady at Anthropologie. “Are you kidding me? $150 for this dress?” “Now, darling, they probably work very hard for that money. Feel how soft this is.” “Not soft enough, dammit!” “Forgive my partner. It really is a lovely piece though. Is there anything you could do?” Somehow, with Sid, it could be done. Even at Anthropologie.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you would convince him to hire a lawn-mowing service that uses goats to spruce up the grounds around his cottage. “Goats?” he would remark, one eyebrow raised in amusement. Yes, goats, you would say, explaining how it’s much better for the environment than regular mowing, but secretly just hoping to introduce the idea of goat adoption by inches. Eventually you would convince him to adopt one of the lawn-mowing goats, the adorable grey one with the black spots. And maybe also the brown one with the white saddleback pattern, like a Corgi. And another grey one. You’d totally take responsibility for taking care of them, and would actually figure out how to make a decent goat cheese, which you’d send out to friends in perfectly shaped herb-dusted pucks, all wrapped in brown waxed paper.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d see you reading a book and ask about it and you’d tell him what it was about, not really paying attention, too immersed in the prose. The next day, you’d see him reading his Kindle and you’d nudge him. “Oh, it’s the book you were reading the other day,” he’d say. “I wanted to see what took away your attention. This is good, though, isn’t it?” It would become a pattern: your book club made of two.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d be visiting a random ruin in Europe one day and end up that night with a klatch of random tourists drawn to your combined presence, a group gradually assembled as you and Sid walked through the city. You’d drink prosecco and discuss technological law and international entities. “Robots!” you’d insist at one point, your eyes gleaming. “But wouldn’t robots just try to overpower humanity?” a Polish painter would ask. “No, see, she’s onto something,” Sid would say. “Robots don’t need power over us, anyway. They’re going to live forever and watch us all die.” “That’s right,” a concert pianist from France would chime in. “They’ve already got power.”
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d be charmed by your not-so-secret Tumblr devoted to fandom ships, fanfiction, and fanart. “I don’t see why they have to be so coy about it these days,” he would say, referring to a slash pairing. “I’d thought that’d be the one thing that wouldn’t carry over.” You nod, knowing he’s still sore that Garak/Bashir came this close to happening before being thrown over for no good reason. You’d send him some really silly Harry Potter fanfic to cheer him up.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, whenever you flew out to visit him in some foreign country where he was shooting a movie, he would make sure there was a field guide to the local birds resting on the pillow of your hotel bed when you arrived. And a gigantic bottle of wine.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d never let on that you never quite got around to watching Syriana.
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he would ruefully admit to your friends over dinner that the Dornish storyline in Season 5 of Game of Thrones was a hot mess. You would get into a bit of a lather on his behalf (“what could he even hope to DO with that writing?”). Afterwards, in a spot of silence on the way back home from the restaurant, he’d squeeze your hand appreciatively and whisper, “Vengeance. Justice. Fire and blood.”
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d tweet about how odd it was, the way people got so shy and silly around you when they met you two together, as if they were blinded by your combined brightness. “Oh my God, you are a liar,” Sid would say, reading the tweet over your shoulder. “No, sweetheart, it’s true, it’s very odd for me,” you’d answer primly. “‘Blinded by your combined brightness’? Darling,” he’d say, meeting your eyes. “You have many fine qualities, but modesty isn’t one of them.”
If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, you’d always wake up first in the morning. It’s not because you’re really gung-ho about being a morning person now, it’s that there are goats to feed. You’d come back as dawn inched in through the bedroom windows and wake up your boyfriend, who would, in the most gentle and loving way, let you know that you have goat crap in your hair. But you wouldn’t mind; it would just come with the territory.
You’ve described the perfect life. I love you (and Sid)
Oh, man, I had such a crush on him in puberty when DS9 was on the air.
now see, i wanted to punch him in the teeth, but actual Siddig could definitely get it. Especially this charming version of life with Definitely The Actual Siddig and the goats 🙂
I had a crush on Bashir back in the day on DS9, now I rewatch and definitely want to punch him most of the time.
But yeah, actual Alexandar Siddig…yeah. This piece brought back a lot of feels.
Bashir wasn’t very well conceived at first, but the character lucked out in getting put in a scene with Garak, thus forming the pairing that launched a thousand ‘ships, and eventually they figured out a crucial detail of the character’s backstory that was his version of Growing the Beard. Of course, there were also a couple of incidents of Bashir romancing his patients, but we try not to think about that.
I’m still mad about the lack of Garek/Bashir. Both actors were more than down with it. Andrew Robinson even played Garak that way for a while!
#startrekfeels
i don’t have much to add, except that this comment made me happy in a very specific, very nerdy way
I would faint. No two ways about it.
I just let out a deeply contented sigh. This sounds like a good, peaceful life. <3
Huh. It’s the life I never knew I wanted. Except for the goats bit. Always the goats bit.
Aaaaaah I love this!
the UNHOLY groan I let out when I saw the title and the Bashir screencap underneath it. How do you know exactly which heartthrobs of my youth to write about? thaaaaankkkk yoooouuuu.
I was going to say ” I looked at the title and could tell you had a tumblr”….but then I read the article and knew you had a tumblr because g/b forever
If there’s one thing I’ve never been coy about, it’s having a tumblr.
(Bonus Alexander Siddig pic I posted on Tumblr: http://bit.ly/1IN4ahe)
you don’t need a tumblr to understand GxB
Can’t be my boyfriend, he’s Colm Meaney’s.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD
(oh god, the goats, it’s all too much)
I never heard of this man until his small role in the most recent season of Game of Thrones, but this piece makes me feel like I’ve really been missing out on something.
You should see CAIRO TIME! It’s on Netflix streaming and it’s the most romantic movie ever, partly because it’s practically a romance about the woman with herself. Alexander Siddig is totally *heart eyes emoji* in it *sighs*
If these get any cuter, they might actually become lethal.
yes please.
The goats! The affordable Anthropologie! The beautiful man! It’s everything I’ve always wanted!!!!
I can feel my Kinsey number plummeting as I read this. The breakfast dance! The Garak/Bashir shoutout! The GOATS!
I liked him okay on DS9 — but it wasn’t until CAIRO TIME that I became truly committed. He keeps getting more handsome I don’t understand it.
Talk about aging like a fine wine, right? He does not get enough roles that are worthy of him and his very soothing voice.
He really does. And is one of the few mens I can visually tolerate bearded.
This is everything I ever wanted without even knowing it’s everything I ever wanted.
Co-sign.
His beard is salt & pepper perfection.
This is my first ever comment on the Toast because I saw this, my pupils dilated, and inside my head there was the sound of a hundred pterodactyls screeching in sheer delight. I <3 BASHIR 4-EVA
I confess I would mostly ask him if he would introduce me to Nana Visitor.
We need “If Nana Visitor was you girlfriend”
SECONDED.
This is the best post in the history of posts. Cheers! I met Sid at Star Trek: Las Vegas this summer and he was divine. Love love love everything about this!
“If Alexander Siddig were your boyfriend, he’d see you reading a book and ask about it and you’d tell him what it was about, not really paying attention, too immersed in the prose. The next day, you’d see him reading his Kindle and you’d nudge him. “Oh, it’s the book you were reading the other day,” he’d say. “I wanted to see what took away your attention. This is good, though, isn’t it?” It would become a pattern: your book club made of two.”
:fond sigh:
My grandmother is almost 70 years old, and she gets all flustered whenever she watches something with Alexander Siddig. “Oh, [raisedeyebrow], isn’t he just so HANDSOME?” she asks breathlessly. Love it.
“You’d always fill up every page of your sketchbooks and notebooks and journals” AND stop worrying about how you draw feet? It’s too beautiful help me.
Never getting over the Ziyal storyline. I’m just not going to let that one go. Goddamnit, Star Trek, why are you so weirdly regressive about sexual politics?
“Why do you always make fun of my feelings for you?!”
“Because I feel the fundamental skeeviness of this plot line and the fact that the writers aged you up from 13 to Sexy in one season and I’m rebelling against the very notion.”
“Also, because mocking everything is kind of what I do, and the entire damn station knows I have an elaborate dance going on with that handsome man over there, but hey, I’ve known you for like a week, so sure, ours is a beautiful and meaningful love.”
I did enjoy the part where he thought Ziyal was trying to kill him, though. That was perfectly in character.
This is the part where I copy and paste his glorious full name from Wikipedia:
Siddig El Tahir El Fadil El Siddig Abderrahman Mohammed Ahmed Abdel Karim El Mahdi
Would he ever forgive me that I still cannot tell him from James Callis without quite a lot of work? Because I was *so confused* about what was different about Baltar’s face for the entire first season of nuBSG until I realized it was an entirely different actor.
Would he ever forgive me that I still cannot tell him from James Callis without quite a lot of work? Because I was *so confused* about what was different about Baltar's face for the entire first season of nuBSG until I realized it was an entirely different actor.
I didn’t know I needed this in my life until now, thank you dear authors.
Also, while I love Bashir, I have to admit I fell for Sid as an adult after Syriana and the episode of Spooks/MI-5 he was in (‘Nest of Angels’), where he broke. my. heart.
I never got into DS9 so my ‘moment’ was his short run on ’24’.
I HAVE seen Syriana(have on my DVR, along with the following other movies:The Nativity Story, Kingdom of Heaven, Inescapable, Vertical Limit, and 1,2,3,4)