Kira seems great. You can really see where they're already putting in effort at developing her. Hopefully they don't A.) move too quickly that she becomes totally stagnanat for half the series or B.) backslide and flanderize her into previous actions/mindsets because old writers are fixed on the first time they encountered a character.

Garak/Bashir is easily the most popular DS9 ship. I know more about them than anything else DS9 related, and I know the actors even in the last few years have talked positively about it. Garak's actor wrote a official tie-in novel that apparently spends a lot of time waxing very quasi-romantic feelings towards Bashir. I haven't read it myself, but my roommate did.

Maybe Garak sees Julian as both gulliable and easy to use, but also cute and earnest. No reason he can't develop feelings for his little patsy.