Work Text:
Three days after Kevin had threatened to divorce him, he boils Raymond an egg for breakfast.
"Jake," he says, setting the plate down, "asked me how we met."
“I thought that that was Santiago,” says Raymond.
Normally, he would have said something more like it was actually Santiago who asked, after you volunteered the information. Sardonic enough that it might make Kevin laugh: biting enough that he might get a scowl instead.
He is not normally afraid that a single misstep will shatter his entire marriage like a window Sergeant Jeffords has thoughtlessly closed.
Kevin had punched Seumas Murphy in the throat and then apologised for not calling him a dirtbag. He had untied Raymond and Peralta from their chairs and then, having packed up his artefacts from the safe house and having told Peralta that he would miss him, had driven himself home, finished all the ironing Raymond had allowed to pile up as he pursued the man who had threatened Kevin’s life, and prepared dinner before his husband had been able to finish the paperwork and escape his own precinct.
The way he had kissed Raymond in the kitchen that night had been reminiscent of their reunion after he’d escaped witness protection with only a badly-stitched thigh wound; they’d spent the evening in ways that Detective Diaz is never to mention again; the next morning, Kevin had passed him the crossword from his own paper. Everything since has been so blissfully normal that Raymond can almost forget, for whole seconds at a time, that Kevin hasn’t actually yet said I’ve changed my mind.
So Raymond is still saying things like I thought that it was Santiago. It may be foolish. Still, he can't help thinking that if Kevin spends enough time walking Cheddar and visiting libraries and sitting in the sunlit window seat to read, then by the time Raymond finally does do something to irritate him, he will have forgotten that he ever considered taking away the very best thing in Raymond’s life as punishment for not wanting the very best thing in his life shot to pieces.
“Yes,” says Kevin, rearranging orchids – cymbidium iridioides – in the kitchen table vase. “But Jake asked about it too. Last week.”
Last week, in the safe house. Raymond considers several possible responses, and settles instead on his most attentive expression. Kevin can’t see it, preoccupied with the flowers as he is, but his eyes flick up at the lack of a reply and when he sees that Raymond is waiting, he continues.
“Do you remember,” he begins, “how we ran over time, and I had a meeting–”
“An appointment,” Raymond corrects him.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said Officer Holt, I’m very sorry to have kept you so long. I have many more questions but if we go on any longer I will be late for an appointment,” Raymond quotes. “May I–”
***
“–call you again tomorrow?” asked Dr. Cozner, whose soft, precise voice and admiring laughter had been making Raymond dramatic and overly prone to wordplay, and now made him do something practically impulsive.
“I have a better idea,” said Raymond Holt, trying to sound calm and thoughtful and not like a shameless flirt. “Are you in Brooklyn this evening?”
“I am, actually,” Dr. Cozner said, sounding surprised by that fact. Or perhaps by Raymond’s audacity. Neither boded well. “Are you suggesting we meet?”
Let me buy you dinner, Raymond thought.
“We could have a drink,” he said, a careful, polite act of cowardice he would be regretting for months, “and you could ask any remaining questions you have.”
On the other end, Dr. Cozner coughed, and Raymond waited, overly conscious of his own heartbeat, for an answer.
***
Kevin nods, setting the orchids in the middle of the table and drying his hands on a tea-towel. Damp stems, thinks Raymond. He has missed Kevin’s habitual fastidiousness just as much as his wry jokes or his thoughtful kisses.
“Did you think that I would say no?”
“To what?”
“Your proposal. That we should meet for drinks.”
Raymond thinks back to the phone call, to the pause before Kevin had said I would like that. Very much.
“I was… anxious.” Kevin nods, and turns away to examine the contents of the pantry, picking up bags of rice and jars of preserves to determine the contents of each. He shows no interest in continuing the conversation. Anxious must have been the wrong answer.
“What did Peralta ask?” Raymond manages. His throat feels drier than normal, but it seems to have been the right question: Kevin’s hands stop moving over bottles and boxes, and he smiles a little.
“He was describing the moment he decided to ask for Detective Santiago’s hand in marriage,” he says absently. Hand in marriage, notes Raymond. Something about the memory has made Kevin sentimental. “Apparently she discovered an error in the crossword puzzle.”
“The Times?”
“He didn’t say.”
“And that convinced him?”
“I considered it quite a good reason,” Kevin says, closing the pantry door and coming to retrieve Raymond’s empty plate and silverware. Oh.
He has been so preoccupied, watching Kevin, that he’s finished eating without noticing it.
“I can clean them,” he hurries to reassure him, and stands to do so. “I was only wondering what led to Peralta's question about our meeting.”
Kevin props a hip against the kitchen table, precisely where Raymond had been moments ago. Raymond, washing his plate in careful circular motions and sneaking glances at the fine lines around his eyes, briefly considers how strange it is that a man so desirable in every way had ever decided to marry him in the first place.
“He asked if I had experienced any comparable moment of certainty,” Kevin continues, “and after I explained exactly how little certainty existed for gay men in the nineteen eighties–” Raymond can’t help the huff of laughter that escapes him at that– “I told him that anyway, after that horrible first impression, you must’ve believed that I was–”
***
Perfect, thought Raymond in quiet awe. There wasn’t a single hair out of place. The crease of his bow tie was meticulous. Dr. Cozner looked exactly the way Raymond might have dreamed him up from the sound of his voice.
“Officer Holt?”
“Raymond,” he said, scrambling to his feet and offering a hand. It was forward of him, but he wanted to move forward. It didn’t seem unwelcome, though: Dr. Cozner tilted his chin up in mock-rebuke, but his eyes were bright. It was… appealing.
“Raymond,” he repeated, voice warm as he shook Raymond's hand. “I’m Kevin.”
“Kevin,” echoed Raymond, privately thinking it a very good name. “May I buy you a drink?”
Everything about Kevin was ridiculously alluring: the way he would suddenly switch to Latin, as though not realising what he was doing (what he was doing to Raymond), always wearing a smug expression that indicated that he very much did; the way he smiled as though he’d just heard a joke at the expense of someone he disliked deeply; the unsettling blue eyes; all that tweed. Raymond, who had wanted to establish beyond any doubt that this was a date and not an interview, found himself talking more than he had intended to.
“...and so I founded the African-American Gay and Lesbian New York City Police Association. A.A.G.L.N.Y.C.P.A., for short,” he concluded.
“Goodness me,” breathed Kevin. He looked admiring: Raymond wondered what he could say next to make him look like that again. Absurd. They’d only been acquainted an hour. “How many members do you have so far?”
“I am the sole member,” Raymond confessed. “Perhaps it is self-indulgent, to create a society of one.” He hoped Kevin wouldn’t think him self-indulgent. He had no desire to pretend that the A.A.G.L.N.Y.C.P.A. wasn’t important to him.
"Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre | mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað,” Kevin said, so firmly that Raymond completely forgot to ask what it meant. All he could tell was that Kevin considered it absolutely indisputable. “It is sensible to plan for the future, but it is courageous of you to do so without help. Anyone who thinks otherwise is–”
***
“–an utter simpleton,” Kevin says.
Raymond blinks once in astonishment.
“You must be thinking of a different first impression,” he decides. “I had never been so impressed by anyone. I rung my mother to tell her so.”
Kevin brings a hand to his mouth to hide his smile. “I didn’t know that.”
“Of course not. She is very discreet.” The fact that Kevin truly likes her so much has never stopped making Raymond happy. It goes a long way towards compensating for how little Kevin’s parents hide their disapproval of him.
“She called me yesterday, actually,” admits Kevin, handing Raymond a tea-towel.
“I didn’t know that,” he says as he dries the plate, partly because Kevin likes symmetrical conversational structures and partly because he is truly surprised: Laverne normally rings Raymond, then asks to talk to Kevin, which they both deem more polite.
“Discreet indeed,” Kevin agrees. The corners of his mouth turn up, as they do when he’s too amused not to show it and too self-conscious to really smile. “She wanted to convey her relief that I had returned home, and to invite us to dinner. And to congratulate me,” he added, studiedly casual, “for rescuing her son, and apprehending a dangerous criminal.”
He takes the tea-towel back, and Raymond recalls how he had punched Seumas Murphy in the throat. The red mark over his lip from where he’d peeled away the false moustache. You may not have a husband when all of this is over.
“Thank you,” he says, finally. “For apprehending a dangerous criminal. And rescuing me. And Peralta.”
Kevin goes very still. The tea-towel is still in his hands, but he doesn’t exactly seem to be holding it. His expression is, to Raymond, indecipherable.
“You’re welcome,” he says slowly. “Of course.”
“Professor Cozner?” The pet name makes Kevin smile, as it always has.
“Captain Holt?”
“What led you to conclude that you had made such a poor first impression?”
Kevin appears to come back to himself a little, folding the towel neatly and returning it to its place.
“I could barely remember the questions I was supposed to be asking,” he says. “By the time I had to go–”
***
Raymond was determined to find a translation of Beowulf, resolved to finally get to grips with orchid taxonomy, and smitten. He was also entirely unwilling to say goodbye.
“Of course. May I walk you to the station?”
The night air was brisk, the fit of Kevin’s coat was precise, and he had considered asking openly if Kevin would allow Raymond to take him to dinner later in the week. He was quite certain that Kevin was homosexual.
He was not at all certain that Kevin would be interested in a man only fluent in French, Spanish and Greek.
Modern Greek.
So instead he had rambled about police procedure and, when Kevin grew bored of listening to Raymond’s inane nonsense, watched the water vapour of his breath in the air as he spoke. By the time they reached the station Raymond had learned that Kevin’s brother was studying dentistry; that he was interested in origami mathematics, but could only fold orizuru; and that he deeply disliked his own journalistic work.
“Apart from tonight, of course,” Kevin added as they descended the steps to his platform, unmistakably flirtatious, and Raymond, weighing the probability of rejection against the prospect of never seeing Kevin again, decided to abandon caution. He glanced around. Late as it was, the platform was almost empty. A few people were leafing half-heartedly through newspapers; an elderly man seemed to actually be asleep; a very young couple were enjoying an enthusiastic embrace over by the wall. Nobody was awake enough or bigoted enough to pay any attention to an academic-looking young man, or even his black friend in officer’s uniform.
“I want to say–”
Kevin kissed him.
It wasn’t a long kiss, not enough for anyone else on the platform to notice, but Kevin’s eyes were wide as he stepped away.
“I’m sorry,” he said, quietly. “This won’t– I’m not very experienced, and–”
Whatever he had been about to say next was drowned out by the screeching of the train’s arrival, and Kevin looked ready to bolt for it, so Raymond reached out and caught his wrist. Pulled him in, down a little, close enough to talk right into his ear, to make himself audible over the whining metal.
“Would you like,” he asked, as deliberately as he could, determined not to allow any further misunderstanding, “to be more experienced?”
He could feel Kevin shaking slightly where Raymond’s hand was wrapped around his forearm, but perhaps it was just the cold: when he tilted his face back to meet Raymond’s eyes, only the determined set of his jaw suggested anything but perfect calm.
“Yes,” he said, voice as utterly unyielding as when he’d been quoting strange, ancient poetry Raymond hadn't understood. “When can I see you again?”
Now, thought Raymond, stay the night. Then he thought, the train, and let go.
“Catch your train,” he ordered. “Call me tomorrow.”
Kevin looked at him with those unnerving eyes.
“I–”
***
“–could barely remember a word I’d said,” says Kevin. “And I still can’t, except that I was barely managing to form sentences, and that I made an idiot of myself on the platform. In public.”
“I liked that,” says Raymond, as he always does. Kevin will often tell people, publicly, that they met over the phone: only in private, once or twice, has he mentioned the kiss on the station platform. He has never, ever mentioned what he said afterwards. He still considers it a terrible lapse. Raymond still considers it an act of bravery rivalled only by the purchase of Gertie.
He knows enough now to have translated roughly what Kevin had told him in the bar, about his one-man society. Our minds shall be harder, our hearts therefore braver | our courage therefore vaster, because our numbers are less.
Kevin was wrong. Raymond had been very alone in the world then. His heart has grown braver and his mind harder thanks to his husband, his courage vaster with every day he spends with the support and affection and respect of his squad. The larger his family grows, he thinks, watching Cheddar bound into the kitchen and straight into Kevin’s arms, the better he is for it.
“I am sorry,” he says, watching his husband scratch between Cheddar’s ears, thinking about Kevin’s courage and of the fear in Peralta’s eyes when he’d said it was because I didn't want you guys to get divorced and of how he might have died and left Kevin only with the memories of being shut away from everything in his life. “I should have had more sympathy with your frustrations, these past months. It must have been trying.”
“I’m sorry,” says Kevin, wearing the inscrutable expression again. It is not nearly so intimidating on a man whose arms are full of Corgi. “For... being ridiculous.”
Which is how, three days after Kevin had threatened to divorce him, Raymond Holt kisses him even though he’s holding the dog, and says “I–”
***
“–love you,” said Dr. Kevin Cozner, Ph.D., as calmly as if commenting on the weather, and boarded his train.
***
They have been together ever since.