STEELE GETTING OVER THE PAST

By: Laura Wood

E-mail: December02@aol.com

First printed: More Red Holt Steele #9

Summary: Laura and Remingtonattempt to work out the kinks in their relationship.

Disclaimer: This “Remington Steele” story is not-for-profit and is purely for entertainment purposes. The author and this site do not own the characters and are in no way affiliated with “Remington Steele,” the actors, their agents, the producers, MTM Productions, the NBC Television Network or any station or network carrying the show in syndication, or anyone in the industry.

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Laura Holt and Remington Steele walked down the hall of the small hotel overlooking the Pacific Ocean just north of Pismo Beach, California. Another case had drawn them away from home, and they barely had a week to recover from their last case in which two people had been shot in Remington’s apartment. They had been presumed dead, but everything had been worked out in the end.

Now, after having solved their latest fiasco in which they stopped the illegal take-over of a multi-million dollar corporation by discovering the murderer of the owner, Remington and Laura were just plain tired.

“Care to join me for a nightcap?” Remington asked.

“I think that we should just call it a night,” said Laura.

“You don’t trust me, do you, Laura?” Remington shook his head, obviously hurt. “Why do you assume that my intentions are always sexual?”

“I don’t assume that,” Laura said, arms spread wide in defense.

“Yes, you do,” Remington countered, his voice steadily rising. “You have no faith in me.”

“That’s not true,” Laura replied, shocked. “I trust you more than anyone.”

“That’s not saying much,” Remington muttered as he turned and headed for his room. “You,” he turned as he reached his door, “have no faith in me, no trust in me, and no faith in yourself.”

“What!?!” cried Laura.

“Think about it,” Remington said in defense. “You don’t have enough faith in yourself to trust me. You still believe, after everything we’ve been through together, that I’m going to leave you.” Remington sighed and dropped his arms. “Look,” he said softly as he approached Laura, “I don’t know what else I can do to show you that I’m not going anywhere. By the time you realize that I’m here to stay, we’ll both be ninety years old.”

Laura silently laughed at herself. Maybe Remington did have a point. Why couldn’t she trust herself and believe that she’d made a good decision when she chose to stick with him? What was stopping them now when Remington was obviously not going to leave?

“Maybe we can go inside and talk for awhile?” Remington asked as he opened his door.

“Just talk?” Laura questioned.

Remington nodded his head. “I’ll order some tea and we can just talk about things. You know...maybe straighten a few things out.”

“All right,” Laura agreed, stepping into the room. Remington obviously had more things he wanted to tell her, and she wasn’t going to stop him now that he had started to open up.

A few minutes later Remington replaced the phone, having ordered some hot tea for them. He crossed the room to stand in front of the large window that, during the daylight hours, held the view of the Pacific Ocean.

“I guess that I don’t have to tell you about how ridiculously awful I am at talking about how I feel,” Remington began.

“It’s not one of your strongest points,” Laura agreed. She moved a few feet to stand next to Remington and stared out the window at the pitch black night.

“I’ve never really had any family,” he began again. “I know that’s why I’m not...experienced... at loving anyone. Or, at least expressing it.”

Laura began to protest his reasoning, but Remington cut her off.

“I didn’t have parents. No grandparents or cousins that I knew were truly mine. I never had any close friends that I knew for any extended periods of time. Not until I met Daniel...but by then I was already fourteen. I already hated my parents for not being with me. Maybe that’s the only real emotion I have towards my family. It’s not that I don’t want to know them, you know that.”

“Yes.”

“I still want to find them. To know...who I am, where I came from.” Remington shoved his hands in his pockets, looking like a lost soul. “How am I supposed to provide a stable home for you and a potential family when I don’t even know who I am? I don’t even know where to begin concerning my feelings towards you.”

Laura moved closer to Remington, taking his hand in hers. “I didn’t think you wanted a family,” she said in amazement. “You’ve never had anything positive to say about it.”

“There are a lot of things you don’t know about me, Laura.”

“Well...if you’d tell me, I’d know.” Laura teased.

“What do you want to know?” Remington asked, squeezing Laura’s hand.

“Anything. Everything,” she answered, squeezing his hand.

“Well, I know that I was born in Ireland in 1952.” A knock at the door announced the arrival of their tea. Remington tipped the server a five and poured two cups of tea.

“Maybe we should sit on the couch?” Laura suggested.

“Sounds good. Where was I?” Remington began as he sat to Laura’s left.

“Nineteen fifty-two.”

“Oh, right. Anyway, when I was a child, whenever anyone asked my age, whoever I was living with at the time would say that I was born then. No specific date, just the year. Nineteen fifty-two.

“I don’t remember much before I met Daniel. I was mostly bounced around to different people, most of which claimed to be cousin or aunt and uncle, but I knew different. Anyway, I was never close to anyone in particular. I usually stayed to myself. When I was around ten or eleven I hopped a ferry to England. I met Daniel a few years later.

“What I’m trying to say, Laura, is that I haven’t had the chance to get close enough to anyone, even Daniel, to learn to love them in a way that is truly unselfish. I’m closer to you than I have ever been to another person in my life. Physically, we’re lacking, but if that’s all I wanted...” Remington trailed off.

“What?” Laura asked.

“I...we would have been together a long time ago.” Remington finished sincerely. “I mean, I don’t know anyone who would stay with someone this long to just... you know,” Remington emphasized his point, making an ambiguous hand gesture.

“I know. You’re right.” Laura conceded. “It’s not as if I think that you’ve stayed only for that.”

Remington gave Laura a stern ‘I don’t believe you’ look.

“I don’t,” she protested. “You know that I value your friendship and partnership more than that. I’m just not sure of your intentions.”

“My intentions regarding you meaning sexually or regarding our long term relationship?” Remington asked.

Laura nodded. “Both. They sort of go together, don’t you think?”

“You’re talking about marriage and children aren’t you?”

Laura nodded her head again.

“Would it amaze you to know that I’ve thought about those things a lot?” Remington asked, feeling the pit of his stomach churning.

“It would surprise me,” Laura answered. “I honestly never pictured you sitting down and thinking about...us.”

Remington laughed. “I told you that there were things that you didn’t know about me.”

“So...” Laura said, not sure whether she wanted to hear what Remington thought of their future together or not.

“So. You want to know what I’m thinking?”

“That would be nice, Mr. Steele.”

Remington took a sip of his tea, attempting to calm his frazzled nerves.

“Sometimes I think that I want to have a family of my own because I’ll never find out who my real family is. At the very least I can create my own family, but I don’t want to get married and have children simply because I didn’t have parents. That wouldn’t be fair to me, or you.

“But...I think that what I really want runs much deeper than that. I know that the main reason I want to be a part of someone’s family is you. I wouldn’t want children if I couldn’t have them with you.” Remington stared into his cup of tea. “But, I don’t even know what you want, Laura.” Remington didn’t know what he’d do if Laura didn’t want the same things out of life that he did. It all seemed so simple to him now. A family with a wife and some children would suffice.

“I want what you want,” Laura said, putting down her cup of tea. “I don’t want to grow old alone any more than you do.”

Remington swallowed hard.

“I want to get married someday and have children,” Laura continued. “For most of my life it’s only been an idea for me that someday in the future this would happen. Now, all of a sudden, I’m not in college anymore, and I’m living my future. Only...I don’t have a husband and a family, and I’m fine with that at the moment. But, it doesn’t mean I don’t want something different with you than what we have now. I don’t even know what we have now,” she finished, looking Remington in the eye.

“So...you want to have these things with me...sometime in the future?” Remington asked, hope obvious in his features.

“Yes,” Laura replied, feeling a sense of relief at the thought that she and Remington shared the same idea for a future together.

“But right now we’re here. And, I’m not exactly sure how to get from here to our future,” Laura admitted. “Relationships don’t come with an owner’s manual.”

“I think,” Remington cautiously began, “that we have one major hurdle to overcome.”

“It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?” Laura asked.

“It seems to be that way.” Remington sat his tea on the end table and turned to face Laura. “We’re both scared that somehow one or the both of us will end up getting hurt, and as much as we trust one another, we have both had past relationships where someone has hurt us.”

Laura nodded her head in agreement. “My father left.”

“And Wilson.”

“Yes.”

“And I know that I haven’t had the best of relationships in my past. But,” Remington continued, confident that Laura understood where he was coming from. “I have always attempted to have a relationship with someone, and this is even if I’ve wanted a relationship with someone, which has only happened once... Anyway, sex has always been the foundation of the relationships I’ve had, and it’s not like that with you.”

“But you want that with me,” Laura said, not really asking.

“Of course. I assume that if we spend our lives together, we’d make love eventually.” Remington teased. “It doesn’t have to be tonight, Laura. Or this week. I was just hoping that with the case being solved, you might want to extend our stay here over the weekend.”

*Let it never be said that this man is a quitter,* Laura thought. “We can stay,” Laura agreed. “But...”

“But?”

“I’m still nervous about things.”

“Oh. Then why don’t we keep our separate rooms and stay the weekend then. Just enjoy ourselves,” Remington suggested.

“I suppose we could take a three day weekend.” Laura explained. “There really isn’t anything pressing at the office.”

“Wonderful!” Remington said. “I’ll let the hotel know that we’ll be staying the weekend, and then we can get some rest and go into town in the morning. How does that sound?”

“That sounds wonderful, Mr. Steele.”

For the first time in their relationship together, both Remington and Laura began to feel confident that they would be able to live their lives together, and perhaps, maybe one day, they would both get the family they always wanted.

END