Chocolate Eyes; Melting Steele
Disclaimer:
Remington Steele and its characters are owned by MTM. No copyright infringement intended. For entertainment purposes only.
Set after Season 4. Bonds of Steele and Season 5 are not in my universe.
Chapter 1:
It was Friday afternoon. The week had been frantic. It had begun with an innocent case; one of those looking like easy to wrap. But it had developed into a big one with the FBI peeping at the end of it. Mr. Steele had decoded the key to solve it stealing the idea from a movie. It wasn't an original success after all, but the man couldn't be asked to be original every time. Besides, the combination of his ability as an ex-thief and conman added to his big screen knowledge was always an excellent resource at hand to close a case. Of course that those two qualities didn't have Laura's approval from the first day they had met. But after a long battle with her distrustful interior demons, frequently helped with Mr. Steele's own doubtful behavior; he had won her confidence through the years showing her with actions his desire to make a step ahead and leave his old life behind.
Miss Holt found his need to quote movies a bit awkward in the beginning. Mostly because she wasn't ready to accept that she wasn't the one solving a case after all the years she invested in her studies and training in her career. And the fact that he was doing it just copying the plot from a movie made it felt like he was cheating at some point. But she had learned through the years to think about his ability to quote movies not as a lousy waste of opportunities, but as a useful advantage to close a case.
As they were spending more and more time together as time went by; she had the chance to share a lot of his old movies' adoration outside work. She had noticed a couple of years ago that it was a key to his heart and the opportunity to show him also that not everything in his past deserved a criticism coming. And that she was ready to learn something from him; with him. They had jumped from the movie subject as a work tool to solve cases, to the chance to enjoy every opportunity watching them, adding to the process some other enlightening pleasures to make the equation extremely satisfactory.
Suddenly getting out of her reverie, Laura found herself opening the loft's door ready to return some of the items she had carried from there to Rossmore because they had been useful at some cases along the last months. She put the bag on the floor and stopped; turned on the lights, left the keys on the table and followed her old patterns when arriving home after a day at the office. The place looked exactly like when Laura was living there: the same furniture, the same pictures, the same books, the same piano. But there was an absence there she was noticing for the first time. She wasn't there anymore. The place had been a part of her present, a part of her life she had lived with enthusiasm, hope, and happiness; a part of her life where she had found every new challenge as fulfilling as the previous one. But it was over. It was a part of her past now. At that very moment, she realized she belonged to another place. Not bothering about unpacking the bag, she found the courage to go forward and exhaled a sigh. She had a decision taken. After giving a last look to the room, she grabbed the keys from the table, turned off the lights and walked toward the door. A fire had buried her old life in the past almost four years ago, but a new fire was pushing her into the future.