Like many people, I really disliked the last episode of Season 4 and all of Season 5. The fake wedding was bad enough, but the rest of it was worse. This is my way of hijacking the plot, beginning right after the wedding. The first chapter picks up part-way through the first episode of Season 5 (Bonds of Steele, Part II), the evening of their wedding day. For the sake of this story, the conversation between Laura and Steel in his bedroom (the one in which they discuss getting divorced in two years) never happened. Everyone has left, and Laura is still at Steele's apartment. I make no claims to the characters.

This story was originally posted under an "M" rating. After familiarizing myself a bit more with the stories posted on this site, I now believe that it qualifies as a "T," which will allow it to show up on the main Remington Steele page. It does contain sexual references and, in a later chapter, a discussion of violence, but nothing too graphic.

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"Okay, well, I can't say that this has been a pleasant day, but at least it's over. I'm going home...I'll see you at the office tomorrow and we'll figure out what to do from there." Laura grabbed her purse and started for the door, but Steele headed her off.

"Um...I certainly understand your desire for a respite from all this, but if Keyes is determined to expose our little arrangement as a fraud, don't you think he will be watching us? If we spend our wedding night in separate apartments, that rather destroys the illusion of wedded bliss, don't you think?"

She stopped and dropped her purse. "Oh, God. How did I get myself into this?" She touched her mussed hair and blew out a sigh of frustration. "Fine. You're right. But I'm taking a shower. And you can sleep on the couch."

"Certainly...least I can do. Help yourself to whatever you need from my...."

She slammed the door to his bedroom and he turned, sighed, and headed for the kitchen.

Later...

Steele came out of the kitchen and turned on the light next to the couch, as the room was getting dark. He had removed his jacket and tie, and rolled up his shirt sleeves. Seeing that the bedroom door was now open, he walked in and came out a moment later carrying a pillow and folded sheets, which he placed on the arm of the couch. He looked around briefly and noticed Laura standing out on the balcony, facing out toward the city.

Steele came out and slid the door closed behind him, but didn't approach her. Laura's hair was wet and freshly combed, and she was wearing a too-large t-shirt and pajama pants, with bare feet. She didn't turn around.

"Laura? Do you want some dinner?"

She brushed her hand quickly across her cheek, and turned to face him, raising her chin but not looking him in the eye. "Yes, fine. I'm not very hungry, though."

He watched her compose herself. He could tell that she'd been crying, but wanted to conceal that fact from him. She looked very young and small, wearing his clothes and no makeup. He turned to go back inside, but stopped with his hand on the door and turned to face her again.

"What's wrong?" he asked quietly.

"Nothing, just a long day," she said. She folded her arms and looked at him, and took a deep breath. He looked at her and waited.

"I guess...I'm just bothered by all the lying. The fiction that we're creating for the INS...and we're just going to get deeper and deeper into this, and I wonder what it will take to keep it up for two years."

He gave a small smile. "We've kept much bigger lies afloat for longer than that. You created an entire agency, not to mention an entire person, out of your imagination."

She nodded, looking at the floor. "I know. But I kind of enjoyed pulling one over on everyone who thought I couldn't run my own agency." She smiled back at him. "Even after you showed up, it was still kind of fun."

He pondered this, leaning back against the doorframe. "So what's different about this?"

"Well...it's... I don't like lying about my personal life. It's starting to feel like nothing is real anymore." She turned to look back out at the city. "I don't like our relationship becoming just another piece of this elaborate set we've built."

He cleared his throat and said softly, "It's not all lies, though."

She turned her head slightly, but stayed facing away from him.

He continued, walking up behind her and putting his hand on her hip as he stood close behind her. "We do have a relationship," he said near her ear.

She sighed and placed her hand over his. "But not the sort Immigration thinks we do. I don't know if I ever want to get married, but if I do I want it to be real, I want it to be about love and passion and commitment and trust and fidelity and...." She pulled away from him and walked back toward the apartment before turning to face him again. "I'm sorry. I don't mean...." She stopped. "This is silly. We did what we had to and we can continue the charade for as long as we have to. I should be the last person to get all idealistic about marriage, given what I saw happen to my parents'."

He cleared his throat again. "I don't think it's silly. And I'm sorry that my immigration issues..."

"They're not only your immigration issues," she interrupted. "They're just more fallout from my whole original set of lies."

"Well, in any case, they're our problem now, and I am grateful for your original set of lies, as they've given me a life that I've become quite fond of."

"Oh?"

"Yes. And, while we may not have a legal marriage, we do have many of the other things you mentioned." He was speaking more firmly now. "I've tried to be honest with you, and if going through all this to stay with you isn't a commitment, I don't know what is."

She looked up at him sharply. "And the scheme to marry Clarissa? What brand of honesty was that?"

He shook his head and looked at his feet. "That was...a monumentally bad idea. I panicked."

She folded her arms and faced out toward the evening sky. After a long moment of silence, she asked quietly, "Are you screwing her?"

"Laura, please!" he said angrily, shaking his head and looking disgusted.

She turned to look at him, and continued in the same calm tone, "I don't think it's an unreasonable question, given the circumstances."

He seemed like he was about to argue, but then sighed. "I suppose you're right." He met her eye and said firmly, "No, I'm not. The only contact I've had with Clarissa since we first encountered her was when I ran into her at a restaurant a few weeks ago. Monroe and I met for dinner at a little Italian place that he likes, and Clarissa was there with what I assume was a client. As I was leaving she was waiting for her escort to bring the car around, and we made small talk for a moment before I continued on. I guess that's why I thought of her when this immigration mess came up."

She stared into his face for a long moment, then looked away and nodded. "Okay." She paused and nodded again. "Okay. But why didn't you tell me as soon as you knew that there was a problem with immigration?" She started to pace up and down the small balcony. "How can I trust you when you do things like this?"

He shoved his hands in his pockets and said quietly, "I suppose I didn't want to put you in the position you're in right now, for all the reasons you've mentioned. I didn't want you to have to marry me."

She stopped pacing and gave him an incredulous look. "And you marrying someone else would have been better?"

"I don't know! At least that would have been just a business transaction, no baggage or expectations. Nothing to ruin if it went badly." He still didn't look at her. "There's too much at stake with us."

'What does that mean?"

He ran his hand through his hair. "It means...our relationship is neither beast nor fowl. It's got passion but no sex, commitment but no honesty...and now it's got a fake marriage license tying the whole thing together. What does that mean? What are we left with?"

"And how would a marriage license with another woman's name on it have been any better? How could we have any sort of relationship with you pretending to be married to someone else? You realize that you and I could not be seen in public together outside of business hours? That she would have been the one spending the night here..." Her voice caught, and she stopped and took a ragged breath.

"I admit that I didn't think things through. But none of that happened, did it?" he said.

"No, it didn't. But it makes it hard for me to see what we have between us that I can count on." She leaned against the stone wall and slid down to the floor, and a moment later he did the same a few feet away.

"I'm scared of being married to you," she said quietly.

He stiffened, and said forcefully, "Laura, I'd like to think that you know by now that I wouldn't..."

"Oh, for God's sake, you know that's not what I mean," she interrupted. "I've put my life in your hands a hundred times; I'm not talking about being afraid physically. I'm talking about how we're going to deal with each other. I mean, we spend, what, sixty, seventy hours a week together now? You're a huge part of my life...you're my business partner, and my best friend, and...well...whatever else you are that we haven't been able to define."

He smiled a little at "best friend," and looked at her fondly. "You're saying how do we add at least the appearance of a marriage to all of that without driving each other mad?"

"I'm saying that I'm being asked to give even more of my life over to a man who habitually lies to me, and that scares the hell out of me. I don't know why it's so difficult for you to tell me the truth, but I don't know how I can go on living a lie for you if you can't be straight with me." They sat with their backs against the wall, not looking at one another.

She drew her knees up to her chin. "The thing with my...father. I think the worst part was the feeling I had after he left, that I'd been so gullible. That he'd been lying to us all for so long and I never realized it."

"Lying to you?"

She hesitated. "I found out a few months after he left that he'd been cheating on my mother with a series of women."

"Oh, Laura. How did you discover this?"

She shrugged. "The way I learned most things at that age: eavesdropping. I overheard my mother talking to her sister. And I later found out that a lot of my friends knew about it, because he wasn't exactly subtle. I was possibly the last person in southern California to know, and my mother was the second-last. I remember feeling so stupid...so foolish and naïve. It was like being punched in the chest. I actually felt dizzy."

She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered a little. He thought about reaching out to put his arm around her, but stopped himself, not sure if she would welcome his touch at this point.

She sighed and said softly, "When you lie to me, and keep things from me...when I find out about it...it feels like that. Like being punched in the chest. And I hate you for it. It makes me not want to be vulnerable to you in any way, because that just makes it easier for you to do it the next time. And I'm so, so tired of that feeling. I never wanted to feel it again, and it keeps happening." Her voice broke, and she paused for a moment, regaining control before continuing, "I wish I didn't think that you were always trying to keep me in the dark, only revealing what you have to. Can't you just talk to me for once, without worrying that you're giving up some sort of strategic advantage?"

He thought about this for a minute, then said, "The problem is that the things I should probably tell you are the things that are hardest for me to say." He paused and looked at his hands. "I guess that's rather the point, isn't it?"

She didn't respond, and the silence stretched on, broken only by the distant sounds of the city far below.

"I haven't been with another woman in over three years," he said, causing her to look over at him quickly.

"What?"

"On the subject of fidelity."

"Why...three years?"

He sighed. "I don't know if you remember that first night you spent here after your house was destroyed."

"Of course I do. What does that..."

"Please, Laura. This is difficult enough." He paused, and she waited for him to go on.

"You were upset. Understandably. In need of comfort and solace. And you made it clear that whatever I wanted from you that night, you would give."

She gave a wry grin. "And you turned me down. You think this subject isn't uncomfortable for me, too?"

"Well, the way I saw it I chose not to take advantage of your vulnerable state. There you were, in my apartment in the middle of the night wearing nothing but my shirt, willing to come to my bed, and I kissed you on the cheek and told you to get some rest."

"Actually, I'm pretty sure I was wearing underwear, too," she interjected with a tiny smirk.

He groaned. "Laura, do you really think that helps? Good Lord. Now I'm picturing your underwear."

He sighed, wiped his hand across his face, took a deep breath, and continued, "The next morning I thought I'd lost my bloody mind. But the truth is, I didn't want to have you think that all I wanted from you was sex. I needed to prove that I could be a friend to you when you needed one. And I didn't want to have to always wonder if you would have ever offered yourself to me if you weren't lonely and desperate."

He crossed his ankles in front of him and folded his arms, then continued, "After that it didn't seem right to be with anyone else. I felt like I'd made a decision to wait for you, maybe an unconscious one, but perhaps that's the only kind I'm capable of making. I found that when the opportunity came up, I thought about you. And I wasn't about to make love to a woman while imagining you...I'm not going to use a woman's body without at least being present for her in that moment, valuing her for herself for at least the time we're together."

They both continued to stare ahead, he with his legs stretched out, her with her knees held up against her chest.

"Why haven't you ever told me this before?" she asked quietly.

He paused before answering. "I guess I didn't want to tell you because I didn't want it to be something I did, or didn't do, for you. I didn't want it to become a way to manipulate you into bed. And I suppose I didn't want the promise that it implied, that I wouldn't ever be with anyone else, that I'd wait for you as long as it took. Because I don't know how long I'll wait, and I don't want to be in a position of having to lie to you about it."

He cleared his throat, and added softly, "And...it reveals too much. About your place in my life. It's fairly pathetic, actually, being faithful for over three years to a woman you've never even seen naked."

They sat in silence for a time. Then she clasped her hands between her knees and said quietly, "Well, I guess I feel rather...unworthy."

"Unworthy? What on earth for?"

"Unworthy...because I'd assumed that your interactions with other women continued until more recently. And I wasn't going to let myself pine away for you while you were off enjoying yourself."

He looked grim, but said, "Laura, I didn't have any expectations about your behavior, one way or the other. Like I said, my choice was my own, and I purposely didn't tell you about it because I wanted to keep it that way." He looked at her out of the corner of his eye, and continued, "I suppose I would like to know, since I've bared my soul here. Not to mention that I've sacrificed a perfectly nice pair of trousers by sitting on this balcony with you."

She breathed deeply and ran her hands down her thighs. "Okay. Fair enough. Well, I haven't exactly been putting notches in my bedpost. The last time I was with someone was about a year and a half ago." She paused. "I went to the wedding of some old friends. The groom used to work with Wilson, and the four of us would double-date. Anyway, Wilson was there, and we talked, and drank too much champagne, and we spent the night together. There was never any question of it going beyond that. It was rather sweet and nostalgic at the time, but I felt completely wretched afterward, and not just from the champagne. He called a few days later and wanted to meet for dinner, but I told him I'd rather just let it go, and he understood."

He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, then opened them to look up at the now-dark sky. "Wilson got a curtain-call, aye? Well, I've imagined worse."

"What kind of worse?" she asked, slightly amused.

"Butch, for one."

"What?" she asked, seemingly perplexed.

"Butch Beamis. The writer."

"Eww. The neanderthal? I have some standards." She shook her head and gave a short laugh. "No. I found him vaguely appealing in a visceral sort of way for about five minutes, but, no."

He pursed his lips and just sat for a moment, then said, "So...a year and a half ago?"

She looked up at the sky, too. "Give or take. It was a few months after we got back from France."

"Ah, during our attempt at keeping things purely businesslike."

She nodded. "Yes. Although that didn't work for long."

"Hmmm. We haven't been very good at keeping our hands off each other, have we? Even for the good of the agency."

She scooted closer to him and took his hand, linking her fingers through his. "No. But now we're supposed to be married, so keeping our hands off each other wouldn't really help the agency any longer, would it?"

He grinned and kissed the back of her hand. "I like the way you think." He paused, holding her hand against his lips, then said, "It does seem that everything has changed now, doesn't it? Up until now, the agency has been at the center of things, and our relationship was on the periphery. And now, our relationship is the thing everyone's paying attention to."

"Yes, it is. And I'm going to have to figure out how to tell people about this marriage...my sister, my mother, friends..." She pulled her hand away and covered her face as she groaned.

He nodded seriously and said, "Yes, Laura, I understand how difficult that is going to be. I'll do whatever I can to help. In fact, I'll even break the news to Murphy for you."

She laughed and dropped her hands as she rolled her eyes. "Oh, it's very generous of you to make that sacrifice." She laughed again, and shot him a sideways look. "Only if I can tell Daniel."

He grinned. "Oh, Daniel's going to need a good stiff drink over this one. He never even got a chance to try to talk me out of it."

She smiled a bit. She took a long, deep breath and said, "If we are going to do this...I need you to stop keeping things from me. I'm not trying to force your hand, I'm just saying that I can't put everything on the line for you and get punched in the chest again."

He winced when she said that, obviously uncomfortable with her repeated use of that metaphor. "Laura, I..."

She interrupted, "Because I don't think I can stand it one more time. Losing you would be hard, losing the agency would be hard, but even harder is accepting that I'm the kind of woman who gets lied to over and over again and keeps coming back for more. I'm supposed to be smarter than that; I'm supposed to have more self-respect than that."

He took a long, shuddering breath. "Laura, all I can promise is that I'll try. If I find myself keeping things from you, I'll fix it. I've never done this before, not properly. I don't think I've ever been completely honest with anyone, even Daniel. But I don't ever want to be the man hurting you like that. And I don't want to lose you. But you're going to have to do the same. I need to know that the honesty goes both ways."

She pondering this for a minute, then nodded. "You're right. I have to be willing to let you in on the important stuff. Scary as that may be." She paused, and then added, "I don't need to know everything, you know. You don't have to tell me what you're getting me for Christmas, or where you keep your porn stash."

He grinned. "Laura, you are my porn stash." She punched him in the arm, and he chuckled.

After a moment she took his hand. "It's easier when I feel that we're at least on the same side."

He held her hand in both of his, gently stroked the back of her hand with his thumb. He didn't look at her. "I'm sorry if I've sometimes given you the impression that we're not."

She looked up at the stars and said, "Oh, I know I've done my share of misdirection, of trying to keep you guessing so you don't ever feel that I need you to stay for more than just the agency."

They were silent for a moment, and then he said quietly, "Laura...do you need me to stay for more than just the agency?"

She pulled her hand away again and stood up, walked the few steps to the end of the balcony and looked out at the city again. She didn't answer out loud, but he could see her nod in the light from the apartment.

He came up behind her, as before, and wrapped his arm around her waist. She placed her hands over his arm and leaned back into him, resting her damp head on his shoulder.

They both closed their eyes, and stayed like that for several minutes.

Finally, he breathed quietly into her ear, "I love you."