A poster named itfan started a thread on the HBO boards during Season 2, she posed the following question:  If you could write the final two weeks of Season 2 episodes, what would you like to see happen?  She had expressed a desire, similar to my own, to see a reunion between Paul and Laura.  I submitted following episode as my answer to the question.

 

Season 2 Final episode:

The funeral was far more difficult than Paul ever imagined. Friends and strangers, a seemingly endless stream of people shaking his hand, embracing him, telling him how sorry they were for his loss. There were colleagues relating tales of his father's medical expertise, former patients bubbling over with praise for his father's bedside manner. Paul tried to watch it all from a painful distance, but as the day wore on, he could feel the tentacles of sadness tightening around his heart more and more. He was surprised that it hurt so much to lose the father he thought he no longer knew and felt a terrifying seed of regret growing stronger by the moment. How could he have thought it would be easy to bury his father without ever having had the chance to make things right?

His guilt was heightened by watching his children struggling hard to manage their grief. This was their first exposure to the death of a loved one and Rosy seemed especially devastated. She had been closer to her grandfather than any of the kids and Paul had to comfort his daughter's sobbing several times throughout the funeral. He couldn't help but blame himself for helping to amplify her sadness, he knew the divorce was contributing to Rosy's overall sense of loss. Her father moves away, her grandfather dies, "God" Paul thought "I am such a failure"

He was remembering the events of the past few days and indeed the past year, as he made his way back home. His father's death, his failed marriage, his stumbling career, a barrage of negative thoughts left him feeling increasingly depressed and he had to fight hard to keep himself from slipping into absolute despair. He gazed absently out the train window and into the dark night as he made his way toward Brooklyn to his sad apartment, his lonely little den-for-one, completely separated from his family, completely devoid of any other "bears".

It was raining pretty hard when he finally got to the Brooklyn station, but finding a cab in the rain was next to impossible. Since it was only a few blocks to his Brownstone, he decided to walk, hoping the rain might help clear his head. But as he wound his way toward his apartment, he found his sense of hopelessness getting deeper by the moment, punctuated by the increasing intensity of the rain, as if the weather itself was in synch with his own dark emotions. The rainwater was seeping underneath his upturned collar, his dark hair was soaked and dripping causing two saturated, curling tendrils to hang down heavily over his forehead. By the time he had reached his building and climbed the stairs, he was drenched and freezing, his hands trembled as he inserted the key into the downstairs door and he wondered if it was from cold or from the shock of the last few days, he felt so confused, lonely and desolate, he no longer knew.

He climbed the inner stairs and walked down the dark corridor to his apartment door, the light was out in the hall so he fumbled with the key feeling his way around, unlocking his front door. He was so intent on getting inside the apartment that he didn't notice the smell of food, didn't notice the tall, slender silhouette standing next to him in the darkness. As the light from his opened apartment spilled out into the corridor he noticed movement from the corner and he heard his name, heard that voice, heard her voice, in a half-questioned, breathy greeting he heard her whisper,"Paul?" His heart skipped several beats and then began to drum loudly in his own ears. He could feel the blood racing faster through his veins as his pulse quickened; he could feel his breath become labored as his eyes lifted slowly to find her face in the darkness. He knew before he saw her, knew before the light bathed her emerging face, that it was Laura. He hadn't seen her in over a year but she looked more beautiful than he even remembered,

And there wasn't a day that had gone by that he hadn't "remembered" her.

He managed to say her name but no other words would come. They stood there staring and silent for what seemed like hours, his eyes drinking in her face dancing back and forth from her chin, her mouth, her eyes, the top of her head, until Laura shyly smiled and offered up a plastic container with her stuttering explanation,

"It's so good to see you again, I'm sorry to just pop in on you like this, but I was afraid if I called, you might not want to see me. I remember how you helped me when my father was dying, I wanted to....I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your dad, so I brought...I brought this... casserole", She stammered and tried to play up the joke "I mean, I heard that's what people do in times like these, they bring food...right?"

And then she stopped. As she got her first close look at Paul's soaked hair, his unshaved face, his sunken eyes, her smile disappeared, her eyes started to glisten with tears. The casserole was forgotten, and it clunked to the ground where it rolled around and settled in its tightly sealed "delux-set" tupperware. Laura's hand flew up to cup his cheek. "Oh Paul, god you look horrible...I'm so sorry, are you...are you alright?"

The stress of the last few days, the loss of his father, his failures as a husband, the incredible catastrophe of his life came crashing over him in that moment as he stood there with her hand on his face. The most interesting thing in his world, this ray of light in an otherwise dark and endless night, this woman that haunted his mind, that "owned" his heart, that "owns" it still, this woman was here, right here, her skin touching his, her eyes begging him to just let go, begging him, once again, to just let her in.

It was more than he could bear.

In spite of his attempt to hold back his emotions, his eyes started to sting and he had to look down and around to a spot on the wall to keep her from seeing the beginning of his tears. "You shouldn't be here Laura, I'm not myself right now and I can't...I shouldn't...I mean, I appreeesiate the casserole, that's really thoughtful of you, but...I'm..."

Her hand moved from his cheek to his mouth and she used her index finger to touch his lips and silence his protests. Her former shyness dissipated as she took a step closer to him and he stepped involuntarily backwards, still trying to avoid her gaze, but his back pressed against the doorway and he could go no further. As her face came closer to his own, he shut his eyes in a final attempt to grab hold of his dignity, and blink back the tears that threatened to betray his emotions. But his efforts were all in vain, and as a single tear slipped out from under his long black lashes, he could feel her breath on his face, feel her lips brush his cheek and kiss the trail of water left there. Once, twice, more, he was losing count as she began to bathe the sides of his face with her kisses, he was losing his will, he was losing his mind as her hands slid behind the back of his neck.

"Laura..." he whispered hoarsely as he opened his eyes and stared down into hers. Her mouth, the mouth that had haunted his dreams and starred in his fantasies, was millimeters from his own. Her body, almost touching but not quite, was radiating heat, enough heat that his rain-induced trembling stopped. As he looked down into her eyes, he saw the question there, he read her thoughts, he felt her wanting, felt her imploring him to give in and finally, finally, finally, let go.

And suddenly, he could hold back no longer. He laid his hands against her hips and slowly traced his palms up and around her waist, as one hand clasped her tightly there, the other slid slowly up the length of her back to the base of her neck. As he tangled his long tapered fingers in her hair, he cupped the back of her head and brought her face closer to his own. He held her there, his mouth hovering over hers, his eyes boring into her own, for a moment, for a second, for a delicious eternity and then...and then...and then,...with a quiet moan, he buried her lips under his own, kissing her with such agonizing passion and depth that he felt her go limp in his arms.

They fell into the entry of his apartment and he managed to shut the door behind them as he swung her around and pressed her against the wall. His hands went wild, tracing slowly over every inch of her body, lingering in the places he had long dreamed of touching. He moved deliberately from the north of her to the south of her, cataloguing the feeling, storing it away in his memory, in case, just in case this was a dream, just in case he woke up before the damn thing was over.

Laura began to unbutton his shirt and he felt her delicate mouth tracing its way down the base of his neck and onto his chest, her hands brushing gently at first, then with more urgency as her strokes moved downward. He felt an urgent "quckening" as her hand found its target and it occurred to him, for the last time, that he should stop this before it was too late, somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembered, distantly, that there was a reason he shouldn't be with her, like this, shouldn't give in to this madness but he knew he couldn't put this genie back in the bottle.

His breathing was heavy and labored as he felt himself being carried past the point of reason. She was naked from the waist up, and he couldn't even remember having removed her clothing, he felt like he was going to burst as he unzipped her skirt which fell to the floor around her feet, exposing some lacey undergarments perched just below her flat stomach. "My God Laura", he moaned, as his lips, and his nose made its way down the length of her body pausing slowly over her lower stomach.

He had every intention of carrying her to the bedroom just like an actor in a romantic scene from a movie but Laura fell upon him, urgently yanking at his clothing, unbuttoning his shirt, unfastening his belt, unbuttoning all 5 buttons of his button fly jeans. She pulled them and his briefs off in one surprisingly fluid movement, a miracle in itself considering how drenched his clothing was from the rainy walk home. Then she made her way down his body, her face, inches from his skin. And he felt the breath leave his lungs as she wrapped her lips around him. She had taunted him so many times in sessions with vivid descriptions of this moment. He had squirmed in his chair when she described doing it with Alex. But nothing in his imagination prepared him for the reality of this sensation.

He tried to keep standing, he tried but his knees could no longer hold him and he was using all of his concentration to think about taxes, dead puppies, anything, anything but Laura's body and the feel of her mouth, if he let himself go too soon, this could all go terribly wrong. Sensing his urgency, Laura pulled him to the ground, and he laid her down and pressed his weight on top of her, settling his hips between her own, he hesitated once more, and looked deep into her eyes. "Please Paul, now" she whispered, and with a deep and slow thrust, he penetrated a mental and physical barrier he had been fighting for over two years.

They rocked there together as he brought her to climax after climax, intending to postpone his own until she begged for mercy. But in the end, she maneuvered herself on top of him and straddled him taking control of the situation, bringing him to the brink of madness with amazing skill. Something about seeing her full and beautiful body dancing on top of him was more than he could handle and when it finally happened, the result was so intense he thought he would lose consciousness.

After they cooled off , they moved to the bedroom and laid together under the covers, drifting off to sleep in each other's arms. They woke several times that evening, a tangled mass of arms and legs rolling together, again and again throughout the night . In the morning, the cell phone rang, it was Kate, so he let it ring. He didnt want anything to ruin this moment and he had no time for petty bickering right now.

After they both awakened, they moved to the shower, taking turns slowly soaping, slowly "cleaning" each other, repeating most of the coupling from the night before.

As he toweled off and moved back to the bedroom, Laura started to dry her hair. So he took that opportunity to check his messages. Half distracted, he hit the button on his cell phone and his eyes widened as he heard the message:

"Paul, I've thought alot about what you said, and I.... think that maybe we should try again. I'm saying OK. I am saying come back. I am saying, let's try again. Please call me so we can talk"

The shivering was back now, as Paul replayed the message one more time. He couldnt surpress his comments as he said them outloud to no one in particular "Oh my god, Oy am so fooked"

It was at that moment that the still-naked Laura appeared in the doorway and as she heard his worried exclamation she couldnt surpress her question...

"Who was that?"

 

Paul turned his attention to the doorway, already beginning to search his mind for an explanation to Laura's question.  But as his eyes connected with her's,  he found his problems fading away, found he could no longer waste his time worrying about Kate. 

 

He allowed his eyes to travel the length of her body, taking a slow and purposeful inventory of everything he saw.  As his hungry gazed crawled upward, it settled again on her face and her eyes and he walked over to her and took her, again, into his arms

 

"That was my past, love, no need to worry about it anymore" **

 

And then...we fade to black

The End

 

** Thanks to Gruffyboy for supplying the final ending line to the story