Baby Bear (Leo and Kate fanfic)

Nine months earlier

Leo beamed as he opened the door to his Greenwich Village apartment. Kate was standing there in a stylish tan raincoat, holding the umbrella she'd brought with her in case in rained during her walk from her hotel room at the Ritz a few blocks uptown.

"Hi sweetie, come in..." Leo greeted her, taking her hand and she entered to give him a quick kiss on the lips. She didn't want to get too carried away.....yet. It was a cool, damp and cloudy late winter night, the middle of March, but there were hopeful signs of spring coming. The sun was staying up a bit later in the evenings. Leo had worked later this evening, shooting some night scenes for "The Wolf of Wall Street." It was his fourth collaboration with Martin Scorsese. He loved working with Marty - they seemed to have an unspoken understanding of what they wanted from each other. It was almost as great as working with Kate, the only other person he could feel as close a kinship and chemistry when making a movie. It had been over 5 years since they'd done "Revolutionary Road" and Leo wanted so bad to work with Kate again. He wanted to see and be with her as much as possible and she felt the same.

It had been almost two years since the fire. That's all Leo and Kate called it, "the fire." She had been at millionaire entertainment and airline mogul Richard Branson's luxury vacation home on Necker Island in the Caribbean when a blaze roared through in the middle of the night, destroying the mansion. Kate escaped with her children - Mia, then 10, and Joe, then 8. In the midst of the terrifying chaos, Kate had even managed to help Richard's elderly mother, Eve, down the stairs during the evacuation. All they knew was that it was the wake up call both needed to realize that life was short and that they needed to be together. A few days after "the fire," a still-traumatized and shaken Kate had flown to New York with the kids and met up with Leo. He was in post-production for "J. Edgar" at the time. Kate's mom Sally had flown from London to meet up with her and the kids, ever the concerned mummy and grandmother. While Sally stayed with the kids at the hotel, Kate and Leo met up at his apartment and made love all night long. He squeezed and held her tighter than he ever had before. They had been seeing each other off and on since "Revolutionary Road" and since her divorce from Sam, but it had all been a casual thing, just for fun. Yes there were stronger feelings developing but the fire had been the come-to-Jesus moment. Now they would never have any reason or excuse to not make every effort to be together.

But complicating things now was that Kate was once again married. After the fire, she had met Richard's nephew, Abel Smith, who had recently changed his legal name to Ned Rocknroll and who was also at the mansion that infamous night. Leo thought that was the silliest and stupidest thing ever. Never mind the fact the guy was simply in the way of him having the only woman he'd ever loved. Ned had wooed Kate, convincing her since they had shared this traumatic event, that they should be together. It reminded Leo of the incident in the mid-1990s when his onetime celebrity crush, supermodel Christie Brinkley, was in a helicopter crash in the Rockies near Aspen with some real estate developer. The guy, Rick Taubman, sleazed on and convinced Christie to dump her husband, Billy Joel, for him. She did but later regretted it as she found out he lied about how much money he had. Leo now knew exactly how Billy Joel must have felt.

But his mind turned back to Kate as she removed her raincoat and put her purse and umbrella down on the kitchen counter then flopped down on the comfortable sectional in the living room. Meanwhile Leo went to the fridge and selected a bottle of Riesling then grabbed two glasses from the cupboard and headed over to join her on the couch.

"Busy day?" she asked as he poured the white wine. "Ah yeah.....craziness. It's always controlled chaos with Marty," Leo said with a chuckle. "Tonight me and Jonah had to film this crazy scene where we're high as fuck and basically acting like infants....crawling around on the floor and shit." Kate sipped her wine and laughed. "Wow, I can't WAIT to see that in the final cut!" Her blue eyes sparkled as she took another sip. Leo couldn't help but glance at her hand and notice the white gold band with the five diamonds on her left index finger, still carefully close to her heart but also, annoyingly, next to the wedding band Ned had recently given her. Leo had given her the diamond ring nearly 6 years before, when they filmed "Revolutionary Road." It was on the first night they officially made love, the night everything changed. In their minds and hearts, Leo and Kate were spiritually married. It was like their marriage existed on some mystical plain, some alternative universe but still in this life, where there were no distractions or interruptions keeping them apart. Or another guy named Ned Rocknroll, for Christ's sake. Really?