A/N: THANK SO SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS! And seriously, MY GOOD GOLLY GOSH (I say this in real life) THIS ONESHOT COLLECTION IS GIVING ME THE HEEBY JEEBES. (I should stop talking.) I've tried so many different things that are now sitting on my computer, until I finally settled on just a fluffy thing here. For some stupid reason my writing just wouldn't work with me on anything else, but I'm glad I got something out! THANKS!

"Lucy!"

"One minute!"

Though Emmet's fiancée (he still loved that word with his whole heart, and anyone who was anyone would tell you that) was not the typical woman his father had told him to expect, nor the way his mother had acted, she still retained many qualities that appeared in TV shows and movies. Things of that sort. He didn't mind, obviously. Even though she took several times what it took him to get ready for a party.

"You ok?" He tried again.

"Fine!"

A cough rattled against his throat, as if to say in an off-hand, rough, accent belonging to someone who owned a newsstand on the streets of Manhattan, She don't sound fine, that's for sure. And, as Emmet leaned against the hallway and banged his head into the worn paint, he had to agree.

Of course, being privy to Lucy's ever in-motion voice, he knew she had much more to do than he did. She had makeup, fancier clothes, shoes, hair–

Wait.

Didn't she leave that the same way every time?

The back of Emmet's mind thanked the front profusely for the distracting thought, and it gladly mulled over Lucy's peculiar, unchanging, permanent hairstyle. Maybe she had always worn it way and saw no reason to ever change it. Or, perhaps she had hated wearing her hair down as a child, and this was her way of rebelling. Goodness (and, again, anyone who was anyone) knew that Lucy loved rebelling. Next to Masterbuilding, sleeping, and brooding, he would say it was her favorite hobby.

"We're going to be late, and Valentine's Day only happens once a year!"

"The ballroom can wait a few more minutes, and so can you!"

It was a bad idea, he mused, to knock on the door. However, he was bored. What else was he supposed to do?

"Lucy?" His hand lowered back to his tux pocket, no matter how often the monkey suit itched and scratched at his wrists. Thrice he had checked for tags and found none. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Fine, fine, come in!"

The inflection had him in the door before she finished the command.

"Are you alright? I thought–"

There was always a part of Emmet's mind, however small, that kept itself detached from crises, chaos, or conflict. It simply stood back, smoked a cigar, smirked, and muttered, That boy will never learn, while his jaw went slack and his shoulders dropped, as helpless as a kitten on the subway. Sometimes the voice found his conscious actions to be pathetic, other times they knew it led to good things. Other times it just rambled as he stood like an idiot.

Across mere feet, Lucy hopped across the floor, hair dangling from her ponytail in her face as she struggled and wrestled to get a very complicated, bells-and-whistles high heel shoe on her foot. "I hate this, I hate this, why can't we wear sneakers?"

The dress, splashed with deep, romantic red wine, hugged Lucy's shoulders and fell at her waist, and she gave up on the shoe. It glittered like a single snowflake on a child's hand milliseconds before melting, and Lucy threw the cursed footwear against the wall. A diamond necklace so pure one could see through it glowed around her neck, and she slipped on a pair of flats, ebony and dotted with snow, muttering about blisters as she did.

"Finally, I can't tell you how glad I'll be when we come home and I put on sweatpants." Lucy stood up, brushed her hair out of her face, and caught herself in the mirror before emitting a low groan. "Ugh, Emmet, come back in five minutes, my hair is still in the process of hating me."

"Huh?" Emmet's vision finally took the sheepish step backwards into his head. Was he stupid, or had he floated into another dimension for the last moments? "What did you say?"

Lucy's voice, no longer fuzzed and blurred by static, rushed at him like a bullet. "Out," she said, pointing to the door. "I need to fix my hair, and to do that I need to take it out, and you don't want to see that."

"Why not?" Emmet resisted her gentle push towards the door. Something did not lay right in his fiancée's voice, and goodness knows, along with anyone who knew anyone who was anyone, that Emmet wasn't one to let things go lightly, especially if they had to do with Lucy.

As he turned to face the woman whose face nearly matched her dress and destroyed her blush, she huffed, more ticked off than he had expected, "Because you don't want to see me with my hair down, alright?"

"Why not?" Emmet thought they were beginning to sound like a broken record, which would have been romantic, if they were a married couple of sixty years with five children and seventeen grandchildren.

"Because!" Lucy insisted. She pointed to the door again. Her face was flaming.

A mental count to ten which lasted three seconds rushed through Emmet's mind. A sigh rolled up from his lungs and through his throat, before he shut his eyes gently and convinced himself to relax the littlest bit. "Will you at least tell me why you don't want me to? We don't keep secrets, right?"

A flash of guilt, or perhaps shame, but most likely annoyance, creeped across Lucy's face, like she wanted him to see it. "We don't, but my hair and I do."

"I'm sure you look really pretty!" The chipper boy scout inside him pepped up again, placed a band aid over the scrape on his knee, and spoke volumes through Emmet's voice, "I told you about the time I tripped in front of the whole school district when I was a kid, remember how funny that was?"

The look on his fiancée's face told him she didn't think it was funny. However, the pouting skepticism that lay in her expression gave him much more hope than the previous crimson did. "Emmet," she muttered, in the way someone very important says to someone who is very not. "I wear my hair up for the same reason you wear a construction uniform every day." She turned from him then, and he watched as her hands shivered a little around a small, blue brush. It ran through her locks just as absentmindedly as her mind raced.

"Because I'm too lazy and too hard to shop for?"

He spotted a smile in the mirror. She was so perfect when she smiled. He smiled back. "No, because I don't like how I look with my hair down."

No, that wasn't it. Anyone who didn't know anyone but knew these two knew that Emmet could read Lucy like a book. "I don't think that's it."

The smile vanished. "Of course it is."

"No, it's not."

The crimson rose other face again. She would spill in a moment. "Yes, it is!" Emmet could hear a meteor soaring through her voice.

"What happened?"

Where he expected an explosion of sorts, a bomb detonating within the second and hardly touching the next moment, Lucy merely leaked frustration and anger through a small, insignificant grunt. "My first boyfriend laughed."

"Huh?"

The brush dropped to the dresser, calmly, as if someone had lay it in the river, and Lucy turned to face her fiancé. She beckoned him over to her. "I was a sophomore in high school," she murmured. Her voice lay low, as if reporters with flashing cameras and itchy notepads clamored for every scrap of information outside their windows. Her hands cupped over Emmet's, and a small smile overcame his face as she pulled his arms around her waist. "Ryan, my first boyfriend, was an ok kid, a little over dedicated to school, but he was the first guy to pay me more attention than 'can I borrow a pencil?'"

Even as she told the story, as part of his mind lay dormant to pay attention to every detail, a small person inside him, a scrawny fellow who remembered everything at the wrong time, copied down vital parts of her story. It made mental notes to wonder how Lucy wasn't the most popular girl in school, how anyone could laugh at the most perfect girl in the world, and things about how to locate people after years of no contact.

"Anyway, we were at a movie, and everything was going pretty ok, until some kids came in. Little kids, like seven, y'know?" As her story went on, as he felt they were nearing the climax, her words rose in pitch and rattled together. "They didn't know much better, but they pulled on my hair and got the band loose. Next thing I knew, my hair fell around my shoulders, and Ryan was cracking up laughing at me."

"He was a jerk, Lucy." Emmet gently stroked his fiancée's cheek before pressing a quick kiss to her lips. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"It's ok." Lucy's voice slowed, and she tilted her head to kiss him back. "I just don't want it to happen again."

Emmet moved his hands to Lucy's back, hugged her close against him, and whispered, "I would never, ever laugh at you. I promise."

Some hesitation lay in her throat as she replied, "You sure?"

"Positive."

"Ok, you asked for it." She laughed a little as she pulled away from her fiancé, hands reaching towards her hair. "You're sure that you won't get freaked out? You've only ever seen me with my hair up, and you're allowed to be shocked."

"I'm ready."

Shutting her eyes, Lucy pulled on the band, and her hair fell just above her shoulders.

Threads of magenta merged with threads of teal, and between the tick, pasted lines of vibrant color, Emmet could pick out streaks of purple, and he thought they were merely a trick of the light, an illusion. They had to be.

It waved. As Lucy shrugged her shoulders, spoke muffled words already blurred by Emmet's panicked mind, her dangerously curly hair bounced and bubbled around her shoulders, scrunching lightly around itself. It held itself up, it was the hair women paid hundreds of dollars for in the salon, and Lucy had it simply by pulling out a rubber band.

"Well?" Finally, only after his mind had flicked on several lights and fixed the circuit board, did Emmet hear what his fiancée said. "I know it's really different, I don't even like it, besides, having it up keeps it out of my face, and–"

Emmet stole the words from her mouth as he kissed her.

His fiancée melted into his arms, and she linked her arms lightly around his neck, smiling and deepening the kiss as he held her. No words were said by either party as his hands gently, carefully, hesitantly reached up to her hair, and she fell into the kiss again as he drew her closer.

The kiss broke, both just out of breath enough to giggle at themselves. Emmet took Lucy's hands in his, smiled and whispered, "Have I ever mentioned how beautiful you are?"

Lucy smiled. "Yeah, I think so." Though her smile stuck, it faltered, and she ran a hesitant, quivering hand through her hair, stopping every other moment. "Are you sure you like it? You're not just saying that, right?"

"Lucy, do you remember what I looked like the first time I saw you?" Emmet ran a hand through her hair, and as she leaned into it, he had to bite down a smile. Anyone who wasn't anyone knew that Lucy, in a quiet moment, was adorable.

With a quick kiss, Lucy replied, "Like the cutest, craziest, most love-struck guy in the world?"

"Exactly. And you know what?"

"Hm?"

Emmet's hold around her tightened, and the smile on his face, the kind that only came when tears laced his eyes and every bad thought or fear scampered for cover, softly glowed as he whispered, "I couldn't find you any more or less beautiful, hair down or up, sweatpants or dress. You know why?"

His fiancée grinned like a child on Christmas morning. "Why?"

"Because I love you, not your looks."

With a soft kiss, Lucy replied, pride in her heart and a smile on her face, "I think that's a great reason."

#

Later that night…

Emmet beamed. He had rarely (already he knew he was lying) smiled so widely, but with Lucy on his arm, smiling and smirking like the queen she was, he had a reason to. His fiancée smiled at everyone who walked by as her hair, down and curled like a crown, brushed her shoulders with an angelic touch.

"Everyone thinks you look great, Lucy." Emmet pressed a quick kiss to his fiancée's lips, and she held it a moment longer.

Lucy smirked and leaned against the crystalline wall. "Yeah, but I discovered major drawback."

"What?"

"It gets in my face all the time."

The pair cracked up laughing.