A/N: YOOO! Thanks so much for the reviews! UGH, sorry for such a long break between this chapter, I had to take a mini-hiatus. But I'm back! THANKS!

August 21st

"Emmet, it's gonna be fine, hyperventilating and shrieking isn't going to do a thing."

Batman's well-meaning words did very little to help Emmet's panicked state, and he continued breathing into his precious paper bag, trying to get his lungs and his heart in sync. "I…. can't!"

"Ok, I'm here, how's he doing?" Unikitty's voice tilted upwards towards the glittering clouds as she waltzed into the room, smiling and depositing sparkles wherever she walked. Batman nearly rolled his eyes at her cheerfulness, but Emmet took the message.

"I…can't…do this!" Emmet threw the paper bag down, it fluttered across the room at Unikitty's feet, and she watched as Emmet's bloodshot eyes darted from corner to corner, his shoulders raised as if someone yanked on them, and his breath rattled against his throat. "Unikitty, the first date Lucy and I had was after she held my hand, after we both liked each other, it was after everything! How am I supposed to get her to like me when her life isn't hanging in the balance of a death-defying adventure? I'm not that cool!"

Beyond the raging, burning fire of anxiety and doubt, beyond the insecurity and fear, Unikitty thought she saw a glimpse of something more. A smile? That was impossible.

"Emmet," Unikitty began, gentle in tone and warm in voice. "You miss her, don't you?"

The looks she got drove right through her heart. Was she trying to hurt him? Was she trying to kill the last inch of hope he had, that tiny sliver of possibility that Lucy would like him someday? Maybe it was for the best. As his head hung, as he shoved daring tears back, he wondered, like gazing across at the most popular girl in school, if it was better if he lost hope.

"Of course I miss her."

Unikitty smiled. "Then you've got to go after her."

Even Batman, whom Unikitty had once thought would act as a hindrance to her whole mission, nodded and patted Emmet on the back. "C'mon, kid, cheer up. Wyldstyle's got a thing for ya, she just has to find it again."

"Yeah, where's our optimistic Emmet, the one who always knew he could do anything?" Unikitty nudged her best friend and pulled out her widest, most encouraging smile she had ever used. "You can do it, Emmet. I know you can."

Chuckling, Emmet rubbed Unikitty's head, hugging her close. "Thanks, Unikitty, but I don't know how much headway I can make on a 'just as friends' date."

A scoff sounded from below him, and Unikitty rolled her eyes as though someone had just told her a small spider lay out in the hallway, and she should be careful. "Please, Emmet. That's what they say about two people who are going to get married one day."

The dangerous, soft smile on Emmet's face briefly caused him doubt, that he was getting his hopes to high, much too high, in fact, but the well-meaning grins of his friends held him fast, and pulled him right onto the Mountain of Too-High Hopes. "That, Unikitty, is the nicest thing I've heard all day."

"Ok, how about this?"

Unikitty had always loved the sound of someone speaking through a smile. When they're just so happy about something, so ecstatic, so overwhelmed that they can't help but grin, and they have to tell someone soon, so they talk through the smile. Unikitty could always hear when someone talked with a smile on their face, and Batman did it, and that was the nicest thing Unikitty had heard all day.

Pulling Emmet and Unikitty to his side, Batman read from his phone, "Wyldstyle says, 'When's Emmet getting here again? Forgot the time.'"

The apartment fell into silence, until whoops, cheers, and hollers crashed through like a high school football team and through silence out the window.

"She's SO excited, Emmet!" Unikitty exploded confetti, glitter, and fireworks into the room, eyes dazzling like a Christmas ornament. "This mean's she's getting ready for the date, and she wants to go with you!"

Emmet smiled. Not a smile for Unikitty, not a smile because his life was comical at this point, and not a smile because it was early in the morning and he had just had a dream of him and Lucy getting married, but because he was happy. "Y'know what?" Emmet looked at his best friends. "I think I may have a shot after all."

"There ya go, kid!" Batman slapped Emmet on the back and Unikitty opened the door, smiling like an escort into the back-entrance of a circus. Mostly wonderful, but a tad unnerving.

After giving Emmet a quick hug, Unikitty said, smiling the whole way through for his sake, "Remember, some part of Lucy fell in love with you. Be yourself."

"Hey, when hasn't that worked for me? Bye guys!" Emmet waved a cheerful hand and walked out the door, crutches, hopeful disposition, cast and all, letting Unikitty shut the door behind him.

Form beside her, as she watched where Emmet had stood like a parent watching a child drop and spill his backpack on his way into kindergarten, Batman said, "He's gonna mess something up, isn't he?"

"BATMAN!"

"What?"

#

For once, Emmet walked up to Lucy's doorstep without butterflies snapping and slicing at his stomach. If a bad thought entered his mind, he simply imagined Unikitty's face either encouraging him, or yelling at him to be braver, and it vanished like a ghost.

Raising his hand, Emmet knocked on the door twice, smiling with the confidence of an entire team of cheerleaders. What was the worst thing that could happen? He and Lucy had gone on countless dates over the years, what was one 'friend date' compared to all that? This would be a piece of cake.

"Hey," Lucy greeted, opening the door and smiling. "Sorry I'm late, you would not believe how messy Unikitty keeps this place."

No reply.

From the frazzled, wacky mind of Emmet Brickowski, all he saw was Lucy. It was as if Rex had jumped into his thoughts, deposited every lonely emotion he had ever experienced, then put Lucy at her most beautiful in front of him. However, nothing on Lucy had changed. She wore her ebony hair with the two, classic highlights, the ones that had betrayed all his assumptions of what women's hair looked like. They framed her freckles, those freckles he had fought her over, begging and pleading with her that she didn't need concealer on the occasion she said she didn't like them.

"You ok?" Lucy tapped him on the shoulder, and he breathed in a little, like a goldfish in the doctor's office when a child taps the glass.

Thankfully, his guardian angel Unikitty had other ideas in mind, and he could practically hear her encouraging, hopeful words:

"EMMET BRICKOWSKI, STOP ACTING LIKE A COWARD AND TAKE HER ON THIS DATE!"

"Yeah, yeah, totally fine, perfect, actually!" The entire sentence left his mouth in half a breath. "Ready to go?"

While not staring at him like he was a maniac was perhaps the hardest thing Lucy had ever attempted, she nodded. "Uh, yeah. The movies, right?"

As Lucy shut the door and began walking by his side, which caused many problems on its own, Emmet replied, "Actually, I thought of something a little different, if it's ok."

Be nice, Lucy.

Lucy could practically hear Unikitty's stern lectures in her head. When had that started?

"Uh, yeah, sure, what did you have in mind?" Lucy ran a hand through her pony-tail, starting at the hairband and going all the way down. Emmet looked away. He wouldn't watch, for his own safety, his own dignity, and his own desire not to cry in front of her.

The pair left the grasslands for smooth pavement, and Emmet motioned up ahead to a quaint, dimly-lit theater. "Up ahead, you'll see."

Dazzling lights sparkled and weaved between them, running through their legs and dragging them forward into the transparent, glass doors resembling snowflakes. "Wait, hold on," Emmet mumbled, holding up a hand just as flushed as his face. He scrambled to the door before Lucy, held it open, and motioned inside while staring at the ground like it had killed a man. "You go first."

For a moment, Lucy did not move. She simply stared at Emmet, watching as he shuffled his feet like a schoolboy, his back pressed against the glass door, a stray strand of his hair falling over his forehead. Sweet. He was kind of sweet, wasn't he?

"Thanks," she replied. She shot a glance behind her as she walked in, and their eyes caught each other's as he joined her side. "So, uh, what movie are we seeing?"

Emmet broke the eye contact, thus halting the machine gun in his heart. "Actually, it's not a movie."

A temptation to find him, his plan, and his general atmosphere annoying tripped her heels and taped at her shoulder, but a stronger, faster, meaner feeling grew, one of enjoyment.

As Emmet guided her through the lobby of outdated, navy carpet, soaring ceilings and arched doors, past rooms of roaring, bellowing applause and dressing rooms with magnificent gowns, Lucy looked away from it all. She set a glare on her face.

I'm going to not have fun tonight if it kills me.

"After you," Emmet whispered, only loud enough to break Lucy out of her thoughts.

Her ponytail whipped around as she turned to face him, finding he held a small, door-framed curtain back for her, leading into a medium-sized room. She walked forward, tugged by curiosity and wonder, held back by insecurity and hesitance weighing on her ankles. Light was unheard of in this room, apart from a few, glowing lanterns on a stage that spanned across the entire front of the theater. The rest of the room, choked with seats, sat in darkness.

"I know it's not exactly what you thought we would do, but it's Hamlet, Unikitty said you might like it…" Emmet trailed off, again with his eyes glued with Kragle to the floor. While his shoulders hung and his head drooped, on the inside, his heart rattled against his ribcage like someone had wrung a bell far too hard, and he breathed in and out five times in the space of a second. This was his one chance, and he was going to blow it by being different, just like he always had.

"Are you coming?" Lucy asked, already walking inside, a glint of wonder tinging her eyes as she gazed up to the top of the ceiling, like a child trying to find the top.

Emmet couldn't follow her in fast enough.

#

After the tenth and final standing ovation had died down, Emmet looked to Lucy, who stared at the empty stage, unwavering with a smile on her face. If he was stupid, he would think about how, a few months ago, he would have reached over and hugged her tightly. She would have smiled, told him he was an adorable sap, and kiss him warmly. He would have smiled, told her how much he loved her, and kiss her again. Thankfully, he was not that stupid, and did not think of these things, and the tears pushing at the backs of his eyes were for some other reason. What reason, he did not know, but it was certainly not from that.

"Y'know, I wasn't sure about a play at first, but that was actually pretty good." Lucy stood up and stretched her cramped legs and sore shoulders, though she imagined she would do it all over again to see that play one more time. Everything about it had sparked something in her she had not remembered, something from her childhood. Perhaps the love for the performing arts, or maybe the memory of her father taking her to a theater instead of golfing. Either way, she had experienced it with Emmet, and that was one of the (admittedly) best parts of the night.

"Really?" Disbelief rang out in his voice like glass shattering, and he followed her through the seats and up the aisle. "I was worried you'd hate it."

Lucy shook her head. They reached the top of the sloped theater, and she stood back, this time letting Emmet hold the curtain for her. "Thanks. No, I actually really liked it, I didn't even know guys liked this type of stuff."

While Emmet may not have recognized many compliments in the past, he detected the undercut of admiration in her voice, and for a moment, Unikitty practically took the controls from his brain and gave him a little push forward.

"Yeah, I love this type of stuff, but I usually don't have anyone to go with me." The words tasted foreign on his tongue, but in a way like riding a looped, six-feet-and-up roller-coaster feels. Exhilarating and terrifying.

"Well, maybe we can do it again sometime." The urge to stare down at the lobby carpeting, noting and committing to memory every curve of the intricate floor, had passed onto Lucy as she mumbled, "I mean, I doubt Gunner would stay awake for half of this thing."

Again, whether Unikitty had rigged a part of Emmet's mind to obey her every command, or he had just learned from the best, we'll never know. "Do you like Gunner?"

Finally, Lucy's eyes locked on Emmet's. He didn't look away, and without any breath in her throat, she kept her eyes on him. "Well, I mean…he's nice and all, just kind of an airhead, y'know? Like Batman without the celebrity status."

Emmet laughed.

As they pushed through the lobby into the brisk, almost-autumn air, where breeze rushed and danced around them in graceful twists, Emmet laughed, waving his hand. "I-I'm sorry, that was just funny."

Contagious laughter. Lucy had warned herself about such a dangerous concept, but in the moment, a giggle slipped into her voice, and she replied, "Thanks, I guess it was." Her vision froze, for a moment, and in the excitement, she tapped Emmet on the shoulder and motioned ahead of them. "Ok, don't look now, but that's Gunner."

"Don't you mean non-celebrity, almost-as-dense Batman?" Emmet chuckled through his words, and Lucy let out a laugh.

"Wait, he's with a girl, c'mon, I wanna see where this goes." Lucy's words ran through her heart and out into the cool air that reminded her of running through a sprinkler. She grabbed Emmet's wrist and dragged him along with her into the night, while he kept up rather well for someone in a cast.

They only ran for a few seconds, but in that brief time, Emmet had contact with her. She gripped onto his wrist like she used to when she had a nightmare, when she was about to hold his hand, or doing something like this.

Emmet tilted his gaze up towards Lucy as she released her grip on him, stuttering to a stop at an ice cream shop. Nothing about her had changed in the recent months. She looked the same, beyond her hair. She smiled the same way, she talked the same, and she still stole his breath with every turn.

"Look, I think they're talking." Lucy nudged Emmet, inciting his face to grow twice as red as blood, and pointed across the street. She pulled him once more, and sat next to him on a small, outdoor table outside the parlor.

Across the road, Gunner spoke to a girl about half as interested in whatever he had to say as the ant crawling by was. She yawned, seeming to call for anyone with more brains than he had to rescue her.

"Think she knows what a dunce she's dating?" Lucy giggled, elbowing Emmet again.

Emmet shook his head. "Nah, she's probably his sister and got stuck with him."

If Lucy had chuckled before, that had sounded like music to Emmet. Now, as she out-right laughed like a child, Emmet thought he had certainly died and gone to Heaven.

"No, no, I think he stole her from another dimension," Lucy replied in a moment when her lungs returned, and Emmet burst out in laughter once more, shaking his head in a nonexistent plea for her to stop.

"Wait, look, he's trying to hold her hand…"

Lucy grabbed Emmet's shoulder. "…she looks disgusted…"

Emmet put his hand over Lucy's wrist. "…it's gonna happen…"

"…wait for it…"

"…almost there…"

With a cry of joy, Lucy laughed as the girl hit Gunner with her purse, hard, before marching off.

"He made it to foul base!" Emmet exclaimed.

"Yes!"

Without noticing, without thinking, without ever wondering why, Emmet and Lucy's hands collided in the air and interlocked like they had waited to do so all their life.