A/N: THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE REVIEWS! Ok, gotta make this a/n quick, cause, well… ENJOY! (EDIT: Fixed the dates, SORRY!)
September 12th
"My name is Rex Dangervest."
"Now, Emmet has gone through a rough couple of months. And when people go through such things, sometimes they do crazy things, things that their friends may not understand or like. Our job, as his friends, is to help him get past this and fix it, right?"
These where the almost-but-not-quite comforting words Sweet tried to explain to Unikitty as she panted through a brown paper bag. "I'm sure there's a very good explanation for this, alright?" Sweet gently patted Unikitty on the shoulder, and as the wide-eyed, frozen princess twitched atop the kitchen counter, Sweet carefully removed the bag. "There, feel better?"
As her lungs recovered, her vision stepped back into her head that ceased spinning with the Earth, Unikitty clutched Sweet's wrist, jerked in Emmet's direction in the living room, and growled, "Bring…Emmet…here…"
"Yeah, see, about that…" Sweet gathered what remained of her quivering breath, heaped it up in a pile and used it on the one sentence that could save her life from Unikitty's wrath, "Emmet's plan may or may not be working."
As skepticism flashed across her friend's face, Sweet stepped back and let the princess wander to the very edge of the kitchen, where she spotted Emmet, in a full-blown Rex costume right down to the stubble, flirting shamelessly with a halfway interested Lucy. And considering that Lucy's normal level of interest in anything was far below average, this was nothing short of a miracle.
That's what he looked like.
The infamous Rex Dangervest, who had forced too many sleepless nights on Lucy and gave guilt no man should bear to Emmet, was in her living room. Unikitty hadn't expected him to look like that. Though she didn't know what she had expected, it certainly wasn't…that.
"I'm going to kill him," Unikitty muttered.
"Ok, before we start planning our best friend's murder…" Sweet gently took Unikitty by the shoulders, dragged her back into the kitchen, and looked her in the eyes for the few moments she could hold her attention. "Emmet is probably scared. Terrified, even, of losing Lucy, and this is his way of fixing it. Maybe…maybe this is a good thing."
Unikitty's eyes darkened over.
Sweet gulped.
"This is not good, in any respect." Unikitty raised her voice, but Sweet shushed her, and she dropped into a whisper-yell Batman would cower in fear at. "He's lying to her right now, and in my book, that's not a start for a good relationship. I need her to fall in love with Emmet, not Rex!"
"I know, I know, but…maybe this can work too!" Sweet forced as much of a preschool teacher's voice as she could, but Unikitty continued her rebellious, teenager stare. "If Lucy falls in love with Rex–"
Eyes blazing like a firework, Unikitty screeched, "THEN WHAT?! Then Emmet either has to live a lie for the rest of his life, or he tells her the truth and she hates him forever!"
"Maybe not…"
"Maybe you can go get Emmet in here so I can straighten this mess out," Unikitty ordered, low enough to bang the Earth's core. Sweet opened her mouth to protest, but Unikitty jerked her head towards the living room. "Get. Him. Now."
Without a word, but only a look, Sweet went, grumbling, to grab Unikitty's next victim.
"Well, I don't really know where I'm from, my earliest memory is rocketing off in a ship into the galaxy," Emmet said. His voice lay in a constant drop, low and muttering, as he leaned back on the couch with his feet on the table. He ran a hand through his hair, smirked at Lucy, and turned around to face Sweet the moment she entered the room. "Unikitty want me?"
The tense hold Sweet's muscles had on her bones prevented her from answering for a moment. "Uh… yeah, she's in the kitchen, something about…the thing you guys are doing tomorrow."
Emmet stood up, flipped his ruffled hair, and tipped Sweet's chin up as he walked by. "You're a terrible liar, kid."
"Do you actually like him?" Sweet asked the second Emmet had gone. She shuddered and watched the space he had walked through, as though it had been infected, and muttered to Lucy, "He seems like a jerk to me."
The lovesick, dreamy, far-off stare in Lucy's eyes did not sit well with Sweet. "Well, he's certainly nice to look at, gotta give him that."
"Oh brother."
"I'M GONNA KILL YOU!"
"Unikitty!"
Finally, the use of his real, much higher-pitched voice convinced the princess-cat-unicorn to cool her temper, at least enough to hop off his back. Emmet stared at her, wide-eyed and quivering. Unikitty stared right back.
"You're probably pretty mad right now…" Emmet began, in his own octave, putting his hands up before Unikitty, a lion trainer before the beast. "…but first, let me at least explain."
Unikitty couldn't hear a word he said.
Though words were said, though his mouth moved, though he spoke and explained his side of things, she would remember none of it. She was talking to Rex. Everything on him was perfectly Rex-like, from what Unikitty had seen and heard. It wasn't possible to hear Emmet when he spoke through this mask.
"Why?" Her voice came out much more sheepish than she had planned.
Where she expected Emmet to make an excuse, lie, or run away, he stood straight, looked her in the eye, and blatantly admitted, "Because Lucy hates Emmet."
"No, of course she doesn't!" She couldn't lose Emmet's hope too. As good as she was, Unikitty could not bring Emmet and Lucy back together if both didn't want it, not in this conflict, not this way, and not when her head refused to weigh more than a paper clip. "Deep down, Lucy really loves–"
"Nice try," Emmet chuckled with no mirth. He didn't look like Rex anymore. Not when tears pooled in his eyes. "She…she doesn't love me anymore. I can't keep ignoring it. I'm not that stupid. Maybe…" Tears spilled out, and he rubbed his eyes against his sleeves, muttering muffled words into his arm, "…M-maybe she'll love Rex."
No, no, no. "Emmet, you've gotta keep trying!" Unikitty gripped onto his arm. He paused. "Lucy fell in love with you once–"
The glint in his eye, the one that hollered when he got injured and screamed her out of the room, came back, and it came with a vengeance. Emmet glared. "Within a day, Unikitty. She fell in love with me faster than I made strangers remember my name. It's been months."
"Maybe if you–"
"NO!"
Emmet thrashed back from his best friend. "It's done! I became Rex once, I can do it again, especially if it means I get Lucy back." His eyes screamed at her. His grimace stared her down. Unikitty was in a faceoff with Rex. Emmet had run away.
"You're lying to her!"
"Well, I don't care!"
Unikitty didn't shrink back. She focused her gaze on him, no longer choked with rage, not even anger, but flooded with trickling, weary disappointment. "Then, in that case, you really are Rex."
Without another word or look, Unikitty marched out the kitchen and up to her room, slamming the door hard enough to bring a platoon of soldiers to their knees. Emmet hardly flinched.
"Everything ok in here?" Lucy dropped a quick knock on the wall as she walked in. Her hair flipped to the side, and she leaned against the counter as Emmet turned to face her. Both lost their breaths. "I was just checking, y'know?"
It's Rex. She likes Rex. Be Rex.
It made sense. Emmet's philosophy was that if you could explain to a small child in a way that made sense, it was probably a good idea. He had abandoned this thinking a long time ago, but now it seemed to serve him quite well.
"Yeah, we're good." Emmet dropped his voice and pulled a smirk out from a part of his brain that he hardly knew had existed. When he had first convinced of the plan, he had doubted that he could even do a reasonable impression of his counterpart.
Emmet had rarely been so wrong.
"So, uh, you'd wanna go to the movies some time or something? I don't know what I'm saying, you've probably got a boyfriend, I mean, you at ya." Emmet winked at Lucy, and she rolled her eyes, exactly as he would expect. A vile taste coated all his throat, like antibiotics, ocean water, and hospital food all in one pasty liquid. He was nervous, and sometimes when he was nervous, he got a bad taste in his mouth. This was probably that.
The look in Lucy's eyes took every bad feeling away.
He hadn't seen that look in months. The adorable look of admiration and attraction. When they were together, when she had loved him, before everything had gone wrong with one bad turn, she had given him that sweet look every day.
Lying was ok.
"Y'know, that would be fun, yeah," Lucy replied.
"Friday night, eight?" Emmet didn't miss a beat.
"Sounds good."
"Cool. Hey, I gotta go, my friend needs help detonating a bomb or something." Emmet hardly thought she would believe him, but it sounded like something Rex would say, and maybe even do, and that was the point.
As he walked out the kitchen, Lucy trailed next to him, offering a smirk. "Dramatize much?"
"All the time. Hey, Unikitty! I'm gonna go, I'll see ya later!" No response came from upstairs, and Emmet shrugged before turning to Sweet. "See ya later, kid." In a brief moment, when Lucy had turned away to look at a text on her phone, Emmet whispered, "Thanks for the Systar System technology or whatever to disguise my cast."
Sweet nodded, her smile worn and shaky. "No problem, just remember it wears off every two hours, then it will pop back up."
"Well, I guess I'll see you Friday, right?" Lucy walked back over to the whispering pair, who knew how and when to shut up to look only half-suspicious. Again, she looked straight into Emmet's eyes, a small, shy smirk on her face. Emmet was liable to melt right then and there.
"You got it." With an incredible amount of restraint, Emmet bid no real farewells, and walked out the door with one last wink at Lucy.
As Lucy walked off, muttering to herself about who-knew-what, Sweet groaned, slammed her head against the wall, and dialed Benny's number.
"Benny? Yeah, it's me. Can you pick me up? I need to go to a playground or something. Thanks. Love."
#
September 15th
"Maybe you should call Emmet."
"Huh?"
Lucy hardly heard whatever Unikitty's suggestion was, but she knew that Unikitty's suggestions were more often commands she just hadn't put the effort into yelling. As her roommate came out onto the still-hot porch, soaking up the summer that was left in mid-September, Lucy asked, "What did you say? I couldn't hear you over the heat, seriously, I'll be glad when winter comes."
Ignoring the comment, Unikitty repeated, shuffling her feet yet staring Lucy down, "Maybe you should call Emmet. You guys have talked in weeks, and, again, no one even knows why you're giving each other the silent treatment."
"It's not the silent treatment." Lucy put her lemonade on the ground before the double-decker porch swing, paused, and considered why exactly she hadn't spoken to her maybe-friend. She took a lingering time to sit backup, choose her words, and reply, "After that friend-date we had, things are just a little uncomfortable between us."
It took too much restraint for Unikitty to not hit the wall. "Things can't be uncomfortable between you if you aren't talking. Right now, things are nonexistent between you two."
"What do you want me to do, Unikitty? Call him up and ask if he wants to get ice cream?"
"Yes!"
If there was one thing Lucy hated, besides the fifty-three other things she despised, it was losing. She smirked. "Fine, get me a phone."
"Here ya go!" Unikitty pulled a phone from behind her back, already dialed and ringing Emmet's number. Lucy stared at it. "Don't ask."
After a moment, a moment that drove Unikitty mad and gave Lucy butterflies she didn't want to ever think about, Emmet picked up, and his voice rang out through the speaker. "Hello?"
"Hey, Emmet, it's Wyldstyle." She mentally groaned. Did her own alias still have to taste foreign on her tongue and give her pause every time she said it? "Look, I know it's short notice, but can you come meet me for ice cream or something? I think we should talk."
Unikitty smiled. He lungs released their death-grip on her ribcage, and she let out a sigh. Everything was going to be ok.
"Uh, sorry Lucy, but I can't. I've got…other stuff."
The words, drenched in light-level static and muffled by the miles between them, still rang out clear enough to jumpstart Unikitty's heart.
Lucy recovered as fast as she could. "Oh, uh, ok. I guess I'll see you some other time, then?" As Unikitty hardly tried to cover the anxious bite on her lip, Lucy stood up, turned off the speaker, and brought the phone to her ear.
"Yeah, sure, sounds fun!"
Why was her heart racing? Did her vision have to stand a full foot away from her head? Why did disappointment taste so bad on her tongue? Why did her steps onto the backyard feel like someone else's feet? "Ok. Hey, uh, Emmet?"
"Yeah?"
"We're…we're ok, right?"
There was a pause.
"…of course we are, Wyldstyle."
The smile, though no one could see it, was forced. "Ok, good, just checking. And…" This time, Lucy was sure the breath had flown from her lungs. "Call me Lucy ok see ya bye!"
She had never hung up a call faster.