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Chapter Text

Peppermint Patty, reigning queen of the evening, had been orchestrating these New Year's Eve parties since they were all in grade school, each year surpassing the last in extravagance. Her connections to the country's most elite sports figures and endless offers to join their ranks had become a kind of power, both in fortune and influence.

A power that, of course, she wielded with reckless abandon, indulging whichever fleeting whim caught her eye.

Lucy stood by the window in a satin blue cocktail dress, her gaze drifting to the distant skyline where city lights flickered like stars. She traced a finger idly along the rim of her champagne glass, watching the golden effervescence spiral upward, delicate and relentless, much like time itself.

Her name lingered in the air, suspended between breath and the quiet disbelief of a man teetering between longing and illusion, half-convinced she was a mirage. It curled in the space between them, weightless yet inescapable, drawing her gaze to his with the quiet inevitability of the tide surrendering to the pull of the moon.

There, at the threshold, stood Schroeder.

Time had a way of blurring the edges of memory like a ceaseless tide wearing down a shoreline, color bleeding away until only a meaningless haze remained. Yet, amidst the erosion, some moments stood defiant, untouched by the passing years.

The haphazard planks of her old psychiatry booth, held together more by stubbornness than nails. The frigid bite of winter air as skates carved trembling lines into frozen ponds. The sticky sweetness of jellybread sandwiches—always folded over, never cut. 

Leaning on pianos. Him.

Tousled, sun-kissed hair. Eyes like a storm-washed sky, pale and restless, caught between breaking and clearing. They found hers as if they had never stopped looking, as if the years between them had been nothing more than the pause between heartbeats.

He stepped closer, slow and deliberate, the space between them thinning like breath on glass. For a single, weightless second she thought he might reach for her.

Good grief.

"It's midnight," Schroeder observed.

Confetti spiraled lazily through the air, catching in the soft glow of the chandeliers, drifting in slow, drunken arcs before vanishing into the shifting crowd.

"And?" she said, turning back to him.

Schroeder’s gaze flickered downward, then back up, searching her face for an answer, an opening, permission.

"And nothing," he said, but he didn’t step away.

She should’ve teased him, knocked the moment off balance with something wry and effortless. Should’ve thrown something sharp and deflecting between them, anything to keep the distance intact. But she didn’t. Instead, she let the silence settle between them, thick with the weight of something neither of them dared to name.

"How much have you had to drink?" she asked, quieter now.

She raised her eyes to meet his, searching—no, pleading—for some kind of explanation. But his eyes gave nothing but the same ache she had felt since she was six years old, a warmth that felt like a symphony composed only for her in the most delicate, impossible key.

And then, as if the night itself had willed it into being, he moved closer still, closing the distance between them.

A desperate, aching part of her longed to be held, to to be cradled in the steady warmth of her parents' arms, to surrender her sorrow to someone strong enough to bear it. But there was no return. All she could do was swallow the instinct to look over her shoulder, even as each step away felt like another fracture in her already-breaking heart.

Chapter Text

Schroeder dreamed of a sun-beaten baseball field that night, dirt dry and crumbling beneath his cleats.

He stood behind home plate as always, rolling a baseball between his palms, the leather scuffed from countless losses, raised stitches nearly worn smooth. He lifted his arm, aiming toward the pitcher’s mound—wild with stubborn dandelions the girls refused to let anyone uproot—and threw.

The ball barely made it two feet before plummeting unceremoniously into the dirt, landing with a dull, pathetic thud.

Lucy started laughing uncontrollably on the far side of the diamond, the sound carried on the lazy summer breeze.

"Some arm you've got!"

Schroeder huffed, scowling beneath his catcher's mask as the others began to snicker at him. "What about you? There's a reason you're stuck in the outfield, you know!"

He wasn't sure if the heat creeping up his neck was from embarrassment or the setting sun.

Lucy only laughed again, impossibly carefree.

With a sigh, he bent down, fingers closing around the ball again. He had never been much of a thrower, always the one who stayed put and waited for his reflexes to kick in. He’d rather be at a piano, but still, he walked, humming a half-formed symphony under his breath, careful not to smudge the chalk lines as he made his way to the mound and dropped the ball into Charlie Brown’s beat-up glove.

Above them, the sky stretched vast and endless as dusk settled in. Somewhere beyond the field, a porch light flickered on, a silent call home.

Schroeder woke with a sharp inhale, breath catching in his throat as his head throbbed in protest.

The champagne. Too much of it.

His mouth was parched, coated in the stale aftertaste of alcohol, the remnants of the night clinging to him in the form of a dull, insistent ache pulsing behind his eyes. He groaned, pressing his palms into his face, trying to will the migraine away before reaching blindly for the answering machine on the nightstand.

"Uh… it’s Charlie Brown. That was something last night. Not that it’s any of my business! I just—uh, well, I hope you’re okay. Let me know if you want to talk. Or don’t. No pressure. Okay, bye."

"Hey, Schroeder! Fun night. Everyone’s been talking about… well, you probably know. Hope you’re not too hungover. See you around."

"Well. That was unexpected. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. Schroeder, my friend, you have made a very bold move. And by bold, I mean potentially life-altering. Call me back, I need details and Lucy won't talk to me."

The realization struck like a cymbal crash, a sharp, metallic shockwave reverberating through his skull. It sliced through the lingering haze of alcohol and sleep, leaving him exposed in the deafening, merciless clarity of morning. 

The party. The glow of chandeliers fractured into a hundred glittering shards against the glasses of champagne in their hands. The heat of bodies pressing too close, the pulse of music thrumming through his bones. A slow unraveling, an intoxicating drift into weightlessness. Her lips against his.

Lucy.

Of all the phone numbers that had flickered across his screen, hers had never appeared. No messages, no missed calls.

His throat tightened. He swallowed hard, gaze fixed on the ceiling with the quiet, horrified resignation of a man who wanted nothing more than to cease existing for the foreseeable future. The quiet horror of it all crept in slowly, curling around his ribs like smoke, settling beneath his skin and turning his limbs to lead.

He had kissed her.

No—worse. She had kissed him back.

His mind replayed the memory in cruel, unrelenting detail—the way the ballroom had spun, not from the champagne, but from her nearness. The way her breath had mingled with his, the warmth of her so close, the soft, inevitable tilt toward something he should have never allowed himself.

For a single, reckless moment, he had leaned into it. Let it happen. Let himself forget. Let himself want.

His pulse pounded frantically against his temples like his own desperate heartbeat. He squeezed his eyes shut, as if darkness alone could erase what had been done. If he stayed still enough, maybe the world would unmake itself. Maybe he’d wake up somewhere where last night had never happened.

He clenched his fingers into the fabric as if he could wring from it some semblance of control, but the truth curled around him, inescapable. 

He needed to be at his piano. It was the one place in the world that did not ask questions, did not demand explanations or compromise, but simply was. In music, at least, there was order—notes lined up in perfect succession, waiting for him to give them breath, to turn them into something more than silence.

As long as he could press his fingers to the ivory, he could breathe again.

But the unrelenting world would continue to slip further from his grasp, and his heart, that foolish, reckless thing, had led him here.

Lucy stormed into the house at an ungodly hour of the night, the biting winter air clinging to her bare shoulders. Her pulse thrummed beneath her skin, hot and erratic, drowning out the distant ticking of the hallway clock, the creak of the floorboards beneath her.

She kicked off her heels, not caring where they landed, barely registering the dull thud as they struck the wall. Her only focus was forward, up the stairs, away.

She shoved open the door to her childhood bedroom, chest heaving, the heat of anger—or maybe something worse—still smoldering beneath her ribs. Lavender walls. Psychology textbooks lined up in precise, untouched rows. The same pale purple bedframe, the familiar plaid comforter, all completely untouched as if expecting the girl who once slept here to step back inside over the holidays as if nothing had changed.

She slammed the door behind her.

The taste of Schroeder's lips was still there against hers, impossible to scrub away no matter how many times she dragged the back of her hand across her mouth. She could still see the way he had looked at her, still hear the way he had said her name, like it meant something, like she meant something, after all these years.

Why now?

She had given up on him so long ago—buried her hopeless childhood crush beneath years of practiced indifference, a routine carefully built without him as her center of gravity.

She had moved on. Hadn’t she?

Lucy collapsed onto her bed, the satin of her dress bunched and twisted around her legs, but she couldn’t summon the energy to fix it, every emotion she had ever felt wrung out of her.

She had spent years perfecting her story—convincing herself that she had moved on, that he had never really mattered to her, that whatever she once felt was nothing more than childish infatuation.

But then he kissed her, shattering the illusion in an instant and leaving nothing left to hide behind.

Or maybe she had kissed him. It didn’t matter who moved first.

Her heart had betrayed her tonight.

She closed her eyes, lashes damp with mascara tracing dark, wistful trails down her cheeks—as if blotting out the world could quiet the question that gnawed at her: What if she had let herself stay?

The soft creak of the floorboards in the hallway.

Lucy barely stirred, her limbs heavy with exhaustion, her makeup still smeared across her face, the faint scent of perfume and champagne clinging to her skin with a sweetness close to regret. 

A hesitant knock. Linus.

Her throat tightened, a horrible ache swelling inside her that did nothing to stop the searing of her mind circling endlessly back to the party, to him, to the way his lips had felt against hers, warm and real and too late.

A sharp inhale. Then another. The exhaustion crashed over her all at once, a sob breaking free before she could stop it—raw, unsteady, muffled by the pillow. Quiet, choked, like something clawing its way out from the deepest part of her, something she had buried so deep she had almost convinced herself it wasn’t there.

She didn't hear the door open.

She barely managed to lift her head, raccoon eyes meeting his.

“Lucy…”

His voice was soft, gentle in a way that made her want to crumble. The way it always was when he wasn’t hiding behind sarcasm or arguing with her, when he wasn’t caught up in trying to be clever.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She swallowed hard, shaking her head. She didn’t trust herself to speak.

Linus hesitated. His hand twitched at his side like he wanted to reach for her, to do something, but instead, he just nodded—small, almost imperceptible, as if he understood.

Maybe he did. He always seemed to.

She let her eyes flutter closed again, surrendering to the exhaustion that pulled her under.

At some point—whether minutes or hours later, she couldn’t say—she stirred just enough to hear a soft rustling of fabric, feel the gentle weight of covers being pulled over her shoulders.

Just as she had done for him every time he would come home shivering from a night wasted in the world's most sincere pumpkin patch, hands cold and breath ragged.

Happiness is having a little brother who loves you.

Chapter Text

Spring had come softly eleven years ago, unfurling its tender hues across the neighborhood like the careful brushstrokes of a watercolorist. The world was fragrant with rain-kissed earth and new blossoms, humming with birdsong and the distant, drowsy murmur of lawnmowers.

She wore a blue sundress that caught the breeze at its hem, white lace socks cuffed neatly at her ankles. Draped across the glossy red plastic, face nestled in her hands, she watched him with a dreamy, patient kind of gaze, laced with just enough mischief to be dangerous.

She had long since mastered the art of lingering in his presence, half in genuine admiration, half in the quiet thrill of waiting for the right moment to say something that would catch him off guard.

For a time, she sat in silence, simply letting the music meander around her. And yet, her thoughts eventually wandered elsewhere, to the very first moment she knew she loved him.

Kindergarten. Him at the piano, her cross-legged before him, gazing up at him as though he had strung the stars across the heavens. She hadn’t the faintest idea what The Nutcracker was, but when he had called her sweet, the words had settled upon her heart and she had never been happier.

And so, Lucy sighed—soft, wistful, as if the thought had only just occurred to her.

“Did anyone ever tell you you have pretty eyes, Schroeder?”

Schroeder faltered, striking a series of keys so dreadfully it might have sent Beethoven clawing his way out of the grave in protest. The once-perfect waltz crumbled into a mess of errant, stumbling notes, undone in an instant.

For half a second, he stared down at the piano as though it had betrayed him, his hands hovering above the keys indignantly. Then, as if seized by some primal instinct of flight, he pushed himself to his feet with the force of a boy desperate to escape something he didn't yet know how to handle.

The tips of his ears burned red.

"What—" he scoffed, his breath coming quick, as if words were a thing he had to chase down and wrestle into order. But no grand retort came, no impassioned defense. Only a flustered huff, sharp as a snapped violin string.

Lucy merely smiled, cheek resting against her palm as she watched him storm away across the yard. His shoulders were stiff, his fists clenched at his sides, and his usually deliberate steps had turned uneven, hurried, fumbling.

Much like the notes he had played only moments before.

Lucy let out a slow, satisfied sigh and stretched out across the top of the piano, her smirk widening as the drowsy afternoon sunlight pooled around her.

Musicians get unnerved when you tell them they have pretty eyes.

Dressed in her frilly blue one-piece, she twirled along the water’s edge, the lapping waves kissing at her ankles and the sun, ever her admirer, bathing her in its glow. Her pink sunglasses—carelessly perched atop her head—caught the light, and the breeze tousled her raven hair. She looked, in that moment, like a girl made of summer.

A little farther up the shore, Schroeder was crouched in the sand, completely absorbed in his task. His black-and-white striped swim shirt clung to his shoulders as he worked, shaping something with the care of a sculptor. Not an ordinary sandcastle, mind you, but a replica of his toy piano, formed with such painstaking dedication that one might have thought him an artist of a very peculiar sort.

His tongue poked out slightly, his brows drawn in fierce concentration as the ridges of his fingertips left delicate imprints in the sand.

Lucy watched him, her lips curling into a small, knowing smile.

"Do you think it'll work if you hit the right key?" she called, voice light and teasing.

Without missing a beat, Schroeder looked up with the tired exasperation of someone who had long since learned that the world—and Lucy—would never quite understand his genius.

“Leave me alone,” he sighed like a boy tortured. “I’m suffering from withdrawal.”

Lucy, however, was not a girl to let such a thing as misery stand in the way of a perfectly fine afternoon. She was nothing if not impulsive, so she strolled toward him without a second thought, her steps light and careless.

Truthfully, it wasn’t planned—more the work of habit, instinct, muscle memory—that unconscious thing that often has us reaching for what we know without thinking. 

And so, as Lucy draped herself over the hastily sculpted sand piano, fingers splayed as if it were cool ivory beneath her touch, the world betrayed her and gave way in an instant, crumbling beneath her weight.

"Hey!" Schroeder grumbled. He cast a helpless glance at the ruin before him, his fingers twitching with the impulse to salvage what remained. But at the edges of his mouth—so faint it was nearly imperceptible—there was the smallest, briefest twitch.

Still giggling, Lucy let herself fall back against the sand, arms splayed wide like a starfish, letting the warmth of the earth cradle her in the aftermath of destruction.

"You’re impossible," he muttered, but the words carried no sharpness, just the quiet familiarity of an old refrain.

Lucy sat up, pushing her sunglasses back into place and making no effort to brush the sand from her tangled hair. “I’m sorry,” she said, and for once, she almost meant it. “I didn’t mean to, really.”

And then Lucy laughed again, leaning forward and planting the softest of kisses to the tip of his nose.

Four years ago, autumn had settled upon Charlie Brown’s backyard in all its crisp, honeyed splendor, thick with the scent of brittle leaves and something faintly burnt—Snoopy, of course, was most likely to blame. He was many things, among which did not include a five-star chef.

A long wooden table, slightly askew and wobbling precariously, was surrounded by mismatched chairs and the strangest assortment of food ever passed off as Thanksgiving dinner. Buttered toast, pretzel sticks, popcorn, and jellybeans lay strewn across the tablecloth, the peculiar spoils of a feast prepared by children and well-intentioned beagles.

Lucy sat beside Schroeder, elbows perched on the table, her smirk as self-satisfied as a cat that had gotten the canary. She had all but dragged him here, stubbornness outmatching his protests as always. He looked vaguely horrified, staring down at his plate like it had personally offended him. 

“Oh, lighten up,” Lucy said breezily, plucking a pretzel stick from her plate and biting into it. “It’s tradition.”

Schroeder shot her a look, the kind that usually preceded a long speech about Beethoven or artistic integrity.  But for once, to her surprise, he said nothing. He only exhaled through his nose, long and slow, and reached for his strawberry milkshake without further protest.

Lucy watched him, feeling strangely victorious.

The world around them, blissfully unaware, spun on. No one was paying them any attention, so in the quiet, as though moved by an impulse she didn't dare to question, Lucy slipped her hand beneath the table and laced it gently with Schroeder's.

She had half-expected the usual rejection—the sharp withdrawal of his hand, a derisive scoff, an eye roll followed by some sarcastic remark. She had braced it, even.

But remarkably, he didn’t pull away.

For a fleeting instant, his fingers twitched, the subtlest of tremors, and with an almost imperceptible shift, his hand settled into hers.

The world around them drifted on, unaware, as though nothing had changed at all.

The winter of senior year had settled over the town like a slumbering beast, breath curling in tendrils of frost along windowpanes, great limbs draping the streets in silver and white. The night was keen-edged, sharp with the scent of distant chimney smoke, snow crunching beneath dress shoes.

Inside the school gymnasium, strings of lights wove constellations overhead, their trembling reflections caught in polished wooden floors. A disco ball, as gaudy as it was magnificent, cast wandering shards of light over the swaying crowd of the Sadie Hawkins dance. The air was thick with perfume and aftershave, laughter and warmth, hot chocolate wafting from the refreshment table.

Lucy had asked him, of course. That was the way of things.

For some reason beyond her comprehension, though, Schroeder had said yes.

She hadn’t questioned it—hadn’t dared. Instead, she let herself believe, for this one night, that perhaps this was something with meaning, something fragile and trembling like the first breath of spring breaking through the ice.

They stood together at the periphery of the dance floor, shoulder to shoulder, neither moving nor speaking.

He hadn’t left. That, at least, was something.

Instead, he exhaled sharply, running a trembling hand through his unruly hair before offering it to her, pointedly avoiding her gaze. 

They began to move, slow and tentative, as though any misstep might break whatever fragile thing had settled between them. They swayed together in a rhythm so intentional, so measured, it felt less like dancing and more like listening to the hush of breath, the beating of hearts.

Schroeder swallowed, his throat working as though he might speak, yet no words found purchase on his tongue. For once, Lucy did not press. She only watched, her breath quiet, their faces close enough that she could see the flickering light reflected in his eyes—soft and golden, like wavering candleflame.

She had never seen him like this.

His fingers tightened just so around hers, a drowning man seeking anchor. His uncertain gaze fell to her lips, returned to her eyes, fell again.

A breath, caught between them, poised on the knife’s edge of a moment too delicate to last.

The music swirled around them, a melody spun from trembling strings, the heavenly torture of waiting—

Snow clung in weary patches to the sidewalks, trampled heartlessly into the sullen ice. The air was sharp, crisp enough to sting as he breathed it in, but Schroeder scarcely noticed. His ears still rang from his own piano playing—the frantic, desperate kind, hammered into the keys until the notes bled together, stripped of meaning. His hands ached from days of it, stiff and unyielding even beneath the wool of his mittens.

He had to get out.

The weight of the past weeks had settled deep in his chest, stagnant no matter how fiercely he tried to play it into silence, tried to drown it beneath a deluge of sound. It remained—persistent, unrelenting, a chord suspended in the air, waiting for resolution.

He hadn't spoken to her since New Year's Eve. Hadn’t seen her. Hadn’t tried.

And yet, even as he drew his coat tighter around him, adjusting his earmuffs against the biting cold, he knew exactly where his footsteps were leading. By the time he reached the bridge, his breath emerged in soft, fleeting clouds, dancing in the space between him and—

She was already there with Linus, a familiar presence in this place, the ever-steady observer. Lately, he had been Schroeder’s reluctant confidant, the sole keeper of his restless, half-formed thoughts. And now, unbeknownst to Lucy, he had played his part in orchestrating this meeting, luring her here under some harmless pretense.

She sat atop the weathered brick wall, her feet swinging idly, her hands buried deep in the pockets of her coat. Her scarf—a pale blue, reminiscent of a sky on the verge of snowfall—was pulled high over her chin, while the wind playfully tangled her dark hair about her face.

Schroeder froze, hand-me-down boots planted in the fallen snow, and before he could even draw breath, Lucy turned as if she had felt him there.

Their eyes met.

Then, in a swift, sharp motion, she tore her gaze away, ducking her head as if to sever whatever had just passed between them.

"Linus!" she hissed, her voice low and bristling. "You're getting slugged when we get home."

Schroeder’s stomach twisted. His hands curled into fists within his mittens, tension coiling tight in his chest. He had known she wouldn’t be happy to see him, but knowing and feeling were two entirely different things.

With the kind of hesitance that felt too large for such a small movement, he took a step forward. The snow crunched beneath his heel, the sound brittle in the quiet. He eased himself against the brick wall beside her like someone about to mutter something bleak—half a lament, half a joke, the kind with a punchline that wouldn’t land until three panels later.

Lucy didn’t move.

She only inhaled, the breath slow and measured, as if testing the weight of his nearness. He was close enough now that their shoulders might brush with the smallest shift.

Chapter Text

Linus had always been a boy wise beyond his years, and such wisdom came with knowing when to make himself scarce.

A sidelong glance, a stiff nod in Schroeder’s direction, a deliberate avoidance of so much as looking at his sister. Without a word, he turned on his heel into the waiting dusk, boots crunching against the frostbitten pavement. His ever-faithful security blanket caught the idle wind, lifting for a moment before settling once more about his shoulders, repurposed as a scarf.

Lucy remained perched atop the brick wall, shoulders drawn tight against the cold, hands burrowed deep within her coat pockets as she exhaled sharply through her nose. The night was creeping in, slow and watchful, but she paid it no mind. Instead, her gaze lingered on her brother until he was gone.

Schroeder stepped closer with measured caution. His breath ghosted in the air, twisting into the silence before vanishing into nothing.

Lucy turned her head, only enough for him to catch the flicker of something weary in her expression.

“Yeah?” she huffed, eyes fixed on the ground. “Well, I didn’t feel like talking to you.”

Schroeder swallowed hard. 

“I know.”

The silence between them stretched thin as blown glass, brittle as the ice on the sidewalk. The wind curled around them, insistent and restless, teasing waywardly at Lucy’s hair the same way it had when she was standing on the curb, breathless and furious, calling for a taxi the night he had kissed her.

“Why are you here?” she asked at last, a blade wrapped in velvet.

Schroeder, rather than conjuring up a sensible reply, thinks of the boundless grandeur of concert hall in Scotland.

The grand piano looms on the vast stage before him, its polished black surface reflecting the glow of chandeliers. His wide-eyed gaze sweeps across the cavernous room, rows upon rows of empty velvet seats stretching endlessly before him.

“I’ve never played in a room this big,” he mutters, wonder tinged with trepidation. “There’s even an echo.”

Lucy steps forward with the easy certainty of one who had never known doubt, hands firm upon her hips and eyes fixed upon Schroeder with a quiet sort of devotion.

"Don’t be nervous, Schroeder. You’ll be wonderful."

The boy straightens, his fingers twitching at his sides. “I’m not nervous!” he protests, voice rising high and indignant with wounded pride. “I’ve been playing piano since before I could walk!”

Lucy's smile only widens as she clasps her hands together, a dreamy sigh slipping past her lips.

“My boyfriend,” she declares, eyes alight, reverent as a pianist before his muse, “the musical genius.”

He doesn't correct her.

Lucy let out a breath—half a laugh, half a scoff—and shook her head.

“That’s rich.”

“Lucy, I—”

“Don’t.”

She dropped from the wall in one swift motion, landing with a light scuff of boots against concrete. The wind flushed her cheeks, and when she lifted her gaze to him, her eyes were heavy with something undeniably exhausted.

“You don’t get to do that,” she said, her voice wavering in its sharpness. “You don’t get to show up out of nowhere and—” She threw a hand between them, gesturing vaguely. “And expect me to make this easy for you.”

“I never expected it to be easy,” he admitted. 

“Then why did you kiss me?”

It should have been simple. A question of impulse, of timing, of moments slipping through their fingers over and over again. But there was nothing simple about it—not then, certainly not now.

Schroeder had spent so many sleepless nights trying to make sense of it, trying to force reason upon something that had never belonged to logic. He thought of the champagne on her breath, the heat of her hands threading through his hair, the way she had looked at him—stunned, breathless—as if she had been waiting for that moment her entire life.

And the way he had kissed her back, as if he had too.

“I don’t know,” he said again, but softer this time, stripped of pretense. “I just... I just know that I did.”

Schroeder stands at the wings of the stage, the glow of the theater bathing him in soft, flickering light as the hush before the performance wraps around him like a held breath. His hands are restless with long-rehearsed melodies, and yet his mind is adrift, lost something far less certain. 

Beyond the velvet curtain, the audience stirs, the scent of aged wood and dust clinging to the rafters, steeped in the echoes of a thousand performances before his own.

Then, with the effortless grandeur of a practiced showman, the girl with the red hair and yellow bows steps forward, gesturing at the crowd.

“Please welcome my friend from the States and the best piano player I’ve ever met…"

The spotlight flares. The stage beckons. 

Lucy pressed her lips together, her gaze sweeping over his face as if searching for something—an answer, an apology, a sign that he understood. And for the first time in longer than he knew she would care to admit, she looked uncertain. Truly, achingly so.

“You kissed me,” she murmured, more to herself than to him, as if shaping the words into the cold night air might somehow make sense of them.

Schroeder gave a single, measured nod. “Yeah.”

A breath hitched in her throat before escaping as a quiet, humorless laugh.

“No disinfectant. No hot water."

He huffed out a quiet chuckle, though it was more exhale than anything else.

“Yeah.”

The wind picked up between them, a restless thing, catching the frayed end of her scarf and tossing it against his coat like a taunt. Without thinking, he reached for it—some foolish, useless instinct to fix it for her.

But his fingers hovered, hesitated, and fell away, empty.

Lucy swallowed, her gaze slipping downward, the toe of her boot scuffing against the pavement in idle distraction. When she spoke again, her voice was quieter but far from soft.

“That’s too bad.”

Schroeder didn’t know what to say to that. Lucy had always been an unyielding, relentless force, much like the winter itself. But now, in the dim hush of a world half-frozen, she seemed less like the girl he had known and more like someone he hadn’t yet understood. A girl who had loved him for longer than he had known how to name it. A girl who was standing in front of him now, not running.

The concert hall is heavy with expectation. Overhead, the stage lights burn into Schroeder like captured starlight, casting long shadows that stretch across the floorboards. He takes his place before the grand piano, the weight of a thousand practiced hours pressing upon him. 

Applause swells and fades as the audience sits patiently, hands stilled, eyes bright with anticipation. Yet the performer remains silent, staring forlornly at his beloved instrument as though it had become something foreign. His fingers tremble, waiting for the embrace of muscle memory, for instinct to seize him, to guide him—but he has no such luck.

For a moment, he is reminded of the first time he touched a piano that wasn't cheap red plastic. He feels an overwhelming urge to cry.

The audience, momentarily held captive, remains still as if afraid to disturb the moment. As the last note rings out, they erupt into thunderous applause.

Schroeder, ever the stoic musician, bows and accepts the ovation with the quiet grace of one who has done his duty. Lucy is a different creature entirely, her arms spread wide with triumph, reveling in the glory.

The night belongs to the music. And perhaps, just a little, to her as well.

“Well,” Lucy stated plainly, tilting her head, “what now?”

Schroeder watched her, struggling to tether the thoughts that eluded him into something coherent. He sighed softly, then reached up with slow deliberation, pulling his earmuffs down around his neck.

Lucy’s eyes searched his with the quiet intensity of someone seeking to weigh the truth in the space between them. The wind stirred again, weaving through her hair, and finally, she exhaled—a soft, resigned sigh, like the settling of snow after a storm. A truce, perhaps.

“I'll be around,” she said as she reached out to brush a patch of fallen snow off his coat, her hands lingering just a heartbeat longer than necessary as she turned to leave.

"You know where to find me when you want to explain yourself."

Chapter Text

Schroeder had spent his entire life in devotion to something greater than words. Music, after all, could express the inexpressible, say everything words could not. Music did not tremble, did not fail, did not leave childhood friends standing in the cold.

With only his voice to carry him, he soon found that making a catastrophic fool out of himself became much easier.

He could recite the histories of his favorite composers as if they were scripture, could conduct movements and symphonies in his sleep, and yet, when faced with Lucy van Pelt, he could summon no more than a handful of useless, monosyllabic answers. It was a conversation that Beethoven, completely deaf, would have fared better in.

Words had not kept Lucy from looking at him like that—lips parted just slightly, disbelief flickering in her dark eyes, soft only for a breath before hardening to resignation.

He had kissed her. That much was undeniable, beyond hope at this point. But when faced with the wreckage of it, when confronted with the simple, insurmountable question of why, all he could manage was a sorry excuse for language.

I don’t know.

And then she had left, and he had let her.

The realization gnawed at him, sharp as the January wind that had bitten at his cheeks and burned at his lungs.

Beethoven, surely, would have been ashamed.

Schroeder had spent days—weeks—shrouded in half-truths, letting silence spin narratives where some semblance of explanation should have. It was easier that way, or so he had told himself, but ease was no substitute for closure, and cowardice was no orchestrator of happy endings.

God, how he wanted one.

So, with a breath drawn sharp and a resolve as unsteady as a metronome rattling off some lunatic tempo, he found himself on her porch, ringing the doorbell to seal his fate before he could talk himself out of it.

“Finally got your dog, huh?” Schroeder observed, nudging it gently away with the side of his foot.

Rerun shrugged, a lazy roll of his shoulders. "Took a while, but yeah." Then, with a tilt of his head, he added, "Took you a while, too."

Schroeder sighed, dragging a hand down his face as he stepped past the threshold.

There was no turning back now.

He made his way down the hallway, his heartbeat hammering a nervous rhythm against his ribs as his hands remained buried in his pockets, curled into fists as if bracing for impact.

The door to Lucy’s room was ajar, and Schroeder found her propped against the headboard of her bed as she idly flipped through a book of crossword puzzles.

She didn’t look up.

Schroeder swallowed hard.

For all her sharp words and stubborn declarations, Lucy had never wasted breath filling a silence that she didn't have to. Not when she wanted him to be the one to speak first.

And this time, there was no piano to hide behind.

Schroeder exhaled sharply, steadying himself. Lucy’s gaze remained fixed on the book in her lap, but he knew she wasn’t paying attention to it. He could see it in the way her fingers hesitated at the corners of the pages, in the almost imperceptible tension that gathered at her shoulders.

She was waiting, so he spoke.

“I don’t really know when it started,” he admitted, his voice measured, carefully assembled. His hands twitched at his sides, betraying the nerves he tried to suppress.

Lucy arched a brow, sending something tight and panicked unfurling in his chest. He swallowed hard and pressed on before hesitation could extinguish his already-waning courage.

"I think I always sort of liked you," he continued, his voice roughened by something he refused to call fear.

"Even when I pretended I didn’t. Maybe even before I knew it myself. But when you moved away... it was like—like I forgot how to stand. Like there was something holding me up, something I didn’t even realize was there until it was gone."

At last, Lucy turned to face him completely, her expression carefully unreadable. She studied him, searching—waiting for him to laugh, to backpedal, to reduce all of it to nothing more than a passing thought.

When she finally spoke, her voice was low, cautious.

“Why didn’t you ever say anything before?”

Schroeder let out a sharp breath, raking a hand through his hair. His fingers lingered at the back of his neck, pressing against the tension there.

“Because I was a moron,” he said. “Because I was terrified. I still am, both of those things.”

Lucy let out a breath of laughter, sharp and brittle, as humorless as the space between them.

“That’s really something,” she huffed. 

Schroeder flinched. It was barely a movement, just a flicker in his expression, but Lucy caught it. He could tell.

"Do you know how long I waited for you?" 

Schroeder found himself unable to speak.

"I waited for years," she continued, "I used to lean on that stupid toy piano and wait for you to notice me, say something, want me the way I wanted you."

She swallowed, her throat tight. "And then I got tired. So I stopped waiting."

Schroeder opened his mouth, but Lucy was already shaking her head.

“And now,” she went on, “when I’ve finally forced myself to get over you, you—what? Decide you miss me?”

She scoffed, a breath of disbelief.

“That’s not fair.”

“It wasn’t like that—” he started, but the words felt clumsy, useless in his mouth.

“I spent so many years throwing myself at you. I don’t think I have it in me to do that again.”

Schroeder’s throat tightened, his pulse beating a slow, relentless rhythm.

“I’m sorry. You don't have to ever see my face again if you don't want to. I just—I needed... needed you to know that I don’t feel this way about anyone else. I never have."

A breath.

"I love you. I wish I knew when we were eight.”

Lucy’s gaze lingered on him, wide eyes tracing every line of his face as if seeking some kind of absolution.

At last, a long, resigned sigh escaped her lips as she tossed the crossword book onto the nightstand, the soft thud breaking the stillness.

“You really are a blockhead, you know,” she muttered, her voice tinged with something like affection, something like regret.

Schroeder huffed out a quiet, rueful chuckle, a little breathless.

"I know."

"But when you spend your whole life loving someone, you find yourself willing to overlook their blockhead tendencies."

Lucy let herself fall backward onto the bed at the simple conclusion, raven hair spilling across the comforter. After a moment, she patted the space beside her in a gesture neither demanding nor unsure, a fragile sort of invitation punctuated by the clacking of a pearl bracelet around her wrist.

Schroeder, who had been lingering stiffly in the doorway, hesitated for only a moment before sinking down beside her, letting the stillness settle between them like dust drifting lazily in a sunbeam.

The keen blade of adrenaline had dulled, blunted to something quieter—weariness, resignation, the unspoken understanding of those who never truly wished to fight like this. Lucy exhaled, long and measured, as though willing the last of her tension to flee with her breath. Beside her, Schroeder’s shoulders gradually lost their stiffness.

For a long while, neither of them spoke. Then, with the wariness of one treading uncertain ground, Schroeder turned his head, seeking her gaze.

He reached into his coat pocket, smoothing out the creases of a folded flyer until the bold ink upon it stood revealed, stark and certain.

A piano concert. A date. A time.

He offered it to her, the slight tremor in his hand betraying his long-irretrievable dignity.

Chapter Text

Lucy spent the next few days mastering the art of avoidance.

She didn’t bring up what had happened again—certainly not to her brothers, who would smother her in well-meaning but unbearable wisdom, nor to Almost Snoopy, whose grand solution to all of life’s agonies came wrapped in the surrender of a half-mangled lace sock.

Wednesday, she let herself think about it.

The way he had stood in her doorway, hands curled into fists as though he could keep his feelings from spilling over. The way his voice wavered, trembling on the words she had once ached for and had long since taught herself to live without.

That night, she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling as if the answer might be written there. The flyer on her nightstand remained untouched but unforgotten.

Thursday, she made her decision.

Schroeder had always thought of himself as a rational person, one who measured life in sharps and flats, in the structure of things that made sense. Music was order. Music was certainty.

Recently, though, irrationality had settled around him like the first snowfall of a long winter, soft and numbing as he sat before his piano, fingers suspended above the keys.

He could play something, but he knew it wouldn’t sound right. It hadn't been the same for years, not since the day she had stopped lingering around.

With a quiet exhale, he pressed a single key. The note was a fragile thing, wavering in the air as if uncertain of its place.

He had spent so long shrouded the careful delusion that if he ignored the aching warmth his chest whenever Lucy looked at him, it would wither and disappear. That if he never named it, it would never be real.

It had been real in the way he kissed her.

A bitter laugh caught in his throat. He had composed symphonies in his head, orchestrated entire concertos in his dreams, yet never—not once—had he dared to imagine what it would be like to tell Lucy van Pelt he loved her.

And now that had finally managed to say it, he wasn’t sure if he was too late.

There was only one way to find out.

Backstage, beneath dimmed stage lights and the hush of anticipation, Schroeder rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the weight coiled tight in his chest. The grand piano waited just beyond the curtain, its lacquered surface drinking in the glow, every string wound with expectation.

Soon, he would step forward, bow his head, and let music spill from his hands the way it always had—effortlessly, instinctively, as natural as breath.

That part had always been easy. What wasn’t easy was the waiting. The not knowing.

He had scanned the crowd before retreating behind the curtain, his gaze searching, straining. Had she come? Would she even care to? He told himself it shouldn’t matter, that his music existed beyond her, isolated from anything so human as longing, but that was a lie.

It never had been, not really, because every melody carried the voice breaking through the quiet with declarations of love he had spent years pretending not to hear.

And now, as he stood backstage, heart a discordant rhythm against his ribs, he found himself listening. Not to the murmuring crowd, not to the restless shifting of programs and dress shoes, but for her. For something real amidst the meaningless noise.

Then, cutting through it all, a sharp, unmistakable hiss:

"Rerun, you blockhead, if you put your elbow on my armrest one more time—!"

His breath caught. His fingers curled reflexively at his sides, as if grasping for something solid.

And then he saw her. Even from here, even in the flickering half-light, her raven curls were impossible to miss as she turned in her seat, gesturing wildly in reprimand. 

Chapter Text

Schroeder nearly forgot how to breathe.

His heart pounded a frantic staccato against his ribs, each beat a mallet striking bone, reverberating through him in shivering waves. The stage stretched before him, a vast expanse of light and silence, but it wasn’t the faceless crowd that made his palms slick, the weight of a hundred expectant eyes.

It was her. She was here.

Good grief, had it always been this hard to think?

The piano was waiting patiently, its polished keys gleaming like a frozen lake beneath a brittle winter sun, familiar and foreign all at once as he willed his feet forward.

But that wasn’t what he wanted. Not tonight.

He thought of blue dresses twirling in the snow, of black-and-purple striped shirts, of lavender curtains swaying in the afternoon and of a toy piano as he let his hands settle into the simplest, most unadorned melody he knew.

E E E. E E E. E G C D E.

He thought of the crackle of vinyl spinning beneath a needle, of tinsel-draped trees and fragile glass ornaments catching the glow of Christmas lights. He thought of peppermint sticks melting on the tongue, of yellow winter coats bright against the snowfall, of skates carving silver lines into a frozen pond.

A football yanked away at the last moment. The sharp, rhythmic scrape of a crayon against thick-lined newspaper print.

It felt almost ridiculous. A pianist like him, paring himself down to something so simple. But tonight, it wasn’t about mastery or grandeur. It wasn’t even about the music.

It was about her.

A faint ripple of laughter brushed through the crowd—affectionate, indulgent, vanishing almost as soon as it stirred the air. But he scarcely heard it.

Then, as gently as it had begun, the song faded into silence.

A breath. A pause.

His hands trembled where they rested on the keys, but he did not pull away. Instead, his fingers drifted, finding their place in the opening notes of Für Elise.

A song the world had heard a thousand times before. A melody worn smooth by time and familiarity. Yet here, now, with his pulse hammering louder than the ivory beneath his touch, it became something else entirely. A confession. A quiet, aching thing, laced into the rise and fall of each familiar note.

He played for her. Only for her.