AN: This story is one of those "be the fanfic you want to see in the world" sort of affairs: I wanted a story where Lucy and Schroeder meet again as adults, and at the time I couldn't find one that quite fit, so I decided I'd have to be the one to write it.

It's set in 1974—a date I chose because when Lucy was introduced to the strip in 1952, she appeared to be 3 or 4 years old, so I decided to give her and Schroeder birth dates in about 1948. 1974 was before my time, so I apologize for any anachronisms! Also, I can't find that Schroeder was ever given a name in canon, so I made up Metcalfe. If anyone's aware of a more accurate last name for him, let me know!

This story owes a large debt to the musical You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown, namely the idea that Schroeder would associate the song Moonlight Sonata with Lucy (if you haven't seen the musical, while Schroeder is practicing that song, Lucy sings about how one day they're going to get married). So in case you're wondering about the significance of the song, that's it.

o.o.o

On a warm July night in his twenty-sixth year, Schroeder steps into the lobby of the concert hall after a successful Evening of Great American Composers and sees that someone is waiting for him.

He doesn't recognize her at first; he only knows she's been waiting for him from the way her posture changes when he appears. She's a young woman, about his age; there's something striking about the contrast of her dark hair and her fair skin and her bright blue eyes, but her face is a bit too round, her jaw a bit too strong, her mouth a bit too stubborn, for her to be considered classically beautiful. There's something undeniably familiar about her but he can't come up with a name, and he's fumbling around for a clue—is it the new girl from the box office? that dark-haired girl he sometimes sees walking her dog around his neighborhood?—when she speaks.

"That was beautiful," she says. "I've never heard you play Gershwin before."

That voice—he looks harder at her, then he looks at her blue dress, and then his eyes widen. "Lucy?"

She rolls her eyes. "Took you long enough."

This would be the right time to greet her, but he doesn't know what to do—it's been so long—until she opens her arms. "Get over here and say hello properly."

And he does, smiling; Lucy always has had a way of getting people to do what she wants.

"Why are you in Omaha? Why are you here?" He steps back and takes in the sight of her again. He wouldn't have recognized her if he'd passed her on the street; she's grown her hair long and started to look quite grown-up since he last saw her.

"I live here," she shrugs. "As of June. Linus told me you were here too so I've been meaning to look you up, and then this morning I open the newspaper, and BAM! Full page ad: An Evening of Great American Composers, Omaha Philharmonic, featuring wonder boy Schroeder Metcalfe."

"They didn't call me a wonder boy in the ad," he says, but he's secretly pleased.

"It was implied," she shrugs. "Listen, I'm starving. You want to go grab something to eat? Catch up a little?"

He'd forgotten the way that talking to Lucy can be like facing a shotgun blast: she just throws every thought in her head at you at blinding speeds until you buckle. "Sure," he says. "Performing always makes me hungry."

He knows a diner that stays open late just a block from the concert hall, so he leads her out into the night. "I'm proud of you," she says as they stroll side by side down the street. "Official pianist extraordinaire of the Omaha Philharmonic. You're actually living out your childhood dream."

"You're not?" he asks.

She gives a theatrical sigh. "Turns out you can't just apply to be queen." And he ducks his head and laughs.

"Well, I'm proud of you," he says. "You sat through an entire concert and you didn't interrupt it once to ask anyone if you were pretty."

Immediately he wonders if that was rude, and if it was an odd thing to bring up—that was a long time ago—but she throws her head back and laughs, a good hearty infectious laugh that says she doesn't care who hears her. "How do you know?" she asks. "Maybe I did." But then she shakes her head. "No, you're right. It was too nice to interrupt."

"You enjoyed it?" he asks, and he can't help the skepticism that creeps into his tone. "You enjoy a night at the symphony?"
Immediately she stops in her tracks, and in the lamplight she fixes him with an oh-come-on sort of look. "After all the time I spent listening to you play and lecture, you think I didn't learn to appreciate classical music?"

He gapes. "Really?"

"Really," she affirms as they continue walking and duck through the diner door. "And I should thank you for that, by the way. One of the partners at my firm is a sucker for all that stuff. Huge fan of this orchestra you're in too. At my interview, we talked Mussorgsky for the first five minutes. Later he told me that between that and my résumé, we could have skipped the rest of the interview and I still would have gotten hired."

Schroeder hesitates. "What did you guys say about Mussorgsky? Because I've always felt like—"

"Come on," she says, forcibly pulling him to a table. "Food now, music crit later."

Lucy orders without even looking at the menu—"Bacon and eggs, over hard, stack of pancakes"—and Schroeder smothers a smile. He's remembering the last date he went on, when Janet in the viola section set him up with one of her single friends, where the girl ordered a half salad, dressing on the side, and only ate part of it. Of course, that's how the girl maintained her willowy figure and he's not going to judge her for her eating habits, but he has to say, it's refreshing to see someone who just goes for what she wants.

He orders his usual BLT and fries, and then he turns to Lucy. "Living in Omaha, huh?"

She nods. "I can drive home in a day—I mean, my parents' house—and this firm had the best benefits package."

"So you're a lawyer? Do you jail criminals or defend them?"

"Neither," she grins. "Corporate law. I decided I prefer it to criminal. How'd you end up in Omaha?"

"They offered me the job," he shrugs. "Getting something so soon out of school—no way I wasn't going to take it. And it's a respectable little ensemble." He sits back in the booth, staring at his childhood friend's enthusiastic face. "I can't believe you're here. It's been what, six years?"

"Eight years," she says. "Since Frieda's graduation party."

"Has it really been that long since we were all together?"

"For you it has. Some of us—" and here she gives him a pointed look— "actually make a point of staying in touch with our friends. Not my fault you didn't ever come home."

"It wasn't home," he points out. "I mean, it was, but after my parents moved . . . I could barely afford to fly from New York to South Carolina for holidays and visits. No way I could afford to fly to Minnesota too, just to hang out with friends."

"You're the one who had to go to New York. Like it was so important to go to Julliard." Her eyes are smiling and it's clearly a joke, but after a moment a different emotion crosses her face—something more vulnerable. "We missed you, though," she says, softer.

"I know. But it was—things were different, you know, after middle school."

She nods in understanding, and he remembers the same quiet understanding crossing her face when he told her he was going to a private fine arts academy starting in ninth grade, rather than going to the public high school with the rest of the gang. If he'd told her that when they were younger, she would have been furious with him for abandoning her. But she'd finally grown bored of her passionate crush on him some time in middle school, so she took the news rather stoically. (He'd been quite glad, really, about her getting over the crush, even if it did mean she came over less often to hear him play . . . but really, it was only on very rare occasions that something would occur to him mid-song and he'd lift his head to talk to Lucy, only to realize she wasn't there.)

After that, Charlie Brown and Linus did their best to make sure Schroeder still felt like part of the group, but it was an uphill battle. The academy was in another town so Schroeder spent a solid hour every day getting there and back. And he was practicing more than ever, and attending and performing in countless recitals and concerts, and anyway he was making friends at his new school. It was perhaps inevitable that a rift would grow between him and his childhood friends—one that always made him feel just a bit like an outsider when they all got together. To be honest, he'd been surprised that Frieda had invited him to her graduation party.

That he would have drifted away from them feels inevitable, like it was just a part of life, especially given his chosen vocation in the arts, which requires single-minded dedication and a willingness to relocate for an exciting new opportunity. Really, few people stay friends forever, right? And yet, when he thinks of Charlie and the gang . . . "I missed you guys too," he finds himself admitting.

She gives him a tight smile as the waitress appears with their food, and then picks up a fork and prepares to dig into her pancakes. "Well, this got depressing fast," she says. "Tell me about Julliard."

He does, and then he asks her about law school, and then they talk about the old gang: about Charlie Brown's job as baseball coach at their old high school, about Linus's graduate studies in theology, about Violet and Shermy's new baby. The conversation flows easily; it always did between them, once she got over him—not much conversation to be had when one person only wants to talk about love and the other person wants to talk about anything but. And it's been eight years since they talked like this, but they quickly fall into their old patterns.

And yet, something is different. Well, obviously, everything is different, he chastises himself. But specifically, the way she talks is different: the edge has been taken off. And without thinking, he says as much.

"You mean I don't sound as bossy," she laughs.

"Well . . ."

"It's all right, you can say it. I was a bossy kid. I'm not embarrassed. I was a kid. You're allowed certain liberties when you're a kid."

"So you just . . . got over it?"

She shakes her head, grinning. "Wanna know a secret? I'm still bossy, I just channel it into my work. And when you're an adult, and you can channel being bossy into constructive outlets, instead of 'bossy' they call you 'driven' and 'ambitious.' And I, pal, am driven and ambitious. I'm going to be the youngest partner ever at my firm. That's my ambition."

"It's definitely ambitious."

She shrugs, clearly unconcerned. "I've got eight years, and I can do it in five."

He stares at her a long moment. "I wish I could be as confident as you," he admits, but she snorts at him.

"You decided to become a professional musician," she points out. "That is an act of supreme self-confidence." And then she smiles at him. "Lucky for you, you've got the talent to back it up."

And he knows perfectly well that he's good—he's got the awards and the reviews to prove it—but somehow it means more to hear it from a friend's mouth. "But music is just about the only thing I'm confident about," he confesses.

She scoffs. "Cute, talented guy like you? You've got the whole world at your feet, kid. I don't think you have anything to worry about." And Schroeder blushes.

They finish their meals and the waitress brings them their checks, and as they stand in line to pay, Lucy smiles at him. "We've got to do this again, okay? Give me your number so I can bug you all the time."

And he's perfectly willing to do so, but not just now—that feels like a goodbye and he's not ready for that yet. This is the nicest evening he's had with a friend in a while; truth be told, he doesn't have many friends in Omaha, although he's been here a year. So he responds not with his number but with an impulsive, "Can we do something before we say good night?"

Curiosity alight in her eyes, she follows him back to the concert hall, where he lets himself in with the key that the manager gave him so he can practice on the hall's Petrof grand. The janitors are still in the lobby—he knows from experience this means they haven't gotten to the hall yet, which is good, the lights will still be on—and they nod at him as he passes; they're used to his odd hours.

The hall is dimly lit, the house lights only half up, so he flips on the work lights in the wings and they flood the stage with enough light for him to play by. "Sit," he tells her, gesturing at the other end of the piano bench. She smiles and complies, and when she is settled, he begins playing the song that he'll always think of as hers, although he's never told her that: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

Her face lights up when she recognizes the song—the advantage of knowing it so well is that he never has to glance at the keys and he can watch her reaction instead—and then her eyes fall closed and she listens with a smile playing across her lips. For a moment, the sight of her hits him in an odd way, giving him a funny sort of feeling in the pit of his stomach. She's striking, as he noticed earlier, and now, seeing her give herself entirely over to the music, she's . . . beautiful.

But he doesn't have time to dwell on that for long because after only a few bars, her eyes fly open and she stands from the bench. He watches her curiously, his fingers never slowing, as she moves around the piano and grabs a chair from nearby. In one fluid movement she sets the chair at the far end of the piano and seats herself in it, then looks at him expectantly over the top of the instrument. And the smile that illuminates his face is broad and genuine and maybe just the tiniest bit bittersweet, because for a moment they're eight years old again, two friends who fight constantly but somehow stick together no matter what, two friends who haven't yet grown apart as they grow up. And he finds himself silently thankful for the act of God or fate or luck that brought Lucy van Pelt back into his life.

o.o.o