AN: First off, this fic wouldn't have been possible with the Schrucy chats I had with my friend Milo. They're super creative and funny and it's always fun to bounce ideas around with them.
Secondly, these drabbles will be published non-chronologically, but they'll all have a date attached to them so you can make sense of where we are. In my personal timeline (which is the one I used for this fic), Schroeder's date of birth is January 18th, 1947, and Lucy's is April 10th, 1947.
If any context is needed for a drabble that wasn't previously explained earlier in this fic, I'll explain it in the notes.
July 1950
For Schroeder, playing piano was like breathing. It came naturally, effortlessly.
His mother and father bought him a toy piano for his very first Christmas. Since he was less than a year old then, they didn't expect to hear anything more than discordant plinking, but he very quickly caught on to the fact that each key made its own sound, and began piecing together melodies. His love and talent for music (as well as for a certain composer) snowballed from there.
His first word was "Beethoven". He could read sheet music by the time he was two years old, long before he could read a book. He had many of Beethoven's sonatas memorized soon after.
Everyone who listened to him play was amazed. The adults would sit and listen in silence, awestruck, and when he was finished, they would clap and coo and praise him. He never had much of a response. It didn't make a difference to him whether his parents' friends were impressed or not. Truthfully, he would have rather been left alone to play by himself.
Regardless, he got used to the reaction. It didn't upset him. It was just how things were.
Lucy wasn't like that.
Schroeder hadn't known Lucy for very long the first time she visited; she had only just gotten old enough to be allowed to roam the block. They had played Cowboys and Spacemen together with the other kids a few times, but that was the extent of their interaction. He figured it'd be like when the other kids came to visit; they'd sit down and listen to him perform a few songs, and then ask if he wanted to go play pretend or play some baseball, or they'd just go home.
She was restless the entire time. She paced the room, circling him at least twice, introducing an edge to his nerves that he had never experienced before. He hadn't even made it through three German Dances when she positioned herself at the other end of his piano, leaning forward with her head propped up, looking at him with an unnerving, round-eyed stare.
He tried to ignore her. He tried to focus on the piece. Perhaps switching gears to a Minuet would help.
No such luck.
She climbed (climbed!) on top of his beloved instrument and stuck her pudgy face out so it was blocking his line of sight, her black ringlets bouncing.
He didn't even know what to say. Nobody had ever interrupted him before. He was used to being the center of attention, but usually, it wasn't him people focused on; it was the music.
For the first time, he heard Lucy speak to him: "You fascinate me."