It started out as a joke, she'll swear it to her dying day. Some people pinched and punched, or made cutting remarks, and don't get her wrong she loved doing those things too. With everyone else, that is. But with him, those tactics never seemed to work as well. He'd just shrug off her words and keep playing, grit his teeth and keep quiet when she pinched him from across the aisle in class.

She was Lucy Van Pelt though. Lucy Van Pelt never surrendered, and getting under Schroeder's skin was going to be the crowning achievement of her time stuck in middle school.

Her usual tactics proving ineffective, she was forced to get creative. And after listening to yet another rant from her little brother about how embarrassing it was when Sally tried to hug him, she had an idea.

It started out with her going across the street after school and sitting outside his window while he practised. Creepy? A little. But it caught his attention, and she always had homework or a book hidden just out of his line of sight, so it wasn't like she was just wasting away the day. That worked for the fall, but when it started to get cold she needed a new strategy. So she tried a little white lie out on his mother, and got herself access to Schroeder's inner sanctuary by pretending she was invited. He was too startled and wary of her fists to call her bluff, and so his mom never learned to stop letting her in. She'd stay for an hour, bugging him and declaring shocking things about their invented future together. The first time she told him they were would get married, he actually lost his place in the song and had to start the page over again. He had to stop and switch pieces to cover his agitation when she suggested children. Musicians weren't known for their attraction to commitment, after all.

She hummed along sometimes, too, aware that her off-key voice irritated him to his core.

Slowly, the effects began to wear off, but it took nearly a year before he stopped cringing every time she opened her mouth while she was over. Surprisingly, he got used to her criticizing Beethoven far more quickly than he did her insistence they were going to end up together. She honestly believed he might never fully get used to that, and she might be able to go on making him uncomfortable forever riffing on that simple fodder.

That was, until she realised it wasn't a joke anymore.

Schroeder wasn't sure what to expect when Lucy walked through the door the year before. She'd never really been on his radar, despite living across the street from her and having the occasional sarcastic encounter in class. Lucy was just Linus's sister, and as much as he liked hanging out with Linus, he'd avoided the younger boy's house because rumors of her crabbiness hung over it like a rain cloud.

Being bossed into marriage was the furthest thing from his mind. He bore it all pretty well, he thought, considering. It wasn't every day that the class mean girl declared her intent to bear your children. (Admittedly, it took a long time before he was able to think about that one in terms as cavalier as that.) He was getting really good at recovery, something his piano teachers had always harped on him about. "Schroeder, oh Schroeder," Mr. Oosthuizen used to lament, "it is not about playing everything perfectly. It is about how quickly we can move past our little mistakes and get back to the heart of the piece." Getting back to the heart of a piece as fast as possible seemed to be the only thing he was good at with her around these days. It wouldn't be quite as bad if she didn't insist on trying to hum along to some of them. Her voice wasn't actually as bad as she seemed to think it was, but his perfect pitch always made everyone sound off, no matter how good. He tried to control his reactions as much as possible, but his face was so often a traitor and he could tell she knew she was getting to him.

Some days he found himself wondering if she really was just joking. It seemed like a whole lot of effort just to annoy him.

On really bad days, he found himself sort of wishing she wasn't.

It started out like so many days before it. She knocked on his door, his mother let her in, and she leaned up against his piano, settling in for another round of her 2nd favourite pastime.

(Her first favourite was clearly advice-giving, and her third favourite was pulling the football out from under that blockhead Charlie Brown. Apparently he'd never heard of Einstein's definition of insanity.)

She started to call him her sweet baboo, as she had so many times before, and then in one blinding flash it ceased to be funny as she realised meant it. Instead she stammered something about Beethoven being stupid and music being a dumb career choice and then shut up and let him play, fleeing after an hour, the soonest should could without arousing suspicion.

She didn't come back for a week after that.

He thought it would be a relief when she finally left him alone. Finally, the ability to practise without distractions, without being constantly on edge waiting for the next fresh hell, for the first time in a year. High school had hit him like one of Peppermint Patty's fastballs to the gut, and balancing homework and piano was harder than ever before.

Instead, he found himself playing the same page over and over again, unable to get through it without messing up. He gave up completely after a while, playing scales and arpeggios until the stillness of the room without her drove him upstairs to his math books.

She had to go back. If she avoided him much longer, he'd realize something was up. And she couldn't let all her hard work making him uncomfortable go to waste.

But she also couldn't quite will herself to go back to the way things were. So she brought a notebook and her World History readings, and got more work done in an hour while he messed around with some Chopin then she had the entire week she'd been avoiding him.

He accepted the new normal gladly. He didn't want to think about why having Lucy there made practising more bearable. All that mattered was that she was there, and for once, she was keeping her mouth shut.

Until one day, weeks later, he couldn't stand it any longer. Some tomfool part of him actually missed her teasing, dammnit, and her stopping so abruptly felt like a rejection.

You never actually wanted her to like you his brain always reminded him.

He'd never actually though about what he wanted, beyond time and space to play without interruptions. He was getting that now. His initial irritation with her had subsided and now he was left with… with what, exactly? With a homework buddy so far removed from the normal Lucy as to be almost unrecognizable?

Some days he found himself wondering if he'd done something wrong, if he'd caused this change in her.

On really bad days, he found himself sort of wishing they hadn't.

It was exam time before she realised what had hit her. Tests she was used to. She never did well on them, but she could do them. Exams seemed like a whole different animal. Suddenly they had a week to just wander around the school and study.

Somehow she ended up in the music room, studying while he stress-practiced. She'd begun to find she couldn't work as well without the constant classical background music.

She longed to tease him again, but it just felt wrong. The words stuck in her throat, which irked her beyond measure. She was Lucy Van Pelt, and she never surrendered.

He should be studying, but he also had auditions coming up, and the familiar keys were more comforting then the swirls and smears of his poorly taken science notes. The music flowed better with an audience, he reasoned, so he should capitalize on her presence.

(And if he never stopped to think too hard about whether it was an audience or just her that made him better, well, who could blame him really?)

"Alright, sweet baboo. If we survive to the end of this, you're taking me to the skating rink."

He got three bars further before fumbling so badly he needed to start the section over again. He looked up at her, confused, annoyed, nervous.

"You heard me. You and me. Skating. Saturday night."

"Lucy, I-"

"No butts, blockhead."

Lucy Van Pelt never surrendered. And if, after Schroeder finally got a word in edgewise that his audition was Sunday morning and she compromised to Monday afternoon, well, it's not a surrender if you get what you really wanted.