I found this sitting on my desktop about an hour ago, and I decided to dust it up a little bit and post it. The song it's based on is very special to me - I discovered it a year or so ago and somehow or another ended up writing this.. so keep in mind that this is a year old! ;)

Enjoy!

"Sally Brown sits down, by his piano
He doesn't see her there
He plays his heart out

She's mesmerized, by his concentration
Closes her eyes
And tries to see what he sees

This is love oh yes, at it's finest
This is love, how it needs to be

And it's enough to break through the shyness

She knows it'd be love if he'd hold her
She can't stop thinking about Schroeder."

- No More Kings, About Schroeder

Tonight he's playing a melody that she can't recognize, one that she suspects even he does not, and part of her feels like she's heard it before while it seems completely foreign to the other. She decides that of all the times she's heard him play, of all of the times she's snuck inside his music room and hid in the shadows, this is her favorite.

It surprises her a little, because the first time she heard him playing it was a classical Beethoven piece and from then on she'd always loved when he played classical music the best. Some nights he would play original songs that he'd written, simplified piano versions of Jonas' number one electro-pop hits, but she always thought that they were nothing compared to when he would effortlessly dole out a rendition of Bach or Beethoven's less famous pieces.

She's always admired his concentration as he plays, his eyebrows furrowed tightly as his eyes remain fixed on the black and white keys before him. He always maintains incredible posture, too, and his lips stay in a straight line as his fingertips glide across glistening keys to create a melody.

She wishes more than anything in the world that for once, just tonight, he would look up and see her standing there. It's his last chance to, she knows, for tonight will be the last night she'll sneak in here in the middle of the night to listen to him, to let the music he plays cloud her every sense and carry her gently away from the reality of the situation.

He pours his heart out into every stroke of every key, and she realizes that there's something about his performance tonight that's different from all the others. It's more personal, more him - and she loves it.

Because she loves him.

She shakes the thought from her head immediately, just like she'd long ago trained herself, and fixes her focus back onto his playing. The music goes soft for a few measures and she has to hold her breath so he doesn't hear her there, and just as she can't hold it in any longer and is about to let it out, he throws his whole body onto the keys and begins pounding on them again. The entire room grows loud with echoes and she fears he'll wake up the whole house tonight if he doesn't quiet it down soon enough, but before her thoughts can stray on it for too long she notices the look on his face. The frustration, the anger is clear. It's written all over him and she can read it as easily as ever.

Suddenly, the music stops.

She cowers further behind the curtain and camouflages herself in the shadows of the dimly lit room. Her breathing has stopped cold so she doesn't have to worry about that, but then her heart starts pounding through the piercing silence so erratically that she seriously fears he's going to hear it.

He simply starts to crack his fingers and wrists and elbows to loosen up and regain his composure before beginning to play a similar melody to the one he'd been playing when she first entered. She lets out a quiet sigh of relief and lets the curtain around her fall back again, seeing that the frustration in his features has disappeared but also that it's been replaced with a childlike sadness as if he was five again and Joe just stole his candy bar.

But the melody he plays is happy, and it confuses her.

Before she knows it she's closed her eyes and is trying to see what he's seeing, trying to see and understand every thought and every picture that's floating through his head at this very moment. She's done this every night that she listens to him, and an image in the back of her mind always meets her and somehow she knows that he's seeing the same thing too. The picture always fades away before she can fully comprehend it though, and then all she will see is him playing on a little toy piano, and she'll be sitting on a bench next to him because he's playing it for her and she's never been so happy.

But tonight she's met with a blank canvas of a dark and cloudy black - no thoughts, no pictures - until suddenly her heart starts beating and the music picks up speed again…

And she sees a picture, but it isn't him.

It's Kevin.

He's in a tuxedo and there's a tear in his eye.

And then she's there too, standing next to him.

She's in a pure white wedding dress.

Suddenly the music stops again and her eyes fly open, and she doesn't believe the sight that meets her. He's looking back at her, their eyes connected in an intense gaze that seems to last an eternity until she looks away.

"I'm going to play it tomorrow," he says, "for your wedding."

In that moment, as her eyes remain locked with his, she knows she's finally ready to let him go.

"I think it's beautiful, Nick," she smiles in return.

He offers her a weak smile that turns into a frown the second she leaves, because he's not ready to let go of her. Part of him thinks he'll always love her, always wish that she would still sneak into his room to listen to him play as he pretends he doesn't notice her. The truth of the matter is she isn't as quiet as she believes herself to be, and he isn't as oblivious as she believes he is.

He loves her for it, though.

But he loves his brother more - and he knows that his brother loves her and she loves his brother, so tomorrow he'll smile as her father walks her down the isle, smile as she says her vows, smile as they kiss, and smile as he plays for her one last time during their First Dance.