Trigger warning: in case you didn't know Fleetwood Mac dealt with some drug problems. They're addressed in this story. Probably a lot.
November 1976
They were so, so close to finishing this album. It was beautiful and it was painful. The only way Stevie could describe it was pure art.
Oh, it hadn't been easy working with Lindsey. He hated her, it seemed. He knew when she was high and when she wasn't and when she wanted to be.
That didn't stop him from turning her songs into magic.
It also didn't stop him from making her cry. He didn't do it intentionally; not most of the time anyway. It was just to be near him that hurt like nothing she'd ever felt before. Sometimes she couldn't remember why she had ended things. He was the fucking love of her life and she just told him to go like it was nothing. Like it didn't matter; like he didn't matter.
Truthfully, he tried to avoid her. She was the one who picked a fight with him every chance she got. He got to her; got under her skin and into her blood.
She sought refuge in the drugs and the people who could give them to her. She tricked herself into believing those people were her friends.
She knew, even then, that she needed saving.
He tried; god he tried so hard. Even after the break up, he still tried. He flushed the drugs down the toilet. He tried to keep tabs on where she was and who she was with.
This just made her angry and they fought over that, too. They fought and she cried and he left.
Sometimes she tried to get him to stay. She thought, maybe, if she could seduce him he could fuck the pain away.
That's all it would be because there was no love left to make.
December 1999
It was Max's first Christmas that he could actually care about. Stevie still thought Lindsey may have been more excited than Max would be.
"Come on, let me go wake him up!" Lindsey begged, as Stevie sat on the couch feeding their baby girl.
"Lindsey, how many times do I have to tell you no? He will wake up when he's ready. I do not want him to be cranky all day."
Lindsey sighed and flopped down on the couch next to her, "but I worked so hard on that train table."
Stevie laughed, "you worked hard on the train table? You couldn't figure out which pieces went where. I had to help you."
"Okay it was a joint effort."
"When he gets his first bike for Christmas, I'm putting that together."
"That's probably for the best," Lindsey chuckled. He took Lizzie from Stevie and kissed her face.
"Do you want your present now?" She asked.
"Oh my god, are you going to strip for me?" He asked, a little too enthusiastically.
Stevie rolled her eyes, "in your dreams, Buckingham."
"Oh, trust me. I dream about that a lot."
"If you weren't holding my baby I would throw something at you." Stevie said as she moved all of Max's gifts out of the way to get to Lindsey's.
She handed him a small box, wrapped in Max's Mickey Mouse Santa wrapping paper. Lindsey rested his sleeping daughter against his chest to open it.
Inside was a cardboard box, which he opened to reveal a VHS tape. He glanced a Stevie, "so you recorded the striptease for me?"
