"I can't believe I've grown two zits since we started recording."

Of course, Stevie knew better than to poke and prod the bright red spot in the smack dab center of her cheek, never mind the other offender on her chin, but that didn't stop her either. What else was she supposed to do when her mind wouldn't stop running? Talk about her feelings? Yuck. She scratched at an itchy scalp dressed with too much dry shampoo in an attempt to hide how she couldn't muster the energy to do her curly hair routine. (Hence the rat's nest on top of her head.) Her face played landing zone for every pimple who wanted access. And if her biological clock went according to schedule, she was due to start her period in approximately four hours, seventeen minutes, and thirty two seconds.

"I feel like I have to shave again," Maverick said, running a hand along his stubble. "Ridiculous. I should just grow a beard."

Stevie related all too well thanks to her PCOS. Had to pluck a chin hair earlier that morning because if she didn't, she would have absentmindedly felt it all day long. (Unfortunately for her, getting rid of zits required more work than a pair of tweezers and will power.)

"Honestly, same."

"We can grow beards together," Maverick said. "Cute."

"We should shave some cute designs into them too."

He nodded thoughtfully, probably thinking up some ideas already. "Adorable."

"Where are your Hero patches?" Stevie asked. Her phone made for a lousy mirror, but it didn't matter since Santa could see her zits all the way from the North Pole. "I can't continue working in these conditions without a pimple patch."

He flicked his head toward the door. "I think I threw them on the bathroom counter. Do you want to go get them or do you want me to?"

Of course she wanted him to grab them. For two reasons: 1) When he said he threw them on the bathroom counter, that meant they would be fine anywhere but the bathroom counter, which unfortunately meant it would take her longer to find them, and 2) Stevie felt lazy.

Stevie sighed dramatically, hand to her forehead, other hand against her chest, and she fell back onto the piano bench. "I might be getting my period today but if I must get them myself..."

All but three seconds passed before Maverick settled in further to his spot on the floor. They didn't share a uterus the same way they shared their singular brain cell, but he knew her cycle almost as well as Jun, even if he spent less time around her. "I'm assuming I'm getting them when you're on your period, so go ahead."

"Fine," Stevie grumbled before rising from the bench. "I might stop and get some cookies then."

"Enjoy." He didn't even look at her. Already flipping through his notebook. "I'm going to write a song about being in love with Bash at Christmas while you're gone."

Work smarter, not harder. Stevie ventured into the kitchen where a tiny cloud of flour dissipated as soon as she made her appearance known. Swiped a cookie while she was there. "Hey, Everleigh. Do you know where Mav's pimple patches are?"

She didn't look away from her staring contest with Brendon, but Stevie was too dialed in to her mission to care to ask what that was about.

"They're on the dresser in the bedroom."

Of course, they were. "Thanks, love." Stevie spun on her heels before looking back over her shoulder. "Also, quick question, but do you mind if I use that song I wrote about us being gay for Christmas?" Because of course she had already sent Everleigh a picture of the lyrics from her notebook. They were legible and easy to read, unlike someone else's chicken scratch.

"It's your song," Everleigh said. "Go ahead."

"Right here," Brendon interjected.

"Perfect!" Stevie skipped away. "Thank you!"

"Have fun, babes," Everleigh called after her.

Some muffled sound followed, and then Brendon saying, "Eat another fuckin' cookie."

Thanks to Everleigh's help, it didn't take her long to find the box of Hero pimple patches. Quickly tore off two of them and stuck them on her face. She had never been let down by the brand before, and she knew she wouldn't be today, so she decided to stash the entire box in her pocket instead of returning it to where she found it. Not like Maverick would have remembered them anyway. She would just mess with him if he did.

While she had the room to herself, Stevie tiptoed around in search of any potential vinyls he might have brought for the ambience. Giggled quietly to herself when she found a stash of Christmas records tucked away in the corner under a throw blanket, including one signed by Michael Bublé. Luckily for her, Stevie specifically left space in her suitcase for this very moment, and nobody was the wiser when she scurried back into the living room, hid the records in a safe space, and then made her way back to the makeshift studio where Maverick scribbled away, laughing to himself in a way that slightly concerned her.

"I've got another song we're gonna use," Stevie announced upon her return.

He went along with it, unsurprised. "It is making the yuletide gay—"

"Consider it Evergay."

"Do you want to solo it or do you think going back and forth is the way to go?"

"You think I want to share this song with you?" Stevie asked.

"Fair enough," he replied.

Stevie held out her hand. "Where's this Bash song? I know you already wrote most of it before we got here."

"Don't worry about it." Maverick was nothing if not a perfectionist who could find something he wanted to change no matter how many times he had gone over a song. It amazed everyone that his collaborators—or, well, himself—could get him to stop at all. Working with him required a lot of patience, understanding, and a strong arm. Stevie knew not just because she worked with him many times, but because her peers said the same things about her.

"No." Stevie shook her head. "I want to see it."

"It's not done."

"I didn't ask if it was done. I said show it to me."

Maverick held up his chin. "Why don't you share your Evergay song?"

She didn't need to be asked twice. The song was complete and approved of by her namesake. Stevie finished off the cookie in her hand before tossing her notebook over. It landed straight in his lap. "Here, I have nothing to hide."

"That was easier than I thought it was gonna be."

"Now hand over the Bash song."

He hesitated but followed through on her demands. "You need to promise me you won't ready anything other than the bookmarked page—"

"As if I'll ever make that promise." Stevie rolled her eyes. If she was forced to decipher every single doctors' note in the world, she would have had more luck making it through that task without compromising her eyesight and sanity. Alas, she managed to find the right page and recognized the tune he parodied in Brendon Ellis' name. "Maverick... Did you just rewrite Santa Baby but for Bash?"

Santa baby, forget about the guys you outrank / give thanks
To the hometown pit crew / Santa baby, lubed and ready to fill up this tank
Santa baby, slide it into a lower gear / All clear
No bad bottoming here / Santa baby, so hurry down the raceway tonight

"I don't know what you're talking about," Maverick replied. "Santa Baby objectifies Santa and I would never do that to—"

Stevie waited for him to finish his sentence, but he kept staring at the notebook so she huffed. "You literally printed yourself a shirt of his abs and 'All I Want For Christmas.'"

"Um. Yeah. I did. Sure."

She continued to flip through the pages, decoding his handwriting as best she could. "Can't believe you made it through an entire song for him without mentioning—oh, never mind. There's the abs mention."

"Do you—" he started. "I can take it out. Sorry."

She stared at him. Recognized the strangeness in his voice. Uncanny Maverick. "What the hells' up with you? Since when do you apologize for objectifying Brendon?"

"Must be a Christmas miracle."

Stevie scoffed. "There's no such thing as Christmas miracles."

He looked nauseous. "I—Yup. Okay. Sorry. I'll keep the line then."

"Would you stop looking at me like this?" She made the same awful expression on his just to illustrate how ridiculous he looked and how he was about to mess up her flow if he didn't stop whatever it was he was doing. "Geez, if you hate the Evergay song so much you can just say it. I'm not gonna be offended. Mostly 'cause I'll still record it, but you know."

"No, it's great," he mumbled. "These are all... great. I wouldn't expect anything less from you, Stev."

"I'm actually going to leave if you don't stop being weird."

"Sorry," Maverick apologized before shuffling over to the window. His voice was a million miles away when he continued. "Does it look like the snow's lightening up at all? I can't tell."

If he wanted any judgment of the conditions of a blizzard, Stevie was the last person to ask.

"Any amount of snow looks like a blizzard to me."

He winced. "Right. I guess it would. Sorry."

Anytime the two of them uttered the word sorry in the other's direction, it meant something strange was happening in the world. The planet tilted off access. A foreign object roaming the atmosphere. Something not at all correct or right in the universe. And Stevie didn't like that she had no clue as to why he was acting this way.

"You can..." Maverick paused. "If you wanted, you could go. I can try to drive to the airport."

"Why would I want to leave in the middle of a blizzard—"

"To be home, Stev—I don't—I'm sorry I brought you here—"

"What the fuck are you talking about you turnip—"

"I—You—The fucking song, Steve—I didn't—Can we talk about it or do you want to go—Because that's okay—"

Suddenly it clicked. A moment of silence dragged on for far too long to not be suspicious. Stevie wondered if there was enough room for her to hide inside the piano. It would take Maverick long enough to find her since he would need to climb up it first. His personal Everest.

While she knew the day would eventually come, even long before it happened, Stevie didn't realize how emotionally unprepared she would be for the day she stopped living in the same house as her bandmates. They spent basically every waking moment with each other, sure, but it was different now. Jun and Lauren lived together. Rami and Seira both had their own apartments. Stevie lived in Brendon's house next door. And every day she was home in LA, she awoke to see some other family living in that house she once shared with some of the only family she had left.

The last show of the tour, Stevie bid farewell to the monstrous crowd of over 100,000 attendees in Melbourne. Brendon stood somewhere in the crowd with his sister. A synchronized aloha! rang out in the stadium. The lights went out. And then Stevie found herself standing in the bathroom of her dressing room, crying her eyes out, gasping for air. Unsure if she was about to faint or stress herself straight into a heart attack.

It wasn't that she was overwhelmed by the emotions of ending the tour. She felt trapped. Unable to escape. Stuck under the weight of some invisible force holding her down by each limb. And no matter how hard she tried to breathe, to live, she couldn't do it. Not in any way that felt good.

While she had booked a one way ticket back to Honolulu for a much-needed vacation of an undetermined length of time, she canceled it. Afraid that going home—home home, not the temporary home of Los Angeles—meant facing the empty house in which she once found comfort.

She barely recognized the woman standing there in the mirror.

Stevie wrote a song about a week ago while Brendon put up the Christmas tree in the living room. Titled it Home Alone.

Woke up on Christmas day with nowhere else to go
Dreamt of throwing myself into a pile of snow
Fallen angels scream there's no place like home
But this place ain't home / It'll never be home

Danced with a broken wing inside a cracked snow globe
Whole world watched and laughed as I ran for the phone
Dial tone / Dad's gone / Mom's lost / I'm alone
This place still ain't home / It'll never be home

They said I'm a star born knowing best to shine bright
Then let me burn out / ash and smoke in plain sight
On top of the world ready to fall back to ground zero
Cause this place ain't home / I want to go home

Too bad there's no such thing as Christmas miracles
Hell's a flurry / nightmare's blurry / blizzards by the pocketful
Millions scream my name every night yet I've never felt more alone
Too bad this place ain't home / It'll never be home

Traded sun and sand and everything I have ever known
Dreams came true I suppose / ran empty on my dried-up soul
Could've used one or two of those fuckin' Christmas miracles
I don't remember what's home / Maybe there is no home

"You mean... Evergay or—"

"You know I don't mean Evergay—"

"Evergay is the only song worth a damn in there so it must be."

Maverick frowned. "Don't do that."

"You don't do that. I'm not doing anything."

"You—It was the home song, Stev. Come on. Please."

She picked at her cuticles. "I think we should talk about your retirement instead."

"Plenty of time for that after my tour," he said. "Yours is more present." As if that would stop anyone there from forcing him to talk. "Your turn."

"Well, next album is dropping next year so maybe we should wait until after."

He shook his head. "I don't think that's how this works."

"Maybe I don't want to talk about it," Stevie snapped more harshly than she meant to. "Should've stayed on the right page."

"You didn't set those rules," he pointed out. And he wasn't wrong at all. "You've never set those rules."

"Do as I say. No as I do."

"You never said—" He stopped. Inhaled. "Why can't we talk about it?"

"I don't know." Stevie threw her arms up, exasperated. Tired of feeling the way she did. The piano bench beneath her was tragically uncomfortable now that she was uncomfortable. Not because of Maverick but herself. Always herself. Always herself and her brain and the rude, mean gremlins that controlled it. "Maybe because it's a pathetic thing to talk about? And we have an entire other half of an album to record before this weekend is over?"

"It's not pathetic," Maverick murmured quietly.

"Put a picture of me right next to the definition of first world problems. Pathetic."

"It's okay to want to go home—"

"It's not like I have anyone waiting there for me—"

A tear slipped down Stevie's cheek, the one furthest away from him. She loved Brendon and their home. She loved MARS and their new home in Los Angeles. But she missed Hawai'i. She missed the sun, the ocean, the breeze. The way life made sense to her there. Not a fish out of water.

"I don't even know what home is anymore."

"I—Stev."

A speck of blood where she had scratched her cuticle too hard. "Somebody should warn us that the more people know your name, the less human you feel. Maybe we'll stop pretending we can ever live up to their expectations."

"It's... hard," Maverick said. "To exist sometimes. Even without the flashing light. You only have to meet your own expectations."

"I think it was easier knowing what those were when I didn't feel like such a... puppet. Some toy everyone can pay for and then demand anything and everything from me, you know? And I can't even just go home and make everything feel better because the longer I'm away, the less familiar everywhere feels. How I feel."

"Sometimes it's easier to keep running around so that it never comes up that at some point, you've gotta face yourself," Maverick said. "It's not easy—Life's not that easy. It's just... shitty to feel like you're not your own person. And I'm sorry that's where it's at right now."

Maverick and Stevie worked in sync the way one recognized when the other was down. Usually because they often shared emotions. When one went through a rough patch, so did the other. The universe reminded them that they were one and the same in all the best ways.

"I know it's... shitty to feel like the only life you've ever known is slipping away from you faster than you're ready for. And that prepping for your next tour is easier than facing what your future means for you," Stevie said. Though they trusted each other to know their greatest fears and biggest aspirations, some things needed to be said, even when the other didn't know if they were ready to hear them. And Maverick would undoubtedly try to steer the conversation back to her, but Stevie was a fighter. Especially when it came to Maverick. (Emotional.) (But also derogatory.)

"It's nice to have future plans. Makes the world less scary. Means you have somewhere to be. It's hard to think about outside of music as much as you deserve the break to be human. To be Stevie and not... Stevie!."

Stevie asked, "And what does it mean to you to be Maverick? Not Maverick!."

This time Maverick looked like he wanted to bury himself six feet under the snow. "We're talking about you."

"We're talking about you now."

He shook his head. "We don't have to."

Ok, she needed the big guns then. She knew how to go there. "Well I'm not really Stevie without my Maverick so I think we gotta."

"It's... I guess after the tour, there's a little more separation. Might be Maverick! and... Kingston? Maverick seems like a person who wouldn't leave this behind. Maybe I'm not really him. Maybe I was faking it. I don't know, Stev. I'm also finishing a tour plan so I don't have to think about it. "

Stevie didn't understand what it meant for a musician to lose their hearing. And she never wanted to speak on subjects that required a certain lived experience to understand. But she knew Maverick, and maybe that gave her enough space to speak to him personally. "I don't think you have to leave anything behind. I don't think you—Maverick or Maverick! or Kingston—are capable of leaving anything behind. It's just... who you are. Who you always have been and who you always will be no matter what. It'll change, sure, become something new, but it doesn't mean letting go of something."

"Music... doesn't sound the same. Since the..." Maverick gestured to his cochlear implants. "It doesn't sound bad. But it's not quite... It's like playing the right chords but the guitar is slightly out of tune. It's off. Just a little bit. And I... I can't do it. So, I am. Leaving it behind. They tried to warn me, I didn't listen, and it's... my own fault. So. I don't know, Maverick made a bad decision. I think. I'm pretty sure."

"You're not at fault for trying something that can help you, Kingston." She used his first name on two occasions—when she was mad and when she needed him to know they were both being incredibly vulnerable. "The success of this procedure varies so much person to person that it's not fair to just say don't bother trying it won't work because it does for a lot of people, just like it doesn't for a lot of other people. And you making a choice that feels best for you should never be discouraged. Nor is it bad. It's... It'll be hard. You don't need me to tell you that. But this is something constantly evolving and I don't—I don't think it's the end. Maybe I'm speaking out of turn or whatever but I really don't."

Part of her wondered if she was saying that more for him or herself. The thought that one day they would stop writing music together, and that the day would come sooner than she was prepared for, scared her more than anything. Besides MARS, no one represented her love and passion for music more than him.

"You're not speaking out of turn," he said. "It's just us. You can say whatever you want to me. It's just... life's hard. That's okay. What would we be doing if it wasn't hard?"

"For what it's worth," Stevie said quietly, "you make all of the hard days a hell of a lot easier."

Maverick gave her a small smile. "I wouldn't be here without you. I hope you know that."

Stevie stared down at her hands. Fingertips raw and bleeding. "And I... I know I just wrote all that depressing shit but... you'll always be home for me. Even when I threaten to throw shitty chili oil in your eyes."

"But you didn't—"

"I was thinking about it. Sorry."

"That's... interesting." Maverick turned green over what he just said. "But fine. I guess."

Stevie looked to the door. "I think we need a refill on our cookies. I just cried out all my energy on this damn conversation."

"Cookies do make everything better."

They hugged it out before walking back outside. Stevie held on for a little longer than necessary but not too long, and Maverick let her. At the end of the day, they needed each other in ways nobody else could replace. And Stevie was a better person for it.

The emotional beat of their day was promptly ruined when they walked outside and met another cloud of flour. This time, Brendon Ellis emerged from the wreckage, barely fazed, or at least appearing not to be.

"Real mature, Leigh," Brendon said.

"Fuckin' deserved."

"These shits appear to not be getting along," Stevie stated.

"Wow, I can't believe them," Maverick gasped. "We'd never act like this."

"We did not sign up to babysit y'all this weekend"

"Tell Brendon he needs to behave—" Everleigh demanded.

"Tell Everleigh to stop trying to run away—" Brendon countered.

Maverick looked between them suspiciously. Mostly at Everleigh. "What are you running away from—"

"A cooki—" Brendon said.

"Him—" Everleigh answered at the same time.

To be honest, Stevie was a little frightened when they got like this. Mildly turned on, but mostly frightened. "We actually came to re-up on our cookies so we can take that off your hands."

Everleigh quickly handed off the plate with a smile on her face, but not before Brendon stole one back, earning a glare from his girlfriend.

"Made this one special for Everleigh," he clarified. "You can take the rest."

Stevie waved him off. "Ew, don't get your Marmite fingers on our cookies—"

"Seriously, I don't want poop spread in my mouth—" Maverick concurred.

"How's—" Everleigh started. Only started because Brendon Ellis proved his speed with how quickly he shoved the cookie he had grabbed into her mouth, sending her flying toward the sink as she choked on it.

"Brendon Ellis—" Stevie gasped.

"She asked me to help her," he said. Dusted off his hands casually. "Can't get her hands dirty."

Maverick helped his partner best he could, smacking her on the back while pulling her bands out of her face. "She is the only one here who can do the heimlich if she chokes—"

"I specifically learned how to do the heimlich for my Halloween costume," Brendon said. "Don't be absurd."

"Did you learn CPR too?" Maverick asked. "Just curious."

"Yes. And I can tell you that outside of a hospital, the CPR survival rate is less than fifty percent."

Stevie had felt like she was living with a university student that week. Books, training videos, test dummies. When Brendon Ellis committed to something, he went all in.

"... I'm okay with that," Maverick said.

Stevie glanced back and forth between them. "I think we'll leave you two to... whatever it was you're doing now."

"Fucking knob head," Everleigh said after pulling herself together and punching Brendon in the shoulder.