Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit, just love!

Notes: I'll admit that this chapter was mad difficult to write. I think that the relationship between Whatsername, Johnny, and Saint Jimmy isn't at all simple, such as Whatsername and Jimmy competing as opposing forces battling for Johnny's soul. I think that on one hand, Johnny and Whatsername end up together only because of Jimmy, without whose intercession nothing would have been realized between them in the first place. Also, Johnny's feelings for Whatsername are deeply connected to those that maintain Jimmy's hold over him, and neither is easy to escape or compartmentalize. Anyway, we'll continue to explore this strange love triangle in the next chapter or so. I consider these two parts to be analogous to the Saint Jimmy / She's A Rebel / Last of the American Girls sequence in the musical.

Once again, THANK YOU to sydsyd1134, invisible girl 12, Jodie-of-Suburbia, and NinjaWizardGleek15 for the reviews!

VIII.

Saint Jimmy brings him half-inch tablets of Vicodin, finely powdered Adderall to snort through cut-up plastic drinking straws, and sweetly sinister sugar cubes blotted with LSD to dissolve on his tongue.

"Lysergic acid diethlyamide," Jimmy muses as Johnny's world begins to expand in a kaleidoscope of colors, sounds, and sensations. "Did you know that the CIA used to secretly dose government employees, prostitutes, and their own staff?" He chuckles, and the sound prompts a veritable frenzy of delicious shapes and colors to explode across Johnny's retinas. "Seems like one of the few things the U.S. Government ever did right." Jimmy starts laughing in earnest, now, and Johnny can't help but join him, dissolving into a fit of giggles that's cut off abruptly when Jimmy suddenly straddles him, his hands coming up to cradle Johnny's face firmly.

"Your pupils are like black holes right now," Jimmy breathes, his face wavering fantastically in and out of the plane of Johnny's vision, his voice both faraway and so very close at the same time. "Are you ready to tumble headlong down the rabbit hole?"

Next come delicate little crystals of methamphetamine, heated and inhaled through fine glass tubes. He hesitates, again, the glass pipe suspended carefully between his teeth. "I don't know if I'm going to do this right," he calls out nervously, and Jimmy's there in an instant, steadying the glass firmly between two fingers for him and lifting the flame so that the crystals inside begin to melt and fume.

"Seal your lips around the mouth," Jimmy coos soothingly into his ear, "Yes, just like that – and now take a big, deep breath."

Johnny complies. His lungs manage to expand nearly halfway when acrid, searing fumes begin to enter them, and he starts to cough so violently that he has to wrench himself away, eyes watering and throat burning.

"Jesus. I guess I really should have bought you a stuffed animal." Jimmy grimaces, but slides the pipe and lighter across the table toward him all the same. "I hope you're ready, 'cause you gotta finish what we started."

"I don't know," Johnny protests weakly, "Maybe I shouldn't—"

"Hey—" Jimmy cuts him off so sharply and forcefully that he jumps a little. "You trust me, right?"

Johnny's teeth tug at his bottom lip for a moment. "Yes."

"Have I ever let you down?"

"No—"

"Then stop being a pussy and take another fucking hit."

It doesn't burn as much the second time around, thankfully. And when the high comes, he's not at all sorry that he did as he was told. A few days later, he no longer balks when Saint Jimmy slaps a baggie of cocaine onto the countertop in front of him, nor does he question it when Jimmy cuts the powder into two straight, even lines with a razor and tells him, "Bottoms up."

The best drug of them all, though, is her – and like all of the other drugs in his life, he supposes that he has Jimmy to thank for that, too. He ends up on her doorstep some nights, and she lays his head in her lap while he rambles off the rest of his high. He tells her things he's never told anyone – not even Tunny, or Will, or Jimmy, and sometimes she strokes his hair and nods to show that she's listening, or leans down to kiss him, hard, to shut him the hell up. He doesn't mind all that much; her lips on his skin send his endorphins skyrocketing, her touch thrills him more than any drug-induced rush ever could, and the sex is better than ecstasy.

Then he shoots up heroin for the first time.

Jimmy walks into the bathroom as he finishes brushing his teeth one morning and sets a small, black leather case on the edge of the sink.

"What," Johnny scoffs, "is that your makeup case? Need help applying your guyliner today?"

"It's for you," Jimmy sneers back, grinning. "And no, it's not a makeup case."

Johnny carries the case into the bedroom and spreads its contents carefully across the mattress. Inside, there's a rubber tourniquet, a small syringe, a lighter, a small baggie of off-white powder, and a spoon.

"That's my dead grandmother's spoon," Jimmy intones, sounding believably forlorn and running his fingers gently over the intricate scrollwork on the handle.

"Really?"

"No," Jimmy's face twists into a satisfied smirk. "I stole it from a hooker."

Jimmy winds the rubber tourniquet around his arm midway between shoulder and elbow once, twice, and then three times before telling him to make a fist. Johnny watches the veins in the crook of his arm bulge, even bluer against the paleness of his skin there, but has to turn away when he sees the glint of the needle in the corner of his eye. It hurts, but only for a few moments; the heroin is cut with acid to make sure it dissolves, after all, Jimmy tells him. Whatever pain he may have felt is forgotten immediately when the rush overcomes him like an incredible, wonderful heat surging through every last one of his nerve endings. Completely surrendered to it, he lets his body sag against Jimmy's, temporarily boneless as if he's forgotten how to move or do anything, and knows only how to feel.

"Do you like it?" Jimmy's voice finds its way to his happily humming eardrums.

To say that he 'likes' it would be a gross understatement. Jimmy hauls him to his feet and heaves them both in the direction of the kitchen, supporting his weight until he remembers how to walk again. "You're a prophet, a savior, a revelation," Johnny moans as he staggers into a kitchen chair. "You're a legend, you're a god, you're the best fucking thing that ever happened to me. You truly are a saint, Jimmy."

A quiet chuckle flutters through the air. "'Well, that's my name." Jimmy pauses, then bends over low to whisper into Johnny's ear, "and don't wear it out."

IX.

Johnny still doesn't know her name, and he's definitely passed the point of simply asking her. It's not for lack of trying, though. He surreptitiously skims her drawers for mail, documents, a diary, anything that would give away her name. The most he ever finds is a delicate silver charm bracelet with the letters "N" and "J," but in all honesty these could mean anything: her mother's initials, her beloved pet's names, hell, even the state in which she grew up.

There is one passage in her diary that he manages to read before she comes back from the bathroom. It's dated to ten months ago, and she writes about how tired she is of men treating her like just another "whatsername:" groping her and then not calling her, fucking her but then playing her. The diary entry is simultaneously ferocious and melancholy, and as little as he may know about her name, he feels like he's recognized a kindred soul in her. He has just enough time to find an entry that mentions him, from two months ago – she calls him "scrawny but adorable." It makes him smile before he has to scramble and shove the diary back into the bottom of her sock drawer.

She invites him to a show one night. It's at the grungy East Village venue down the block from the bar where she words as a waitress; she says that she wants to introduce him to her friends. His heart seizes with excitement and he feels suddenly nervous – like he's in high school again, trying to figure out how to ask his crush to the prom. With sweaty palms and a giddy heart he sits down at the kitchen table to write a frenzied postcard to Will:

May 5th:

My heart is like a bomb.

She knows I'm full of shit but she thinks I'm cute (or is it the opposite?).

She's taking me to a show tonight; the band will probably suck - but I'll be with her.

Is this just lust?

Or could it be the dawning—

But before he can finish, the postcard is snatched out from under his pen. When he looks up, Jimmy is standing over him, the postcard dangled teasingly between his index finger and thumb. "Are you seriously going tonight?"

"Yes," Johnny stands and grabs the postcard back. "I told her I would."

"You realize the band will suck, right?"

"I'm not there for the band," Johnny replies coyly, moving into the bedroom so that he can pick out an outfit and change.

"You already got into her pants," Jimmy yells after him, "What more could you want from her?"

Johnny doesn't tell him, but there's actually a lot that he wants from her. Or with her, or whatever. Later, as he's standing in the crowd at the show, she grabs his hand and smiles up at him so sweetly that he realizes with a jolt, holy shit, he loves her. The thought is absolutely terrifying: he's seen what love can do, and it isn't pretty. There's his mother, so riddled by grief over the loss of her beloved husband that she spent much of Johnny's childhood and early teens in a drunken stupor; and now there's Will, so affected by his love for Heather and their child that he remains a prisoner to that love on his living room couch, even now. Johnny's not sure if he can do love, and he's afraid to find out that he can't.

Saint Jimmy corners him when he get's back, as if sensing his distress. Like a field medic attending to the wounded on a battlefield, Jimmy knows to bring the black leather case that stocks its own kind of first aid. "You know," he growls as he tightens the tourniquet around Johnny's arm with his teeth, fingers occupied with the syringe, "fear is our most important instinct. It warns us of impending pain, doom, or destruction. It tells us when to stop."

A small flame jumps to life in the darkness of the apartment, and Johnny can smell the familiar odor of scorching metal and melting opiates. He ponders Jimmy's words for a moment, brow furrowed as he waits for the familiar sting of the needle. After the first tendrils of his high creep across his pacified nerves, he shrugs Jimmy off. "Whatever, I like her. Maybe she's worth that risk."

"Do you love her?"

"Maybe." He flops onto the unmade bed and grabs his guitar, strumming a few chords mindlessly. "Yes."

When Jimmy doesn't reply, Johnny takes the silence between them to be the end of the conversation. "I'm heading over to her place now. I guess I'll see you later." When he sits up, though, his vision wavers lazily and he groans. "I shouldn't taken that hit. She says she doesn't like it when I show up really fucked up – says I'm not myself."

His hand is already on the doorknob when Jimmy's voice reaches him, stifled and pained. "Can't you see? She's holding on your heart like a hand grenade." He takes a few steps toward Johnny, but stops just before he leaves the shadow of the darkened bedroom. "She's a rebel, Johnny, and she's dangerous."

Johnny doesn't reply, and slams the door behind him as he leaves. He's not quite sure what he's supposed to say, but he knows in his heart that Saint Jimmy is wrong.