Disclaimers, etc. in chapter 1.

A/N: House told Wilson in "Who's Your Daddy" that he cared about making sure Crandall didn't get screwed over by his "daughter" because he (House) had kept Crandall from marrying someone by having an affair (of sorts) with her. Could be that House owed Crandall for another reason, which I now present to you. (I never realized until I was writing this chapter that Crandall is a sort of forerunner for Wilson – except that Wilson at age 40 is very different from Crandall at age 20 – those 20 years make a huge difference, no?)

Also, a quick note about all these drugs. As I understand it – and I don't really understand it, since I wasn't around in 1980 and this is all based on research – the average twenty-year-old in the late 70's had had the opportunity to experiment with a fair amount of drugs. Given House's rebellious and adventurous personality, it's a fair bet that he took many of those opportunities. But the drug landscape was also very different in the 60's and 70's when House was growing up. House was 10 in 1969, for instance, when LSD had only just been made illegal and the war on drugs hadn't yet been declared in the U.S. Smokers were becoming second-class citizens, but they weren't demonized like they are now. Alcohol wasn't considered the scourge of youth it is today. It was a different world. Americans didn't really get serious about drug abuse for any extended period of time until the mid-to-late 1980's (when all those kids who were 20 in 1980 became yuppies and started having kids of their own). In 1980, cocaine was the "it" drug (like ecstasy is now) and it was viewed by much of the population as less harmful than it's viewed as now. This is due in large part to crack's not having been invented at that point in drug history – or, if it had been, not having hit the U.S. yet (that happened in '83). Plus, House is in a band at this time: drug use was expected if not encouraged in most bands in 1980. Add in the extremely addictive cocaine high and you've got this chapter. Just to let you know where I'm coming from with these various drug experiences for young House...

Setting note: this takes place a few months after the Cocaine I scene. It's summer. House is 21 now. Still in New Orleans.

I love this city, man,
but this city's killing me

—Gomez, "Get Miles"

Cocaine II

Cold and shaking despite the stifling heat in the bathroom, House leaned against the dirty, graffiti-smeared wall of the stall. It was the only thing holding him up right now and he knew it. If he just had another hit, he could go out and play this gig and then he'd have some cash and he could stop this. Blood dripped on his pants' leg—the last pair he had, he'd sold the rest—and he dabbed his nose with his shirt tail. Couldn't sniff that stuff back inside of him.

Sticky Buns Carter banged a meaty fist against the stall door. "Show's starting, G-Man, c'mon."

"Can't do it," House said weakly. "Sick."

"Man, you're not sick," Sticky Buns retorted. "We all know. We ain't dumb. You better cut it out or you're gone. Now c'mon, can't play no show without no piano man."

"Can't do it," House murmured.

Sticky Buns smacked the door with his palm and cursed loudly. "This the last time I work with a goddamn coke fiend. Look, man, no gig, no bread, so you come on outta there and give us something."

House's heart was pounding hard and fast, flashing against his head like angry lights, and each second took several seconds to pass. He needed a hit so bad, and anyway how was he gonna play a show when he couldn't feel his fingers?

All this he wanted to yell at Sticky Buns, wanted to charge him and bust him up, take his money, surely someone would be dealing outside the show, but he couldn't even move. The blood trickling from his nose was the only thing that felt good. He couldn't get warm even with the close, hot air pressing in as more people arrived at the club.

He repeated what he'd been saying, that he was too sick to play, but no words came out of his mouth. Sticky Buns had been standing out there for hours. Why wouldn't he go away?

"Here."

Sticky Buns slid a half-drunk bottled beer under the stall door.

"Drink that quick. We got whisky and a joint backstage, make you feel better. Hurry your ass up in there."

He heard Sticky Buns muttering about coke addicts and the bathroom door slammed shut.

He didn't want a beer, dammit, he wanted a hit. He panted through his mouth, blood from his nose mixing with saliva and running down his neck and under his shirt. It wasn't warm enough to help, though. He was so cold. The cool metal of the stall wall against his head was torture, but he couldn't move right now. He needed a damn hit. Flashes of himself yelling at Sticky Buns and knocking him down with a hard right hook, or staring a bar fight with a well-aimed bottle so he could pick a few pockets while the audience cracked each other's skulls open filled his head, but he just couldn't move.

He felt something on his arm—damned cockroaches, bad enough that he had to sleep with them in the hotel-by-day brothel-by-night where the band was staying, now they were following him when he was awake.

He brushed it off.

It was still there.

He brushed it off again.

It wouldn't come off.

Suddenly it dove under his skin. He screamed and scratched frantically with numb fingers at his arm—it was in there, he felt it moving, wriggling and crawling and laying eggs—and suddenly it multiplied, all the eggs hatched, and a dozen cockroaches ran under his skin up and down his arm, itching and breeding—and now running up his arm—he clawed his neck with both hands, couldn't let them get to his brain, couldn't let them get—and then they were there and he felt them crawling behind his eyeballs and in and out of his ears and under his scalp. He twitched and clawed, scratching at every inch of skin he had, and in his frenzy, he fell off of the toilet and hit his head against the stall door, then lay on the ground in a puddle of warm beer and blood screaming and writhing because they were everywhere.

He screamed for hours. For days. The roaches hatched ten bugs for every one he killed, he couldn't keep up.

Later, when the gig was over, Crandall found him spread out on the floor taking up two stalls. Someone—no, several people—had kicked his legs out of the way to use the toilet in the open stall and had missed, hitting his pants and shoes instead. Crandall wrinkled his nose. Some of them had missed pretty badly.

Crandall pulled the stall door until it opened. House looked up at him with unseeing eyes.

"Hey, G-Man, Sticky Buns says you're out," Crandall said. He laughed. "Crazy bastard made me play your part. Me! Can't believe they still paid us and I didn't get my head knocked off by the crowd."

He nudged House's shoulder with a foot. House kept staring at him. Crandall squatted next to his head, noticing for the first time the dried blood on his face and shirt.

"You're pretty messed up, G-Man," he said matter-of-factly, just drunk enough that the gravity of the situation hadn't registered yet. "Come on. I'll take you back to the hotel. The guys won't be back for hours and they got paid, so they don't care. Sticky Buns is kinda mad though cause he's gotta replace you before the next gig."

Crandall moved until he was next to House's head and scooped House up by the shoulders, dragging him out of the stall.

"You lost a lotta weight since the last time I carried you out of bar," Crandall remarked.

Now that House was in the pallid yellow-green light of the bathroom, Crandall could see the scratches up and down his arms.

"Jesus, what'd you do?" he asked with slowly-dawning horror.

Most of the scratches lit up in the pale florescence because of little trails of blood marking each one. House's fingernails were sharp and jagged from the knife he used to cut them.

"You're pretty sick, G-Man," Crandall observed. "You should go home."

Crandall hefted House to his feet and leaned him against the wall. He let go and House's reflexes kicked in before he could slump to the ground.

Now Crandall noticed the blood on his jeans and shirt tail. "Jesus," he whispered.

House looked back at him with dull, sick eyes.

"I'm sorry, G-Man," Crandall said softly. "I didn't mean to get you into this."

"You didn't get me into anything," House croaked, his voice all but gone from screaming. "I make my own choices."

Crandall wasn't convinced. "Yeah, well…" he began.

He stopped himself as House started to sway.

"Just come on."

Crandall slipped an arm under House and pulled him forward.

Hours later, House sat on a curb outside a Greyhound bus station. Nearly asleep under the dirty, moth-ridden all-nite lights, he was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt and jeans on loan from Crandall, the jeans tied with a piece of rope because they were two sizes too big and tended to slip down when he walked, and wrapped in a stained blanket stolen from the hotel. The beignets and soda Crandall had forced on him from a stand outside the bar rumbled in his stomach. He hadn't been hungry then and he wasn't hungry now. He wanted a hit, but Crandall wouldn't let him near any money and he knew now that he was too weak and tired to take Crandall on.

"Hey. I talked to the driver," Crandall said, appearing from nowhere. "He's going all the way to D.C. himself. Your folks are still in North Carolina, right? Yeah. Anyway, he's got another guy who's gonna take over for him in Atlanta but he's gonna stay on. He says he's got a brother that had trouble with heroin. He understands you need to get home."

He squatted next to House.

"Now, look, I gave him some money and told him you can't get off anywhere until you get to D.C. Give me your parents' number and I'll call 'em when the sun's up."

House grumbled, but gave Crandall the number. He didn't want to go home, but he couldn't stay here. That left nowhere else to go.

"Hey," he said, making sure Crandall had his attention. "Don't scare her, okay? Just tell her where I'll be and when. Just tell her I'm visiting."

The concern on House's face didn't escape Crandall's notice.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay." Then he nudged House. "Come on," he said. "Bus is leaving in fifteen, they'll let you on already."

Crandall led him on to the bus, nodding at the driver, and settled him in a window seat near the back.

"There's the john," Crandall gestured toward the back of the bus, "and here's some milk and crackers."

Crandall produced a pint of milk and a box of saltines from a bag he had, putting them in the seat next to House.

"The driver'll get you some water if you ask and probably a sandwich too." He offered House a folded piece of paper. "Here's a map of the route. It's a long way but you'll be there tonight. This one's going express. Not a lot of stops."

The map ended up in the seat next to House, too. He was cold and uninterested.

"And here's some vitamins they were selling inside." Crandall offered him a sealed package labeled 'Vitamins from the Land for Today's Busy Man' with a smiling farmer waving from a tractor.

House, who'd been paying attention up to that point, turned his head away and looked out of the window.

"Look, G-Man," Crandall said, "I'm gonna call your parents tomorrow too and if they say you never got there, I'll tell your mom about the coke."

That got House's attention again. His eyes shifted tiredly over to Crandall. "You wouldn't."

"Man, you stay here and you're gonna die," Crandall said. "Just be cool until tonight and get back with your folks."

Crandall held out two quarters. "For phone calls," he said.

House took them and slipped them in his jeans' pocket with effort. He wanted Crandall to go away so he could go to sleep. When the jitters he'd experienced in the bathroom at the bar came back at the hotel, Crandall had swiped a few sleeping pills from someone's stash and offered him one. House had taken it gratefully. Now Crandall held out two more.

"Don't take them now," Crandall instructed as House pocketed the pills. "Long trip. Space 'em out."

House just looked at him, having no strength to do anything else.

"The driver's got some more money for you when you get there," Crandall said. "It's not a lot. Not enough for anything but some food, okay? In case your folks are late."

House looked away again.

"I'm serious, G-Man," Crandall said. "I'll call them tomorrow and if you're not there…"

"Okay, I get it," House grumbled.

Crandall straightened up. "All right. Look, take care of yourself, okay? Look me up when you get clean. Maybe Sticky won't be mad any more."

"Yeah."

House closed his eyes. Dimly he heard Crandall leaving. He was at the end of a long, hard crash. Sleep stretched out into a long tunnel and he followed it, never closing any part of the distance between himself and the tunnel's end. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either. He was used to everything being really, really good.

Later, someone nudged him and he woke up slowly.

"Hey, buddy."

House looked up. It was the driver.

"Your friend said to give you this."

House took the sandwich and bottled soda the driver offered him.

"We're in Atlanta," the driver said. "Get to D.C. pretty soon." The driver appraised him. "That's a good friend you got. I'd be mighty thankful to him if it were me."

House watched him move back up the aisle. Mechanically, he unwrapped the sandwich and ate it. He drank the soda in a few long gulps. He felt nothing about Crandall or being forced to sit on this half-crowded bus in the summer heat; he wasn't capable of feeling right now, except to feel in his bones how he needed a hit. He took another sleeping pill instead. At least it was something.

Once the bus was moving again, he closed his eyes, finally warm under the blanket with the southern heat all around.

He woke up somewhere in Virginia, and ate the crackers and drank some of the curdling milk. He slept again before he could reach for the last pill.

The driver nudged him at the D.C. terminal. Leaving the blanket behind without realizing it, he weaved through the aisle and down the steps, forgetting why he was in D.C. until he saw her.

"Mom," he said, a smile automatically forming on his face.

Blythe hugged him tightly. "Greg," she said into his shoulder. "I didn't think I'd see you again. When your friend called this morning, I—"

"It's okay," he interrupted, hugging her back. He was more awake now that he'd walked around a little and he sensed the tension in her body and voice. The consequences of the past few months were beginning to reach through to him now.

"I'm okay," he repeated.

But she'd already felt how thin he was and she'd seen his ashen face.

"You're sick, honey," she said, pulling back and brushing the long hair away from his forehead with a palm. "What happened?"

House hesitated. "I'm okay," he said. "Let's just go home."

She smiled sadly at him, dissatisfied with his answer but so happy to have him back where she could hold him and keep him safe that it didn't matter.

"Okay," she said and put an arm around him, leading him to the car.

When Crandall called the next morning, Blythe reported that her son was home but too ill to come to the phone. Then she thanked him profusely and they spoke for over an hour about what had happened.

Crandall told her how most of the musicians he'd met were addicted to something, that it was a trap waiting for everyone that no one should ever have to fall into, but that it happened all the time. He told her about some of the good times, too, and she even laughed a little.

He asked about how House was getting on. Blythe guardedly reported that she'd taken him to a local doctor who was going to run some blood tests to see if he'd done any permanent damage and who'd given him Valium to ease the transition. He also recommended a treatment program that had helped a lot of local vets who'd had drug trouble in Vietnam. She was optimistic about his recovery. She dropped in that his father was away for the week doing special consulting and training in California. Crandall noticed and sent up a quick thanks for that small mercy.

They hung up feeling relieved of a great burden of knowledge. Now they both knew the same things and knowing wasn't so lonely and difficult. House, who was such a loner by nature, wasn't alone any more either.

Blythe reflected that Dylan was a lovely young man as she crept down the hall toward the guest room. The soft, still sound of her son sleeping deeply and the gentle whir of a ceiling fan were the only sounds in the house. Silent in the doorway, she watched his chest rise and fall under a pajama top she'd given him two Christmases ago that now billowed around his empty frame. She stood there for such a long time that her legs ached when she finally moved away from him.