Wesley loaded Faith out of Gunn’s truck. The hospital was out of the question. Faith was still a wanted fugitive.
“She okay?” Gunn asked.
“I’m fine,” Faith groaned. “I’m going to be even better when I get my hands on that little shit.”
“That little shit is my son,” Angel said angrily.
“Tell it to a girl who’s not on a stretcher right now,” Faith answered.
“Angel, perhaps you could give Faith some room,” Wes offered.
“Where was he last?” Angel asked.
“Angel, it’s almost dawn,” Wesley protested.
“Where was he last?!”
**
Connor barely had time to pull on his boxers. He slid them on quickly and ran to a door. Throwing it open, he saw it was Kat’s closet. He came in through the window and didn’t know where the hallway was. He opened the door next to the closet and ran down the hall.
Connor kneeled on the bathroom floor and skidded to the toilet just before he started vomiting. Outside, Connor noticed the sun shined brightly. He groaned bitterly as he heaved again, internally complaining that he shouldn’t even be awake. Up all night. Sleep all day. That was his internal clock. Heave.
“Oh my god, Connor!” Kat said as she saw Connor kneeling before the toilet and puking. His hair, being longer than he was accustomed to, was dipping into the vomit-filled water. “What’s wrong?”
He glanced at her. She’d thrown on pajamas; cute pink bunny pajamas that her parents had doubtlessly bought her. “Nothing,” he vomited again. “Can you bring me my pants and coat?”
Kat ran to her room and came back with Connor’s pants and the leather duster. He grabbed them and searched the pockets furiously. He found a small container in the pants and dropped them. Connor opened the container and tried to dump out the contents on the floor, but it was empty. “Fuck!” he shouted, violently throwing the container. It bounced off the bathroom floor and into the tub.
“What is it? What do you need?”
“I just need something to get me going now that I’m up. Do you have any coke or anything?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Hang on.”
Connor turned and heaved again. He knew he really needed to get to his primary source of anxiety relief; heroin. But for something to get up and go in the morning, coke would probably do him okay.
“Here,” Kat said, holding out a can of Pepsi. She figured Coke or Pepsi were as good a source of caffeine as anything.
Connor angrily slapped the soda can form her hand. “What the fuck is this?” he yelled. The can smashed on the floor and exploded.
“I’m such an idiot,” Kat said, shaking her head and trying not to cry.
Connor ran his hands through his hair. “Look . . . I’m sorry,” he said, knowing that wasn’t nearly enough.
“Fuck you!” she yelled.
“Please, just let me go get right and I’ll make it up to you.”
“Get right?” Kat shot bitterly. “I can’t believe I let a junky . . . never mind.”
Connor looked down. He wasn’t quite sure what a junky was, but he knew two things. Being a junky was bad and he definitely was a junky. He reached for her, but she recoiled. He opened his mouth, as if insulted by the inference that he was dangerous. “I’d never hurt you.”
Kat shook her head. “You already did.”
Kat turned and stormed down the hall. Connor wanted to follow her, but knew he was in no condition to talk or reason or even think. Only one thing was on his mind. He needed a fix badly.
Connor put on his pants. His shirt, shoes, and socks were still in Kat’s room, but he knew better than to go and ask. He threw on the coat, then headed out the front door and ran shirtless and in his bare feet across the lawn.
***
“Have you seen this kid in here?” Angel asked, showing the bartender a picture of Connor.
“No,” the man said.
“Let me rephrase that,” Angel said, holding up a hundred dollar bill with the picture. “Have you seen this kid in here?”
“No,” the man repeated.
“Let me rephrase that,” Angel said again. He laid the picture on the counter, then slammed the bartender’s head down on the bar where the picture laid. “Have you seen this kid in here?”
“I have a lot of customers. Some of them spend a lot of money. I don’t like to upset a lot of money.”
“He spends a lot of money? Where’s he get it?”
“Not my business.”
Angel twisted his arm, bordering on breaking it. “I didn’t ask you if it was your business. I asked you how he got it.”
“Vampires. He beats them, robs them, and kills them.”
Angel’s gloomy demeanor lightened slightly at the thought of his son beating up vampires. “What’s he buy?”
“From me?” the barman said. “Private rooms, champagne and food for his cronies. From other people at the club?” The barmen smiled. “That’s not my business.”
Angel shoved the bartender and hung his head. “Where’s he live?”
“Don’t know where he lives,” the barmen said, rubbing his neck. “He comes in here with a girl named Naomi. Maybe some of her clients can tell you where she hangs her hat.”
“Clients?” Angel asked, then shook his head. “Never mind. I get it.”
****
“Buffy,” Giles said, hugging the slayer. “How’s Dawn.”
“Looks like she’s out of the woods,” Buffy said with a smile. “Willow’s healing mojo did its job on Dawn even if it didn’t on Willow.”
“Emotional scars can be harder to heal.”
“I’m thinking we give her a big ol’ group hug when we’re done here,” Xander said.
“Agreed,” Giles grinned. “And me agreeing with Xander means a lot.”
“Here, here,” Xander said.
“So,” Buffy said. “Where do we go from here?”
Xander suppressed a laugh. “Sorry,” he said. “I just got this image of all of us singing.”
“Well, this hotel could be a good base of operations,” Giles said. “There’s certainly room enough.”
“There’s not room enough in California for me, Spike, and Angel,” Buffy said.
“Or me, Spike, and Angel,” Xander said. “I’m thinking we split up. Maybe have Angel look after some girls here. Spike handle some others somewhere else. And Buffy be in charge of some third place where neither Spike nor Angel will be present.”
“Gee,” Buffy said. “Thanks.”
“You misunderstand,” Xander said. “I wasn’t mocking you. I was mocking Spike and Angel. Which, I suppose could be construed as mocking your taste in men, but that was not my--” Giles raised his hand, but Xander quickly spat out, “Xander shut up! See, Giles? Way ahead of you.”
“Thank you,” Giles said.
“Speaking of Angel,” Buffy said. “He’s out there tracking down Connor the slayer-slayer. Maybe I should give him a hand while you guys figure this stuff out.”
“Without you?” Xander said. “How will that work?”
Buffy smiled. “You guys will come up with a plan. I’ll come back and disagree with your plan and we’ll use my plan which I will concoct while helping Angel find his son.” She looked at Giles. “Make sure to go tell Dawn where I went and go tell Spike . . . I don’t know. A lie.”
*****
“Wow. You’re up and so’s the sun. How often does that happen?”
Connor flopped in the booth across from Naomi and she slid him a menu. Connor pushed it away. “I’m not hungry.”
“What can I get ya, sweetie?” the waitress asked. She saw him slide the menu away and figured he knew what he wanted.
“I’m not hungry!” Connor snapped. The waitress grunted and walked away. “Naomi, I need something to get me going. I’m out of coke and I couldn’t find any at the apartment.”
“We’re out. But I have some Crystal Meth.”
“What’s that?”
“Speed. Better than coke.” She surreptitiously slipped Connor a bag of white powder.
“It looks like coke,” Connor said.
“You want a coke, sweetie?” the waitress called from the next table.
Connor was about to snap that he said he wasn’t hungry, but realized he needed more discretion. “Yeah,” he said grumpily. “Thanks.”
“How do I take it?” Connor whispered.
“Snort it.”
Connor rolled his eyes and walked to the bathroom. He wanted to snort it at the sink, but there was another guy in the bathroom. Connor stepped into a stall and kneeled. He spread a bit of the powder on the seat of a backed up toilet. He set his nose to it and snorted quickly.
Connor leaned back and waited for the Meth to kick in.
“Hey!” Connor said loudly and excitedly. He sat across from Naomi and grabbed the menu. “Is it too early for a cheeseburger?” He called across the diner to the waitress.
“No. You want one?”
“Yeah,” Connor called. He glanced at the menu again. “What about ribs? Can I have some ribs?”
The waitress frowned at Connor. “Which do you want?”
“Both,” Connor said in his best ‘duh’ tone. He smiled at Naomi. “So what’re we doing tonight?”
“First things first,” Naomi grinned. “What did you do last night?”
“Kat,” Connor laughed. He put his head down and kept laughing. “Kat,” he repeated. Suddenly, he fell quiet. “I have to go see her. I was kind of shitty this morning.”
“You can’t help it,” Naomi said. “You’re a guy.”
“She goes to school at a place called . . .” Connor searched his mind, remembering the blazer in Kat’s closet. “Immaculate Heart High School.”
“Nice. Upscale Catholic girl’s school. You nailed yourself-”
“I like her,” Connor said, taking his cheeseburger when it came. “I need to find her.”
******
Angel stepped into the apartment. “They’re squatting.”
“Come again?” Buffy asked, glancing around as she stepped into the room behind him.
“They’re squatting here. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to enter without an invite.”
“Maybe they invited you when you weren’t around,” Buffy said sarcastically. “Would that work? Or, like, if they did it over the phone. Would that work?”
“Thanks for coming, Buffy,” Angel said.
“Dawn’s gotten pretty well. Well enough to want me out of her room, anyway. Figured I’d help. So can we just find this kid before he puts another one of my slayers in the hospital?”
“She’s not in a hospital. She’s in a room at the Hyperion.”
“She should be in a hospital. So let’s find him quick-like, okay?”
Angel looked around. The place was filled with drug paraphernalia. It’d been recently ransacked. “Great. He already has a favorite flavor.”
“Come again?”
“Connor’s . . . Connor’s using drugs,” Angel said, feeling ashamed. Buffy’s face fell and he could see sympathy in her eyes. “Apparently he’s already distinguishing between what he likes and what he doesn’t.” He waved his hand, indicating the torn up room.
“I don’t follow.”
“He tore the room up. Passing over all these drugs. He wanted something in particular. I can smell him in here.”
Buffy put a hand on Angel’s shoulder. “We’ll find him, Angel.”
“I don’t need to just find him, Buffy. I need to find him soon.”
Angel looked around the floor. There were ads and flyers from all manner of clubs, take out menus from a hundred fast food places. Nothing that could tell Angel where Connor was.
“Maybe we should stake the place out,” Buffy said.
Angel nodded. “Good idea.”
*******
“Check out the gutter trash!” a boy said laughing. “How about a hair cut and a bath, you freak.”
Connor was wearing his leather duster and sunglasses over jeans and a t-shirt. He had on a new pair of sneakers, probably stolen.
Kat hid her face. “Come on Mark, just keep walking.”
“What’s wrong, Kate.” Another student, Jeff, asked. “Freaky guy creep you out?”
“Can I talk to you?” Connor said, ignoring the comments and looking at Kat.
“You know him, Katie,” Kat’s friend Melissa asked.
“Yeah, I’m . . . I’m tutoring him.” She pulled away from Mark and walked to Connor. “What do you want to do? Set up another tutoring date? I mean day?”
Connor took a few steps away with her and took his sun glasses off. “Kate?” he asked. “Katie?”
“That’s what my friends call me. Last night I . . . I wanted to be someone different. I wanted to be sexy.”
“You were,” Connor said, touching her chin.
“Hey, get your hands off her, freak!” Mark yelled stepping forward.
Connor looked at the boy in his Catholic boy’s uniform and grinned slightly. “You go to school with her at the girl’s school? Where’s your dress?”
Mark moved to punch Connor but Kate stepped in the way. “Cut it out, Mark. Can you just give me a few minutes? Please?”
“Who’s the guy?” Connor asked.
“My boyfriend,” Kate said, smiling slightly at the look of pain in Connor’s eyes.
“If he’s your boyfriend, what were we doing last night?”
Kate looked down and frowned. “He cheats on me. I was sick of being the good girl all the time. I wanted to get back at him. And . . . and . . .”
“What?”
Kate used to laugh whenever her friend Susan said this, but she knew what Susan meant now. She looked Connor in the eyes. “Only a bad ass can make a girl’s heart beat faster.”
“So I’m a bad ass?”
Kate pulled away. “Get over yourself.”
Connor grabbed her arm. “Wait, please.”
“I said don’t touch her,” Mark shouted. “What the hell is it between you two?”
Connor glared at him. “I think she needs a better boyfriend who doesn’t cheat on her.”
“Fuck you!” Mark yelled.
“Kate, come with me,” Connor said. “Be with me. You have no idea how free we are. No bed times. We just party all the time. All the food you can eat. All the champagne you can drink. All the drugs you can take. Remember how you felt last night? I can make you feel like that all the time.”
“Cut it out, Connor. Look at yourself. Look at yourself! You’re pale. You’re hair is stringy. You have bags under your eyes like my grandmother and you have this glazed look all the time. Last night was fine for last night. But I’m not living my life like that. I have a future, Connor. And I’m not giving that up so I can be a goddamn junky.”
Kate turned back and looked at Mark. “As for you, asshole, I’m sick of you and your shit, too. Go fuck all the cheerleaders you want. I’m through with both of you.”
********
“She doesn’t know what she’s missing,” Naomi said, handing the pipe to Connor. She sat on a beat up couch. Connor’s head laid in her lap. It was only about four p.m., but they were in a basement with no windows. Exposed pipes hissed above them.
“What is this stuff?” he asked, lighting his lighter and sucking on the pipe.
“Something to take away the pain of what that bitch did to you.”
“If she doesn’t know what she’s missing, how come you don’t want to know what she’s missing?”
Naomi stroked Connor’s hair and smiled at him. “You want to fuck me, Connor? You do, don’t you? You want to fuck me.”
Connor giggled and took another hit from the crack pipe. He leaned up and kissed Naomi. “I want to have Kate back. I . . . like her a lot. But I just want to know why you don’t want to fuck me.”
Naomi slid off the couch and knelt face to face with Connor. “I do. I wish I could give you something special, Connor. But the things that are special, so many men have taken it from me or bought it from me that it’s not special anymore. And I don’t have anything left to give you. That’s why I want you go out and get something special from other girls when you can.”
Connor giggled slightly as he took another hit. “I need . . . I need some . . . can you cook up some of the . . .fuck, fuck, fuck. I need to fix so fucking bad.” He squirmed. “The sun hurts my eyes so bad and I licked blood off a girl last night. I think, I think, I think I’m becoming a vampire like my dad.” Connor began to cry slightly. “I don’t want to be a vampire.”
“It’s okay,” Naomi said, easing the crack pipe from Connor’s hand. “Just close your eyes, baby.” She kissed his forehead. “Just sleep it off.”
*********
When Connor awoke, he could tell it was night. He was still in the basement with no windows, but something in the air let him know the sky outside was dark. He felt that familiar nausea he got upon waking. He knew he had to fix or he’d be puking in less then ten minutes.
Connor opened his kit and pulled a spoon out and lighter out. He dropped a little heroin in the spoon and started to cook it. A moment later, Connor plunged the needle in his arm and shot up. He leaned back on the couch and sighed with satisfaction.
A door opened behind him and Connor smiled. “Naomi?” he called. “I made enough for you.”
“Yeah, I met Naomi,” Angel said as he entered the basement. “Back at the apartment. Nice girl.”
Connor looked up with a look of boredom on his face. “Where is she?”
“With Buffy Summers. She’s taking Naomi to a methadone clinic.”
“What’s that?” Connor asked.
“Great. She’ll tell you how to get hooked on the junk, but not how to get off it. Connor, I want you to come home.”
“I’ve been home. More times than I like. Always ends the same way; me not being welcome. Me getting picked on. Me getting thrown out. Me on the street. Well, I’m on the street now, dad. Don’t be pissed at me because you don’t like how it turned out.”
Connor wiped his nose on his sleeve, leaving a long line of blood and mucus.
“Connor, it’ll be different this time.”
“You told me before I could come home. Remember? I was sneaking around Cordy’s room taking stuff back to my place for her. You said I could come through the front door. Two months later, I’m out on the street again. Didn’t even have the balls to tell me yourself, you piece of shit.”
Piece of shit was supposed to sound angry, but Connor was so mellow he couldn’t manage much of any emotion.
“This is how the Connor saga ends, dad,” Connor said. “Thrown out a hundred times until he stayed out. Now I’m just going to fucking party ‘til I OD in a bathroom like Sunny.”
Angel put his head in his hands. “Connor, we’ve all made mistakes. I know I have and I’m sorry, son. But it’s not too late. It’s not too late to set things right.”
“It is for me. That’s why I like this, you know. Part of me likes it cuz I can just forget about everything and be in the now. I can experience just . . . just happiness. But the other part of me likes when I come down. When all the pain comes rushing back and all I can do is hurt. Because I know I deserve it. It’ll happen in a couple hours. Maybe less than that. It gets shorter and shorter every time.”
Angel began to speak, but stopped. He was angry. He’d say something he regretted. It didn’t matter anyway. Convincing Connor he didn’t deserve this was impossible. It was all impossible. It was all for nothing.
Angel moved over on the couch and picked up Connor’s needle. He put the tip in the remaining Heroin solution Connor had made for Naomi.
“What’re you doing?” Connor asked in a slightly amused voice. He grinned as if watching his father load a needle was amusing.
“Do you remember what I told you in the Hellmouth?” Angel said as he pulled back on the plunger. “I told you I’d never let you go into that darkness alone, Connor. I’d pull you out or I’d come with you. But I’d never let you go there alone. That was the deal.”
Angel rolled his sleeve up and pulled the tourniquet from Connor’s arm. “If this is the hell you chosen, fine. If you won’t let me help you, fine.”
Angel tied the tourniquet tightly around his own arm. “I’m keeping my promise Connor. If you’re going into this hell, then I’m coming with you. I’m coming with you.”
Connor watched Angel nervously. There was no way Angel would really do this. Why would someone who’d thrown him out and pushed him away so many times be willing to do this?
It’s a trick Connor thought.
Angel slid the needle into his arm.
He’s bluffing.
The vampire put his finger to the plunger.
He just wants to scare me.
Angel pressed the plunger.
The plunger only moved in a centimeter before Connor slapped it out of Angel’s arm. “What are you doing?! You're supposed to be a champion. People need you!”
“People need you too, Connor! I need you! And if this is the only way to be with you, then this is what I’ll do. I’d do this and worse. But I will not leave you!”
Connor sat on the couch and ran his hand through his hair. He gripped it and pulled at it slightly. “So if I don’t stop . . .” He looked down at the ground. He leaned back and looked at the ceiling. “So . . . so where do we go from here?”
As Angel choked back his tears, he had to remind himself that this was all far from over. Heroin, cocaine, and god knows what else were coursing through his son’s veins. The path to recovery would be long and painful and Connor would likely wish himself dead many more times. These thoughts alone kept his soul from slipping away as he pulled Connor into his arms and whispered in the boy’s ear.
“We go home, son,” Angel said as he began to cry. “From here, we go home.”
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