"You mean…," began Buffy slowly, "he can—"
"Experience perfect happiness without losing his soul?" said Wesley. "Yes."
Her eyes grew very round as his meaning fully sank in. The next second, she had released Angel's hand and launched herself at him in an almost bone-breaking tackle-hug that sent him staggering backward. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she said.
While Wesley tried to figure out how to react to this in a dignified fashion, Angel was still reeling from the impact of what he had said. He had spent a good portion of his recent waking hours brooding about the fact that it would be incredibly dangerous to continue doing what he was doing with Buffy. As considerable as it was after a century of resisting his demon, his self-control was not infinite. It was impossible not to be happy in Buffy's presence. She was his sunlight. She made the whole world fall away until it was just the two of them, and his past didn't matter. The threat of releasing Angelus was like an axe hanging over their heads every second they were together.
But not anymore. Thanks to Wesley, Angel's greatest fear had been banished. He no longer had to live every moment in terror that he would reach that forbidden joy without realizing it and unleash the monster within himself on an innocent and unsuspecting populous. He was free. "H-how can I ever repay you?" he asked, his throat tight with emotion.
"Preferably in a different manner than Miss Summers," Wesley gasped.
"Oh, oops! Sorry!" said Buffy, hastily releasing him from the hug.
"Ow," he wheezed, rubbing his ribs ruefully. His expression held an interesting combination of pain, bewilderment, and smugness. Neither Buffy nor Angel noticed this, because as soon as Buffy had finished reassuring herself that she hadn't done him any serious harm, she turned around and pulled Angel to her for a kiss. Smugness quickly came to dominate Wesley's features as he looked upon what he had wrought, though embarrassment and impatience soon replaced it when their embrace grew more and more heated rather than ending.
He cleared his throat, but, whether truly oblivious to their surroundings or merely pretending to be, they only held each other more tightly. "Yes, I'm sure celebration is in order, but can it please wait until after we've dealt with this Eliminati business?" he asked loudly. They broke apart and looked at him, Buffy blushing slightly.
"Sorry, Wes," said Angel, though the sincerity of his apology was slightly ruined by the fact that he was unable to suppress his grin. With a great effort, he forced himself to become serious. "Where's the amulet?"
"It's somewhere safe," said Wesley confidently.
Buffy glanced at the slight bulge in the right side of his jacket skeptically. "That doesn't qualify as safe."
"How did you know?" he asked, surprised.
"It pooches your jacket," she said.
"Walking around with that thing is like wearing a target," said Angel. He held out his hand and Wesley grudgingly passed him the amulet.
"Don't worry," said Buffy. "He'll put it somewhere safe that's actually safe."
"Yeah," he said, "I'll do it now."
"And I'll do some recon on Balthazar."
"If I may, Balthazar is dead," said Wesley. "Am I the only one who remembers that?"
"You might want to recheck your sources," said Angel. "Mine have told me that he's alive and well. Or, alive, anyway. Not so sure about well, which is why we can't let him get his hands on this." He held up the amulet before tucking it into his own jacket.
"Are you sure?" asked Wesley, alarmed. Angel nodded. "Good Lord!" He turned to Buffy. "You can't be thinking of hunting him down alone, can you?"
"Wasn't planning on it," said Buffy, gesturing towards Faith, who was still on the dance floor. Angel bent down to kiss her goodbye, inclined his head at Wesley, and departed.
"Ah, yes, very good," said Wesley. "You'll let me know if you find anything?"
"Yep," she said. She turned to go pull Faith from the crowd, but stopped and put a hand on Wesley's arm. "Thanks again. Really." She gave him another hug, and, to his great relief, was careful to do so much more gently this time.
"You're welcome," he said.
[o]
Buffy and Faith managed to locate the warehouse Angel had mentioned without too much difficulty. Through a grimy window, they could see quite a few vampires and one grotesquely obese demon—Balthazar, no doubt. Buffy shuddered to think what he'd be like if his strength was ever restored.
"Okay, we've got ten, maybe twelve bad guys and one big demon in desperate need of a Stairmaster," she assessed.
"I say we take 'em all," said Faith with a grin, her hands already balled into fists in anticipation of the battle, "hard and fast and now."
"We need a little more firepower than none," said Buffy repressively. "We should head back to the library."
"Well, I guess Jacuzzi Boy isn't going anywhere," said Faith reluctantly. She glanced around vaguely. "I just...wish we had...." She spotted a sporting goods shop across the street and pointed it out to Buffy. "Ah, that is too good." She began to stride purposefully towards it.
"Faith, what are you doing?" Buffy hissed.
"What's it look like I'm doing?" asked Faith. "Stocking up on firepower."
"You can't just break into a store! We can get weapons from the library. And backup, if Angel's done hiding the amulet. In fact, a carefully laid plan to be executed tomorrow night when we're less tired from slaying all day and can definitely have Angel and weapons we legally own would be even better."
"You're just gonna do this the Watcher's way? That loser doesn't know a thing about slaying," Faith scoffed. "He can't tell us what to do."
"Yeah, well, I owe him," said Buffy with blunt finality. Very grudgingly, Faith left the sporting goods shop alone and went with Buffy. They did a couple of sweeps of the nearest cemeteries before calling it a night.
[o]
The next morning, as she and her mom made waffles together, Buffy decided that it was as good a time as any to tell her about Angel. She took a deep breath. "Mom?"
"Yeah, honey?"
"There's something I've got to tell you that you're probably not going to like, and just…please don't get angry or interrupt, okay?"
"Oh, God, you're not pregnant, are you?" she asked, dropping the ladle full of waffle batter back into the bowl.
"What?!" said Buffy, mortified. "No!"
"Sorry. Number one mom fear," she said, wincing apologetically. She picked up the ladle again and poured the batter into the waffle iron. "What is it?"
"You remember Angel, right?" Buffy asked tentatively.
Joyce's face darkened and she closed the iron over the batter with a snap. "I wouldn't forget him in a hurry, even if he wasn't a vampire," she said. "Isn't he gone, though?" She now looked both hopeful and apprehensive.
Buffy's heart sank. This was exactly the reaction she had feared. "Okay, this is the part where you can't interrupt. He was gone for a few months, but he's back now." Joyce opened her mouth, looking alarmed and upset, but Buffy went on quickly and slightly louder than before. "But he's good! Willow restored his soul, and Wesley—my new Watcher—made sure he wouldn't be able to lose it again. He blames himself for everything that happened last spring even though he couldn't have done anything to stop it. He's only been back for a couple of weeks, but if he hadn't come back, I'd probably be dead and the world could have ended. He's one hundred percent fighting for the good guys now."
Joyce simply stared at her, at a complete loss for words.
"I think that batch is done," said Buffy eventually, when the light on the waffle iron went off. Joyce opened the iron to reveal four deliciously golden-brown waffles for which neither of them was sure they had the appetite anymore, eased them out onto a plate, poured more batter in, and closed it again.
"So, um, if he has his soul, does that mean you two are dating again?" she asked.
Buffy couldn't tell whether or not it was a good thing that the cheerfulness in her voice was obviously forced. Either she was trying to make the best of it, or she was attempting to mask the fact that she was angry beyond words. "Yes."
"Oh."
Another awkward silence, though not as long as the first. "I was hoping that you'd be okay if I invited him over for dinner? It doesn't have to be tonight. Whenever you want."
To Buffy's surprise, Joyce smiled and then began to laugh. It went on for so long that the next batch of waffles was done by the time she had recovered. "Oh, wow," she said slightly hysterically, "I must be the only mom who's ever been in this situation. My daughter goes out every night to fight demons and save the world, and now I get to cook dinner for her vampire boyfriend." She dabbed at her eyes with a corner of her apron. "Anything special you want me to make?"
"I'm sure he'll love anything," said Buffy, smiling. In reality, it wouldn't matter what she made, because Angel wouldn't really be able to taste it anyway, but she wasn't going to tell her that.
Joyce's misgivings made one more attempt to take control. "Honey, a-are you sure you can't just date someone from school? What about that nice boy, Scott?"
"Mom," said Buffy, breaking the word into several syllables and rolling her eyes. "Scott dumped me, remember? And I'd be putting his or any other nice boy from school's life in danger by letting him get that close to me. With Angel, I don't have to worry about that. He can fight just as well as I can, and he's even better help in a fight than Faith, since he doesn't have problems with his attention span being missing or scary, reckless overconfidence when we're way outnumbered—" She broke off her rambling to deliver the real point-scorer. "No other guy can protect me as well as Angel does. When he's around, I know I'm safe."
"I just don't want you to get hurt again."
"I know, Mom." They smiled at each other and hugged tightly. "I love you."
"I love you too, sweetie."
Buffy didn't know what it was, but she was sure she'd never had better-tasting waffles in her life.
Wesley finally gets his well-deserved hugs! Yay! Though he did get a bit of an overdose. Heh. Anyway, now that Wesley is officially one of Buffy's favorite people ever, she's obviously done rebelling against him. Hence not breaking into the sporting goods store with Faith as she did in canon. Also, as a result of not having broken into the sporting goods store, she isn't too anxious the next morning to reject her mom's suggestion of making waffles, which then provided the perfect opening for her to bring up the Angel subject. Alternate scenarios are fascinating. Oh, and I would just like to say (because I've forgotten to do so in the past five or six author's notes) that I usually hate it when Angel's curse gets de-loopholed, because to me that's just a cheap way for disgruntled Buffy/Angel shippers to get what they want. I'm more okay with it if it isn't done for the sole purpose of enabling him and Buffy to live happily ever after, if it's difficult to do, and (preferably) if it's done by the Kalderash themselves. Hence Wesley having to travel all the way to Romania where he had to argue with Gypsies to change the curse so that Angelus could never be free. He had no idea that he would be removing the biggest obstacle in Angel's relationship with Buffy; as far as he was concerned, he was sparing Angel from the fear of his demon and saving the world from the possibility Angelus returning again.