"You have to keep your elbows in!" Angel barked with about as much patience as the average drill sergeant.

Wesley dropped out of his fighting stance and glared at him. "I am keeping my elbows in. So much so, in fact, that if I kept them in any more, they'd be knocking together. I may still have a lot to learn, but I'm fairly certain that having one's elbows knocking together is not conducive to a well-balanced stance." When Angel didn't respond, Wesley gave him a look that was both shrewd and indignant. "If you wanted to stay at your apartment and brood, we could have rescheduled."

"No, it's okay," said Angel grudgingly.

"Is there anything going on? I know you're worried about Faith, but it's been two weeks since she started her double agent role, and it seems to be going rather well so far."

"It's not Faith," said Angel. He had been discreetly keeping an eye on her, as he had promised Buffy he would, and she seemed to be handling her task very well. The mayor had even gotten her an apartment in the nicer part of town, though she didn't know that yet.

"What, then?"

Angel grimaced. "I'm having dinner with Buffy and her mother tonight."

Wesley snickered. "This is what has the former Scourge of Europe so wound up?"

"Hey, have you ever had to be formally introduced to your girlfriend's mom when there was already an uncomfortable past between you and she knew you were a centuries old vampire?" Angel snapped.

Wesley's smirk faded as Angel began to pace the length of the room in agitation. "Good Lord. That is a daunting prospect, isn't it?" Off the vampire's grave expression as he walked past him, he tried to think of something encouraging to say. "Well, surely this isn't the first time you've met one of the parents of a girl you were courting."

"Buffy's the only girl I've ever 'courted', Wes. When I was alive, there was hardly a tavern wench in Galway I hadn't had in and out of my bed, but no mother or father wanted their daughters coming anywhere near me—even if it would raise their status! Not that I was interested. I was happy with the tavern wenches." His tone was bitter and full of self-disgust. "After that, I may have been with Darla for a hundred and fifty years, but neither of us was ever faithful, and her presenting me to the Master wasn't exactly the same thing as meeting a parent. Then, once I got my soul, there was no one until Buffy."

"I see," said Wesley, who felt he should have realized as much already, given the amount of research he had done about Angel—not to mention that his own pen had filled in the blank spanning the entire twentieth century.

"What about you?" asked Angel, sounding a little hopeful beneath his brooding anxiety.

"What?" asked Wesley, distracted.

"Have you ever had a girlfriend introduce you to her parents?" Angel clarified, still pacing.

"Oh, er, well…not exactly," said Wesley. "The Watchers' Academy is split into two schools: one for boys and the other for girls. Ever since I graduated, I—well, no, overall, there hasn't been much dating." His thoughts turned, as they had so frequently done for the past fortnight, to Cordelia Chase, but he didn't bring her up, not wanting to sound even more pathetic than he already did. The trouble was that no matter how much he beat himself over the head with the fact that she was a student, he couldn't stop himself from thinking about her, and she wasn't making it any easier. But, on the other hand, he thought, Angel and Buffy were together, and she was still a student too—no, that argument wouldn't work. When Angel was alive, it was perfectly normal for a girl to be married when she was Buffy's age or even younger, and more often than not to a much older man, so his relationship with her probably didn't strike him as unusual at all—at least, not in that way. Wesley shook his head slightly to clear it.

"Buffy and I have been spending a lot of time together lately." Angel was talking more to himself than to Wesley now. "I don't know how much Joyce knows or suspects about that. What I told her last year when I had no soul didn't help. She probably hates me." He gave a humorless snort of laughter. "Of course she hates me! I took the innocence of her only child!"

"She's giving you this chance to change her mind, though, isn't she?" asked Wesley. "She could have simply forbidden Buffy from seeing you, but instead, she's cooking dinner for you. Personally, I think that's a rather good sign on its own."

"I hope you're right."

"Did Buffy tell you anything about her that could be helpful?"

Angel halted at the end of his invisible pacing track, thinking. "Not really, but I know she runs an art gallery in town." He resumed his pacing, but with a slightly more relaxed gait.

"Well, then, if things start to go poorly, go for common ground. You're an artist yourself, and you've been around through the times of most of the classic artists. I think it's safe to assume that it's the sort of thing that would tend to give you an edge."

[o]

Buffy spent the evening leading up to dinner hovering restlessly around her mother in the kitchen as she prepared lasagna and breadsticks. It was one of her favorite meals, but she was so nerve-wracked that the normally delicious smell was making her slightly queasy.

Finally, about half an hour after sunset and just when Joyce had finished setting the table with the special company plates, the doorbell rang. Buffy ran to answer it, but hadn't gone five steps when Joyce said firmly, "I'll get it, honey," and walked past her. It was then that Buffy realized that this was the first time Angel had been to her house since he returned, which meant that his invitation was still revoked from the previous year.

Buffy joined her mother in the entrance hall just as she was opening the door. "Good evening, Angel," said Joyce in a tone that was welcoming and forbidding in equal measure.

"Mrs. Summers," said Angel respectfully, before looking at Buffy and greeting her as well, his eyelids crinkling slightly in a barely visible affectionate smile. Buffy smiled back, though it was a tight, uncomfortable thing.

They all stood there for several increasingly awkward seconds before Joyce spoke again as if those seconds hadn't happened. "Well, the food's ready and the table's all set, so why don't you come in, and we'll get started." Buffy let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding in a sigh of relief as Angel nodded politely and crossed the threshold. Joyce closed the door behind him and led the way out of the entrance hall to the dining room, but the other two didn't immediately follow.

Momentarily free of Joyce Summers' scrutiny, Angel took the opportunity to look at Buffy properly for the first time since he'd arrived. She was wearing a knee-length periwinkle sundress with a pleated skirt, and her hair was pulled back in a partial ponytail. "You look beautiful," he said, his smile reaching the rest of his face now. Some of the nervousness drained from her features as her own smile became considerably more natural.

"You're not bad yourself," she said teasingly. Angel was dressed in a gray-blue button-up shirt and black slacks. As much as she loved his long black coat, she thought it had probably been a wise move on his part to dispense with it for this occasion. It would be crucial for him to appear as harmless and wholesome as possible, and that coat was a rather imposing article of clothing when worn by him.

Buffy slipped her left hand into his right and led him in the direction her mother had gone. Before they reached the dining room, he leaned closer and pressed a brief kiss to the side of her head. She responded by squeezing his hand, then let go and moved approximately two feet away from him and marched forward into the room, where Joyce was flitting around the table, checking unnecessarily that all of the cutlery was precisely in place.

Buffy took her usual seat at the end of the table and Joyce sat at the head, leaving Angel to sit on the side, which gave him the uncomfortable feeling that he was about to become the rope in a metaphorical game of tug-of-war.

Joyce served them all generous portions of steaming lasagna and passed the breadstick bowl around, and for a few minutes they ate in silence, with her watching them carefully. Though Angel put on a good show of enjoying the meal, all he could really taste was the ground beef in the lasagna, but even that was very faint, as any blood in it was completely cooked. The breadsticks he had no choice but to avoid—Joyce had forgotten to leave off the garlic powder.

"This is great, Mom," said Buffy, who seemed to have grown more comfortable now that her nervous butterflies were partially buried under two breadsticks and a large helping of lasagna. She shot Angel a pointed glance and cleared her throat.

"It's delicious," he agreed quickly in a warm, flattering voice. At the same time, unbidden into his mind came the memory of the time Darla had shoved an unconscious and bleeding Joyce into his arms—of how close he had come to giving in to temptation. He forced those thoughts away, hoping that they hadn't shown on his face.

"Thank you," said Joyce, who had clearly noticed nothing. "It's been one of Buffy's favorites since she was five."

They each ate a few more bites without speaking, until Joyce broke the silence, looking purposeful and calculating. "So, um, I guess you were never really Buffy's history tutor." Buffy coughed; a piece of her third breadstick had gone down the wrong tube at these words.

"No, not exactly," said Angel with an apologetic smile. "I mean, I have helped her with her history work now and then."

"Because you know so much of it first-hand," said Joyce.

"A lot of it, yeah," said Angel.

Buffy didn't like where this was going. Her mom was obviously trying to emphasize Angel's age. She also didn't like how the conversation was progressing as if she wasn't in the room, but she couldn't seem to find her voice to do anything about that.

"And what do you do, since you're probably not really a student either?"

"I spend most of my time scoping out the town for any upcoming demonic threats, and I go with Buffy on a lot of her patrols."

"She tells me that she feels safest when you're patrolling with her," said Joyce, nodding. "That you can protect her better than anyone else."

"I'd give my life for her, Mrs. Summers," said Angel, turning to look at Buffy as he said it.

Joyce watched Angel closely for a moment, scrutinizing him for the smallest hint of insincerity for which to attack him. But, to her surprise, she found that not only was there nothing insincere about him, but she had never seen such a tender, loving expression in her life as the one he was currently giving her daughter.

Moving her gaze to Buffy, she saw the same expression mirrored on her face. This was no teenage crush; this was the real thing, and it caught Joyce completely off-guard. It was the kind of love she had long since resigned herself that she would never have, but which she had always hoped her daughter would find. Never would she have dreamed, however, that she would find it with a vampire.

In spite of herself, Joyce felt her opinion of Angel begin to rise. Whatever may have happened in the past, it was clear from the look on his face alone that all he wanted was to make Buffy happy no matter the cost to himself, and she couldn't hold that against him.

Holy crap, this one was hard to write. And yet I didn't have to resort to Angel and Joyce discussing art. Perhaps another time. Anyway, in canon, Joyce never really had an opportunity like this, to just watch Buffy and Angel interact, and I think it could have made a great deal of difference to her opinion of him. Also, even less canon-lifting than the last chapter! Happy day!