I like Oz in general--I like stories about him dealing with the wolf, how it might affect him like Angelus affects Angel. I enjoy the really juicy idea that someone so laidback (deceptively so, really) hides something wild and uncontrollable. I wonder how it's changed him.
I also really want to write Oz/Seth Cohen slash. Seth Cohen is a Big Block o' Concrete. You can slash him with pretty much anything (and oh, in my head I so plan to). In this case, I have ideas about Oz being this fabulous junior professor for one of Seth's courses in undergrad--some weird backstory of Oz having come back, gotten in touch with Giles, who gently convinced him to go to college. I'm not sure if it's logistically possible, or if it's even smart. Because, okay. It was S4 when we last saw Oz, which was about 1999-2000. Seth was what, twelve then? So Oz is gone for a year, and comes back changed and ready for something new, though he doesn't know what. Taking the Gloss's presumption of season three-based friendship between Giles and Oz, Oz quietly requests guidance and Giles, being the upstanding bloke he is even in the face of a Hell Goddess, points him toward Northern California, namely Berkeley. It's in the same state, which is close enough, but far away so that Oz can really have his own existence.
Oz gets on well with San Francisco; it suits him, the oddness mixed in with normality, much like himself, and while he operates pretty much like he did in high school academically, the presentation of material he's actually interested in starts to twig his considerable mental faculties. This, see, is what he'd been searching for all along: a new him. Or rather, a reconciled him. This isn't Devon's Oz, or Willow's Oz, or the Wolf's Oz. This is his own Oz. And that quiets the parts of him that seem forever unsettled--of course they don't go away, because how is that interesting? but they certainly aren't as loud as they were in years past.
He graduates, and sort of glides on into Berkeley's grad program in, like, English or something. Probably literature, because my Oz? has a deep enjoyment of reading. Even though I know grad school doesn't operate that way (oh, if it did...) it will for the sake of the story. The faculty like him, push him to keep going, and Oz is really a homebound creature--he likes to stay in one place, so when the opportunity presents itself, he takes it. And takes an assistanceship.
So, what, that's four years to get him to first-year grad school. His credits probably wouldn't transfer--if he had any, 'cause I don't think he even completed a semestre at UCSD. That hits 2005, for his first year teaching. Right? If he left in 2000ish, came back 2001, went into school the fall of 2001, was there for four years? Yes. 2005.
Seth's currently a, what, sophomore? Junior? I'm guessing sophomore, because they usually start the one-hour teenager shows at that year. That puts him at 16, pretty much, in the 2003-2004 academic year, so he'll graduate high school 2006. He goes straight into undergrad at Berkeley (oh, if I write this, I'll be using Telegraph Avenue as crib notes) and takes English classes, because really, what else can you see Seth Cohen doing?
He takes one, like, Eastern-based Characters in Western Fiction, the only class Oz really got to structure himself because of Freshman Comp and two-hundred level basic courses for mouth breathers. This is the class he loves, and Seth takes it because he likes the sound of it. Oz is Daniel Osbourne, because what is he if not a new identity, or rather a different identity than what he was before? So, Seth chatters to Professor Osbourne, except Oz feels uncomfortable being called that 'cause he doesn't feel that old, so he says "Daniel," instead. Seth doesn't get the importance of it, because he's so excited about the readings that he babbles on forever until they really both have to leave.
They maintain a friendship throughout the semester, Seth coming to Daniel for advice on papers or suggestions for further reading, and Daniel is more than happy to oblidge. At the end of the semester, though, they both get the feeling that they're missing something big, and there's a tension there that wasn't there before. Daniel smiles with something akin to regret, and Seth can't reach out and touch like his fingers are itching to do. But they part ways, and Seth takes other classes, and it's not until the summer that they reconnect, when Daniel invites him to TA for him, help him work out parts of his diss.
They get into a routine, things get easy again, it's like that tension was never there. Time passes, research is done, there's a guest appearance by Giles, because dammit, it's Giles and who else would approve more of Oz becoming a learned fellow than him? And Seth overhears some wacky shit about Slayers and apocolypses and how well Dawn is faring in Rome, but he can't bring himself to ask when he sees a shadow cross Daniel's face at the mention of someone named Willow.
Giles leaves, a pile of huge, thick, old books in his wake, and Seth understands a little more why Daniel's thesis surrounds monstrous characters in old East Asian manuscripts. It's one late night when they're drinking cool mint tea on the very lovely porch on the exterior of the house Daniel leases with a never-present roommate that there's something in the moonlight that makes their lips just meet, and it's like it was always meant to be, even if it took a little while to get around to it.
words © SA. characters, show, and people not mine. no infringement is intended.