Ficlet - Deck the Walls (Faith & Oz)

[clawofcat]

Title: Deck the Walls

Author: ClawofCat

Timing: S3, shortly before “Amends”

Rating: G

Pairing: Faith & Oz

Words: 523

A/N: Written for rebcake, who asked for a Faith & Oz drabble. This ficlet is a mixture of what I originally wrote for your request in December and new material. Since I love canon tie-ins, references to events in “Lover’s Walk” and “Amends

Comments

[clawofcat]

I like writing Faith in any incarnation, but S3 Faith before she totally goes off the deep end is so refreshing. She desperately wants to impress people, fit in, be likeable, and that's an aspect of her personality (or maybe her disguise?) that gets discarded the more unstable she becomes.

Oz, pulled from his own head by someone with an even harder row to hoe.
Exactly. They're both a bit down and out by the time "Amends" rolls around. Faith's tried to kill Buffy after some seriou manipulation by Post. Oz has to deal with cheating Willow. Neither of them are particularly judgemental. Between his music and his unreadable (guarded?) demenor, I think Oz is the type of person that Faith would actually go out of her way to hang with. If they ever do cross paths post-NFA, I would love to see that conversation. They both did a lot of growing up by the end of the series.

Thanks for the great pairing suggestion. I'm glad I got a chance to go back and revisit it. My only question - did I get Oz right? Reading this over, I still don't feel 100% about his characterization/dialogue.

[rebcake]

Somebody asked me to do an Oz drabble, too, and it kicked my butt! That guy is soooo hard to write, and I decided that it's because he's way cooler than any of us could ever hope to be. I say that as a gal who played drums in punk(ish) bands, so I'm not without perspective here, I think. Understand, bass players are generally cooler than drummers, regardless, but you get my drift.

Anyway, I've got no criticism of your take on Oz. An argument could be made that Oz upset and Oz on a normal day are virtually indistinguishable (insert Calvin Coolidge joke here), so it's hard to know how to jump. If you're interested, check out my post-S4 breakup drabble:

http://community.livejournal.com/writercon100/51396.html