Sunnydale, 1997: Life During Wartime
Sometimes it kind of feels like his life's become postwar Berlin, mapped out and divided among various powers. There are neutral areas, like the parking lot and hallways, where the trick lies in not looking at Giles in the first place. Like taking a test the entire time: Keep your eyes on your own paper. The library is completely off-limits, which pretty much sucks; before he got banned by Miss Petrie, Oz would spend afternoons in there, browsing and reading. Now he's banned for totally different reasons, and if he needs a book, he has to ask Giles and hope he remembers to bring it home.
Giles's apartment is neither neutral nor enemy territory. It's more a battlefield, or at least Oz thinks of it that way. Sometimes it's utopia, the best possible haven, but if the phone rings or there's a knock at the door, Giles goes tight and militaristic and Oz either leaves through the garden or retreats to the loft.
It's easy, and selfish, to think of all this like it's all designed to complicate *Oz's* life, and he hates himself for that. Because it's not about Oz at all, and it's not even about Giles. It's about monsters and the battle against evil and that beautiful blonde girl. If Oz fucks up, Giles goes to jail. If Giles fucks up, he dies. They're not even on the same scale. Incomparable.
Oz has a stake in his pocket now wherever he goes, and he knows to go for the unbeating heart. But he's not a warrior, not like Giles and not like the other kids who hang around him. He's a civilian, making his way through a besieged city, and sometimes it's quiet. Those times, he gets to see his friend Giles and help him pretend there's not a war on.
So it's the end of another schoolday. Weird thing about not being able to see Giles at school is that Oz is spending more time around school. Even going to classes. He's waiting in the parking lot, sitting in the back of the van, listening to the Talking Heads and swinging his legs. To anyone's eyes, he hopes he looks like a regular slacker, eating an apple, paging through Spin, enjoying the late-afternoon sun.
He parked five spaces from Giles's Citroen and figures Giles has to walk past if he's going home at a decent hour.
Lots of ifs in Oz's life these days.