Detente by Maverick (PG-13)

[actizera.livejournal.com]

Fandom: OZ
Pairing: n/a
Author on LJ: maverick4oz
Author Website: Maverick's Cavern (although you'll find more of her stories at the Unit-B Archive)
Why this must be read:

Mav's own warnings/summary for this story should give you a good idea of why it must be read right off the bat:

"Lord help me, I've written a story about *the cellphone*. Otherwise known as Ryan and Nikolai play a game of cat and mouse. For the record, I know as much about cell phone cloning as [Tom Fontana] knows about aging drugs, so don't go looking for an airtight explanation here."

Hee. Think what you want about Fontana's various...er, *odd* plot devices, but the cell phone storyline provided us with some highly amusing O'Reily-Stanislovsky moments, and Mav has done a great job of capturing everything that was so entertaining about it in this little vignette, written for the Oz Lyric Wheel. As is always the case in Mav's stories, the dialogue is sharp and witty and the characterization is spot-on perfect (the story is written in a dual-POV format—first "Russia," then "America"). When you read this, it's like you can *hear* Ryan and Nikolai working each other, just like in the good old days. Plus, you get to learn a Russian phrase that translates literally as "The one who is chiming with his balls." *g*

Détente