Story 193: "Sore Luck at the Luxor" by Rivkat (Anubis)

[wendelah1]

This week's theme is Under the Covers Undercover. Yeah, I made that one up, but it does pretty much sum up this week's selection. Mulder and Scully are in Las Vegas, posing as a couple (duh!) to get dirt on some scumbag mafia type. This was originally posted under the moniker "Anubis," who it turns out was a small group of fanfiction writers who decided it would be fun to write stories individually and then post them under the same sock puppet. Yeah, I don't get it either, so there must be more to the story than what little I've gleaned.

Anyway, this story is funny and sexy, which is exactly what I'm in the mood for.

Summary: Not enough plot to summarize. I only wrote one story as Anubis. As for the rest, I'm not sayin'.

Organized Crime had jumped at the chance to have fresh faces doing the surveillance, and Mulder had jumped at the chance for a weekend in Las Vegas, and they met in the middle and smacked together and came down right on Scully.

Ever since she'd been lured to Vegas, Mulder had been itching to go together. Unfortunately, all the time she'd spent apart from the Gunmen was rather hazy in her mind and she hadn't resisted with as much vigor as she should have. Now that she considered it, Mrs. Franklin was a pretty pitiful excuse even for him. Mulder no doubt had some sort of dark and nefarious bet with the Gunmen involving what *he* could get her to do in Vegas.

Regardless of his true motive, he'd signed them up to do surveillance on Chip Morelli in a hotel in the ridiculous and superstitious shape of a giant pyramid. A black glass pyramid with neon coursing down the edges in case any alien spaceships needed landing lights. Mulder was in love with it.

I'm kind of in love with its ultra-tackiness, too.

You can read Anubis's other stories at their Gossamer page, and then try to guess who wrote the rest. Members, Watchers, Lurkers: feel free to come forward if you are one of the other authors!

Read Sore Luck at the Luxor at AO3. Leave feedback for the author, then let us know what you think. Suggestions are always welcome at the nomination post.

Comments

[flourish.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite fics!

[sothcweden.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite authors! Rivkat, that is. *off to read*

[infinitlight.livejournal.com]

Cute. I love Vegas (along with themed hotel rooms and neon lights. Tacky is not really in my vocabulary) and liked the feel of the story.

rivkat always writes lines that have me trying to decide if I love them unreservedly or hate them. His mouth taking hers "like Sherman marching through Georgia", for one. It's definitely vivid.

It's also very distinctive. I wonder how many people suspected who the author really was.

There are also lines that immediately strike me as perfect, like:

He had, reluctantly, come to the conclusion that Scully had simply decided not to know how he felt, the same way she'd decided not to know about colonization.

[estella-c.livejournal.com]

I had thought I would be the first commenter, and I had a great first line invented: "Well, might as well get the tumbrils rolling on this one..." The French Revolution, get it? Because I thought a lot of people might hate it. (Go ahead, explain some more.)

But if everyone's going to *like* it, just as well I was late.

I of course love SLATL, because it's gorgeously overwritten with hot and cold running metaphors (there is such a thing, and the only time it got in the way, a bit, was during sex) and it's unabashedly about LUST. There's hardly a scrap of unnecessary sentiment in the whole thing. And although I have no desire to visit Las Vegas I don't mind reading about it; it's such a manmade pile of excruciatingly persuasive bad taste (I hear). (Totally OT, but has anyone read Tim Powers' Last Call? Now there was a VEGAS.)

I'm sure we'll get into analysis and stuff, but I'd like to mention that Penumbra's Contact High popped into my brain, which is amusing because the two pieces are very different. So I think I'll compare and contrast. For fun. We're still in fun mode, right?

They're roughly of a size. I'm guessing. (Research, are you crazy?) They are both "first times." But while in SLATL it's Mulder who craftily, hopefully plans for unbridled sex, in CH it's a far less crafty and more hesitant Scully who knocks on her partner's door. (She is reading his sex fantasies as a result of their Field Trip mindmeld, and feels confident of welcome. Surely you've read it!) When Mulder attempts to bring her down to earth, she dissolves into humiliation. Of course they end up in bed, talking and fucking, soul to soul.

This doesn't happen in SLATL. Though Mulder technically initiates, it's an exasperated,undercover,overdressed and sweaty Scully who suddenly decides--watching her partner throw successful dice in a tux--that she might as well take advantage of the situation and claim the sexual satisfaction from his well-maintained body that years of professional loyalty have earned her. And she does, inviting him to partake in wonderfully philosophical language that he "thinks" he understands. She has a couple of second thoughts along the way, but Mulder brings the ecstasy. It kind of surprises her, and though the morning after she suppresses his bursting desire to brag, she is definitely keeping options open.

Why am I comparing these two. Dunno, exactly. They are both wonderfully written. One is sweet, and one is on the verge of acid. They have very different Scullys and Mulders. There's a power transfer. Nonetheless, everyone gets off and is happy.

What have we learned today? Nothing. Except I love both stories. Except, maybe, keep your options open.

[badforthefish.livejournal.com]

I'm late I'm late....Gaaahd, I feel like Alice's white Rabbit. Am only halfway through this story. Morpheus knocked me out with a baseball bat pretty much every day this week, so I haven't managed to give this story the attention it deserves.

So far the one thing that struck me is how...I'm trying to find a word more suitable than 'bitchy', hmmm...sarcastic? Hard edged? Scully is in this fic, until I remember that the person who wrote it is responsible for one half of Iolokus. And it does bear some of the OTT-ness of good old Iol' - an abundance of vivid, intricate metaphors that teeter on the thin line between being spot on or so distracting they get in the way of the narrative flow.

This said, I sure loved this one: "Mulder was always focused, like a ray of sun through a magnifying glass. Whatever target he found would soon burst into flames."

This sums up Mulder's intensity so perfectly. -----> iz jealous.

[amyhit.livejournal.com]

I’m not really sure what to say about this fic. It just doesn’t do it for me and it never has. Which is peculiar, actually, because I like literally every other XF fic RivkaT has written.

I love the “under cover” trope, and all of the subsequent tropes that go with it, such as them pretending to be a couple, and them getting all dressed up, and them interacting in strange environments, and getting unprecedented opportunities for (getting forced into) showing each other aspects of themselves they don’t otherwise. But despite having all of these things, I just don’t like SLATL. I guess there are two main reasons why I don’t like it.

1. I think the sex scene is WAY too long. It’s a twenty-eight page fic, and the sex and foreplay take up ten pages. It’s a well written sex scene, but it’s too long, and frankly it’s too full of words for me to really feel anything but distracted or bored by. I’m so conscious, throughout, of RT writing about sex, that the actual sex doesn’t engage me. I’m not going to say it’s purple, because it isn’t. The mood and the focus are just entirely not to my liking.

2. The characterizations grate. This Mulder and Scully just…don’t seem to like each other very much. The way they look at each other, it’s like they only understand each other as “other”, as “the person in the room who is not me, who I must deal with”. It’s tactical and strategic. For me, this sort of thing works in RT’s other fics, because they’re all dark and serious and life-or-death, and the focus isn’t on romance or sex or love. But in a fic like SLATL, which is a fluffy (albeit witty) smut biscuit, I find it really unpleasant, to read Mulder and Scully thinking about each other this way.

Ultimately, I could more easily see RT having tweaked this fic into something dark and cynical that left a bitter taste in your mouth as Mulder and Scully depart from Vegas, than something fun and shippy, which I presume she was aiming for. As it is, I find SLATL is like a shiny red apple, which looks great, but the tastes if off.

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

Just wanted to pop in and say that I was one of the Anubis group, although I did not write any of the stories posted under that pseudonym on Gossamer. We had all gotten together in Vegas one weekend and just thought that it would be fun to write fics under one name and see whether anyone suspected or could identify any of us based on our other work.