xf_book_club | Story 215: "And Dance by the Light of the Moon" by Mustang Sally and Rivkat

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Story 215: "And Dance by the Light of the Moon" by Mustang Sally and Rivkat

It's still October 31 on my coast, so I feel fine about posting a Halloween story. In honor of our dynamic duo winning the Shipper Cage Match, I am posting some "Halloween (mind) Candy." No spoilers.

Sally says: Yeah, didn't think we could pull it off, didja? No deaths, no major traumas, just some harmless fluff—flirtin' and fuckin' as my granny used to say. Weird family, I'll admit. Speaking as one who has partied in a cemetery on more than one occasion, you can't beat it—they're quiet as the grave.

The link is to AO3, but you can also read this at either author's page at Gossamer if you prefer plain txt. If you do read at AO3, don't forget to hit the Kudos button on your way out. Even visitors can leave a kudo.

Read "And Dance by the Light of the Moon."

Happy Halloween!

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SQUEEEEEEE WE WON!!! And there are some really awesome .gifs in the celebration!post at hetrecs. I still think Mulder and Scully's kiss is hotter than most actual sex scenes on TV. *fans self*

It's still Halloween here too, but just BARELY. Meaning I *really* need to go to bed, but look forward to reading the fic in the morning!

I hope you enjoy it when you do. It's holiday fluff, nothing serious.

Yay, they had to win really! And aww, that picture! It just makes me think of being 8 years old & having my room plastered in posters from that photoshoot.

I would have been upset if we hadn't won this one.

I'm so happy they won; warms my shipper heart :)

And I thought this fic was a fun ride; interesting in the way the authors used various candy names and general Halloween vocabulary throughout, and I thought Mulder's attitude/response to the body was funny and in character. Only took issue with one sentence that I didn't think quite fit

But his petite passionflower had been in the refrigerator too long and there was no way that she was going to warm up enough to hold a rose in her teeth and flash her shapely legs around his.

....BUT...there were so many lines that were in character that it makes up for it. :)

Overall, nice treat for Halloween :)

Edited 2012-11-02 01:22 (UTC)

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

But his petite passionflower had been in the refrigerator too long and there was no way that she was going to warm up enough to hold a rose in her teeth and flash her shapely legs around his.

That line didn't work for me either. But I still enjoyed the story overall.

I actually liked that line; if I imagine Mulder saying it with a kind of heavy sarcasm it works for me.

I really love the way MustangSally and RivkaT write imagery, though, it kicks ass.

Taken in context, I can picture that, sure.

They capture perfectly the party atmosphere of a college campus at Halloween.

I love this little bit:

Wrapped in the president of the college's academic robe, Mr. Peabody sagged like a scarecrow against Mulder, who had the cadaver's arm over his shoulder and was carrying him like a drunk fraternity brother across the leafy expanse between the administration building and the science building. Scully walked ahead with her flashlight picking out fallen branches and beer bottles hidden in the leaves. Mulder ground his teeth and noted that she was managing to distance herself from the dirty part of the job as much as possible. The funk from Mr. Peabody's microbes meant that he would spend All Saint's Day explaining to his favorite dry cleaner why his coat smelled of corpse.

"Good party, dude!" a passing student encouraged Mulder and Mr. Peabody.

I love that part! And:

"He isn't very heavy. I think you could just carry him across campus."

"He's not wearing any pants." Mulder pointed out. "I am not carrying a dead guy without pants. People will talk."

Which is not descriptive but just a line I especially liked. Sometimes I forget to pause before changing topics.

I liked it too.

hmm, I didn't imagine him saying it with sarcasm in my head, but now that you mention it, it makes a lot more sense to read it that way.

And I'm also happy they won. It warmed my noromo (but still intensely devoted to Mulder and Scully and The X-Files) heart to see all of the old Philes turn out to vote. There were a few Avengers-loving turncoats but most stayed true to their fannish roots.

I think it's funny that I now have an icon named "shipper" to match my "noromo" icon.

Edited 2012-11-05 16:45 (UTC)

It's a little funny, but I think it makes sense. Even though you are a noromo, you still respect the fact that there are shippers and why shippers feel the way they do. The whole "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I'll defend, to the death, your right to say it." :)

This story was really fun. I love Halloween stories, probably because they never did a Halloween episode.
What didn't work for me were all the similes. A few similes in smut are necessary, but too many and I have to think too much about what is going on.
Not that I had to think too much here. Stories like these have become an indulgence. So ridiculously fun.

I probably stopped reading and starting skimming as soon as I got to the sex scene. I skip 'em for the most part. LOL.

I like the idea of sex in a graveyard on Halloween night more than I would like the reality of it, I suspect.

Okay, I'll go read it. Back in a bit.

The first time I worked up the nerve to read sex, I was hiding in my laundry room hoping my husband wouldn't walk in.

Hopefully he'll never find out what I have been reading on my laptop...

I hope you're kidding. It's none of his business what you read on your lap top, but if he did find out, he'd probably find it a turn-on that you enjoy written pornography.

Having read the aforementioned sex scene, I agree there are many, many metaphors, but this didn't bother me.

He looked at her, and knew why so many words for attraction were violent. She was striking, stunning, ravishing; she seized every sense and sliced it to bleeding red ribbons.

That works for me in part because she's a pathologist who does slice bodies up for a living.

He dropped to his knees, heedless of the damage, and buried his face between her breasts. Scully was the one who liked chocolate; he desired the variety of the whole candy store. She was hot cinnamon jots, her nipples rough red gumdrops he sucked and sucked and could not capture all her sweetness. She was laughing beneath him, probably because he'd lost all finesse, but laughter ceased when he thrust two fingers into her. He wondered if he could get away with a Twizzlers joke as the heat of her body blasted away the fall chill.

No, Mulder. I do not think even adorable you could get away with that. But I think it's funny to hear him think about it.

They just take the Halloween candy motif and run away with it, don't they? I'm the last person to know if any of it's sexy but the line about the Twizzlers made me laugh. It's all way over the top, but the writers seem to know that. Anyway, as we have previously established, what's sexy to one reader isn't necessarily to another.

It's so cleverly done. Even Mulder's earlier "Que sera, sera," is from a Hitchcock thriller. Then there's the shout-out to Phoebe and Fire, and the subtle Scully correction to the line about the tombstone and her evident satisfaction (in every sense of the word) at being one up on Phoebe, by getting to be Mulder's first graveyard fuck.

I could just go on and on. The bottom line for me is that this is a story that only Mustang Sally and Rivkat could have written. In a lesser writer's hands, this would not have worked half so well.

I didn't mean for it to sound like he infringes on my privacy, but he is curious and I really don't want him to find out. I'm don't worry too much about it, however if he figured it out he would tease me forever lol. He knows how much I love the show...

He looked at her, and knew why so many words for attraction were violent. She was striking, stunning, ravishing; she seized every sense and sliced it to bleeding red ribbons.

That was a great line, but like you I was lost when they started with the candy analogies.

And you'd lose the forbidden thrill aspect of reading porn if he found out...

It's always good to keep a little bit of the naughty as relates to sex, isn't it?

I thought the candy analogies were absurd but still funny. The more we discuss it, the less sexy it gets, I suspect.

Did you read the PWP "The Airport" by Jess M? Even I thought that was hot, but I think it's because it hit my kink button for exhibitionism. I say "even I" but not all of our readers liked that fic.

That was one of my favorites. I find Jess M's Mulder PWP silly but somehow it always works for me. Talk about blushing and reading, I think I even giggled aloud the first time I read it.

Me, too. I think it's one of the funniest stories in the fandom. And sexy.

Oh, I missed this! I celebrated Halloween by breaking my ankle. You guys are probably getting tired of my medical history. No sex in it.

This is, of course, a Grand Old Favorite, with all the Grand Old Objections to the crazy similesandmetaphorsandsuch. These writers did not take themselves seriously, and it helps if you don't take them seriously either. Fun! Pumpkins! Mouldering bodies! Sex on tombstones!! It's really a wish-fulfillment spree, complete with reference to the toe-tag picture. Is there any other toe-tag fic?

Don't misunderstand, I think this duo was awesome and I believe they gave us one of the very top fics in our history, which begins with an I . (I'm also, unlike many, very happy with Tikkun Olam.) But they did not consider themselves above fun for fun's sake, and I think that the most strained and bizarre of their images are simply, well, joshing with the reader. That line? About the passionflower with the rose in her teeth? Didn't work. Too mixedmetaphorish.

Jess M is a favorite too. I think I prefer her "Butt, Montana" duo, especially the first. And no one ever mentions Hog Heaven! The only thing I have against The Airport is that I don't have an exhibitionist kink.

Jess M is great.

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Story 215: "And Dance by the Light of the Moon" by Mustang Sally and Rivkat

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We won!

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Heavy sarcasm?

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Fun is good, right?

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