LUNA PARK
by DBKate, 2004
[email protected]
*****
Chapter One
*****
"Jasmine, are you done brushing your teeth?"
The Marlboro Projects in Coney Island were quiet in the early fall. Kids were starting school, walking happily beneath the newly turned leaves, jean jackets at the ready for the unpredictable October weather. The beach wasn't officially closed but most of the stands were shuttering for the winter, the few holdouts hanging onto the last warm breezes of summer for another few weeks.
"Come on, honey. You know you got school tomorrow."
Then would come winter. A no-man's land would materialize overnight, snow sifting through the gray sand, the dark ocean frozen and forbidding. There were few places on earth as bleak as Coney in the winter, usually no one to be seen for miles except a brave bike rider or two thumping down the boardwalk past a lonely cop blowing into his gloved hands.
"Jasmine! It's time for bed."
Coney Island wasn't the seaside paradise it should have been with enough ocean-view property to make it the envy of New York City, maybe even the entire East Coast. It was a tattered old lady, wrapped in blowing plastic bags and dirty sand but to the people who lived there, like Juanita Jorges, it was still home.
A home she would like to leave sooner rather than later. The projects were faceless and dangerous, not the place to raise a child, but until she could get that promotion, they were there to stay.
"All right, Jasmine," said Juanita, exasperated. She took a deep breath and counted to ten before rattling the bathroom doorknob. "I told you three times to get into bed and this is the last time before I take the T.V. away. One ... two ... " Not willing to wait any longer she opened the door.
To see her little girl standing tiptoe on the toilet, peering out the tiny bathroom window at something bright nearby.
"Honey, what are you doing?"
Jasmine turned around with wonder in her eyes. "Mama, come and look ..." the little girl breathed, before pressing her nose once again to the glass.
Juanita squeezed in beside her daughter. Squinted over nearby Neptune Avenue, wondering why the sky was lit so brilliantly. She blinked as the lights came into clearer focus.
"Madre Dios!" she screamed, snatching Jasmine into her arms and running for the door. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!"
Stumbling and shrieking, Juanita Jorges ran into the hallway, away from the lights as fast as she could.
****
Steeplechase Pier
1:00 p.m
****
Dana Scully grimaced at the sensation of sweat trickling down the back of her neck as she walked down the Coney Island boardwalk. The air was cool but the sun boiling hot and she couldn't decide if she should take off her trench coat or just deal with the mixed weather as is.
A large black sand fly buzzed past her nose and for some reason, this made up her mind for her. "There's a very odd smell around here," she said, slipping off the trench and slinging it over her arm. "What is it?"
Mulder sniffed the air. "Candy apples? Hot dogs? Garbage? All of the above?" He reached out and squeezed her fingers lightly. "Keep looking at the sea. It'll take the smell off your mind."
Scully tried not to wince at his affectionate gesture. They'd made a pact five months ago, at the beginning of their love affair not to bring the relationship to work with them but Mulder seemed to keep forgetting about that, leaving Scully in the uncomfortable position of playing bad cop to his horny one.
It was too distracting, she kept arguing. Maybe even dangerous. Work was work, play was play but she couldn't help a sigh when he wrapped his arms around her from behind as they stopped in front of the "Shoot The Freak" live-action paintball game.
"Aw, look Scully. If I'd known we could make money from shooting freaks ..."
"That's a terrible thing to say, Mulder." She examined the game with a critical eye, watching as a helmet-wearing "freak" ran from his paintball tormentors. "That man's going to get hurt. He has nowhere near enough body armor on to ..."
She was silenced by a long kiss. So much for keeping work sacrosanct, she thought hazily, responding eagerly to Mulder's possessive embrace.
When it broke, she put a hand on his chest and gently pushed him away. "Okay, we made a little promise, remember?"
Mulder put a hand over his heart. He looked wounded. "I'd never forget our Promise of the Sacred Abstinence. I have the saint card for it around here somewhere." He felt his pockets before chuckling at Scully's annoyed look. "Okay, okay. No more PDA's while FBI'ing. Is that A-OK?"
"STFU," Scully replied. She laughed at his confused expression. "Never mind. Now as 'interesting' as this place is, why are we here, Mulder? You have this habit of bringing me to the airport and falling asleep on the plane just as I'm about to be briefed. If I didn't know any better, I'd say you were doing it on purpose."
"All the better to seduce your brilliant mind toward my latest discovery, Scully. Because while you may be easy ..."
"Watch it, Mulder."
"Your mind is another matter. And I wanted you to give this one a chance. Do you remember anything about the heyday of Coney Island?"
Scully thought. "It was big around a hundred years ago, before air-conditioning?"
"Something like that, except that when you say big, you should amend that to huge. It made Busch Gardens look like a ball bouncer at McDonald's. Three giant amusement parks, each one more spectacular than the last. Come on, Scully. Follow me," he said, taking her by the hand and dragging her into a dubious-looking bar called "Ruby's Olde Time Bar and Grill."
It was little more than a dirty indent in the boardwalk. Scully tried not to balk at Mulder's insistence she sit on one of the wobbly red leather stools lining the bar. The bartender didn't ask for an order, he merely plopped two small bottled beers in front of them, wiping up worn wood as he went.
Scully took a long swig. It was cold and fresh and she relaxed, letting Mulder point out various photographs out of the hundreds that decorated the crumbling walls.
"That's Steeplechase, that's Dreamland and there's ... " Mulder squinted, obviously hunting out something in particular. Excited, he jabbed a finger toward a postcard, showing what appeared to be a city of lights. "Luna Park. Look at it, Scully. A million electric lamps lining the rides and hotels. You know what that must have looked like a hundred years ago?"
She peered at the card. "I'm sure it would have been impressive today."
"Exactly," replied Mulder with a sly grin. He turned back to the photos. "All these parks came to an inglorious end. Two were destroyed by devastating fires, Luna Park included. Steeplechase was ruined by greed, a common occurrence around here. There are some development issues with the area."
"No kidding," Scully muttered. She tugged her sleeve free from a large splinter jutting out from the bar. "So where's the X-File?"
"Have you ever heard of ghost ships? Lost sailing boats that appear in the night, then disappear again?" A dramatic pause as she nodded. "What would you say to a ghost amusement park?"
"I'd say the haunting business is aiming low these days," Scully replied, taking another gulp of the tiny beer, finishing it. "Mulder, are you trying to tell me that one of these parks is appearing out of nowhere and disappearing again into thin air?"
"Yes. And it was Luna Park. The palace of endless light. I have at least thirty eyewitnesses who swear they saw the place lit up like Christmas in July one night last week, only to turn back into a vacant lot by morning."
"Only thirty?"
"Those are the ones who'd talk. The people around here aren't known for their trust of law enforcement or federal agencies. Forget about it when you combine the two."
Scully sighed. "For such a spectacular occurrence, you have just enough witnesses for a mass hallucination. For real mystery, you'd need at least a few hundred more." She waved the bartender down and was rewarded with another unasked-for beer. She took a sip, wondering at the distinct Mulder pout aimed in her direction. She swallowed. "What? You know I'm right."
"You didn't get me a beer," Mulder accused.
Scully looked at the bottle, then back to Mulder. She shrugged. "Maybe one will mysteriously appear in front of you."
True to the moment, the bartender plunked one down in front of Mulder.
Scully nodded knowingly before sneaking her hand over and switching Mulder's beer with her own half-empty one. "And now it disappears. I'd say you might have a case here."
Mulder continued to pout.
****
Marquis Hotel
9:30 p.m.
****
"Scully, that shirt was clean."
Scully looked down at the dress shirt she'd put on after her shower, futilely trying wipe away some of the droplets that had fallen from her wet hair onto its starched sleeves.
"It's still clean," she insisted. "I just took a shower."
Mulder looked up from the bed where he was stretched out reading reports. Freshly showered, wearing gray sweats with a white tee, Scully had to admit he looked good enough to eat.
His annoyance was almost as enticing. He peered at her over his glasses. "When it comes to dress shirts there is only 'clean' and 'not clean'. There is no 'gently used'. Being as we are on a case, I only have a finite amount of them. Mind leaving me one or two of them?"
"Oh, all right," Scully replied. She moved in front of the bed, held onto Mulder's gaze and slowly began to unbutton the shirt. "You want me to take it off?"
Mulder's irritation evaporated instantly. "Yes. Please."
One button opened. "Take it all off?"
She could have sworn a bit of drool was gathering at the corners of Mulder's mouth. "Yes."
Having Mulder reduced to husky monosyllables was even better than drool and another button was loosened as their pact of abstinence while at work was quickly shoved aside.
Five months of great sex was turning Dana Scully into a free thinker. Two more buttons popped and she let the shirt hang loosely around her, trying not to chuckle as Mulder frantically pushed the reports off the bed letting them scatter haphazardly over the floor.
He got up on his knees and patted the bed hungrily. "I need that shirt off, Scully. As in ... now."
"Such impatience." But she let the shirt slip off her shoulders, reveling in Mulder's awed look. You'd think he'd get used to her naked, but every time seemed like a first for him.
Just like having a great time every time was a first for her. She crawled onto the bed and into Mulder's eager embrace. He buried his face between her breasts and Scully groaned, letting her head fall back, giving him complete access to her chest ... neck ... face.
A hand snuck between her legs and Mulder moaned to find her soaked. She'd been that way since stepping out of the shower, knowing full well where tonight was going to end up.
The best of intentions and they'd still fucked their way through the past four cases, so what was the point besides Scully trying to give the worst lip service this side of her ubiquitious "I'm fine"?
A quick tangle of hands and cloth and Mulder's shirt was off. The sweat pants were slightly more problematic but Scully always took pride in her problem solving ability. Shoving Mulder onto his back, the sweats came off in one hard yank and wasting no time, Scully straddled him, working his cock deep inside.
So good. So fucking good and she rode him hard, enjoying his gasps. She wasn't normally a screamer but there was something about the way Mulder bucked beneath her, the way his hands worked her clit and nipple at the same time, the way he chanted her name over and over that inspired a shriek of pleasure, one she'd normally be mortified to hear at any other time.
Or with any other man. But there was no one besides Mulder and when Scully came, she didn't see stars -- she saw him.
He was a beautiful sight too, his cheeks flushed, his face screwed up with pleasure as his orgasm hit a minute later. She kept him inside, enjoying the little pulses that echoed the aftershocks shivering through her.
Finally, she gently worked her way off, bemused to notice Mulder was already fast asleep.
"You're lucky I'm a doctor and know that's a purely biophysical reaction," she grumbled. She poked him. "Right, Mulder?"
He jolted awake. "Right!" he yelped, before falling straight back to dreamland.
Scully sighed. She bent to kiss Mulder's forehead before heading back to the bathroom to clean some of the residual stickiness away. Yawning, she got off the bed and noticed a bright light coming in from between the hotel blinds.
It was white and brilliant and Scully didn't remember it being there before. The lamps in the room flickered and Scully's mouth went dry. Flickering electronics and weird lights were not her friend these days and she approached the window with extreme caution.
Heart pounding, she lifted two slats with her fingers and peeked through them. A burst of relief filled her as the whirling lights of a huge amusement park came into view, its vast towers shining and light-bedecked rides spinning gaily through the night.
So beautiful, Scully thought and her relief lasted exactly ten seconds longer before she suddenly realized that she was looking out over what Mulder showed her earlier to be the abandoned site of Luna Park.
The brilliant wonderland of light that had burnt to the ground over sixty years before.
****
to be continued in Chapter Two