Chapter Text
“What if we’re Baby and Johnny for Halloween?” Jake suggests the first week of September. He’s throwing together dinner for them while she works on crocheting a baby hat for her cousin.
Natasha grins. “I already have my costume for this year. You’re going to have to go solo, dickhead.”
“You picked a costume without me?” he whines like they’ve stuck to any of the other predictable couple norms in their relationship so far. Not that they’re even officially a couple.
“I thought it would be fun to surprise you.”
“You could’ve at least given me a heads up that was the plan,” he grumbles.
“Consider this the heads up then,” she tells him and counts out her stitches.
He turns to her from his stove. “You’re not even going to give me a hint what it is then?”
Natasha has to bite back the excited smile trying to give away her secret. “Why don’t you surprise me with yours? Call it even.”
Jake considers that as he stirs his homemade sauce. Then an evil grin spreads across his face, and Natasha wonders what she may have gotten herself into. “Deal,” he says. She loses count of her stitches again.
For the next several weeks, the tension of expectation builds as they catch one another smiling secretly and quietly to themselves. Coyote officially invites them to his Halloween bash. Natasha finds Jake peeking through her closet under the guise of helping her put her folded laundry away, and she’s glad she knows him well enough to have stored her costume at Bob’s. She does her own snooping at his place when he’s in the shower one morning, but he knows her too, and she can’t find even a clue before he emerges with his towel wrapped around his waist.
Bob offers to drive both of them to Coyote’s, and they agree to meet at her house so her wizzo only has to make one stop.
The night before, Natasha puts her hair up in pin curls so it will hold the shape through the party. She irons the costume Bob brought to work for her and hangs it up.
Her hair come out perfectly when she lets it down in time to fall some before they leave. Anticipating the look on Jake’s face when she opens the door, Natasha grins widely as she runs her fingers through the curls to stretch them into waves. She embellishes her heavier makeup with glitter and goes all out with falsies.
She opts for a push up bra under the Cowboys blue long sleeved blouse she ties between her breasts. Beneath the cheek high white shorts, she slides on a nude micro thong. Let Jake enjoy the whole package. She buckles the star studded belt low on her hips, shrugs into the mini white fringe vest, and pulls on the calf high white boots Jake’s mom sent her. She’d splurged, expecting this might not be the only time she wears them. The white cowboy hat stays in the closet. Her blue and white pom poms will be enough to keep track of, and Jake can enjoy the hat and boots another time with less in between.
She’s gone all out with the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader costume. It occurs to her as she looks herself over in the mirror that she’s never put this much thought or planning into what would turn someone on. Usually whatever is in her closet or drawers is enough. But with Jake…well, she wanted something meant just for him. And she doesn’t particularly want to think about what that means. They’re just having a good time. Exclusively with one another. Enough for Jake to expect them to wear matching costumes.
Just before he’s supposed to arrive, Natasha puts on the Cowboys’ anthem “How Bout Them Boys.” The tequila, limes, and salt are ready on the counter. The doorbell rings, and she does one last once-over in the mirror, fluffing her hair out, before hurrying to get it. He has her key but promised not to accidentally ruin the surprise by letting himself in.
She opens the door, and Jake’s jaw hits the floor. It’s a funny look on the normally suave Indiana Jones he’s dressed as, as ruggedly handsome in a jauntily tilted brown fedora, brown leather jacket over a deeply unbuttoned white collared shirt, with a whip at his hip.
But fuck, if he didn’t know what was going to make her worry about her white shorts showing too much. She’s slammed against the wall before she even tracks his movement. He has enough sense to kick the door shut behind him so her neighbors don’t get a front row view of his mouth and hands all over her, her leg hitched over his hip.
“I must be fucking dreaming,” he mutters between hard, ravaging kisses, his thumbs somehow already gliding under the hem of her blouse and bra with hands splayed across her bare sides. If she doesn’t get control of the situation, they’re not making it to Coyote’s party. But that’s a hard thought to follow with her palms already running over the ridges of his abs.
“The party,” she gasps before he claims her mouth again. They’re not going to be able to pregame like she planned because she’s sober and already tugging at his belt, gasping at the clinks of metal.
“Fuck the party,” he growls, tossing his hat away so much like Harrison Ford that Natasha’s knees give enough for her to slide down the wall.
She catches herself on his arm and the knee he’s thrust between her legs, and aren’t they too old for Halloween parties anyway? Natasha grabs the chiseled sides of his cheeks and pulls him back down to her mouth.
Bob’s ringtone blasts through her speakers and their hastily changed plans. She drags her mouth away from his. “We can do this,” she pants heavily, strong arming his shoulder to keep him at bay. “Go to the party. Leave early. Enjoy the rest of the night.”
He groans and lets his head fall to her arm. “I’m supposed to watch your ass in that all night and control myself?”
She whispers his reward for doing so in his ear, and he looks up at her through burning, indignant eyes.
“Fine,” he agrees, straightening up and fixing his costume. Natasha has to go the bathroom to retie her blouse after he attempts to help her and accidentally, probably on purpose, undoes it. Her face is too done up to splash water on so she paces until she’s pulled herself together.
She gets in front with Bob when he arrives to pick them up so Jake won’t be tempted to let his hands wander. He sits in back alone, arms crossed over his chest like a kid that didn’t get his way.
Bob takes one look at her in the front seat and one look at him in the rear view mirror and says, “You each owe me two hundred bucks if you hook up or fuck anywhere other than one of your houses tonight.” He doesn’t even bat an eye at the shock on her face or sullen scowl on Jake’s. “And you might want to pull your collar up, Phoenix, you already have a hickey.”