It's about the time Gary starts physically wrestling the pants off of him that Pete realizes he's not getting out of wearing a skirt tonight.

This is humiliating. This is past the point of humiliating. This is so far past humiliating that it's started traipsing into the territory of mortifying. But it's Halloween, and Pete knows what Halloween means. Halloween, for Pete Kowalski, means Gary Gets His Way Day, which is pretty much every day, for Pete, really, but just on today, it's made even more embarrassingly awful by means of horrible costumes.

Gary had just gotten into the niche of picking out Pete's costumes every year, was all. It wasn't really something that was up for debate, not after the first time Pete had protested himself hoarse, and after enough of it, Gary had gotten That Look in his eyes, the dangerous one that was saved for things like paintball and video games and war. It was the look Pete spent half his life trying to avoid on the guy, so when he saw it, he backed down fast. It was just another victory, a small one - and really, after how many years they'd been friends, what was one more?

Last year hadn't been so bad, at least. He'd gotten to keep most of his dignity intact. Or most of his testosterone, at least. He'd been a pirate, completely with eye patch and plastic, blood-stained scimitar.

Gary had spent the night cracking snippy remarks, about 'seamen' and 'poop decks', and bullying Pete into laughing too, like it was the funniest thing in the world, wasn't it the funniest thing in the world, Petey? Pete had chuckled it off - oh, yeah, Gary, it was hilarious, even after the fifth time - and tried not to think too hard about how terrified he'd been, when Gary'd turned on him; when the Shaken Not Stirred grew dull for his Bond garb; when he'd pointed the prop gun for Pete's forehead, shouted out a 'bang bang!' and cackled like he'd just heard the funniest joke in the world.

All Pete could think about was how realistic that gun looked, how heavy it sounded when Gary clunked it onto a table later that night, vaguely wondered just how fake it was and, in that case, if it was loaded. He wouldn't have put it past him.

But that was then, this is now. Now, when Gary's flopped onto Pete's bed and looking increasingly comfortable. He's donned an impressively and exuberantly mismatched suit, flipping about a too-large top hat in his hands and impatiently waving a hand in Pete's direction. The crazed Mad Hatter to Pete's Alice in Wonderland.

"Let's go, Femme-boy, let's go. I can't wait around all day. Places to go, things to do, pranks to play."

He's moaning all world-wearily, as if he didn't just come into the room a good seven minutes ago, announcing his plan, spend the following three and a half bullying Pete into it, and now the last two waiting patiently while Pete simply stares the offending object down, as if it's going to fly away and not bother him anymore. Pete's noting the influx of impatience, wonders vaguely if Gary's taken his meds today, but doesn't dare ask him. "Come on, Gary, just give me a minute - this is, like, as humiliating as it gets."

"What, is it the changing that bothers you? Do you want me to leave? Cover my eyes so they don't fall upon your tender, virgin breasts? A B-cup is not anything to write home about, Kowalski."

Pete wishes, not for the first time, that he was just as witty. That he could have sarcasm just as biting and sneers as penetratingly humiliating, so he doesn't have to come up with weak rebuttals like, "Shut up."

Gary sits up on his elbows, hat falling to the floor, forgotten and probably fleeing from the grotesquely annoyed look that's starting to settle over Gary's features in the form of a scowl. "Well, then, get on with it. We don't have all night. It's already eight thirty. Curfew's only in a couple of hours and I have so much to do."

Pete tries to think when Gary's started caring about something as silly as curfew. "Cover your eyes." Gary rolls the aforementioned offenders, but obligingly flops back onto the bed, and hugs Pete's pillow over his face, all the while wailing into it about how long he's taking, about how they could have at least pulled two pranks by now, and harassed the younger children for their candy.

"Can I look? What's taking you so long? Did you go to some sweater factory in Tijuana to get them to weave it for you? Jesus fucking Christ."

"Yes, you can look, Gary, God, I don't even--"

The rest of Pete's sentence skitters off into nothing, useless and irritated mumbling under his breath as Gary rips the pillow off, sits up greedily and gets set to soak it all in. The expression Pete gets, though, is... not what he was expecting. Cackling laughter, perhaps. More than a few jokes. 'Femme-boy, where did you get those legs? Spent enough time with them wrapped around the football captain?' he can already hear the voice jeering in his head - he's been spending way too much time with the guy, if he's starting to think like him - but it doesn't come. It's just... staring.

And rather strangely so, Pete notes. Indescribably so, he goes so far as to think, as the glower Gary is giving him looks somehow mystified, furrowed eyebrows and a weird kind of way his lip twitches at the corners as he drinks in the sight - Pete's not sure if it's stifling a laugh or repressing something else.

"Well."

He decides that it's unsettling to hear Gary Smith, of all people, speechless.

"It's stupid, right? I look like an idiot, you hate it, and it's-- it's stupid."

"Are you kidding?" Gary's face finally decides what to do with itself, curls up into a slow kind of smirk as he gives Pete the once-over. "I'm not even sure if I can let you out in public right now. The dim-witted jocks wouldn't know what to do with themselves. On the one hand, you're Pete. On the other, their dicks don't care."

Pete blinks. And blinks. "Huh?"

Gary's up within a breath and pushing Pete up against the door, his knobby fingers already starting to paw under the hem of the skirt, greedy, can't even waste any time before they're trying out this uncharted territory. Which it's not even - it's stupid, because they've done this kind of thing before, at least a couple times, Gary always in the lead - it's just that Pete is in a skirt, and Pete knows it's just because he's in a skirt, which is the idiotic part, that it's that one little fact that has Gary treating this like it's all new terrain.

There's something frustrating and yet kind of hot, about Gary automatically leaping to Pete's needs, his lips pressed in flush to his throat, that hand rubbing at the front of Pete's briefs - awkward to be wearing, with the skirt, but it's not like he's so whipped he's going to be wrestled into a pair of panties. "You look so hot - my own little Alice," Gary croons against his skin, and Pete thinks he sounds like a cat. A big one, though - a dangerous one - a lion, marking its prey.

"You're such an idiot," Pete shoots back, one of the only people who's allowed to talk back to Gary, to Gary Smith, only his voice is a little breathy and hitched and it doesn't have too much weight behind the comeback.

"You're ruining the moment for me, Petey, shut that pretty mouth," is all Gary snipes, and Pete wants to tell him that his mouth hasn't changed at all, if it was pretty now, it was pretty before - and also good, that he's ruining the moment, for Gary, ha ha, small victories - but it's right around that time that Gary has the skirt hitched up around Pete's pelvis, his underwear down enough that he can scoop his fingers around Pete's cock and jerk his fingers in a tight, cruel little circle.

Jesus Christ, Joseph and Mary and anyone else who will hear his prayers.

"I knew you were a girl," Gary's breathing, against his skin, barking out a laugh as he pumps his fist. "Ever since the first time you stepped into that dormitory, with your stupid pink shirt." Pete impatiently draws Gary's mouth to his own, because if Pete was ruining the mood, Gary's definitely ruining the mood, and if the boy's going to be a horndog, he can at least shut up about it.

Gary lets him, whorls his tongue into Pete's mouth - everything's a fight for him. Some competition or battle that he just uses to assert his dominance, that he just uses to win, and Pete lets him, sometimes; most of the time. Almost all of the time. Pete moans against that tongue, contained enough that he seems satisfied none of the other boys would have heard, his hips jerking up a little helplessly into Gary's hand.

Gary's enough of a control freak that he bats Pete's hand away when he slides it between Gary's own legs, cautiously, and he resigns to touching where he can - his shoulder, his arm, his neck, ever so carefully tiptoeing against the divot his scar leaves against his cheek. And when he comes undone, gasping into Gary's mouth and grabbing onto that purple checkered jacket, Gary retracts as easily as he'd magnetized, resigning to wiping his hand onto Pete's discarded sweater vest, so as to not dirty The Skirt. Pete's still slumping against the door, feeling vaguely like a cheap hooker, with his briefs still down and his skirt half hitched around his hips.

"Well?" Just that easily, Gary's adjusting his own clothing, straightening his jacket, smoothing out his pants and donning his hat, not one single trace of a hard-on. Like he wasn't even too interested in what he was doing. Like he'd just wanted to mark Pete as his own for the night. "Fix yourself, my good man, we have much to do for tonight."

"But--" Pete tries to protest, and Gary yanks his underwear back up for him, kisses him one last time, slow and languid and heated and so uncharacteristically Gary that Pete makes another tiny noise, against his lips. It turns into a yelp when Gary slaps his ass.

"Let's go, Femme-boy. I want to hit Algernon with at least three eggs tonight."

Messy and embarrassing and spending half the night antsily pulling at the skirt hem to make sure nothing incriminating was showing, Pete knows this all. But all in all?

Maybe not the worst of Halloweens ever.