Do It For Charity

Felicia was loose enough to wiggle free, not caring that she left her catsuit behind her. She grabbed her gloves and such from Gwen, pulling them on carefully oblivious to the effect her near-nudity had on the two women. Mary Jane, obviously, was intrigued, while Gwen was determinedly interested in the refrigerator.

Felicia tried to figure out what she'd be fingering after she left: herself or MJ.

"Are you sure he's, you know... 'my type'?"

"Your type?" Gwen asked.

"You know... someone who has sex with women."

"He definitely likes girls," Mary Jane said. "I flashed him once and he was definitely not thinking about how great my boobs would look in a sequin dot blouse."

"When was this?" Gwen demanded.

"Mardi Gras."

"You've never been to Mardi Gras!"

"Mardi Gras isn't a place, it's a state of mind," Felicia insisted, and MJ pointed at her in agreement. "Anyway, sorry I couldn't help." Now she turned to pull her suit free. An activity that didn't necessarily require her to bend over so far, but why not? "He seemed really cute. And polite, when he wasn't pasting me to the walls. Just let him know that if he wants a second date, we'll have to work out a safe word first."

"And since when do you do 'safe'?" MJ asked.

Felicia winked at her. "Never. But, ah..." she glanced at Gwen, "some people find it comforting. I'll see myself out. Catch you at the Ball later?"

"Maybe, maybe not."

"Not," Gwen corrected.

Felicia walked out of the apartment with her suit slung over her shoulder like a towel in a locker room; bra and boots and panties and gloves. And mask, of course. Mary Jane smiled. The mask always stayed on.

"I feel like such a bad feminist for hating her," Gwen said when the door was safely shut. "She's funnier than me, she has bigger boobs than me, and boys like her more than me—I can barely tolerate that from Jennifer Lawrence, but from her?"

Mary Jane patted her on the head. "Let's stay focused. We pretty much threw Peter into a porn movie and he still couldn't get laid. It's time to bring out the big guns."

"Who would even have bigger guns than her?"

"Tony Stark."

"Tony... oh." Gwen shook her head of a surprisingly intriguing mental image. "Wait, no, no. The last time Tony came over, I ended up posing nude for a series of black and white photographs."

"They were tasteful and artistic," Mary Jane said. "And you looked like Emma Stone."

"Really?"

"Yeah. But that could just be the girlfriend in me talking."

Gwen hummed in adoration. "Okay. So you just want to sic Tony on Peter?"

"No, not quite... I want to give Peter my pass to the Ball."

"The Ball?" Gwen repeated, throwing her head up. "C'mon, MJ, that place is—"

Mary Jane waved her hands as if in surrender. "I barely go there. I much prefer spending time with you. But when you're buried in your books, it's a good way to spend a weekend. That's all. And it's for charity!"

"Pfft," Gwen went. "I've seen you coming home from there. People don't wear that kind of thing to give to starving orphans."

"Maybe they should. The orphans weren't complaining."

Gwen threw up her own hands, moving to sag into an easy chair. Mary Jane hovered nearby, wanting to sit down on her lap as was their happy custom, but wanting the proto-argument done with first.

"That's another thing," Gwen continued, on a tangent. "You know Peter. He has no money. What's he going to give to charity?"

"That's the beauty of it, G. Each of the Ball's members gets one freebie to put on the List. You, obviously, don't want to be on the List, so I'll just put Peter down. He can bill everything to SHIELD."

Gwen's head folded into her hands. "Oh my God, you have the details worked out. You're really going through with it."

"Well, it could count as a combined birthday and Christmas present from both of us. Save us some money, and you know how hard Peter is to shop for..."

Gwen sighed. "Make the call."

"Ha-ha!" Mary Jane cried triumphantly, throwing herself atop Gwen. "You're awesome. You are my awesome girlfriend."

"Cut it out!" Gwen said as MJ smothered her with kisses, her beautiful girlfriend replaced by an overly affectionate puppy for an instant. "First, get the phone call over with. Then you can work out all your Black Cat frustrations on me."

"Oh, you were looking too," MJ said, running her cheek along Gwen's cleavage as she pulled away, her feet carrying her on a beeline to the phone...

***

It wasn't that Peter didn't like girls. He loved them. Wasn't at all sure how some guys could go for other guys when there were girls, although of course that was their lifestyle and it was perfectly natural and really not any of his business. But now girls—like his good friend Gwen and his good friend Mary Jane and, just now, a somewhat frightening cat burglar who'd shown more cleavage than the scrambled porn channels he'd seen as a kid. He would very much to take any of those beautiful ladies out on a nice date, or to see a movie, or to drink coffee, or climb rocks, or whatever they were comfortable with.

He just didn't want to be a macho jerk asshole like Flash Thompson about it. Flash Thompson, who grabbed girls' asses in the school hallway, leered at them in the street, made sexist comments online. If that, as the dubious theory went, was what girls were into, then he'd rather die a virgin.

Although the scary cat burglar lady had offered to prevent that. But she was, in fact, so eager to have sex with him, a perfect stranger, that he couldn't help but conclude she had some kind of behavioral disorder. Nymphomania or something, which was a very real problem. It'd practically be rape to take advantage of someone in her condition.

Still, maybe when she got out of the mental ward, he could check up on her. Purely as a friend. Anything else and, gosh, what would Aunt May say?

This and similar thoughts tormented Peter on the ten-block walk from his bus stop to ESU. His mind would paw the same well-worn tracks—Mary Jane asking him if he wanted to see her tits and him saying yes off-guard and her flashing him; that time Gwen had drunkenly kissed him on New Year's; pretty much all of the fifteen minutes he'd spent with that white-haired cat burglar (White Cat?). He would've jerked off that morning if he didn't just know it would make things worse... make him feel pathetic and guilty in addition to undersexed.

He was on his fifth attempt to switch over his train of thought—not even recalling how bad the Star Wars prequels were was helping—when a high-end Audi pulled to a stop at his segment of the sidewalk like it was a pit stop at the Indy 500 and he was expected to change the tires. The window came down as fast as a pen being clicked and Peter saw the world's most famous goatee.

"Get in, loser, we're going shopping," Tony Stark said.

All of Peter's mind stopped functioning except for the bit that told him this wouldn't normally happen. A conclusion leapt to him. "Wait... wait... how do I know you're not the Chameleon, trying to get me alone?"

"Hmmm... if I was a shapeshifter who could take on any identity, I would be me," Tony conceded. Then grinned: "The lovely and talented Ms. Watson sent me. She says: 'face it, tiger, you just hit the jackpot.'"

Peter's reluctance ceded control of his body to the 99% of him that was geeking out over going on a car ride with Tony Stark. He didn't know why Mary Jane had set him up on a playdate and he didn't care. Tony fucking Stark!

Inside, the car was an oasis from the perfectly pleasant day outside. The air conditioning was somehow even better, there was a vague scent of the sea that was just charming, and there was a computer built into the dashboard. Peter buckled himself in with a series of straps that looked like they belonged on a NASCAR racer.

"My insurance company insists," Tony explained. "It's either that or I stop going at triple digits. So, you're Red's mechanic?"

"Mechanic?" Peter repeated, like it was a word from a foreign language.

"Her guy. Her man Friday. The dude who makes the Starbucks run. I'm Rescue's mechanic, Clint is Black Widow's... well, actually he's her 'handler', but I'm not calling him that, it's so Tom Clancy." Tony rolled his arms and, as if belatedly realizing something, stepped on the gas. The car accelerated to sixty in as many nanoseconds, sliding into a gap in traffic like a knife between ribs. "You know what they say: Behind every great woman is a great man, with a great view of her ass."

"I... haven't heard anyone else say that."

"I'm an early adopter. Always have been. Brace yourself." Tony hit a button on the gearshift and they rocked through an intersection while the light was halfway between yellow and red.

"Was that nitro?" Peter asked.

"If the cops ask, no." Tony shifted seamlessly back to their—Peter guessed it could be called a conversation. "Mechanic, Parker! Noun! Think of it this way--sure, the car's doing all the work, but the mechanic is what keeps it running. Thor shows Thunderstrike how to fight, even though he doesn't have powers. Bruce Banner calms She-Hulk down when she's had a bit too much gamma radiation. Steve Rogers—" Tony shook his head suddenly. "I don't know what he really does for Captain Britain. I'm thinking oral sex?"

"Wait, uh..." Peter blinked. He was very aware of blinking. He hoped Tony wouldn't take it as an affront. "What are we talking about, exactly?"

"It's a thankless job, being a mechanic. Less benefits than a Foxconn worker. But there is one redeeming quality."

"Helping in some small way to make the world a better place."

"Fuck you," Tony said gently. "I mean the Ball."

He wrenched the Audi into a curve that nearly had Peter in Tony's lap, were it not for him having more straps on than a Final Fantasy character.

"The Ball is what would happen if charity weren't designed by pussies. I mean that in a nice way."

"It doesn't seem like it?"

"But obviously we're not going to take you looking like that. I mean, c'mon, how many pairs of jean shorts do you own?"

"Just one!" Peter protested.

Tony pulled off his sunglasses and gave Peter such a long stare that Peter became worried they were going to hit a baby carriage or something. But Tony got his eyes back on the road before that happened.

"I can't do anything about you being a nerd," Tony said, "but there's a difference between being a nerd in an 80s teen movie and being a nerd in a show on the CW."

"You mean being a male model who happens to wear glasses instead of contacts?"

"You know of the invention of contact lenses. Good. I had doubts. P.S. You're going to wear cardigans, Peter. You're going to wear a lot of cardigans. Aaaand we're here," Tony said, pulling to a stop literally in front of the door to a clothing boutique whose name Peter couldn't even pronounce. Tony slid out of the car and tossed his keys to a teen passerby. "Park that for me, would you? Be honest, take it for a joyride, but if it's not back in half an hour I'm reporting it stolen. To the Avengers."

Before Peter could even parse how that was going to work, Tony had propelled him inside the boutique. It was for men, though Peter could only tell this because none of the mannequins were female.

"Shopcreature!" Tony called, which Peter didn't think was the name of the pretty young sales assistant who came over. "Get this man into something that would make him a dating prospect. If not, at least someone you would let your younger sister see without passive-aggressively sabotaging their relationship."

The woman took one look at him. "I'm thinking cardigans."

"I know, right?"

"Do I get any say in this?" Peter asked.

"Do you know how to tie a bowtie?" was Tony's answer.

The woman scanned Peter with a laser, which he enjoyed, obviously, then told Tony a wardrobe would be ready in two hours. Tony thanked her, gave Peter a brisk tap on the chin, then pulled a handkerchief to wipe off his hand. "Ever hear of skincare, kid?"

"I think I saw that as an autofill on Google once," Peter said sarcastically.

"Let's get you to the spa. It'll give us some time for bald-faced exposition."

"Eh?"

"You know, a history lesson?" Tony took off his sunglasses, which Peter hadn't noticed him putting back on. "Sorry, started a studio last week, I'm still in a bit of a producer headspace. Say, would you watch a gritty reboot of Pinocchio?"

"No."

"Origin story for Monstro the Whale?"

"No!"

"How'd you like a job? You're already better at it than Tom Rothman."

It was a three-hour drive to upstate New York, which meant Tony made it in an hour and a half. Surely thereafter, they were parked at the Ark of Omon-Kra Resort, with Greg, who looked like a Greg, giving them a tour of the garden grounds. He was trying to explain the herbs and their effects on the human body so they could choose what their Herbal Garden Treatment would be, but Tony cut off each explanation with "that one" and moved them along.

"As you know, Bob," Tony started, then laughed and shook his head. "Sorry, screenwriter talk. As you know, Peter, after World War 2, Peggy Carter and my daddio formed SHIELD. One of their many hobbies was hunting down Nazi war criminals."

Peter had heard of it. He struggled to remember his high school history class—they'd watched a pretty cheesy movie about it, but although MJ had rejoiced in how easy all this spy stuff was to memorize, Peter had been eager to get back to polygons and polymers. "Baron Zemo. Baron Strucker. Baron Blood. A lot of barons."

Like a whirlwind, next they were getting a body mask 'using honey and blossoms from the indigenous trees.'

"One of the worst of the lot was Sebastian Shaw," Tony explained. "Not a baron; not even a Nazi, per se. Mutant supremacist. Major-league asshole. As soon as the bomb dropped on Hiroshima he wanted a full-blown nuclear war between the United States and Russia to end humanity as we know it and, hey, crazy person version of evolution."

Peter was pretty sure he'd seen that movie too, though not in school. It was pure SyFy Channel. A massage came next. Peter tried hard to concentrate on Tony's words as Rudolfo chopped the tension out of his spine.

"After the war, Shaw joined a very old gentleman's society called the Hellfire Club. Took it over, got it into prostitution for the pocket change, smuggled drugs, lotta bad stuff. Using the whores, he got to some of Washington's finest—big surprise there—and eventually managed to leak the A-bomb to the Ruskies. As you might imagine, that didn't go down too well with Howard Stark Esquire."

After the massage came peppermint foot care ("For centuries it's been used for calming and relaxation," Rudolfo explained, though Peter didn't point out that so had cocaine) and organic ale. Thankfully, the latter they drank.

"It's the fifties. Shaw's well-connected. He's even got friends in McCarthy's office, so anyone who steps up to him risks getting branded a Commie. The only way to get to him was through the girls. So Peggy and a few of the more," Tony winked, "female agents, went undercover as prostitutes."

"Bull shota!" Peter cried. By then, he'd been subjected to a facial using sandalwood, lemon, and bitter orange that claimed to 'exfoliate and boost the senses.'

"It was the fifties. Don't you watch Mad Men?" Tony accepted his green tea from an attendant with a gentle "moshi moshi." After a drink, he pressed on. "Now, imagine the kind of people who'd be in the gentlemen's club to end all gentlemen's club. And I mean that—it wasn't too long after this that the women's libbers started in and places like the Hellfire Club had to open their doors to everyone from Gloria Steinem on down. You've got athletes, you've got movie stars, you've got Kennedys. They're having a good time, they're throwing money around, no one's pulling switchblades. Just good, wholesome sex."

"Hold on, I think I heard about this in a letter someone wrote to Penthouse..."

The conversation paused until they'd started a foot scrub with matching finishing butter. Tony insisted on pink grapefruit.

"Laugh if you want," Tony said, "but keep in mind, these ladies are working fourteen-hour days, in a job where the moment they show a hint of lust, they practically get branded traitors to their country. Folks thought women were especially vulnerable to the old seduce and destroy routine. So at this club, they're having great sex, they're making thousands of dollars, and if anyone asks, they just say they're serving their country."

"I won't judge," Peter replied. "Better than working at Starbucks."

Next, the one Hispanic man in the place introduced them to the Mayan Massage, in which brightly colored shawls that were meant to carry babies were wrapped around them for a stretch treatment. Peter asked and found out it cost two hundred dollars. He made a mental note to find out if this place was hiring. For two hundred dollars, he would massage Man-Wolf.

"And what do they do with the money?" Tony asked; the question, like most he posed, rhetorical. "They give it to charity, minus what they skim off the top. So they're making money and they're buying toys for orphans and they're serving their country and they're having more orgasms than a screening of Twilight. Where do you think this is headed?"

"A movie starring Jenna Jameson."

"Close, but no." The Mayan Massage included rain sticks and finger cymbals to enhance the rain forest relaxation, which Peter thought would work better if the mosaic on the wall wasn't one of redwood trees. "So after a few months, they get the dirt on Shaw, they bust him, throw him away and lock up the key, but Peggy Carter has a great idea to keep morale high, raise funds, all that. She keeps the place going."

"The brothel, you mean?"

"Yes, the brothel." Tony had already gestured to move onto the lemon massage. Because lemons were cold, they absorbed all the bad energy one had in their body. Peter didn't know how much bad energy a genius billionaire playboy philanthropist with a superhero girlfriend could accrue, but Tony had a lot of lemons. "They make money hand over fist, they have a virtual vacation spot for their female agents (and a few lucky male ones), and they get to use the place to spy on certain jerk-offs. Win/win/win."

"So what happens? The place can't just keep going."

"It does!" Tony insisted, so emphatic that he spilled a lemon. "The thing just keeps going and going and going. It turns out to be great for morale. You tell a women you'll pay thousands of dollars for sex, make her cum, then tell her the money went to buy some kid a new heart. See if it doesn't put her in a good mood."

"I'll take your word for it."

"The program works out so well, that certain high-ranking officials remember it when superheroes start showing up. Suddenly, you've got a bunch of women with no time for a social life, no way to relieve stress, no revenue flow because they're busy beating up bad guys all the time. What do you do?"

"Whores?"

"Whores!" Tony pounded the ground with his fist. "And keep in mind, female superheroes are scientifically proven to be forty percent hornier than the average woman. It's science."

"Alright," Peter nodded, "so in their spare time, most superheroines like to... whore themselves out, would be the proper terminology?"

"Yes. Villainesses too. As soon as they find out that they can make a lot more money sucking a few dicks with Ms. Marvel than robbing banks—"

"Oh, obviously," Peter nodded more heartily, "so these brothels also function as reform schools?"

"And superhero headquarters. Makes for a much looser commute. I honestly wondered why no one questions how many mirrored ceilings I put in Avengers Tower."