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What was it that Saito said about the suits? Barnaby couldn’t really remember. At least, until he saw something move out of the corner of his eye when he was supposed to be alone in the laboratory.
Blond curls ruffled as his head whipped around towards the hangar in which his and Kotetsu’s hero suits stood, immobile and statuesque. These were the first iterations of their hero suits, the second generation on display in the Apollon lobby. His current one remained docile in its bangle, firm around his wrist. Presumably, Kotetsu had Wild Tiger Generation 3 in his own possession.
Wild Tiger V1 had undergone some sort of…something that day, Barnaby recalled as he got up from his seat, stepping over to the glass container to peer at the dormant armor. Suspicious that it hadn’t been properly returned to its post, he walked in the short semi circle around the dock, looking the frame up and down, keenly aware of how the mech was supposed to look.
Nothing seemed out of place, so he turned–
Rrrr.
Jerking around again on his heel, Barnaby skittered in an about-face, startled by a glowing green suit. It had activated on its own accord, helmet shakily trying to focus on the man before it.
Hesitantly, just to make sure that he was not in any more trouble than he really wanted to be, Barnaby looked towards his old suit to make sure it also had not onlined. Thank goodness, no, the red, pink and white mech suit remained asleep, paired next to Wild Tiger in a twin research tube. The tube itself was made of some sort of polycarbonate in the assumption that the suits wouldn’t do something like–
Thud, a huge hand slammed against the material separating man from machine and Barnaby gasped, taking a step back. While he was strong even without his Hundred Power, there was no telling what the hero suits could do on their own without a human pilot, since they were meant to augment and protect those contained within. All the same, it was a special kind of spooky to see your partner’s hero suit reaching out, trying to get through a reinforced polycarbonate barrier to you–
Suddenly, the suit disengaged, sagging against the container and taking on a pose not unlike Kotetsu himself; facefirst, arms dangling, back arched so that its ass is in the air. Saito appeared shortly after, looking panicked.
“I don’t know how that happened,” Saito whispered, “but I was thankfully able to engage its emergency shutdown. Sorry you had to see that, Barnaby.”
“It’s quite alright, Saito,” Barnaby laughed, waving one hand as he fixed a curl behind his ear with another, physically soothing his nerves. “But you’re going to have to tell me what all that was about. I didn’t know the suits could do that.”
“Well, you see, Apollon is interested in–”
Barnaby’s PDA drowned out what little remained of Saito’s explanation. “Sorry,” he gestured to the beeping, flashing device, “gotta run.”
—
Bruised and battered from that day’s mission, Barnaby returned to the lab to finish what he had started. His assignment entailed inputting his vitals into a computer for research purposes while engaging in a number of activities; reading, running on a treadmill, among other things. This was for some sort of machine learning purpose that no one could really give him a straight answer on, but he figured that vital signs were pretty harmless as far as information was concerned.
Thankfully, Saito had given him access to the lab after hours. He would rather get this done sooner rather than later, and a little bit of time on a treadmill won’t kill him. He thought about what Kotetsu would say and thought less about his disappointed tone when he told his partner that he couldn’t meet him for drinks that evening, single-mindedly wanting to get this done so perhaps he could enjoy time with the other man at a later time.
“Okay, Bunny,” he had said, shrugging out of his under suit. “But you really need to take care of yourself. At least make sure to get to sleep at a good time tonight, you got hit pretty hard earlier.”
Peeling his shirt off, pulling it from over his head, he winced, holding his hand briefly over a bandage on his ribcage. He had indeed gotten hit pretty hard by a guy with a rock-hard fist, right in the side, hard enough to make him see white for a solid minute or two. He would never forget the way Kotetsu would scream for him over the comm link, however. The rage he heard when his partner saw him go down, the protective nature of his other half in life and at work.
Smiling at the thought, Barnaby went to work on connecting the various little stickers to his bare skin. Alcohol wipe, sticker, repeat, until–
Rrrr, thud. Thud. THUD.
SMASH.
Barnaby did not even have time to react! Wild Tiger escaped his pod, making his way quickly towards the hero in a graceless stumble, and the human in question would find the gait endearing if the suit had a pilot.
Eventually, Barnaby ended up backed against a terminal, pressed against a bunch of buttons and knobs and who knows what with a hulking machine caging him in. Barnaby could not bring himself to raise his fists against the suit because…
Because–
Shakily, Wild Tiger, a manless suit, armor that really should not be moving, raised its hand to gently caress Barnaby’s face. A shaky gentleness, to be sure, but the gesture reminded him of…Kotetsu.
“Kotetsu?”
Wild Tiger paused. It paused for a long time, palm resting on Barnaby’s cheek. Then it continued its trajectory, rubber-coated digits skimming his chest down to the bandage on his ribs. It made an odd noise, a garbled radio static of–was that concern?--something, and it didn’t dare touch the taped gauze.
“Oh,” Barnaby broke his stare from those glowing green optics to look down at himself. “It’s fine. I’m fine. I promise, I’m fine. Just got hit a little hard today, that’s all.”
Did that little “chrr” sound worried? Did the suit in front of him growl? Why wasn’t Barnaby freaking out more, he wondered?
Maybe it was because of some sense of familiarity, the way the suit was mother henning him like Kotetsu would. He felt like Wild Tiger was about to spout some “you should have jumped sooner, Bunny, like I told you” nonsense like Kotetsu had done to him hours prior, with no shortage of boo-boo kisses and helicoptering while the doctors bandaged him up.
All the same, it was a little strange for the suit to be just standing there, protectively barricading Barnaby against the computer terminals, not letting him move. He tried sidestepping away from Wild Tiger only to have it gather him back into that spot like a mother cat corralling its young. It even leaned down and nuzzled its helmet against the top of his head with perfect tenderness, causing Barnaby to stare at the Softbank logo with disbelieving dinnerplate eyes.
What the hell?
“Look, Tiger–”
Rrr?
“I really need to finish this assignment. Can you do me a favor and go back to your dock and go back into shutdown?” Still staring at the SoftBank logo, Barnaby shook his head quickly, gathering himself, looking up at that living suit. Was it alive? That was really the best way to describe it at the moment.
Testament to the way the suit hesitated, paused, not really wanting to break away from Barnaby. But it did, not before nudging the top of his head in a really hard, metallic “kiss”, fingertips sliding off the computer terminal as the suit sidled back to its dock.
It seemed…put out. In the way that Kotetsu would have when Barnaby rejected his advances if he was too tired to have sex one evening. Resigned, but accepting.
There was something else there, too. Something else there not quite…Kotetsu.
The suit climbed back into its hangar, surrounded by broken polycarbonate, and settled back into its dock. It gave Barnaby one last look, yellow-green eyes lingering, until it shut down.
Barnaby felt a little bad, but continued on with his work.
—
They couldn’t get the terminal fixed right away. Wild Tiger remained dormant in the dock, next to Barnaby’s old suit, for a couple of days. Barnaby felt like he was going a little nuts, feeling like he was being watched, all the same. The suit was off, right? And yet, he felt like Wild Tiger’s eyes were on him. Did it have eyes? Did it have feelings?
“Hey, Bunny,” he heard Kotetsu’s voice cut through his fog, his head swiveling around fast enough to dislodge his glasses. “I can hear you think.”
“Sorry, Kotetsu.”
“It’s okay. But did I hear you talking to Saito earlier? That my old suit had broken out of old suit jail?” Kotetsu looked amused and Barnaby wanted to punch that dumb handsome face. “Is there a video?”
“Just ask Saito. I’m sure he’d love to show it to you. He was having just as much fun as you are, something about learning about unintentional technological advancement and at my expense, no less.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean it like that. I just think it would be kinda cool…” Kotetsu scratched his cheek in that way, the way he does when he knows he put his foot in his mouth.
“Yes. Very cool.”
“Come on, Bunny,” Kotetsu tried again, sliding his arm around his partner’s waist, tugging him close and looking up at the sleeping suit. “Don’t you think it’s neat? It came to life. On its own. What if your suit did the same thing?”
Barnaby sighed and leaned close to Kotetsu to kiss his cheek. “Yes, and what if it came up to you while you were working and came on to you?”
Kotetsu’s grin screwed up into a puzzled stare. “Wait, what?”
—
Saito needed a bit more information from Barnaby concerning his project, and of course he couldn’t complete the project at any other computer in the damn lab, no! It had to be at that same one with the broken suit hangar.
“It will be fixed tomorrow, I promise. But I really need this data,” Saito had whispered politely, and Barnaby had obliged. He’s too nice sometimes, especially considering the way Saito’s eyes glittered when he showed Barnaby the tape from before.
This time, Barnaby wisely made sure that all surveillance was cut off from that room. Whatever he’d get up to, he could defend himself, and he didn’t want to be at risk of embarrassment again if…
The suit was already active, looking around and experimentally touching things, not unlike a curious Kotetsu. It had cleaned up a little, even removing the excess broken polycarbonate shell from its dock in preparation for the full replacement tomorrow.
It apparently heard Barnaby enter, dropping whatever it was examining with a loud clatter, jerking and embarrassedly rubbing the back of its helmet, picking the item up and putting it back on the table. Its movements were more smooth than before, as smooth as anything copying Kotetsu could be.
“You’re doing a good job of copying Kotetsu’s mannerisms,” Barnaby commented, shutting the door behind him…and locking it, wondering if it was a good idea. He could definitely overpower a suit, but he was curious.
The suit responded by looking a bit taken aback, shaking its helm rapidly. “Nothing like him,” it seemed to express, putting its hands on its hips.
“You seem pretty lively,” Barnaby commented instead, shrugging out of his jacket and draping it across the back of a chair, peeling out of his shirt. He shook out of his curls and looked at the suit, meeting its gaze and canting his head playfully. “Are you going to let me do my work today?”
Wild Tiger responded with…nothing. A remarkably blank stare resonated from the entire unit though the helmet watched the blonde move over to the treadmill and a harness of wires that hung over it. He started to feel a little self-conscious when sticking the wires to his skin, glancing over to the suit–
He was rushed, rubberized hands grabbing him around his slim waist and drawing him close to its metallic frame, hoisting him onto a metal table and leaning in for a kiss, only to bonk their faces together. Barnaby hissed and held his hand to his mouth in pain, drawing his fingers away to see blood, shoving at the suit with his other hand.
“Tiger! What in the world–” he gasped, and Tiger seemed to pause and study the situation, analyzing what went wrong. This time it leaned in closer and gently pressed in, easing forward (though Barnaby leaned away, shy) and kissed him properly this time.
Rather, it did what it could, nuzzling its firm helmet into his mouth in what it thought was a nice, sweet kiss. And this time, its black mouth piece was…soft. Pliant, and Barnaby was more responsive, even though the new texture was surprising, to say the least. The change was fascinating, and Barnaby’s curious brain took over, kissing back just to touch.
Thankful for his curiosity, he didn’t even want to think of what all this implied. Why was the suit doing this? Why was the suit trying to kiss him? How did the suit gain this much information on Kotetsu’s subconscious in order to act like how Kotetsu would if he was fed up with Barnaby’s bratty behavior and just wanted a piece?
Speaking of, this robot was running its hand up his inner thigh.
This robot was making out with him, for lack of a better word. That pliant faceplate conformed to his mouth and his kisses, even mimicked a tongue, sliding into him, and it felt so familiar. There was that word again, and it was true. It felt like if Kotetsu had been turned into a big metal being and wanted to fuck him. He felt a little bad, responding to Wild Tiger’s advances and not his partner’s, but… he could say that this was in the name of science. And Kotetsu could watch the surveillance video, like he wanted.
Oh wait, he turned it all off. Oh well. Maybe next time he’d let Kotetsu watch.
Barnaby’s hands traveled along the white expanse of its chestplate, feeling at scuffs and imperfections in the paint as he made out with his partner’s metallic counterpart. He moaned quietly with the way Tiger touched his hips and waist, just like Kotetsu would.
It’s been watching. Paying attention.
A sensation made Barnaby gasp, jerking away from the kiss to look down at one of the hands on his body. It had started to slide, and with visual confirmation, the suit began to…shapeshift? Deform? He wasn’t sure what word was proper, but the big hand on him was leaving streaks of mostly opaque ooze originating from the fingers. It felt like something fluid in plastic wrap at first slipping along his skin, and then like warm wax. It was lovely.
As the hand traversed down it covered his clothes…and then ate them away, the fabric of his belt deteriorating, dissolving his pants.
“Hey!” Barnaby gasped, then sighed in resignation, wiggling out of his messed up trousers once they were loose enough. “I could have taken those off, jeez. Those were my favorite pair.”
The suit made no move of apology, no noise of regret as it allowed those pants to slide down, crowding Barnaby in against the table as the blond kicked at the zippers on his boots, sliding them down with clumsy movements. He managed, wiggling out of his footwear and what remained of his pants, cold and naked against the surface. He launched his boots away, not wanting to sacrifice those to…whatever this stuff was. He liked those boots. He shivered on the examination table, drawing his legs up close, feeling exposed.
It did respond to his shiver, crowding closer to aid in warming him up. The heat expelling from the suit did aid, but what helped more was the way the suit was sort of melting, molding around his exposed skin.
It started around his thighs; Barnaby spread his to accommodate the frame as it leaned in closer for kisses, and the suit seemed to concave, conform around his body. It should have been horrifying, but the suit began to bubble and ooze that same black substance smeared on his hip, dripping over his flesh, but it just felt warm. Safe. Mostly fascinating. Barnaby held on to that.
He watched the way the stuff came out of Tiger’s faceplate, bubbled from its carapace, slid out from under major nooks and crannies. But it wasn’t like a liquid, it was like a ferrofluid responding to a magnet, alive and responding, sliding up over Barnaby, weighty, warm…
Barnaby found himself tilted back against the table with Tiger above him, laid out in strings of nanofluid. He couldn’t even begin to explain what he was feeling but it was good and there was no way he was going to ask the suit to stop. He really couldn’t, not with the way Tiger’s “tongue” was filling his mouth, making speech impossible.
He was unafraid, he was comfortable, and he would think about this later. Right now, the fluid was seeping over his abdomen and along his steadily hardening dick and driving him crazy. Actually, it was also sliding along his ass, originating from Tiger’s pelvic plating, pressed firmly to him. Filling him. Stretching him open in a pulsing, rolling wave, a penetration that he couldn’t have ever imagined.
It felt incredible.
“Tiger,” he gasped, gurgled around the nanites, running his fingers along the suit, wanting to reciprocate. He was never one to just lay there and take pleasure and he wanted to try his best to give back if he could. There was an occasional touch that made the suit twitch, and a game of hot and cold progressed where Barnaby’s slender fingers slid between plates, caressed in the depths of semi-solid inner plating, and suddenly he found something that made Tiger freeze up and let out a strange noise.
A goopy hand flew up to grab Barnaby’s wrist and hold it there. ‘More’, it seemed to say, just as a rush of nanofluid seeped into Barnaby’s body, filling him up, rippling inside him like a living mass, ebbing and flowing like tide. Barnaby whined and gasped out, sliding his fingers along the spot over and over while the suit swallowed him from the waist up, stroked his cock, enveloped him.
As if in challenge, the suit sought out his prostate and hammered it, absolutely massaging it into oblivion, and Barnaby saw stars when he came inside the cocksleeve the suit made for him. His orgasm came so fast, like a truck, and he could barely move or make any noise except for desperate little sounds of pleasure and shallow, uncontrollable rolls of his hips.
It would have been embarrassing if he had any time to feel anything. The suit was bearing down on him, delighting in the way he was pressing on whatever he was pressing on, steadily–was it pulling him into the suit?
The onslaught continued, filling him until his stomach was sore, until his cock couldn’t give up any more cum, until nanites covered his whole body, swallowing him up.
Barnaby watched as yellow-green eyes flashed, Tiger’s frame shuddered, and then everything went black.
Barnaby didn’t wake up until morning when Saito came into the lab. The door was locked, so he had to have Kotetsu break it down with his Hundred Power.
When they entered, all they found was Wild Tiger, dormant in the hangar with Barnaby sleeping soundly inside.