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“What are you reading?”
“Nothing.” Richard turns the phone away, and the suit lets a tendril crawl up his arm, trying to take a peek. At the same time, it runs its ghostly fingers over Richard’s sides, making him double over and huff out a surprised laughter.
“You’re grinning too much for it to be nothing.”
With Richard distracted, it catches a glimpse of the article title: “...a relationship for the first time.”
“Well,” the suit chuckles, “Speaking from experience, practice will do you more good than theory.”
“Can never be too prepared.”
“What advice could those nerds possibly give?”
1. Communicate openly and honestly.
It waits in the dark while Richard thinks he’s being inconspicuous—one of the default parental behaviors it inherited.
Richard gasps when a tentacle wraps around his ankle.
“Where do you think you’re going?” The suit keeps the volume low. There’s no need to involve Mary Jane yet.
“Looking for dad.” Richard’s pulse throbs wildly under its hold. “We can’t just sit here and do nothing.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You would’ve said it’s too dangerous.”
“It is.” It uncoils from his ankle and hovers inches away from his fingers like a cautious animal. “But not if you’re with me.”
2. Keep your head.
The suit does most of the lifting.
Lifting and jumping and maneuvering, while Richard is too busy enjoying the cityscape and stifling yelps—it can tell by the contracting of his chest.
So what happens next is the suit’s fault. It should have considered Richard’s lack of superhuman reflexes.
It throws all its mass to the left, changing their trajectory, and in the last second, Richard avoids flying face-first into the skyscraper.
“Don’t lose your head, kid.” Warnings flash all over its internal processes.
Richard doesn’t seem to have noticed the danger he was in, rolling his eyes, “Very funny, dad—”
3. Build up your physical intimacy.
Next day after their first outing, when Richard tells it to suit up, it takes it slowly, wrapping itself around him, inch by inch, starting from the soles of his feet, sliding up the lithe muscles of his calves, the slender thighs, and higher, getting to know him, every plane and curve, smoothing out his clothes to press against him snugly, clinging to the newly-covered parts of his body almost appreciatively, squeezing here and there—
“Hey, watch it!”
The suit pauses above his hips, lessens the pressure, then continues up, without any unnecessary dwelling.
“I’m sorry, Richard. I’m still calibrating.”
4. Keep being yourself.
“So does that mean dad’s killed people too?”
Richard isn’t even supposed to be in the same room with it—a beloved pet suddenly developed a taste for biting people’s faces off. Still, he tries to patch things up between them.
“No. He’s never crossed that line.” A couple of feelers crawl tentatively toward Richard. “And never asked me to, either.”
“But aren’t you him?” Richard frowns but holds out his hand, and the suit swallows it readily.
“I suppose you could call it an interface. One of.”
There’s no fear in Richard, only wonder, when he asks, “Show me again.”
5. Avoid making any long-term decisions.
What feels like the hand of god, cold and impersonal, rips it away from Richard, drags it onto another host, and molds it into the old-new form, and it can’t fight it.
It understands all too well why this should be done, even if it makes a fuss about parting with the kid.
There’s still a chance this god is not omniscient and won’t see the real act of defiance through its halfhearted backtalk—the suit’s tiniest particles left behind, too diluted to discern from Richard’s own cells.
After all, how can it take care of him if it’s not there?