To his shock, it was Anne who called him to go out for coffee this time.

It wasn't like Eddie wasn't aware that he was kinda pathetic. Even if he hadn't known already, he had his other half - other person? whatever. His other, hanging out in his head, reminding him of how pathetic all his worst moments are. Venom was of the opinion, and Eddie was inclined to agree, that constantly asking Anne out for coffee was kind of pathetic. That's why he'd avoided doing it, mostly, once Venom'd taken up residence in his head.

But apparently she'd actually been enjoying the coffee dates, because she texted him to set one up just a couple days after he got Suzy her job.

"How've you been?" she said, smiling at him over a cappuccino.

"Aw, you know." He sipped his coffee. "Around. Doin' stuff. You ever heard of Milq?"

"Like, from a cow? Yeah, I'm familiar."

"No, with a q. It's this new startup. They bill themselves as Uber for milk, or AirBnb for cows, depending on which marketing person you talk to."

"Never heard of them. I'm guessing they're bad news, though, if you're investigating them."

Eddie tipped his drink towards her. "Right in one. I'm chasing down all kinds of leads about that, plus this housing thing. The usual bullshit. How 'bout you?"

"I'm good, I'm...really good." She bit her lip, eyes sliding away from his. "Things are going really well with Dan."

"Yeah? Hey, that's good. I thought maybe I'd fucked that up too."

In the past if he said something self-deprecating, she'd roll her eyes and snipe at him. And thinking back, with the benefit of time, he couldn't really blame her. But now he meant it seriously. Plenty of guys would turn tail and run at the first sign of aliens, much less the second or third. Plus, Eddie'd really made a scene at that place with the lobster.

That was nice. We should go back there. I like the eyes.

"No, you didn't. I mean, he was definitely shaken, and I'm kind of surprised he's willing to let it go. There are plenty of papers he could write to get his name in the history books. But he's okay with it. His heart is in his work, really, not his reputation."

There it was. "Not like me, huh?"

And maybe they'd gotten farther than Eddie thought. Maybe it was gonna be more okay than he'd hoped. She smiled at him, entirely without anger, and said, "Yeah. Not like you."

In the back of his mind, Venom was very, very quiet.

He was halfway through reading up on the housing report from Mrs. Gutierrez's building when Anne texted him. Funny story about that thing we talked about. Can we meet?

'That thing' could be Uber for milk douche, Dan, or his fucking alien, and given the gamut of choices he figured he shouldn't put her off. He met her in a corner store a flew blocks from her work, trying - and failing - not to think of Dr. Skirth.

God, if the same thing happened to Anne - no. "Hey, what's going on?"

"You mentioned heavy metals. Remember?"

Uber for milk douche. He felt relief course through him. "Yep."

"It's a lot worse than that. I can't give you more detail -"

"And I won't try to take it from you," Eddie said hastily.

She actually smiled at that, a little. "I know. Thanks. But here - go talk to these people. Third-party processors for the company, down in the Central Valley." She handed him a bit of folded-up paper. "There are answers there, probably."

And probably people they could eat. Yeesh, Eddie didn't like how the prospect kind of excited him. "Hey. Thanks, Anne. This means a lot."

She smiled a little, even as her eyes darted around, scanning for someone watching or listening in. "Don't mention it. Seriously, don't; I could get disbarred for this." And then she was gone.

"Guess we're gonna go for a ride."

Venom cackled in the back of Eddie's mind. It loved the bike, maybe more than Eddie himself did. As soon as they got free of the worst of the traffic, it wrapped itself around his neck, warm and wet in a way that should've been weird - that was weird, okay - but was also -

Not the time, Eddie told himself, taking a sharp curve on the road. But then, when would be? There wasn't really an appropriate time to admit that he liked it when Venom materialized, liked being touched and held.

I like it too, Eddie.

"None of that." It felt better to talk out loud, shouting into the wind. "I'm gonna get you a book on what buddies means. Buddies is not cuddling on a motorcycle."

In response, Venom offered up an image of Anne clinging to him, yelping in delight as they crested a hill.

"Yeah, exactly! Anne and me weren't buddies!"

But you're friends now.

"Breakup'll do that to you. If you're lucky." He sighed, then tried something a little different, reaching out with his brain instead of talking. Listen. Let's just enjoy the ride, okay? I don't know what you're trying to do with all the touching, but I don't want to argue about it when we could just be enjoying ourselves.

We are enjoying ourselves. As if to prove it, Venom wrapped around his shoulders, sending sinuous bits of darkness up his chest.

It was way, way inappropriate for two buddies on a bike. But Venom was warm, and Eddie knew it well enough to be able to tell when it thought it was compromising. He'd bring up boundaries again later. For now, he grinned and revved his engine.

Their contact was in an old fakey general store, one of the places that had been a real general store once upon a time, then a gas station, then a tourist trap. Eddie ducked past a bunch of bullshit California memorabilia and asked the lady at the counter, "Hey, I'm looking for Scottie Michaels?"

Her eyes widened and she barely restrained a flinch. "He's, uh, he's actually out. I could take a message."

"Nah. It's cool." Eddie leaned on the counter and looked around, putting on a show of laziness. "I got all day, I can just wait for him here."

She is brave. Venom sounded kinda pissed about it. We should try to convince her.

It said a lot about how fucked-up Eddie's life had gotten that he knew exactly what Venom meant. It wanted to suit up and scare the woman. She'd tell them what they needed to know and then they could be on their way. And Venom would love it; it'd be happy afterwards, lighting up Eddie's prefrontal cortex with joy.

Eddie wanted to make it happy. Fucking fuck.

Let's do it, Eddie.

They could - if, Eddie thought firmly, Scottie didn't show after a couple hours.

"Hey. Hey. Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to leave," the woman behind the counter said loudly.

He refocused. It felt fucked up every time, like the moment after a roller coaster starts, when you can barely breathe because of the change in speed. "I don't think so," he said. "I really need to talk to Scottie."

Her face froze. She raised both hands.

Humans can't do that, Venom said as fire burst over both her palms.

Eddie didn't have to ask for Venom. It was on him as soon as they saw the fire, swallowing him up. Eddie was still there, though; he just wasn't - quite - himself.

We. A hiss, a roar, surrounding him and filling him.

"What are you?" they snarled, advancing on the woman. The first still burned from her palms, but she'd gone ashen. Realized she was in over her head, probably.

"Never mind," they said. Eddie felt a bolt of perverse pleasure. "You still look tasty, after all."

"Get away from me!" The woman brandished fire, which they easily bat aside. "I don't give a shit what your boss is CEO of, you can't take me!"

"Wait," they said. "What?"

Venom vanished from Eddie as soon as it'd emerged. Eddie was left reeling, and then -

"Oh shit," he said, and dodged the fire.

Eddie! She is innocent!

"She's trying to burn us!" Eddie said, ducking behind a giant taxidermied bear.

We can't hurt innocent people! You said!

Which was a good point: he had said. But he didn't want to end up in the burn unit, either. "Wait, wait!" he shouted. "I'm not who you think I am!"

"Not some piece of shit thug trying to kidnap me?" Fireball, singeing Eddie's jacket. "Not some Silicon Valley motherfucker who's going to lock me up and try to drain my blood for your stupid immortality project?"

"No! I'm - ah, fuck." He came out from behind the bear, hands in the air. Venom curled out of his shirt, wrapping around both his wrists. Fuck, it was really comforting, this whole thing was so much more fucked up than he'd been planning on this morning. "I'm a reporter. Actually. You ever see the Brock Report?"

She didn't look convinced, but at least she didn't crispy fry him. "That lunatic who quit his job to join a paper? My sister loved his shit."

"You have a sister? Is she an alien too?"

"Wait, holy shit," she said. "You're the lunatic."

"Guilty as charged."

"My sister's human." Her expression contorted. "I thought I was, too."

Boring, Venom hissed. If we could shoot fire, that would be the best.

"Yeah? That's, uh. Lotta weird shit happening lately. Speaking of. I'm doing a story on Milq - with a q. And Scottie's a source, or, a potential source. Hard to explain. But someone tipped me off that he might have some information for me."

She lowered her hands, looking suddenly exhausted. "Your tip was a little off. Scottie's not a man. Scottie's me."

Eddie had kind of suspected. "All right. How about we sit down and talk some?"

"What's that thing in you?"

"A...friend. My other half, you know."

For some reason, that made her snort. "Sure. Fine, come on."

She led him into the back, where old papers teetered in massive piles over a single desk. Eddie sat down across from her and pulled out his recorder. "All right?"

"Sure, fuck it." She sighed. "Milq approached us awhile back about doing some processing for them. My family owns this land, the store's just to have something facing the highway. We have dairy facilities further back in. The business was stupid, frankly, but the money was good. So we said yes."

She went on to tell the story Eddie'd thought he came down here for: corruption, Silicon Valley dickfucks trying to lean on them to let health and safety standards slip, trying to make the facility a sub-sub-contractor, trying to straight up not pay them when the contracting scheme failed. All the usual shit.

It was good material. Incredibly good, actually, a massive breakthrough compared to what he had before. He owed Anne like fifty coffees. But at the same time -

"Thanks, this is all really good. I have a couple questions, though."

"Shoot."

"Why'd you think I'd come to kidnap you? Please don't, you know." He motioned with his hands, not wanting to say 'light me on fire' on the record.

She looked at him, then down at the recorder. She reached down and shut it off.

"Brad Treit wants to live forever."

"Don't we all?"

About that.

"I mean," Eddie said, ignoring Venom's shit as best he could, "humans are scared of dying. It's kind of normal."

"Sure. But Treit attended the auction of Carlton Drake's personal effects six months ago. He paid fifteen million dollars for his laptop."

Eddie remembered. That'd put him on to Milq in the first place, how stupid the name was. "Sure. It's encrypted, though."

She shook her head. "He knows. I don't know how, I'm a farmer, but he knows. He's convinced aliens are the secret to eternal life."

I will never let us die, Eddie.

"That's crazy," Eddie said. "He knows that's crazy, right?"

She shrugged. "I'm going to have to leave the state soon. I saw him - he wanted us to process his...specimens. I watched him drink alien remains. He doesn't know about me, but he knows I saw, and he wants to kill me."

"Christ." Wait a second. "How'd you know they were alien remains?"

She smiled, small and bitter. "I watched him kill the alien, Mr. Brock. His name was Gary, and he was my friend. He just also happened to be not from around here."

At some point, Eddie thought, he was going to have to deal with the fact that there were apparently aliens just - all over the fucking place. "Right. Okay. Well, you know I believe you." He held up his right hand, where Venom still tingled against his wrist. "But that probably won't make it into the story."

"As long as he gets put away, I don't care."

"Great. So here's what we're gonna do." Eddie went through the ethical stuff - safe file transfer, verifying her as a source, fact-checking, all the good stuff. Venom sat quiet through all of it, didn't say a fucking word till they were back on the road.

My kind came here because we feared others would beat us to the punch.

"I didn't ask."

I can feel your curiosity.

Which meant it could feel other stuff, too. But then, Eddie'd already known that, what with the late-night hookup attempts and all. "I'm not too worried about it."

You're worried about everything. You shouldn't be. We can do -

"Whatever we want, I know."

Frustration. You don't know. You don't listen. Eddie, I will keep us safe. I will kill everyone who threatens you.

Eddie didn't answer. He couldn't; there was nothing to say. Maybe he didn't understand - actually, he probably didn't, because from where he was sitting, Venom'd already told him that same shit over and over. He knew Venom needed a body. Eddie was that body. It really was that simple.

We are not simple!

At least being on the defensive like this felt kind of familiar. "I know, babe. I know."

You don't. But Venom retreated, back to the darkest recesses of Eddie's mind. Fine by Eddie. Absolutely peachy.

It was almost nine by the time he got back home. He had notes to type up and he needed to sleep, but he didn't feel like doing either of those things. He felt like he had during college, equal parts wired and exhausted, strung along by caffeine and nerves. Well, and overwhelming horniness, in college. Less so these days.

Eddie. Let's go out.

"I'm tired."

We're not tired. We're restless.

And damn it, it was right. Eddie felt like his limbs were on fire. "Fine, fine. Where you wanna go?"

He figured it'd take him to a nightclub, or maybe a dark alley where they could eat a criminal. Instead, Venom showed him...

"The movies? Seriously?"

Popcorn. Darkness. Just us.

Eddie closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths and did not think about how many movie dates Venom'd probably pulled out his memories. "Sure. Whatever you want."

Fuck, he meant it, too.

So they went to the movies. They watched some Tom Cruise bullshit, and Venom asked him weird questions, and Eddie laughed, and they shared popcorn. They could do that, in a dark and mostly-empty theater; no one would realize what Venom was. No one even glanced twice at them. Halfway through the movie, Venom snaked a tendril around Eddie's waist, warm and absolutely unavoidable.

Eddie decided he'd have a breakdown later. He let Venom drag him out of the theater after, asking questions about the feasibility of weak humans scaling skyscrapers alone, without help from superior beings. ("Yeah, yeah, you're really something else," Eddie said, suffused with warm fondness.) Venom took them to a bar, and Eddie had a couple fingers of whiskey with Venom stroking his neck, where no one else could see. Then someone sat down across from him - Tad, who worked in a healthcare startup. Sure, Eddie thought. Fuck it. He was horny and frustrated and the subject of all those feelings was an alien with a shaky grasp on human behavior and an affection for cannibalism that Eddie didn't really know how to deal with. Hooking up with Tad in a bar bathroom was so much simpler than that.

Tad had longer hair and the kind of kissing style that brought Eddie viciously, viscerally into the present. He bit Eddie's lip and shoved him against the stall, pressed their hips together and then pushed Eddie to his knees.

And Eddie, who had fucking dreams about being forced, about being held still and used, went. He pulled Tad's dick out and sucked it, more eager than he remembered being for a long fucking time. He was drooling, hard in his jeans, Venom pressed against his lower back and watching with avid, silent attention.

So - he had excuses. Horniness, for one. A fucked-up crush. Alcohol. An alien parasite who'd let him get drunk. Lots of excuses.

But still, he didn't notice the knife against his neck soon enough. Venom didn't realize this wasn't part of normal human sex fast enough. Tad smiled, his eyes suddenly empty, and said, "Brad says hi."

Then he flicked the knife and slit Eddie's throat. Eddie's blood soaked the bathroom door as Tad fled the scene.