Eddie already had enough problems, what with being a busy reporter with an alien parasite, when he caught one of his neighbors holding a fridge above her head. Now he has twice as many problems, including a kid who won't stop treating him like the big brother she never had and a moody alien parasite. Or: you can totally secretly pine while sharing a brain with someone else, as Venom and Eddie are both determined to prove.
"You should have let me eat him."
"I'm pretty sure the nutrients you need wouldn't even be bioavailable in a corpse already beginning rigor mortis. Though frankly, I don't really want to think about it enough to be absolutely sure. Here."
A crunching sound, very close to his ear. Eddie opened his eyes to see Dan toss Venom another piece of Almond Joy. Venom, connected to Eddie only by a very thin tentacle, caught the candy in its teeth.
"Eddie." Dan stood, dropping the rest of the chocolate bar in favor of his stethoscope. "Welcome back. Who's President?"
"Ugh."
"There you go." He bustled around checking Eddie's vitals, which was nice and all, but - "What happened? Is Suzy okay? Is Venom - are you -" It wasn't inside him hardly at all, why wasn't it inside him?
Turned out it was pretty embarrassing to have his heart spike in fear when it was hooked up to a monitor. "Easy, there," Dan said. "Everyone's fine - well, except Brad: he's dead. Anne's having a field day down at the DA's office. But your neighbor's fine, and Venom is, um, as healthy as I could confirm, given limited tools. Just waiting on you to wake up before -"
"Going back inside you," Venom said.
Eddie could feel himself turning bright red. "Okay, thanks. That basically sums it up, huh."
"Not really," Venom said.
Eddie could feel its anger, he realized suddenly. It coursed through their limbs, like the freaky version of your hands warming back up after being outside in the winter too long. A foreign sensation here in Cali, sure, but Eddie had a long memory and Venom -
Venom was messing with those memories. Digging through them.
I thought you would die, it hissed furiously.
"Now's really not the time," Eddie told the corporeal part of it.
Then when will be the time! The next time you almost die? Or the next? Or maybe when you're finally dead!
"Hey. Hey, asshole, I thought you were dying too, get off your high horse."
"Ah, technically Venom was dying." Dan held up a conciliatory hand when they both turned to glare at him. "I'm sorry, but I do actually need both of you to understand. Venom, you were dying. Eddie, you were dying too. As far as I can tell - and I really do need to stress, this is beyond the realm of my understanding and my licensing - Venom saved you, Eddie."
"And then you saved Venom."
"I did my best."
He is very talented. And for some reason Venom sounded fuckin pissed as hell about that, like it'd rather be dead.
Eddie gave Dan the best smile he could manage at the moment - strained, probably pretty crazy-looking. "Excuse us for a sec."
"Of course. I'll finish my rounds." He stood up and gave them that half-smile Eddie'd seen so many times now, like they were just another pair here for medical attention, not an alien and his girlfriend's ex. "It's been good seeing you, Eddie, in spite of the circumstances. You too, Venom."
And then Doctor Dan was gone, and Eddie had to face the music, as it were.
"So you almost died burning that poison from my veins?"
"You're the idiot who got himself poisoned." Oh, great. Time for the blame game.
"Seriously?" Eddie said. "I was trying to protect Suzy, we were trying to protect Suzy. But if we were both gonna die - I'd have rather you found a new host than go out with me, dipshit."
"You still don't understand." Venom cocked its head at Eddie. It looked almost like it had that first time, on the pier, only then Eddie had been scared shitless. Now he just felt desperate fondness spreading in his chest like some kind of messed-up feelings bronchitis.
"What don't I understand?" he said when he realized it was waiting for his reply.
"We saved the world."
"Yeah, I know, I was there."
"No." Half-roared. "We saved the world for you, Eddie."
For a second he didn't get it, and for another few seconds he got it and felt like the bottom of his stomach had fallen out. "So you're telling me," he said slowly, trying to think through every word yet totally unable to think at all - "You're telling me that if I'd died, you woulda, what? Gone and gotten all your alien buddies to blow the Earth up?"
"Of course not! I would have died too. Just like you would for Anne."
He should've expected it, but he didn't. He was left with nothing to say, and then Dan came back in, and whatever he might've said got lost in his need to repress and pretend he was fine for Annie's boyfriend.
Only he didn't care, did he? Not anymore, not since accepting that he and Anne really were history. Something about that thought made Venom snarl at him. They got discharged and Venom took them home via the rooftops, and when they got back into their apartment, with its garbage bags of broken glass and one-leg-missing couch, everything clicked into place for Eddie.
"Hey, V. Why do you think I told you never to do that again?"
I don't know. Sulky in a way it hadn't even known how to be, six months ago.
"Well, why do you think I didn't want you to kill yourself saving me?"
You like having superpowers. No hesitation there, but the hint of a growl. Venom materialized just enough to wrap around his wrist and glare at him. "You enjoy the convenience of symbiosis."
"It's pretty cool, but I wouldn't call it convenient."
"You think it will help us win Anne back."
"Anne and Dan are happy." Eddie dropped his backpack and went to sit down on the bed, staring at his hands. Here it was, the plank or ledge or whatever. The emotional vulnerability that Venom probably wouldn't even realize Eddie was expressing, given that it was an alien with more feelings than emotional IQ. He could tell from their too-tenuous connection that Venom was freaking out, just like he could tell it didn't want to admit it. So he reached out and stroked it, along the curve just below its unnatural face, hoping to communicate what he was having trouble shaping into words.
"I think we could be happy too. That's all. That's why I don't want either of us to go on some suicide mission if we don't have to, okay? Even though I appreciate, you know, not having poison where my blood should be."
Venom became thicker at the point where it entered Eddie's body, sliding over his hips the way soap-slick bathwater might. It shivered against him, leaned into his touch. The next time it spoke, its words reverberated through Eddie's bones. Are you lying?
"Course not. I can't lie to you."
I didn't know about this!
"Hiding things is a little different." He shivered as Venom grew prickly in rebuke. "Whoa, sweetheart, it's not like I'm the only one who hid shit, here."
I didn't hide anything. Asshole.
But Eddie could feel it now where he hadn't been able to before, affection and care and this awful kinda vortex of emotional need. So much for thinking Venom didn't know what human feelings were like. "I think you might've, buddy."
You love Anne! And Venom shoved the memory at him, like Eddie's own memories shoved through a funhouse mirror. "God, I love you," he'd said, right before going off to rescue Suzy.
Ah, fuck, what a stupid thing. "Not like that. Like a friend. Like - okay, yes, thank you for that image, that was long before the break-up." He did kinda miss Anne's dildo collection. But - "I moved on, okay? Generally, because that's the healthy thing to do. Specifically, with you."
Two could play the psychic game. He shoved his own feelings at Venom in an ugly pile: his weird horniness, his stupid crush, his hopeless love. It was all there, wrapped up and inextricable from their incredible, unbelievable, unsustainable togetherness.
Venom went still inside him and around him. Eddie had no idea what it was thinking and was too chickenshit to press the issue. A full three minutes passed - and Eddie knew, 'cause he could see the microwave clock from here - before Venom said, I still think I should have been allowed to eat Brad.
Eddie stroked their hip, the spot at which Venom's materialization met his skin. "Thought you said we could do whatever we want."
Doctor Dan had persuasive medications.
Eddie snorted at the image of Venom, loopy and under Dan's influence. "Uh-huh. Well, you're here now, and you still got me. And Brad's dead." Thanks to Suzy, god fuckin' bless.
We're going to give her a pony!
"Sure. Or maybe like, college tuition. But that's for later." Quit being a coward, Eddie told himself, and took a deep breath. "Right now, I wanna - I wanna know what you're going to do about what you can feel. From me. To you."
He gasped when Venom raced to cover him, pushing him back flat on the bed and stretching his limbs out. He couldn't move, but it didn't matter; one minute he was spread-eagle and bare to the world, and the next Venom had him covered head to toe, not quite masked up but not just Eddie anymore either.
"God, I love you," he said, half because it was true and half because it was fucking transcendental to be able to say. "You're so fucking perfect, I - oh, fuck. Fuck, fuck."
Venom stopped sucking and biting at his neck for long enough to grin at him. "Do you need something to do with your mouth?" it said, and then answered its own question, sliding inside Eddie slick and weird and perfect.
Eddie'd thought it was good before, when he was hiding half his own feelings from Venom. That was nothing compared to now. Venom surrounded him until Eddie forgot there was a him. They sank into each other, their nerve endings lighting up with sensation. Eddie couldn't move and he didn't care; Venom was in his ear and in his mind, whispering Eddie, Eddie, always, forever, even as he filled Eddie every possible way.
When he came, they sobbed. They blacked out together, wrapped around each other, Eddie's own flesh a nonsensical non-barrier between them.
He woke up himself again, Venom wholly inside him, smug and comfortable. The bed was disgusting; apparently they'd fallen asleep in one of several wet spots. "What the fuck, how many times did you make me come," Eddie said, heaving himself upright as his muscles screamed.
We came exactly as many times as we wanted. Warmth ran down Eddie's spine, and with it, his muscle aches disappeared.
"Ah, that's good. Thanks, babe."
Beloved.
Venom was. Eddie smiled to himself, a grin he knew was doofy even before he saw it in the mirror, and went about getting ready to go. He owed his boss some short-term disability paperwork, and he wanted to check up on Suzy.
When he opened his front door and saw someone standing there, he was shouting and tripping on his own feet before he realized it was only Suzy, who apparently hadn't felt like waiting for Eddie to get his shit together enough to visit. "Shit," he said from his spot on the floor, where he'd landed after tripping over his own feet. "V, why didn't you catch us?"
It was funny. My love.
So he was bright red when Suzy said, "Did you know the ceilings in this building are super thin? Yeah, I guess they're hundred year old wood or whatever, so if someone jumps or does karate or has loud gross feelings sex, you can totally hear."
"I didn't...we weren't...on the floor."
Yes we were. And, oh boy, those were some very explicit memories Venom was sharing with him. "Never mind, I stand corrected. Sorry."
Suzy rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Anyway, I'm glad you're okay."
"And how are you?" Eddie motioned her over to the couch, grabbing them sodas from the fridge. "Are you holding up all right?"
"Why wouldn't I be?" Suzy had that belligerent tone it seemed like every teenager was a natural at, the one that said Eddie had better be careful with the assumptions he was making.
"Well, you know, you killed a guy. Two guys."
"Three," Suzy said grimly.
Eddie bit back the proud smile Venom wanted them to wear. "Yeah. So, taking human life, I hear it can fuck you up."
"Well, I'm an alien."
Eddie rolled his eyes. "So you just don't care? Pull the other one. Be serious with me, okay? Or I'll call my friend at the DA and she'll make you go to therapy."
"That's not how family law works, like, at all." But Suzy bit her lip and looked down at her Coke. "I don't know. It's messed up. It gave me bad dreams. But I feel like I should feel worse than I do."
"I hear you. That's how I feel when me and V eat some murdering asshole, too."
"Brad wanted to kill me. They all did. And I just." She shrugged. "I feel so bad about other stuff, like my friends I lost and my family. I can't feel bad about this, too."
Eddie gave in to his and Venom's shared impulse and clicked his Coke against Suzy's. "Nah. You don't need to feel bad. We're proud of you for defending yourself."
Suzy looked thoughtful. "Does this mean you guys are my gay dads?"
"No!" Eddie said, at the same time Venom materialized from his shoulder and hissed, "Yes."
"Uh-huh." Suzy grabbed Eddie's remote. "Do you have Hulu? I want to watch the newest What's Happening, Allison."
"What's - what?"
"It's huge with my Whatsapp chat. And the star went on the New Day pod a couple weeks ago and said some crazy stuff about their costumes, so." She poked at the buttons on his remote. "Oh my god, you still have all the factory installed apps on here. God, what would you do without me?"
"Not realize how old I'm getting, apparently," Eddie said. But he let her put on her weird show and laughed when they cracked jokes he only half understood. Venom stayed with him, watching both Suzy and the show intently, and outside the world kept spinning, uninvaded by aliens and slightly less populated by douchebag startup vampires.
It was kinda perfect. It felt like home.
unspeakablehorror
Updated: 01 Sep 2023Confirm Delete
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