Sui Zhou hears Tang Fan coming long before he arrives, because he knows intimately, resolutely, the shape that Tang Fan takes in his life.

“What else was there to do, hm?” Tang Fan tugs the records back, tucking them under his arm with a flap of his drapey sleeve and a jut of his chin. “Let him learn a hard lesson not to be so complacent in his obstinance towards you from now on. It wasn’t undeserved.”

People should apologise when they’ve done wrong, and he’s done more than wrong Sui Zhou over the past weeks.

"Have you no care?" Tang Fan berates. "Or is this clumsiness?"

"I don't step beneath blades on purpose," Sui Zhou bites back, now sufficiently baited.

Before Fujian, Tang Fan had only caught those turns in Sui Zhou's expression where it had made sense to conclude they were borne of irritation. He's since learned differently; been its witness and its inspiration enough to know that it comes when Sui Zhou is not expecting something to touch at where it does within the crux of man and malformation, where his pleasures have bled to pains have bled to perturbations.

They say the nights on Lake Houhu will drive a man to madness.

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.

Five photographs from the collection of Carlotta Valdez.

Stolen moments down below.

Iris only sees him once after that.