Chapter Text
After talking to Anne and convincing her that there was nothing amiss, that he didn’t find the symbiote still living inside him, despite it all; despite the fight with Riot—a blood-curdling, terrifying event that almost left him dead—and despite the sorrow that he felt when he thought that symbiote was gone, an ache that he couldn't possibly describe, Eddie went home.
Home is just the way he left it. That is to say, the bodies and blood have been cleaned from his floor and most of the furniture replaced, but it’s the same shithole that he’s known since Anne left him to fend for himself after he fucked everything up between them.
It’s not that he has to stay here anymore, because he got a huge lump sum of money from the Life Foundation, but after Anne, and after the symbiote and Venom, he doesn’t know quite what to do with himself.
Well, that’s not entirely true. He knows of a million things he could do. He could start over. Eddie could move somewhere; find a place that suits him with the money he got, but the truth is, he doesn’t want to. This is place where the symbiote and him—this is where it all started. This is really where they become who they are now. Whatever that means.
Eddie opens the door to his apartment and steps inside. He shuts it behind him, hand hovering on the doorknob before he turns around, slowly.
It’s the same empty, lonely place that he remembers.
Home sweet home, he thinks.
There’s a slither of something inside him, like an awareness. By now, he knows it’s the symbiote.
The symbiote has been quiet since things calmed down. There’s still the never-ending, gnawing hunger that lives on inside him, but they don’t say much. Initially, after the flames from the rocket launch nearly incinerated them to death, the symbiote was quiet because they were healing. Eddie ate like a madman, devouring every bit of food that he could get his hands on, and ended up coughing up most of it because it wasn’t the right kind of food.
Since then, he’s been eating a shit-ton of chocolate and tater tots, and he’s already sick of the taste. It fills him better than most things, and it’s what the symbiote needs to heal, but it still sucks.
“We need to find you something else to eat,” he’d muttered on his way back from the convenience store, bags of chocolate and tots in hand. The symbiote had been weak, and only offered a rumbling hungry, before settling back somewhere inside his ribcage.
That was weeks ago, and now the symbiote is healed, more or less. Eddie can tell they’ve healed, but they haven’t said much.
It almost feels like—like nerves, or some shit, which doesn’t make any sense, because the symbiote never had trouble calling him a pussy and a loser before it all almost ended.
Eddie sits down at his kitchen table and buries his head in his hands. Somehow, despite not having a job to deal with that day, and having no obligations of which to speak, he feels run dry. The conversation with Anne exhausted him, because while he may understand they’ll never get back together, he still misses her.
His chest throbs when he thinks about her with Dan, going back into her apartment while he returns to a place that only reminds him of how lonely he is. How pathetic his life has become; how he’s such a goddamn loser.
I can tell you still miss Anne.
Eddie lifts his head reflexively, even though there’s nothing to look at.
“Yeah, what else is new,” he grumbles, leaning his head on his hand. He sighs, waiting for the symbiote to offer more, but they’re resting still and quiet inside him. It’s when he moves towards the fridge that he feels them shift and ripple underneath the skin on his arms, tendrils bubbling up from his skin to wiggle at the freezer door.
Hungry, Eddie.
“You’re always hungry,” he says. “Forcing me to eat crap like this so you won’t eat people. Whatever.”
He yanks open the freezer door and pulls out a bag of tater tots. After ripping it open, he dumps the entire thing on the oven tray and then shoves it inside, not bothering to wait for it to preheat.
The symbiote fades back into silence.
Eddie stares at the far wall. There’s a streak of blood that the FBI or who-the-fuck-ever forgot to clean, looking stark on the cheap paint. Eddie can feel the memories of that time surface inside him. He recalls how powerful he felt, underneath all the fear. The symbiote is so strong, it’s a wonder that it lets him do anything on his own, what with how forceful it was at the beginning.
He wonders why things don’t feel like that anymore; why he doesn’t feel like that.
Maybe it was because he had a goal then. The symbiote was intent on getting to their home planet, and Eddie was just drifting along, which is sort of like a goal, if you’re a guy like him with nothing left to lose.
He glances down at the tater tots cooking. The apartment is quiet, the dead silence ringing on, broken only by the quiet ticking of the oven timer. Eddie feels something like a scream work up his throat.
“Hey,” he says, leaning back against his kitchen table. “You’ve been quiet lately. And I’ve been meaning to ask: what do I call you? Venom?”
We are Venom, they reply. The response is more emphatic than before, maybe because they know food is on the way. Their feelings are like a flicker of emotion so raw and true that Eddie feels almost like it's his own. That’s how things have been since they got back together—in a matter of speaking—and it’s hard to separate what’s him and what’s the symbiote, when they feel up to talking.
He understands what the symbiote meant immediately. Venom—that’s the thing that makes up that big suit of raw power and energy. It’s when the symbiote crawls out from inside him and wraps him up in one big, strong package.
Eddie shudders, wrapping his arms around himself. He misses being Venom. He didn’t realize how much he would until he was back in his own body, no reason or rhyme to having that much power at his disposal without homicidal symbiotes trying to take over Earth.
“You’re real quiet these days,” he repeats, because the symbiote hasn’t said anything else, and the loneliness is beginning to creep back in. “What up, V?”
The nickname pops out without much thought. It’s not really his style, but it’s better than Venom, which feels like a special name all on its own.
There’s a rumble of displeasure. He gets the distinct feeling that they aren’t entirely happy with his choice in nickname.
I am quiet because you are quiet. We are still healing.
“Still?” Eddie pulls out the tots and starts arranging them on a plate. Despite how much he’s starting to hate these things, they look fucking delicious. “You sure weren’t quiet before. You just couldn’t wait to lay it on me. Callin’ me a loser, and a pussy.”
You called me a parasite! I would not insult you if you weren’t such an easy target.
Pussy, they add, after a beat.
Eddie bursts into loud laughter, momentarily shocked by the force of it. It shakes him at his core, and he feels a thrum of pleasure come from the symbiote at having made him laugh. He quiets down quickly enough, still shoving tater tots past the grin on his face.
I like it when you laugh. Laugh more. You are always too sad. It’s pathetic.
“Ain’t that easy, buddy. There’s not much to laugh about these days.”
He thinks about all the things he doesn’t have any more and feels his chest ache.
We miss Anne.
“Well, yeah.” Eddie shrugs, keeps shoving taters. After a moment of deliberation, he reaches for the bag of chocolates in the cupboard and starts funneling those down his throat. “We—I miss a lot of things, like my own house, and my job—”
You didn’t take the old job. You have a new one, the symbiote points out. You are still a reporter.
“Still kinda miss it, though. I knew everybody there. We were friends. At this new job I don’t know anyone.”
You know us. And we know you.
Eddie doesn’t say anything in reply. It’s still weird to think about—although it’s getting less so, the more that time goes on—but it’s true. The symbiote knows everything about him, having combed through his memories or whatever the hell it did to get to this point.
“At least I still get to report,” he says eventually. He abruptly realizes that he’s been shoving chocolate in his mouth for five minutes now and the bag is almost empty. “Jesus—fuck. Look what you got me doing with all this chatter. What happened to being quiet, huh?”
You started this conversation. I did nothing to instigate your behavior.
“Don’t try and act all innocent. You make me eat all this chocolate! I just bought this yesterday.” He grumbles and gripes, but he’s smiling again, the gesture as unfamiliar as it is welcome. He didn’t realize how nice it would be to have someone to talk to in his lonely apartment space, and he wonders why he didn’t try this before. “Damn parasite.”
We are not a parasite. Take it back!
“Not happening, V.”
Apologize!
“Honestly, you’ve earned that title.”
APOLOGIZE!
“Nu uh.”
His hand lifts itself from holding onto the plastic bag and then punches Eddie square in the jaw.
They start talking about boundaries.
“You can’t just use my body for stuff, you get that, right?”
We can do whatever we want. It’s the same phrase they used when they first met. It’s my body, too.
“That’s—” Eddie stops, tamping down on the urge to immediately argue against the notion. Technically, it’s true. A few weeks ago, when this whole thing started, he might’ve fought back, but the symbiote feels like a part of him now. Just being away from them for even those few minutes had been demoralizing, and when he thought they had died?
Agony.
“No matter whose body is whose,” Eddie continues, gesturing in front of him, nearly hitting a woman holding an umbrella in the process, “you can’t just use this body—our body—to do whatever you want.”
The symbiote’s form starts to ripple around his arms rebelliously, forming tightly knit cables over his forearms. The tips of the tentacles peek out from underneath his jacket, and he goes to slap his hands over them, only to find his hands are moving on their own. Then, it's his entire body.
"Whoa, whoa, hey! Where are you going?"
He starts walking to the left, and soon realizes that the symbiote is taking him to the nearby coffee shop. It’s probably less the coffee smell and more so the pumpkin-spiced latte that everyone is getting that has attracted their attention; the one with those little chocolate swirls.
Hungry.
"I don't care if you're hungry. Stop yanking me around!"
Even as his mouth waters, Eddie starts pulling himself backwards to still the symbiote’s progress, probably looking like an insane man fighting against the wind.
A car whooshes by. Eddie is at the edge of the road now, and even though he knows the symbiote wouldn’t let him die, it still makes his heart jump up into his throat.
“Stop,” he says, trying to be quiet, still clinging to his attempts at seeming like a normal person. When the symbiote doesn’t listen, he uses every ounce of his strength to hold onto the nearby street pole, shouting out obscenities.
There’s somebody to his left that has their phone out. Either they’re filming or calling the police.
In either case, it is not a good thing.
If this got onto youtube, and people recognized him, he could potentially lose his job depending on the way it’s spun. Sure, it’s a little dramatic of a scenario, but he’d never given stock into his reputation as much as he did until he’d lost his job and couldn’t find another because of it. Plus, the whole Life Foundation thing had everybody still on edge. He was a part of that, but he doesn’t want it to define him.
“Stop! Fucking stop! I’m not joking around, V! Stop moving!”
That’s when the symbiote finally stops. Eddie collapses against the pole, holding onto it tightly, unsure.
“I asked you to stop,” he wheezes, straightening gingerly. “You don’t get to do that, asshole!”
I’m hungry. They sound petulant, their irritation mirroring Eddie’s own. Why do you always get to choose? It’s not fair!
Eddie pinches the bridge of his nose, turning around in a circle. People are still staring, but they’re moving on now that he isn’t actively throwing himself intro traffic.
“It’s not about being fair! This was my body in the first place. Just because you’re here now doesn’t mean you get the run of the place whenever you feel like fucking around!”
The punch was unexpected, and a one-time thing. Even though Eddie has healing powers out the wazoo now, he isn’t just going to let the symbiote use his body to do whatever they feel like; not like that first time.
You did not care when we did it before. Why are you so angry now?
“It was one thing when all that stuff was happening, but now…” He sighs, scratching the back of his neck. Having this conversation here, and about his fucking body, is ridiculous. “I don’t like it, okay? Not being in control like that.”
The symbiote is silent. Eddie gets the feeling that they’re considering what he’s saying more carefully now that he exploded like that. After waiting a beat, he decides to go into the coffee shop anyway, because it’s fucking cold out and coffee doesn’t sound half bad.
He’s in the middle of asking the barista to pour a ridiculous amount of chocolate syrup into the cup when the symbiote speaks up.
I am sorry, Eddie.
“You? Sorry? Coulda fooled me,” he mutters. The barista gives him a sharp look, and he realizes she was saying something. “Sorry, uh, how much was that?”
She rattles off his total, he pays, and then moves over to wait for his order, tapping his foot impatiently. There are too many people in the room, and he’s hungry. They’re hungry, whatever.
I don’t like it when you are angry, the symbiote says. Not at us.
“I’m not mad anymore. But you can’t do that again. This is like the eating people thing.” Someone looks over at him and he flushes, shoving his head down, fumbling for his phone. He shoves it at his ear, pretending he’s on a call. “You’re not allowed to do it, not unless we agree. Remember?”
The symbiote rumbles under his skin, tendrils tickling his chest. They’re not happy.
Why does it matter so much to you?
“Because it’s important. Otherwise we’ll be fighting all the time, and I don’t think my poor body could handle that.” He pauses. “Gotta lay the ground rules if we’re rooming together. Though, no matter what happens, I have the final word.”
Bitch.
“Did you just call me a bitch?”
More people are staring. A mom shoots him a glare. Fire-truck red, Eddie grabs his cup before the barista can even say his name and hurries out of the shop.
Talking with the symbiote about these things feels surreal. It’s like dealing with a naughty child, except the child is an alien that’s inhabiting his body and feels a lot like the missing part of his soul. Or something.
He tries not to think about it too hard. Even the idea of separation is an uncomfortable thought, but he’s gotten pretty good at compartmentalizing a lot of things, so he shoves that aside, too.
The coffee tastes delicious. It’s way too chocolatey for a normal person, but the symbiote loves the way it tastes going down his throat, so he keeps drinking it. Within a few minutes, it’s already gone. And then like always, he’s still hungry.
Let’s find some bad people, Eddie. Just as a snack. We’ll make it quick and painless.
“Nope, you’re not gettin’ it,” Eddie declares. His phone is in his pocket now; he really needs to get one of those Bluetooth things if he’s going to keep talking like this.
When he thinks about it, he feels a little bad. The symbiote didn’t choose to need to survive off people’s brains, and the gnawing hunger that Eddie feels whenever he goes too long without eating (which is always since they ate that guy in Mrs. Chen’s shop) must be worse for them. Or maybe it’s the same, because they share a body now. Either way, it fucking sucks to never feel full, knowing what could give him that feeling they both crave.
“Tell ya what, I’ve got a gig today but later we can pick up some special chocolate from a place I know. Whaddya say?”
But Eddie, we are hungry now.
“I know, buddy.” He pats his growling stomach. “I know.”
Once they start talking, they don’t stop.
Eddie doesn’t even realize how the quiet solitude that he had been wallowing in dissipates. The symbiote is his constant companion, whether he pisses or sleeps, and now that they’ve worked up some camaraderie, whatever nervousness or hesitation that was holding them back is gone. And they always have something to say.
*
Eddie, look. A stray dog. We should eat it. Nobody will even notice it’s gone.
“That’s not a stray,” Eddie replies, looking pointedly at the collar around its neck. The dog sniffs at his boot and he gently shoos it away, continuing down the street.
*
Eddie, you really embarrassed us back there.
“Wha—you’re a dick, you know that?”
Bigger than yours!
“That’s…that doesn’t make sense. And has nothing to do with this! Don’t talk about the—” His self-preservation instincts kick in, and he lowers his voice, “the size of my dick, you dick. They think I’m crazy because you wouldn’t stop talking!”
You were doing it wrong.
“How was I doing it wrong? We were just ordering at Taco Bell!”
We hate Taco Bell. It’s all dead meat.
“You hate it. I like it.”
You are going to be sick later. We are going to make you sick.
“Don’t you fucking dare.”
*
You are quiet, Eddie.
“Huh?” Eddie lifts his head from lying in his arms. He’s staring out at the water, arms resting on the railing at the edge of the pier. It’s midday, but the sky is overcast, leaving the city dreary and wet. During days like these, Eddie just wants to curl up in bed and sleep the day away. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, just thinking. What were you saying?”
Hungry, the symbiote says, but it’s half-hearted, like they’re saying it out of habit.
“Sorry. We’ll get something to eat soon.”
They don’t reply immediately. After a moment, he feels them form on top of his shoulder. When he looks over, they have transformed into a smaller version of the head he saw weeks ago. They flash their teeth at him, but the sight no longer strikes even the littlest bit of fear inside him.
“Hey,” he says, “you look all small. That’s kinda cute.”
Cute?!
They rear back, eyes narrowing. Eddie isn’t totally certain the white streaks on their face are actually eyes or if it’s for the benefit of looking a little more human.
I am not cute. Take that back!
Eddie smirks, reaching out to pat the top of their head. He’s never touched them before now, not like this, and the both of them freeze the moment he does it. Or maybe it’s that the symbiote freezes when he does, following his example.
We are terrifying, they continue, opening their mouth wide, slick tongue sliding wetly over their many sharp teeth. We will rip out your lungs and eat them! They will taste delicious!
“Can you feel that?” Eddie asks, stroking his fingers down the side of their undulating skin. It feels soft and wet, but when he rubs his fingers together, there’s no residue. “Huh.”
Stop ignoring me, the symbiote says, more tendrils rising up to form a larger head like the one he remembers. They keep forming, growing bigger and bigger, until he’s looking at Venom—the upper half of Venom. The bottom of their torso is a mass of tentacles that stretch to his stomach and arms.
They roar in his face, clearly going for the terrifying, and if it was anyone else other than Eddie, it would be. But looking at the symbiote is like looking at a part of himself, and that’s not terrifying at all.
When he starts laughing, the symbiote grabs his shoulders and swallows his head in their open mouth, which does pull a yelp form his chest, but instead of chomping down, they merely lick a single, disgusting stripe up the side of his face before sinking into his skin.
“Oh, gross! Come on, man!”
The symbiote moves throughout his body, brushing his organs in what is probably supposed to be a threatening manner. It does make Eddie nervous; the symbiote can heal him if it decides to take a chomp out of his heart, but they have set boundaries now.
“You better not be touching anything in there,” he threatens anyway, not quite trusting them just yet. “I’m serious, V.”
You suck. You called me cute.
“Nothin’ wrong with being cute, man. I’ve been told I’m cute by tons of women.”
And men, the symbiote adds. Eddie winces, and a hint of curiosity flickers up from the symbiote. Does that matter?
“Yes.” He scratches the back of his neck and starts walking away from the pier, his hunger getting too great to ignore. “No. I mean… ‘s just different, I guess. When a dude says it it’s more…you know.”
Without really meaning to, he conjures up images of exactly what it means when a guy calls another guy cute, at least in the sense that he’s always known it. The symbiote can’t read his mind, but it can see what he’s thinking about, in a sense, so when he starts thinking about the last guy he fucked, he knows he’s in deep shit.
You like reproducing with men. Just like you did with Anne.
“Reproducing? Uh, sure.” He looks around, trying to find an out for this conversation. “Oh, look, taco truck! I’m gonna get us a few of those.”
Despite the power and the understanding that comes with his symbiotic relationship as Venom, Eddie still has nightmares.
Of fucking course he does. Everything that happened to him terrified him. It’s not something he can just get over after a few days of meditation; no, he has nightmares all the time, and sometimes he recalls the specific feeling of being stabbed, how much pain he’d felt; how he thought he was going to die, but worse yet, the symbiote—Venom, everything that made them who they were—was going to die along with him and there was nothing he could do about it.
His eyes snap open, a scream still hanging on his lips. His hands instantly go to his stomach, feeling where a giant shard should be sticking out of his body. For a moment, the pain is there; he can feel it clear as day, but then just as quickly, it’s gone.
He rolls over onto his back, wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.
“Fuck,” he breathes. He scrubs his hands over his face. “Shit.”
Eddie. You are afraid.
Eddie jumps, swearing again as the symbiote materializes above him, a floating head like the one in his nightmare. He’s not afraid of them anymore, but he still can’t seem to catch his breath, his heart pounding too hard and too loud in his chest.
We don’t like it when we are afraid. There is nothing to fear here. Stop being afraid!
Eddie chuckles weakly. “It’s not that easy.” He pauses. “Don’t worry about it, though. I’ll go back to sleep in a minute.”
He doesn’t go back to sleep in that minute, or the next. He lies awake, staring at the ceiling, and then attempts rolling onto his side, hoping the change in position will give him a better sense of peace.
It doesn’t. An hour goes by, the fear long gone, but replaced by something else.
It gnaws at him, like the endless hunger. Sorrow swells in his chest, lodging itself in his throat and sitting there, making it impossible to breathe. Eddie’s lower lip trembles, and he exhales unsteadily, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand. He feels the symbiote rise curiously, and so he doesn’t make a sound, refusing to let on how upset he’s feeling even though they can probably tell.
He isn’t lonely anymore. Not like he once was, but he can’t help but miss the way things were before. Not completely, and not entirely, because he would never change the past, but he fucking misses it. Things were easier then. They weren’t so complicated.
He opens his mouth to breathe, and all that comes out is a dry sob. He shoves his knuckles at his eyelids, willing the feeling to go away. He’s so fucking tired of being sad.
Something tickles at his waist. He reaches down to itch at it, fingers closing over a slimy mass.
He yanks his hand back. The ticklish feeling continues on his arms and shoulders, the movement of the symbiote shifting under his clothing making it hard to concentrate on that sleeping thing he’s supposed to be doing.
“What’re you doing?” he says tiredly, closing his eyes when he feels tendrils crawl up his forearms. They form around them in their entirety, but stop short of his wrist, wrapping around it firmly. The symbiote continues to spread across his back, and then stretches up over his shoulders and down past the back of his thighs.
It’s weird. He’d be more bothered by the movement if he wasn’t focused on trying not to be obvious about how he’s crying, to the one person that can tell without a doubt.
Once the symbiote settles, Eddie leans back to try and look, but their head blocks him, having formed by his shoulder at some point. Lying like this, it almost feels like he’s being…held.
Eddie, the symbiote says, why are you sad?
He doesn’t immediately answer.
“Dunno,” he whispers. “Lots of things, I guess. Just feel kinda shitty tonight.”
He tries to wipe at his eyes, but the symbiote tugs him back, tendrils tightening around his wrists.
“What are you doing?” Eddie asks again.
I have seen this before, in your memories. Other humans do it all the time. It’s called a hug.
“A hug,” Eddie repeats dumbly. The tendrils all along his body tighten all at once, and it is like a hug, although an admittedly weird one.
This will make you less sad.
Warmth crawls into Eddie’s chest, spreading until he can’t stop the smile splitting his face in two. The symbiote’s teeth brush his ear and he huffs out a tired laugh, twitching away.
“You’re, uh. You’re something else, you know that?”
Yes. I am not a squishy, sad turd of a human like you.
Eddie’s laughter grows. He wraps his arms around himself and ends up winding the symbiote more firmly around him. It’s almost like pulling a blanket tighter, and because his brain is connected to the symbiote or some shit, they sees the way Eddie is imagining it and crawls further down his chest and over the back of his hands.
It should be weird. Instead, it feels right in a way that Eddie doesn’t fully comprehend.
You are not sad anymore, Eddie. The hug worked.
They sound proud. Smiling, Eddie smooths his fingers over the tendrils covering the tops of his fingers with his thumb. They harden, forming the something like fleshy fingers, still resting on top of his own.
“Like this,” he mutters, adjusting his fingers so he can thread his through the symbiote’s. They remain still, made unsure by Eddie's unfamiliar gesture, but after a moment he feels them tighten their grip, fingers curling around Eddie's. It’s different; it definitely shouldn’t feel this good, but Eddie is feeling too tired and too content to remember he’s not supposed to be cuddling up to his symbiote like he’s really that pathetic.
No more feeling sad.
“Can’t promise anything,” he slurs. He feels warm, and his eyelids are heavy as lead, drooping dangerously every few seconds.
Maybe not so pathetic, Eddie thinks, just before sleep finally pulls him under.