Chapter Text
Flash Thompson was being followed.
He had noticed it not even a block away from the Alchemax building. That place had become like a magnetic pole for the compass needle that kept on twisting into his gut, but it was yet to see if that happened because of some kind of symbiote-related research they were conducting, or because of a genuine connection to his partner, and he figured he needed more informations before trying to break into the place.
Now, as he walked through the afternoon crowd, a few snowflakes carried by the wind hitting his face, and a constant itch in the back of his head telling him to turn around and confront his pursuer, he thought it a safe bet to say he had finally found a lead. Or to be more precise, it had found him.
He entered a narrow alley, walking until the sounds from the street started to wane, then he stopped. The footsteps behind him halted too. He took a deep breath, then he turned around.
“Eddie Brock,” he said.
The man standing a few feet away raised his chin.
“Thompson,” he replied, coldly. “We meet again.”
“You are a wanted man, Brock. Why were you following me?”
“Not because I wanted to, that's for sure,” Brock scoffed. Flash took a couple of steps forward, careful, ready for any reaction. Coming closer he could see Eddie seemed to be in rough conditions, even in the shadow of the alley. His jacket was worn out, his stance tense, and though his gaze was defiant, Flash could see tired marks under his eyes.
“Then why?”
Eddie looked at him, his mouth set in a tight line, for a few seconds. Finally, he seemed to make up his mind. “We need your help.”
The emphasis on 'we' wouldn't have been necessary. Flash felt himself tense up.
“What do you mean?”
Eddie glanced around. “I'd rather talk somewhere more private.”
“Where? Your house?”
“Not a chance, as you said I am a wanted man,” he walked past Flash, towards the other end of the alley. “Follow me.”
They walked through two other blocks, avoiding the more crowded streets. Flash trailed a few steps behind. He watched the other man's back, looked through him, as if he could see the silhouette of the other being hiding within him, if he peered hard enough. But he watched Eddie too, and confirmed his suspicions. The man was exhausted. Flash wondered how Venom was. He wondered what they had done to each other already.
Eddie stepped into another, even narrower alleyway, and stopped in front of the service door to a closed diner that faced the main road. He removed the propped up bar that kept the unlocked door shut, and opened it.
“So as a first thing we trespass? You set on having the law after me too?”
Eddie rolled his eyes, not even deigning to answer him. He entered and Flash followed quickly, pulling the door closed behind his back. He could already hear Andi's voice resonating into his mind in disbelief. 'And you walked right into the trap just like that?! Come on, coach!' Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The diner had been abandoned for quite a while, and everything in it was covered under a thick veil of dust The windows were boarded, except in a few places were the wooden planks were broken, and from these the light of the winter afternoon sun came in, adding to the general spectral atmosphere instead of diminishing it.
Eddie sat down in a dusty booth.
“Cozy,” Flash remarked, sitting down in front of him. “When does the ghost waiter come to ask for our order?”
“Wouldn't recommend the coffee.” Eddie shrugged. “It makes a good place for a stake out.”
“That's what the two of you do now? Keep watch and catch criminals?”
“Still didn't manage to get as many front pages as your friend, the Spider.”
“Competition is hard.” Flash sighed. “Alright. Why are we here, Brock? What do you need my help for?”
Again, Eddie went quiet, as if debating with himself. Or... Flash watched for the signs of an inner conversation taking place, but that didn't seem the case. With sudden concern he wondered if the Symbiote was sedated.
“The Symbiote is sick,” Eddie said, finally.
“What do you mean?”
“As it has been explained to me, it appears that my body has become a toxic environment for it.” Eddie avoided Flash's gaze, as he spoke. His voice was calm, but his fists were balled up, resting on the table. “It is decaying, slowly but surely, it is literally falling apart. We have been provided with a chemical treatment, a serum, that can slow down the process, but it has been losing effectiveness, and the new one that is being developed is still too dangerous. It might even kill it. I won't risk it.”
“So that's why you were hanging around Alchemax, someone there is giving you access to this treatment?” In exchange for what, Flash wondered, but he momentarily put the thought aside. Right now he was way more worried about their conditions.
“Yes. And that's not all. Beside the physical decay, this illness is also damaging its mind. It is becoming angrier, more and more violent. This is not just because of the illness. What has happened to it before we were reunited...”
Flash's eyes hardened. “Lee Price.”
Eddie nodded.
“I have read the reports. I don't know the details, but I know he hurt Venom...” Flash's voice trailed off.
It made him furious. After all they went through, together, after Venom had managed to cleanse itself of its old corruption, to become better. He could imagine all too well what being bonded to a ruthless host, someone who would take advantage of its worst tendencies, would have done to it.
“I don't know the details either.” Eddie glanced at him, then he looked away again, his voice tense. “It... won't show me.”
Flash blinked, in surprise.
“I can feel the shape of those memories, their jagged edges, and the wounds they left in my other's mind, and I know it still hurts because of them. But whenever I ask it to let me understand more, whenever I reach to those places... it pulls back. It hides, or shuts me away. And when we are Venom it is becoming harder and harder to rein our anger in. We want to help this city, but we can't risk killing people.”
“You can't control it.”
Eddie looked at him, suddenly angered. “This is not about control, not anymore. It should have never been. We aren't trying to control each other anymore, we--” He shut his mouth and closed his eyes, exhaling slowly. “Whatever we are attempting to do, it isn't working. This is becoming unsustainable. And... there is one more thing.”
“What?”
“My other misses you.”
Flash opened his mouth, then closed it, again taken by surprise at the admission. He watched Eddie's eyes move to the side, his expression turn from angered to sad. “I know you do...” he whispered, and this time Flash knew he wasn't talking to him.
Eddie looked at him again. “My other won't show me much about you either, but I can feel how important you were, how meaningful what the two of you had was to it. Venom was a real hero, with you. You saved people... even me.” He shook his head. "Why haven't you come looking for it sooner?" He asked, sounding angry again, pained even.
"I have tried," Flash said defensively. "I could still feel a residue of our bond... After I lost it I have been combing this city to find it again. Then after Price was apprehended, I was informed it was with you again. I didn't stop my search, you saw it, I was never going to stop, but in all honesty I thought it was... where it wanted to be."
"Did it a whole world of good," Eddie said bitterly. "Look, Thompson, I don't want to give up on what we have. But there's too much at stake if we can't win this fight. We've been there already, you know it, we have done terrible things. I... am not the right person and I can't lie to myself, to ourselves, anymore. This is why we are here now. Why I am here" He spoke with urgency. "I need to know if you can be the one who will look after it, who will make it well again."
Flash leaned back against the chair, taken aback, slowly taking it what was being asked of him.
Seeing Brock talk to him in such clear distress wasn't something he had anticipated, at all And as much as his gut screamed for him to just tell the man to give the Symbiote back, so he could make sure it would be fine... he felt it could not be that easy.
"Let me speak with it," he said instead. "We have been talking about what it wants and doesn't want, but I need to hear what it has to say for itself." Flash looked at Eddie, looked past him. "You hear me, buddy? I need to see you."
Silence stretched, as Flash stared intently at the other man. Eddie looked up to the dark ceiling, then he closed his eyes. "Love, please..." he said softly. He extended his hand, palm up, and let it hang between them.
The two men waited, sitting at a table in a deserted diner, for the Symbiote to give them a sign. Flash could see Eddie didn't want to force it to do something it didn't want, but this wasn't going anywhere.
"Alright. Let me..." Flash reached out and placed his palm on Eddie's, pressing his hand down on the table. Eddie startled, but he didn't pull back. Flash focused on what was left of his bond to the Symbiote, on the signs, the battle scars, it had left in his mind.
"Hey, can you hear me? Please, we really need to talk. Like when you wanted to talk after the fight on the lava planet. You gave me quite a scare that time, remember?" He chuckled. "We got a lots of scares and close calls, while we were having adventures in space. But we overcame all of them, in the end, even the worst... and we even had some pretty good times, didn't we?" Flash's smile turned almost nostalgic. "Sometimes I miss that. Being an actual space warrior. And I miss our friends up there. But I am much happier here on Earth. Aren't you?"
The Klyntar had been a part of him for such a long time, losing it had hurt like losing a piece of his soul. But what had been even more painful was thinking he had lost its trust, its friendship. If it really wanted to come back to him...
"Eddie tells me there's something wrong, and I need you to trust me and tell me about it so we can fix it. Come on, partner."
He fell silent. The low rumble of car engines coming from the outside were the only sounds they heard for a minute.
Then Flash saw the small change in Eddie's expression, and the next moment tendrils the color of ink, not quite liquid, extended from under the rim of his jacket's sleeve. They dripped down over the table, then crawled up on their hands and started curling around, insinuating between their fingers. Flash lifted his free hand and picked a tendril between thumb and finger, pulling it, and more thin tentacles joined it, climbing up and down his forearm. He looked at the tentacles tying into bracelets around his arm, the pitch black mass pooling into his palm, growing bigger, until white slits appeared and widened into pupilless, reverse Rorschach inkblots eyes. They focused on him, and the symbiote opened its mouth to let out a soft, high-pitched screech.
Flash's smile brightened, and he brought the Symbiote's head close enough they could bump their foreheads together. "There you are, buddy," he said fondly.
--
Eddie watched his other come to Thompson's call, and felt a pang of jealousy. He tried to suppress the emotion. He had very little time to prepare himself for this, but whole weeks wouldn't have been enough anyway.
For days now he had felt the Symbiote's distress only grow worse, and he had seen it try to hide it, for the sake of being with him, only to make it harder and harder not to lose themselves to bloodlust. It couldn't go on like that. When, after their last talk with Steven, the Symbiote had sensed Thompson's presence at Alchemax, alerting him too, Eddie had seen the path laid clearly in front of him. And it had taken all of his willpower not to turn and run away from it. He had followed Thompson, feeling his other grow nervous, and yet make no objections, even if until that moment even the vaguest threat to be separated had made it immediately react with fear, fury, even misplaced aggression. That felt like a confirmation he was doing the right thing.
He wanted to be with his other so much, but not at the price of seeing it turn into a monster again, not at the price of possibly seeing themselves at each other's throat, hurting each other again like they did in the past. He would have died before he let that happen.
He would have died before he let the Symbiote be hurt again. And giving up to it... felt like dying.
"There you are, buddy," Flash said, with so much kindness and affection into his voice. His other hadn't shown Eddie much of any of its previous hosts, but where the bad ones had left gashes and dents in its mind, places where it still burned, the traces left by Flash were soft and soothing, and the only way they hurt the Symbiote was with longing.
Sometimes Eddie wondered if the reason his other kept those memories sealed away was so they wouldn't be marred by him. Such a thought would immediately elicit a response from the Symbiote, eagerly assuring him that wasn't the truth, and Eddie really wanted to believe it, he really did... but the doubt remained.
If the Symbiote really wanted to go back to its previous host... to its one good host... Eddie wouldn't have forced it to stay.
"Looking good and shiny, I see," Flash added, jokingly, then he grew serious again. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you, partner, but I am now. Please tell me what's wrong, or show me, so I can help."
The Symbiote opened its maw wide, fangs shining wickedly and spit dripping on the table, and without a sound it took the whole of Flash's head inside it, immediately losing shape and reforming again around him. Its eyes, and its mouth, shaped up on the back of Flash's head.
Eddie felt their bond stretching thin, and he felt... echoes. Shadows on the wall, of what the Symbiote was communicating to Flash. It was showing its old host all it had kept hidden until now, Eddie realized... It was showing it to Flash, and not to him. He swallowed, feeling his chest ache. For a moment he wished he could just stand up and leave the diner, leave them there together, as they were clearly meant to be. But Flash was still holding his hand down, and even as it was now mentally united to Flash his other was holding onto him too, to his body and to his mind. They were still bonded.
And anyway, he wasn't going to leave the Symbiote before making one hundred percent sure it was in the right hands. He had more to discuss with Thompson. A lifetime ago, full of anger and resentment he had swore to kill him, them, if Thompson hadn't been able to control the Symbiote. Now he knew the soldier was a way better man than he could ever be, and he knew he would fight the whole world to protect the Symbiote. No threats left to make. But he would have Flash promise to take care of it, for Thompson was someone who kept his word. Unlike him.
So he sat there, waiting, and feeling awkward.l
Eventually the Symbiote unwrapped from Flash's head, and the man took a long breath. He seemed shaken, and Eddie felt suddenly concerned for him too.
"Are you ok?" he asked, and formed the same question into his mind, nervously waiting for his other to reply, either with words or sensations.
He felt calm radiating from the bond, the anxiousness that had latched onto it since he made clear that they had to meet Thompson had dissolved now. He breathed out, at least a little reassured.
"I'm fine,” Flash said. “But like you said, Venom is ill."
Eddie pulled his hand from under Flash's, and placed it palm down on the table. The Symbiote's body shifted back, its mass coming to rest over their hands. Its head formed again and it started to look back and forth between the two men. Eddie fought the urge to reach and stroke it.
"Has it shown you what has happened?"
"Yes" Flash exhaled slowly, then he grimaced. "What it went through with Price has made it fall back hard, old patterns of thought, old fears, and this mental stress reflects on you too, of course. Add to this the physical strain of your bodies battling against each other...” Flash shook his head again. “...I can see that the situation doesn't look great, but--”
“It's like I thought,” Eddie interrupted him. He looked at the Symbiote, who stared back wide-eyed, obviously anguished. "You aren't safe with me..." He scooped the Symbiote's up into his hands, so he could look into its eyes. Looking at it from the outside instead of reaching through their bond, as if to distance himself already. “You need to leave me, before it's too late. Please, understand.”
Please, understand, he thought to himself, gritting his teeth.
Flash watched them intently, pondering something.
"Alright,” he exclaimed. “It is pretty clear what is the right thing to do." The Symbiote turned to look at him, and Eddie noticed that its tentacles were still holding onto Flash's arms. They were fused to his skin. With a half-smile on his face Flash leaned back against the booth, crossing his arms, the black tendrils drawing dark lines on them.
"Give Venom back to me, Brock."