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Eddie pulled into the drive-thru of the only fast food place on the block that was still open. It had been a long night and he felt like a lab rat. Doctor Dan had been poking and prodding at him again – under cover of night and the weight of Anne’s carefully-written NDA – but they still hadn’t quite worked out how to keep his body – their body – from eating itself alive. He scrubbed his hand down his face and leaned out the window. Garbled noise came from the drive-thru speaker.
“Uh, yeah, can I get-” He rubbed his eyes, squinting at the bright menu. “A large fry and a large chocolate shake?” His stomach churned. Not that long ago he wouldn’t have minded a little junk food as a post-midnight snack, but he’d eaten almost nothing but chocolate and fried potatoes since he’d caught this parasite.
I’m not a parasite.
“Actually, you know what?” he said, hearing the edge of hysteria in his voice but too tired to try to keep up the “sane human” act. “Gimmie a double bacon cheeseburger, no pickles.” He was hungry. He’d been hungry since that night in the lab. Sometimes it gnawed like it was chewing on him from the inside – and it was – but right now it was like an itch he couldn’t scratch. He wanted a steak. He wanted a goddamn beer. “Actually, make it two.”
Eddie, we can’t eat that.
The voice in his head made him miss the staticky voice from the drive-thru. “Yeah, thank you,” he shouted, putting the car in gear and pulling up to the window.
Eddie, we can’t eat that, it’s-
“It’s a bunch of ground up sawdust they showed a picture of a cow once, but listen-”
We can’t-
“Listen,” he said, slamming his hands on the steering wheel. The lady at the pickup window startled and gave him a look. He put on his most disarming smile and gestured to his ear. Just my Bluetooth, lady. When she turned away, he muttered, “You heard what the doc said. Eating…” he swore, lowered his voice further, “Eating people helps, but unless I get some real food, my body – our body – is going to die.”
I can keep you alive.
Venom loved talking over people, especially when it was mildly important. Eddie smiled and handed the lady at the register a twenty, oblivious to whatever total she’d rattled off. She handed him a miscellaneous pile of change and shut the window. “I die, you die, right?” Venom stayed uncharacteristically quiet. “Please, can we just try to eat? If I never get to eat anything but fried potatoes again, I might kill myself before-” He put on a big smile, accepting the bag and tall cup from the drive-thru lady, who was looking at him like – well, like he was having a heated argument with an otherwise empty car. “Thank you so much.” He didn’t bother to make the drive home, just parked in the lot and tore open the bag.
It smells like death.
He unwrapped the burger. No matter what Venom said, it smelled amazing, like hot, mostly fake meat and melted cheese and bacon. Like something that might stop the grinding, crushing hunger in the pit of his stomach. He took a big bite and immediately spat it out. Dead, dead, dead, a voice echoing in his head that was neither his nor Venom’s, something primal and instinctive that said what he was putting in his body was fetid, contaminated by death, decomposing on his tongue. He took another bite. Maggots and bloated corpses. He forced himself to swallow and took another bite, and another, trying to choke it down.
Black tar whipped his arm out to the side, flinging the burger out the window of the car, and Eddie kicked open the car door, tumbled out onto the pavement, and vomited until there were tears in his eyes and his body was shaking.
He felt the ghost of something soothing, almost like a hand rubbing circles up and down his back. He spit bile in the puddle of three half-chewed bites of hamburger, half-digested tater tots from lunch, and the remnants of that morning’s hash browns.
We can’t eat food that’s dead.
“All food is dead,” he said, trying to swallow the sour taste in his mouth. Before Venom could contradict him, he wheezed out, “We can’t eat nothing but people.” The doc didn’t know about the people eating specifically, but Eddie knew how to read between the lines. When Venom ate, it slowed down the damage to their body but did nothing to sustain it. They couldn’t skate by on tots and a multivitamin forever. Between the malnourishment and the alien slowly digesting his insides, he would die, just like all of Drake’s test subjects before him.
What would you have us do?
There was more concern in Venom’s voice than Eddie expected. Maybe he was starting to grasp the gravity of the situation, too. “We have to figure out what we eat,” he said, picking himself up off the pavement and climbing back into the car. “But I have no idea where to start.”
You’re an investigator. Investigate.
“Yeah, great,” he said, starting the car and pulling out of the lot. “Investigate,” he parroted back in his best grumpy, gravelly tone.
Hungry.
Eddie sighed and ate a limp, lukewarm french-fry.
The real problem, Eddie realized the next evening, wasn’t that Venom had an alien diet, but simply that he was an alien. Any food put in front of him was new and strange, and his early experiences with the human diet hadn’t been spectacular. He wanted to eat people, not whatever it was that people ate. To him, everything was grass for cows. He only ate what little he did because he’d had it forced down his throat and it hadn’t, for whatever reason, counted as “dead.” But most things were “inedible,” anything with a trace of alcohol in it was “poison,” and he threw a tantrum almost every time Eddie tried to put something in his mouth.
Eggs were out – not just “dead” but “dead babies,” apparently. Bacon was also bad. Pancakes he’d met with wary distrust, and butter, milk, cheese, and yogurt had all made him shake like a dog, which was an unpleasant experience for both of them. Chocolate milk, of course, had gotten a pass – somehow. Lunch had gone about as well. Eddie’s regular afternoon fare – street food, pizza by the slice, and hot dogs from a cart – were all out, so they’d tried a salad instead. Venom had permitted him to eat the dried cranberries and candied walnuts but not more than a bite of the actual greens, plus a few pieces of cucumber and shreds of carrot. It was already almost dinner time and Eddie was this close to buying a live lobster and taking a bite out of it. Again.
“I think he might be a vegan,” Eddie said, leaning back in his desk chair and bouncing his stress ball against the far wall, holding his phone to his ear with his shoulder. “But he likes veggies about as much as I do.”
“That’s tough for a vegan,” Anne said, more amused than sympathetic. “What’s for dinner?”
“I dunno,” Eddie said, squishing the stress ball against his forehead. “A gun in our mouth?”
Not funny.
“Why don’t you try that Ethiopian place? The one we went to for our-” She stopped, cleared her throat. “You know, the one we went to last spring?”
The one they’d gone to for their anniversary. He shifted in his seat. Eddie had always been more of a meat and potatoes kind of guy, but Anne had gotten a real kick out of the flatbread and various mushy bean-and-lentil dishes, and the food hadn’t been half bad. “Yeah,” he said. “We might try that.”
Tell her-
“Venom says hi.”
“Hey, tall dark and handsome.” Damn, but she could make him melt in his boots. “Good luck you two. Let me know how it goes.”
This place makes you uncomfortable. Why?
Eddie scratched his head, shuffling farther into his booth. The Ethiopian restaurant was middlingly loud, music playing over the speakers and conversations going on all around him. He’d chosen a booth in the back, but he’d probably still get glances for talking to himself.
You know, you don’t have to speak out loud. I always know what you’re thinking.
“Then you know I like pretending you only get the parts I want you to.”
A long sigh rolled through his mind.
“Anyway, it’s not the place, it’s just…the last time I ate here was with Anne,” he said, wringing the laminated menu in his hands.
You have eaten with Anne in many places.
Eddie scrubbed his face in frustration. Sure, Venom “knew” everything, but his grasp on human culture and customs was still… developing. “It was… a special meal. To mark an event, a special event- hey!” he flagged down a waiter. He smiled. “Hey, man,” he said, showing the waiter the menu. “Is there any way I could get, like… everything. Just a little bit of,” he waved, encompassing the whole menu. It wasn’t a long menu, and there were plenty of combo plates on it, but…
“I’ll see what I can do,” the waiter said, gently pulling the menu out of Eddie’s hands before he could crease the plastic.
What makes one food more special than another food?
“It’s not…the food, really. I wanted to make her happy, to celebrate our relationship – our romance.” That was a word Venom had been picking at. Eddie had started leaving rom-coms running with the volume on low while he slept, but only the good ones – he didn’t need an alien accidentally learning that stalking was a good way to make someone fall for you. “So I took her to a place that she was excited for, so she would have a nice time.”
Why would a person be excited to ingest sustenance?
“Because food is more than just-” He huffed out a sigh. “Okay, just. Listen, okay?”
I’m always listening.
Eddie folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back in the booth, closing his eyes. He was still shit at this whole telepathy thing, but he wasn’t going to get better without practice. He took a deep breath and tried to remember the last time he’d been here, in as much detail as he could. The way the fairy lights made Anne’s eyes twinkle, the way she held her fingertips up to her lips when she laughed, the eager look on her face when she fed him a slightly dusty tasting lentil paste off the tip of her finger, the spongey feel of the injera in his hand when he used it to wipe a little dribble of some kind of stewed soy off Anne’s chin.
You did not like the food here.
Eddie shrugged. “It was fine.”
You liked Anne here.
He wasn’t wrong.
Food is important to you. As more than sustenance.
Yes. He let his mind wander, rifling through memories of meals he’d had – good food in bad company, bad food in good company, birthday cake and celebratory steak, late night beer and hangover soba and day old donughts and deadline coffee.
He was half drowsing by the time the waiter came back with his food, and had worked up his appetite reminiscing about New York hot dogs. “Can I get you anything else?” The waiter asked, like he hadn’t quite literally just delivered him everything on the menu.
Eddie shook his head. “This is wonderful, thank you.” The waiter turned and left, and Eddie said under his breath, “Okay, ground rules: no throwing food, no spitting it out, and no vomiting.”
“I’m sorry?” the waiter said, turning back to him.
“Oh, uh.” He patted his stomach. “Intestinal parasite. I’ve been having trouble keeping food down. But I think we’re- I’m getting over it.”
The waiter tried to hide his disgust, shuffling a step away. “Enjoy your meal,” he said, before booking a hasty retreat.
The injera bread was a winner, which was a small blessing. It at least meant they had a utensil to eat with as they worked their way around the big serving platter, one dish at a time. The rest was hit and miss. Anything with stewed meat was out, which was a shame because the chicken dishes had been among Eddie’s favorite. They both enjoyed most of the stuff that had chickpeas in it, but Venom’s spice tolerance was closer to fire-breathing Anne’s than his own. Still, it was so good to be eating again that Eddie almost didn’t mind the burn.
They’d polished off most of the dishes Venom could palate when Eddie felt his attention pulled toward a small bowl he’d intentionally left untouched.
What is this one? It smells like flesh.
“Kitfo,” he mumbled, smoothing a hand over his stomach, which was starting to feel full for the first time since the lab. “It’s raw, spicy beef.”
His hand reached out on its own, quicker than he was, scooped up a bite of the red meat in a piece of flatbread, and popped it in his mouth. It was heavenly – herbaceous and buttery and so tender it melted on his tongue, another favorite dish of Eddie’s and, he was surprised to realize, deeply satisfying to Venom as well…
Until he tried to swallow, and gagged. Eddie grabbed his water and forced the bite down – no vomiting at the table – then waved the waiter down and asked for the check.
It was dead.
This time, he sounded sad.
He was an investigator, damnit. He wasn’t going to let the fact that he was dealing with an unknown, alien entity stop him. He’d spent most of the day with his nose in the reams of paperwork confiscated from the Life Foundation after everything had, well, blown up. He wasn’t a scientist, but he could glean traces of what he’d been experiencing (and what the doc had been telling him) in the reports of the partially-successful symbiote pairings: they were getting the nutrients their human bodies needed, but the symbiotes were still digesting them from the inside out. What the scientists hadn’t been able to understand was clear to him, now: there was something missing from their shared diet. He just had to find out if the gap could be filled by something other than live human tissue.
Eddie huffed out a sigh, dropping the documents back into their file box and turning to his computer. With all the enthusiasm he could muster, he typed into the search bar animals you can eat alive.
I don’t understand why you don’t want to try the one with the still-beating heart.
“Hi, yes,” Eddie said. Venom really needed to learn telephone etiquette. “I’m calling to confirm that you serve… Sannakji?” Yeah he’d definitely butchered that. “No? Okay, do you know of anywhere that- PETA? Yeah. Yeah, okay. Thank you.”
He hung up the phone and tossed it on his bed, dragging his hands back through his hair. He was frustrated and disappointed but not entirely surprised to learn that angry affluent white people had apparently made a concentrated effort to drive all the high-end traditional Asian seafood places in the area out of business, forcing them to drop most of the live dishes from their menus. Ikizukuri had been a no-go as well, and as far as he could tell, frog sashimi was something that only actually existed in the form of a youtube video. He flopped down into bed on his back and reached for his phone, then started to type: live seafood new york ci
He deleted and typed again: direct flights sf to seoul
He knocked his phone screen against his face and groaned. The problem with Venom liking Ethiopian food was that Eddie had no idea how to make it, and takeout was expensive. In the last three days they’d eaten a corporate lawyer, two slices of dry toast, and a jar of peanut butter, which Venom had licked clean.
“Fuck it,” he said, getting to his feet and stumbling into the bathroom. “We’re getting sushi.”
There were dozens of sushi places in the city, for every budget and palate. But what to get a space carnivore with a huge prehensile tongue? He tapped out on his phone freshest sushi san francisco while he waited for his shower to heat up. The corner bodega was the closest place that technically had sushi, but Eddie wasn’t looking to get food poisoning. If this worked, they’d have all the time in the world to establish a baseline for how cheap, old, and/or questionable a sushi roll could be and still count as edible. No need to lead with his worst foot forward.
He set down his phone, climbed into the shower, and stuck his head under the water. He reasoned that he had two choices: either he could drop a week’s food budget on a prix fixe menu at one of the highest-end sushi places in the city and risk puking up congealed peanut butter in a nice restaurant after the first bite, or he could cheap out and risk putting Venom off their last best chance at a shared food group that wasn't potato-based. If he was right and Venom needed animal tissue for more than just the protein, a good plate of sushi was maybe the only thing standing between him and either starvation or cannibalism. He rubbed shampoo through his hair and tried not to think about that last part too hard.
Then he rinsed, toweled off, and called to make a reservation while digging around in his closet trying to find something respectable to wear.
Ah, I understand now – sharing food is a human mating ritual.
Eddie choked on his water. “ What? ” he hissed.
The place you took Anne. It was a prelude to re-consummating your relationship.
Eddie put his glass down and pressed his napkin to his lips. “It’s a little more complicated than that,” he grumbled.
It’s often depicted this way in your films as well. Two humans accompany each other to a public feeding site as a pretext for later emotional and physical intimacy.
“That’s a date. People go on dates. Sometimes there’s food, but not always.”
Most of the people here seem to be on dates - they are all paired off. You’re the only one here eating alone.
“But I’m not alone,” he blurted, then frowned at the empty seat across from him.
Venom rumbled, an unusual sensation vibrating in his chest.
Is this a date?
The question took Eddie by surprise. Was it? He was all dressed up. And he had picked a place he hoped Venom would like – where he hoped he’d find something he could enjoy. Had blown most of a paycheck on it, in fact. And they’d come here, at least in part, to get to know each other better. The two of them were about as intimate as two…beings could get, but they didn’t know each other yet. But he wanted to. He really wanted this to work. Huh. Well, if it quacks like a duck… “I guess it is,” he admitted. His mind drifted, briefly, back to the kiss that he and Venom and Anne had shared, but cut himself off before he could spend too long considering how two people sharing a body might- “But I never fuck on a first date,” he said, putting a lid on the whole train of thought and locking it.
Good thing this is our second date.
Heat flared across the back of Eddie’s neck, blush creeping up to the tips of his ears – just in time for the waiter to set a bowl of clear, golden broth in front of them.
Dinner was eleven courses of the best food they’d ever eaten, cautious bites of the first few plates slowly giving way to eating with a gusto that was borderline inappropriate for the quiet, sophisticated ambiance of the restaurant. By the time they made it to the bottom of the menu (urchin: live, abalone: live, and eel: pretty damn close), Venom’s purring, ecstatic trills of It’s alive! It tastes alive! had gone from mildly offputting to downright endearing. Apparently a piece of well-cut bluefin tuna had conveyed what Eddie’s own memories had failed to: that there was joy in the food itself, not just the company or the sustenance.
When the waiter came to take the last plate away, Venom rumbled More!, but Eddie was already asking for the a la carte menu.
“Will you be having dessert as well?”
Chocolate!
“Probably not, bud,” he mumbled, then cleared his throat and corrected for the waiter, “but let’s see the menu?”
They hadn’t been able to eat everything on the menu – particularly a wagyu tongue stew that they’d both been disappointed to only pick at. But Venom’s threshold for “still alive enough” seemed to be “raw and very fresh,” which gave him hope that they might be able to navigate something like the kitfo if he didn’t leave it sitting on the table for an hour before putting it in his mouth. And, hell, steak tartare was still steak, goddamnit.
He ordered seconds of all their favorites, pointedly ignoring the fact that each individual piece of sashimi cost what he usually spent on an entire meal. It was worth it to have a belly full of food that was exactly zero percent liquefied human goo. In exchange for satisfying his sweet tooth (with a tofu-based take on tiramisu that Eddie could have lived without), Venom permitted Eddie to “poison himself” and finish the meal with a sip of sweet plum sake that left him feeling warm and content.
“Was a pretty good date,” he muttered, tucking his newly-lightened wallet back into his pocket. The waiter shot him an odd look. At least no one had noticed Venom darting his tongue out to lick his lips, or the flashes of alien teeth tearing into raw fish.
As it turned out, having sex in a shared body wasn’t complicated at all.
“You’ve gotta stop using my phone while I’m sleeping,” Eddie yawned, wiping the screen clean on his shirt. Venom wasn’t sticky, per se, but Eddie could always tell when he’d been getting into something – he left behind a faint residue, like someone had been slapping one of those gatcha machine sticky hands against his phone all night.
Your computer is too far away. I was bored.
Venom slept, but they were still working on matching up how much and when. Venom needed very little sleep, but it hadn’t stopped him from hounding Eddie about staying up too late and drinking too much coffee when he was on a deadline. Apparently he was allowed to slowly destroy their body with his bad eating habits, but Eddie wasn’t. “What were you looking up, anyway?” he asked, unplugging the phone charger and turning on the screen. “Restaurants?”
Hungry.
He wasn’t. They’d eaten a stockbroker with a hedge fund manager chaser two nights ago. Eddie was still working on tracking down the money they’d stolen and drumming up a title for the exposé. Something about missing millions and missing millionaires. He’d work on it. It was going to be another long night.
Ah. Hungry and bored – Venom was feeling neglected. “Sorry I’ve had my head in a computer all weekend. You find somewhere good for dinner tonight?”
His other half had turned into a snobby gourmand, but at least he had good taste. He’d picked a classy but not budget-breaking restaurant with an ocean view (and Eddie’s outfit – also classy, but not suit-stuffy), and reserved a table on the relatively private upper balcony that had a view of the bridge. He breathed in the crisp salt smell of the bay. Some days he missed New York, but this wasn’t one of them.
The menu touted a surprising array of fresh bay- and No-Cal- caught fish, and… A full oyster bar. Eddie snapped the menu shut. “Seriously?” he hissed under his breath.
Oysters are the most commonly eaten live animal, but you would sooner have flown to Korea and put a live octopus in your mouth than come here. I know how you feel about tentacles, but-
“What is this, kinkshame Eddie night?” he asked, a little too loud. He gave a passing waitress a tight smile.
I’m only curious why you avoided the simplest option.
Venom knew – of course he knew, because he was inside Eddie’s brain all the time. Which meant he just wanted to hear him say it. “Because this didn’t start out as project seduce my parasite,” he hissed.
I’m not a-
“Eddie! Hi! Sorry I’m late.” Eddie looked up just in time for Anne to bend to kiss his cheek. “I got held up at the courthouse. I hope you haven’t been waiting long?”
“Anne,” he said, dumbfounded. “I… no, I just got here myself. What…?”
I invited her.
“You what? ” He coughed, cleared his throat. “I mean, what, ah, what happened? At the courthouse?”
He was still working on the whole psychic communication going both ways thing, but he thought very, very hard: WHAT. DID. YOU. DO.
I told you we would win her back.
Eddie’s vision flashed red. Venom sounded like the cat who got the canary.
“…anyway, I was so surprised when I got that message from you. You didn’t used to be much of a texter,” Anne said, fidgeting with the clasp on her watch.
Eddie cleared his throat again. “You’re right,” he said, trying not to sound strained. “I always forget to check my messages.” But apparently Venom hadn’t. “I’m sorry, would you excuse me?” She startled when he stood up, bumping the table in his haste. “Sorry, I’ll be right back.” He made a beeline for the bathroom, pulling out his phone and scrolling through his chat history. Venom and Anne had been messaging back and forth sporadically, mostly late at night or early in the morning – when he’d been sound asleep. And he realized, quickly, that Anne had known the messages were coming from Venom, not him, though it seemed like she thought he knew about them. It was all innocuous stuff: about their ongoing food-venture, quips about doctor Dan, some light work gossip. It was a little flirtatious, maybe, but nothing he could really be upset about – they were conversations he might have had with either of them. So why was he so angry?
He pushed open all the stalls to make sure he was alone, then locked the bathroom door and stormed over to the mirror, bracing his hands on the counter and staring down Venom’s reflection. “What the fuck, man?”
You miss her.
“So you thought, what? You’d just parent trap us at an oyster bar? Eat some aphrodisiacs, make a little magic?”
It was hard for teeth and eyes and sentient latex to look abashed, but Venom managed it. She will never know that we love her if we don’t tell her.
Eddie gaped at his alien reflection. Venom had been trying to fix things – not just between him and Anne, but trying to carve out something for the three of them. He deflated, leaning forward and letting out a slow breath. He knew why he was so angry. The texts they’d exchanged were things either of them might have said to him directly, but neither of them had. “Why would you hide this from me?”
Venom hesitated. You want to be with her…
“And right now, I’m with you! ” he shouted, not caring if anyone overheard them. “And I know it’s not that simple, and I know you don’t understand, but-” He bit off his words, forcing himself to lower his voice. “You’re not supposed to keep secrets like this from people you care about.”
He felt Venom peel away from him, eyes and teeth angling to look at him, like a curious cat. Explain secrets.
Eddie closed his eyes, taking a steadying breath. “You know everything I’m thinking and feeling. But I’m not psychic. I’m trying, but I don’t- what you do, what you want, what you need, it’s all still a mystery to me. And when I see something like this?” He held up his phone. “It…” he chewed on it for a moment. “It hurts. You intentionally excluded me from something that’s important to both of us. I know you like her, and that’s… fine. It’s good that you like each other. But you can’t just decide that things are going to work out between the three of us because you know I’m in love with both of you. I have to know what’s going on, and be a part of it.”
Venom’s pearly eyes widened. You’re in love with me?
“I wouldn’t be having weird, tender alien sex with you if I weren’t!” he snapped, then sucked in a breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I know this is still new to you, but I wouldn’t be doing that with someone I didn’t care about.”
There was no one else since Anne.
“Yeah and no one else for a long time before her.”
But the notion appeals to you. Of the three of us together.
“Not if it’s just for kicks,” he said. Apparently he was less of an open book than when they’d first joined, because it wasn’t like he hadn’t thought about it. “What happened before was fun, but I wouldn’t want her back if she didn’t want you, too.”
So she loves you, and you love us, and I love both of you, but this will only work if-
“If she’s into you, too. Yeah.” If Venom said love one more time, his head was going to explode. “But if you two plan on keeping me out of the group chat, you might as well jump hosts now, because I’m not interested.”
Understood. Venom melded back into him, disappearing so thoroughly that Eddie caught a rare glimpse of his own reflection in the mirror. Can we eat?
Oysters. Jesus. He’d set up a hell of a date.
There was a line of people outside the bathroom, but Eddie ignored the parade of funny looks and headed back to his table, where Anne was still sitting, scrolling through her phone. She didn’t look up when he sat down, just said, grimly, “You didn’t know we were talking.”
“No, I didn’t.”
She frowned at him, looking weary. “I think we need to talk.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry I’ve been keeping my distance. It’s been...”
“I get it.”
He held out his hand, palm up on the table, and she reached out without hesitation and took it. “No more secrets,” he said, tossing a napkin over their joined hands. Black taffy slid out from under his skin and twined between them, an odd third set of fingers. “I’ve never stopped loving you, and I think you still love me. But I’m a package deal now, and if that won’t work for you, I’ll drop it and so will he.”
If you aren’t certain, Venom’s voice rumbled in their heads, I’m strongly of the opinion that we should go on a date. Perhaps several.
Anne cleared her throat. “And if it works for me?”
Then Eddie has some ideas about what the three of us might do with my tongue.
Eddie choked.
Anne held up her free hand, flagging down the nearest waiter. “Hi, yes, I’d like one of everything on your oyster menu and four shots of your worst tequila, please.”
“I’ve been cutting back on the alcohol,” Eddie said. Whether he wanted to or not.
Because it’s poison. But I’ll allow it.
“Eddie, please. The shots are for me,” she said.
Ooooh, I knew liked her. Venom’s laughter rumbled through his chest, like a big contented cat. This is going to be fun.
Alright. Apparently this was happening. Eddie handed the menu back to the waiter. “I’ll have what she’s having.”
Like all things worth doing, it took time. But in the same way he and Venom had slowly settled into a routine, so did the three of them. The most unexpected step forward was the reinstatement of date night, with a twist. Once a month, the three of them would go to a restaurant together, and they would eat something almost-alive while holding hands under a napkin, or touching toes under the table, Venom wrapping them together so the three of them could have a passably normal, public conversation - a real actual date - before going home to one of their apartments and spending the night together. Once a month, Eddie took Venom out to eat, just the two of them, to one of the places a little too weird for Anne's taste, and Anne turned off her phone, took a long bubble bath, and left them to it until the next morning. Once a month, Venom slid into Anne's body like a cocktail dress in reverse, and they would go out and eat something so spicy it made Eddie's eyes water just hearing about it - while he checked in with doctor Dan and got his monthly under-the-table physical to make sure his organs were still working (they were, and getting steadily healthier) without a black alien blob to skew the results, then went out for street food or a steak, a single beer and a glass of whisky, and a cigar with no one there to complain about it. And once a month, Eddie and Anne went out and did something embarrassingly human and normal - like bowling or taking a pottery class - and had totally normal, boring, human sex while Venom twiddled his space-thumbs and counted the tiles on the ceiling and pretended he didn't secretly enjoy it.
Six months after their first date, Anne started wearing her engagement ring again. Venom didn't say he was jealous, but he didn't really need to.
Eddie held his phone loosely in his hands, little sticky black tendrils poking out of his palms and tapping against his on-screen keyboard, texting about five times as fast as he could.
Anne will meet us at the restaurant. She didn't ask the address. Where are we going?
"Somewhere you'll like," Eddie said, flagging down a cab.
The sensation of Venom rifling through his thoughts was familiar now - noticeable and, a year to the day after they'd merged in that basement lab, something he could push back against.
You're not supposed to keep secrets from people you care about, Venom groused. It had become his default response when he butted up against a boundary and didn't like it.
Eddie put his phone to his ear as he climbed into the cab - it had taken a while, but he was getting better at covering for the voice in his head. "Remind me to teach you about surprises." He passed the driver a note with the address of the restaurant written on it.
I know what surprises are. They are unpleasant.
Eddie hummed. "That's because you're a control freak."
Anne was waiting for them at the curb, and went up on her toes to kiss them on the cheek. "Did he gripe the whole way over here?"
I don't gripe, he griped.
Eddie raised his eyebrows and shrugged.
Stop insinuating that I was griping.
He shut up as soon as they got inside and the smell of fried potatoes washed over them. It had taken a little searching, but Eddie and Anne had found a place that served tater tots, basically anything you could imagine putting on some tater tots or putting tater tots in, and absolutely nothing else except a seven layer chocolate cake.
They let Venom order for both of them, and took turns eating with him moving between them, so he could enjoy twice as much food before they were both too full to eat another bite.
I changed my mind. Venom rumbled after they polished off the last of the chocolate cake. I think I like surprises.
"That's good," Anne said.
"Because we have one more."
Are you going to let me eat the waitress? It was either a joke or cautious optimism - it was still hard to tell.
"On three?" Eddie said.
"One, two-"
They each pulled out a small velvet box and popped it open. Each box contained a ring - a solid black titanium band for Eddie, and a lean, twined band of black diamonds designed to fit over Anne's solitaire engagement ring. It had taken weeks of passing notes to coordinate, but it was worth the thrill of Venom's surprise jolting through them like a current.
For me?
"For you," Anne confirmed, wiggling off her ring so she could fit the new band to it. Tiny black tendrils poked and prodded at it, gently tapping each facet of the stones and smoothing over the metal band. Eddie slipped his ring onto his unadorned index finger, and Venom shifted his attention to it, spinning the band in careful circles.
Thank you.
"Mm. Happy birthday," Eddie said. "Or, I dunno, welcome-to-Earth day."
Birthday. I like that. He seemed to be considering it, maybe rifling through his knowledge of what, exactly, a birthday entailed. We have had food, and cake, and gifts. Will we be returning home together as well?
Eddie snickered. "Angling for birthday sex?"
"Unfortunately, I have a court date," Anne said, but she had a twinkle in her eye. "I sure hope I don't forget any important paperwork about the case." She set a thick file on the table and left it there as she gathered together her things and stood.
"You know this feels like a trap," Eddie said, staring at the file like it might try to bite him.
"Mm, I think we understand each other better than we did a year ago." She leaned down and kissed their cheek. "Stay safe, and have fun cracking heads you two. I'll see you at home."
"Good luck in court," he said.
As soon as she was out the door, he flipped open the file and started scanning it. From the look of it, Anne's client had gotten mixed up in something big. Something worth looking into. They were already in the right part of town, and it had been a while since he'd let Venom out to play. His gaze settled on a grainy black and white picture of someone who looked like he was about to lose his head. "You ready for a second course?" he asked.
Always.
He had to resist the urge to lick his lips.