Chapter Text
Many years later, after Earth has officially become enough of a hotspot for weird shit that interplanetary—and interversal and interplanar and Yggdrasilic—immigration laws become a thing, Eddie and Venom get married. Because why not? They can now, so they do. It was sort of a pending issue with them, one that had annoyed the symbiote very much indeed because saying we want to get married, Eddie doesn’t just make laws that let them marry happen. Although Venom being terrifyingly supportive of the interspecies marriage law on social media and tagging the politicians responsible for passing the law did help quite a bit in making it happen, Eddie supposes.
They were already married in every way that counts, anyway, but adding the slip of paper that says their choice is legal is a good call. Because humans are shitheads. Actually, that’s unfair to humankind as a whole—sentient species overall are shitheads. All of them have the amazing potential to be utter assholes, and if there’s one genocidal tyrant in a species of pacifists? Earth will get a visit from that single genocidal tyrant. Eddie is pretty sure he has accumulated enough empirical information on the topic throughout his years as a villain-eating hero to prove it scientifically instead of just writing sardonic—and highly popular—articles to vent about it.
But anyway, they get married. Venom is very excited, which isn’t a rare thing at all, honestly, but it’s still a sweet thing that never gets old for Eddie. So they get the whole legal thing done, just the two of them in a tiny room, signing copies in triplicate, which Eddie isn’t sure is a human-wedding thing or just an interspecies-wedding thing. Either way, scribble-scribble, and it’s done.
A few days before their scheduled appointment, Eddie got the documents so he and Venom could go over them, expecting some kind of foul play, but no: they’re pretty normal marriage contracts, with just a few non-normal words that are sci-fi and legalese vocabulary hybrids because they need to address the literal outworldliness of the marriage somehow. They think the only reason the contract doesn’t put the non-Earthen partner in a position of vulnerability, though, is because Anne herself helped draft up the interspecies clauses. Yet again, she has fought ugly for them and won like the warrior goddess in a pencil skirt that she is.
Eddie signs and hands in the last copy, his hand looped in loving black tendrils to make the handing-in a them thing instead of an Eddie thing. He likes the detail, and so does Venom, who purrs along Eddie’s consciousness, not loud enough to distract him but certainly with enough presence to make the memory of this day intrinsically theirs, a bright pulsing light in the part of their mindscape that has no fences or barriers or hedges of any kind and where concepts like ‘you’ and ‘me’ have no meaning at all.
They step out of the small office where they just legally binded their lives together. Objectively, signing some papers isn’t as important as sharing every heartbeat in the most literal of senses, but Eddie is still reeling from it. Probably because he and Venom were denied the right for so long, and now the right is theirs, as it should have always been.
“Well,” Eddie says, giving his hands a rub. “That’s done now.”
We’re married, Eddie, Venom says, low and ecstatic and tingling down Eddie’s spine.
Eddie smiles. “At long last, eh?”
Yes, Venom purrs. Now you’re mine.
“I already was,” Eddie says, walking to the emergency exit.
But now it’s official to non-symbiotes, Venom says.
That’s actually a good point. For some reason, some people don’t understand that Eddie is taken. Sure, having a symbiote doesn’t always mean you’re romantically involved with them, or that you’re exclusive even if you are. But in Eddie and Venom’s case, it does mean that, and some people have a hard time wrapping their heads around it. Being legally married might be enough of a hint for them to cease and desist, but if Venom’s towering body and jagged grin haven’t managed to get them to stop already, then Eddie has little hope.
Eddie steps into the stairs and starts making his way down quietly. With any luck, no annoying paparazzi or tabloid reporters will spot them on their way out. He hates those people, hates being told that oh, but he’s a reporter too, so isn’t that hypocritical? It sure the hell is not. He is an investigative journalist, not a freelance shutterbug gossip.
Eddie, Venom says, his presence curling around Eddie’s chest.
“Yeah, love?”
Now we honeymoon, Venom purrs, and Eddie steps out into the alleyway laughing.
Venom turns them away as a camera shutters behind them, then spreads over Eddie and scuttles up the side of the building, the camera clicking frantically after them. Just as they’re about to climb onto the rooftop, Venom turns around and whips out a tendril. He snatches the camera out of the photographer’s hands and then holds it up.
“Ours now,” he says, then jumps to the next building.
Venom, Eddie laughs, that wasn’t cool.
“We didn’t eat him,” Venom counters.
That camera is the guy’s source of income, Eddie says, trying to sound chiding but having a hard time stifling his amusement. Venom knows he likes it when they mess with paparazzi. You know that. Don’t play dumb.
“We’ll give it back after our honeymoon,” Venom promises. “We needed a camera, anyway.”
Eddie laughs again. He can’t disagree with that.