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Eddie is sleeping.
He sleeps too much. Sometimes five hours wasted a day, sometimes six, sometimes eight or ten, doing what? Laying down and being unconscious. Boring.
Boring and, unfortunately, necessary. Symbiotes don’t sleep the way humans do, and it has taken Venom some time to understand the point of the whole frustrating exercise. There had been incidents, in the early exploratory days of their bonding, where they had pushed the body past Eddie’s warnings and had regretted it. Too little sleep and the body became sluggish and slow to react to their commands; too little sleep and they kept having to catch Eddie when he stumbled, when he staggered, when he fell; too little sleep and Eddie’s mind became alarming and incoherent.
He sleeps too much, but if Venom doesn’t let him, then they both suffer. Venom won’t keep their body awake and put Eddie at risk just because they’re bored at night.
Sometimes they watch TV, the volume down low enough that it won’t disturb him. It’s a good way to learn about their new home, and their new host. They’ve seen amazing things on TV in the middle of the night - vast herds of delicious looking animals in nature documentaries, glowing cityscapes populated by delicious looking degenerates and criminals, elaborate culinary competitions featuring delicious looking chocolate confections.
(“You’ve gotta lay off some of this shit at night, V, you’re waking me up hungry,” Eddie grumbled one morning, knuckling at one of their eyes blearily as they watched the toaster.
We’re always hungry, Eddie. Unless they had just fed. Only with the taste of living meat on their tongue was the symbiote ever truly, completely sated. Venom summoned a strong memory of blood, warm and coppery, and filled their mouth with it. We could always go hunting for our breakfast instead, they had suggested, hopefully.
“Oh, just give me the chocolate chips,” Eddie had groaned, plucking the waffles delicately out of the toaster when they popped up. “And stick to the baking shows for a while, okay?”)
Once or twice they tried using Eddie’s computer, but found it too difficult to work all the buttons without the structure of the body’s fingers. Since they couldn’t use the fingers without waking Eddie up, the computer was out.
Sometimes, they just watch Eddie. They watch him with their own eyes, extending their self far enough from the body to manifest face, teeth and tongue, humming in quiet satisfaction at the sight of their host. They drink up the sight of the fascinating patterns inked into their host’s skin, the thatching of fibers-- hair-- on top of his head, the anatomical geometries unique to the human body. More often, they watch him without eyes, sunk deep in among his muscles and veins and nerves. They time the beating of his heart, they follow the ebb and flow of his pulse, they sample the chemistries in his blood and brain. The body is theirs but the body is also still his , and Venom knows they have much yet to learn, about humans in general and about their Eddie particularly.
Tonight, the rhythms of Eddie’s body are erratic. He sleeps restlessly, his muscles working in little uncoordinated twitches. His eyes jerk behind his lids and he breathes unevenly. His blood tastes of stress and his brain tastes awake, even though he’s not-- like dreaming, but different. (Symbiotes don't dream, either. Eddie had to explain dreams to Venom, the first time they mistook the sleeping activity of his body and brain for wakening. Particularly frustrated and bored that night, Venom had dumped them together to the floor to speed the process up. Eddie hadn’t liked that very much.)
Venom knows what Eddie looks like when he’s dreaming. This is not a dream.
They ooze up out of Eddie’s abdomen, gathering their substance to look down on their host. He looks uncomfortable, he sounds distressed. This does not seem restful, and another thing that Venom has learned about Eddie and this obnoxious requirement is that bad sleep is almost as harmful as no sleep at all. Do they wake him?
But a strange thing is happening as Venom concentrates so much of their self at the surface of Eddie’s skin. He’s quieter, he’s moving less. Thoughtfully, experimentally, Venom spreads their self across his belly and chest in a thick, tactile layer. Beneath them, Eddie calms further. The pinched expression on his face smooths away; his breathing is evening out.
Venom draws as much of their self out of Eddie as they dare, layering themself heavily over their host until he relaxes into deeper, more restful sleep.
Eddie is sleeping, and normally that’s intolerably boring. But this?
This isn’t so bad.