Chapter Text
When Venom first melded with Eddie Brock, Eddie Brock was probably in a pretty near constant state of tachycardia.
His average heartbeat was 135, and ‘resting’ did not really factor into truthful vocabulary. Venom eating forty percent of Eddie’s heart muscle really didn’t help things, either.
Now granted, he put it back. Or stimulated Eddie’s body into almost supernaturally developing new muscle, but the initial few weeks they were together were nothing short of monstrously stressful on Eddie’s cardiovascular system.
After the chaos died down and they got a routine in and figured out how many calories they needed (and what percentage needed to be meth dealers), Eddie’s body stabilized and finally took a breath.
Then it began to strengthen. A combination of Venom learning his host and Eddie’s body naturally responding to an increase in activity, good chemicals, and real sleep saw Eddie actually putting on a couple of pounds of muscle and feeling fatigued far less. His color was better, his eyesight actually came back from the decay it had been suffering from long nights in front of his computer screen, and he almost never noticed his heartbeat anymore.
Which was a luxury after he’d suffered spells of being so aware of the hummingbird that had replaced his heart that he felt nauseous.
All things considered, with his apartment cleaned up and his new job secure, Eddie Brock was feeling pretty amazing. Especially when the PTSD nightmares from Riot started to get less frequent.
He was confused, then, when almost six months after Riot and Drake and everything--he woke up in a horrible state of anxiety for no discernable reason.
A horribly lightheaded combination of hyperventilation and high tension woke him up and he jerked up in a scramble, pulling himself out of his sheets like they were sentient. Chest heaving and heart absolutely pounding, Eddie sat in the middle of his bed with his knees bent and his shoulders hunched, staring into the dark and trying to understand what had sent his body into such a state of fight or flight. He swallowed and gasped another breath, rubbing at his sternum like his heart could be calmed down by stroking it.
He would chalk it up to a PTSD spell triggered by a dream, but there were two things wrong with that. One: he always remembered dreaming. Two: Venom was always the one to talk him awake and almost smother him once he was conscious.
His symbiote was silent.
“Venom?” he croaked, squinting at his side table and reaching for the half-drunk can of orange crush he’d left there the night before. It wasn’t water but it was better than a beer so he went with it.
He drank the flat soda in two swallows and crunched the can, shifting his weight to sit on the edge of the bed while he wiped at his mouth with a fumbling hand. Venom still wasn’t answering him, which was strange because Eddie could distinctly sense that the alien was very much present and very much awake.
“Hey, what happened to that freaky tongue of yours? Why aren’t you talking to me?” he asked, frowning down at his chest and thumping at the side of his ribs like someone trying to beat a bad piece of technology into working again.
“I can feel you hanging out by my liver, what’s going on?”
Nothing.
Eddie raised an eyebrow and snorted. “Nothing? Really? That’s like….the equivalent of the silent treatment with you.”
Go back to sleep, Eddie.
“Wow, what did I do to you?”
We aren’t going to talk about it so go to sleep, Venom snapped, his tone creeping along Eddie’s bones like angry insects. Eddie shuddered and made a face.
“Fine, piss off to you too,” he muttered, pulling his legs back into the bed and laying down. His body had settled abnormally quickly with no conscious memories to prolong the attack, but that didn’t make him feel any better about not understanding where it had come from. He bunched his pillow up under his head and shoved it into a comfortable spot with his arm, staring at the wall.
Eventually, he closed his eyes. He didn’t sleep much.
Venom was fine and demanding bacon loudly the next morning, acting like nothing had happened at all. For about a week, everything was the same it had been for months. They bantered, they ate bad guys, they went to work and Eddie continued to lock horns with people who had a lot more money and a lot less morality than he and his human-eating symbiote did.
Then it happened again. And again. And one more time a month later. That time, he and Venom got into a fight about it.
“What are you not telling me?!” he demanded, hitting his side hard enough to bruise. He knew it jarred Venom though, so he didn’t care. He was too irritated. “You’d better not be chewing on something important again.”
You had a nightmare, Venom snapped back testily. Why are you angry at me?
“Because I didn’t have a nightmare and there’s no other explanation for why my body is having periodic night-time freak outs other than the parasite living in it!”
Venom manifested and hissed at Eddie’s use of 'parasite', but he was too angry to care. His sleep was messed up and he knew Venom was doing something, he just couldn’t pinpoint what.
Under his irritation about it he was, quite frankly, hurt. This wasn’t Venom just screwing around and tripping things accidentally or being mischievous, he was once again scrambling vital systems. After thinking the warring “I” had actually become “we” the perceived sabotage stung.
They didn’t talk for a few days after that, and there were no more attacks.
It was only when things finally started to get back to normal that the attack came back, and that time Eddie woke up to feel Venom absolutely shaking.
“Woah okay, no more avoiding me what in the world is going on with you!?” he demanded, sitting blearily up and pressing a hand to his chest.
Venom quivering all through his torso left him feeling unsettled and wrong inside but something was telling him that this wasn’t Venom just screwing around. He got the distinct and terrifying impression that it was involuntary.
Nothing….
The voice trembled too and Eddie’s brow twisted in alarm. This time, his adrenaline was entirely self-induced. “V, you never react like this to my nightmares what is--”
That’s when it clicked. “They’re not my nightmares, are they?” he asked very softly, pressing his palm more firmly against his chest and slowly shifting to cross his legs. “Venom? They’re not my nightmares.”
The length of silence told Eddie all he had to know, and he suddenly felt like the lowest piece of dirt for being angry with Venom the past several weeks.
“V, why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice pained. “I could have helped--you’ve been helping me with mine, why are you hiding yours? You’ve been having nightmares all this time and it’s causing my body to panic, isn’t it?”
Slowly, looking exhausted and ashamed, Venom pooled out of Eddie’s stomach and hips to sit in his lap. His head was bowed, his eyes mostly closed.
We did not want you to think we are still a loser….
“Hey,” Eddie said, reaching out to pet across Venom’s head and down into the inky warmth of him. “I’m having them too, and it’s not stupid to have nightmares after what we went through. Have you been having them all this time? Since Riot?”
Venom wouldn’t make eye contact with him, turning his head away and sinking a little lower. The tendrils slunk across Eddie’s legs with a reluctancy that was very unlike him.
No. They are…..recent.
Eddie’s brow furrowed, shaking his head once. “I don’t get it, bud. What’s setting them off--do you know?”
We never had nightmares...before Earth. Venom said, finally looking up at Eddie. He blinked slowly, and Eddie could see and feel the weight of exhaustion and confusion pulling the symbiote apart.
“So you don’t know how to deal with them, do you?” he asked, the sympathy only growing. If Venom had no real concept of nightmares (unlike every human who’d learned how to deal with them since childhood) what was he supposed to do?
Thinking back on it, even though Venom had helped to deal with Eddie’s nightmares, Eddie realized it had been 99% biological. He reacted to the chemicals and physical panic Eddie’s body produced, not so much the thoughts that caused them. Venom would reassure that the damage from Riot was repaired, but all the psychological healing Eddie had been doing was mostly self-pursued.
“Venom, we gotta figure out what’s causing these or they’re not gonna stop,” he said softly, stroking his fingers through Venom’s body. “Trust me. Humans have lots of experience with nightmares.”
We...are tired, Eddie.
Eddie pressed his lips together but he could take a hint, so he just nodded and gave Venom another reassuring stroke. “Okay. Okay buddy just...get some sleep and we’ll figure things out in the morning.”
The only problem was, no matter how carefully Eddie tried to bring it up, Venom dodged the question. The spells happened two more times and then Venom’s behavior changed radically--he started staying awake all night and sleeping when Eddie was awake and working. Just about the only time they were conscious together was when they were feeding on live people.
Eddie was a strange mix of angry and worried. He was angry that Venom was choosing to retreat instead of let him help, and he was worried about whatever was upsetting Venom badly enough to go a complete 180 of his normally loud, invasive personality and spend his time...surviving.
He remembered what that kind of mental state was like and he didn’t want to leave Venom stuck there.
After three weeks of avoidance treatment from his other, he finally decided to text Anne.
“So, what do you mean he’s acting strange?” Anne asked, frowning lightly at him over her coffee while they sat outside on the diner patio.
“I mean he’s not talking almost at all, except when we fight,” Eddie said, holding one finger up to show that there would be more “and he’s taken to sleeping while I’m awake and being awake while I’m asleep.” He leaned forward, his expression earnest. “It’s worrying me, Anne. He’s asleep right now, curled up in here,” he all but whispered, gesturing across his chest “and he’s not getting up until like ten or eleven when I crash. It has to be something to do with him having nightmares, but instead of him letting me help him with them, he’s managing to avoid me even while living inside my body!”
Anne made a face that was part disturbed part conceding. “Okay so, let’s think about this. You said Venom hasn’t had nightmares before now, right?”
Eddie shook his head. “No. I don’t think he has a concept for what they are, or didn’t until me. When I first had some after Riot and Drake, he couldn’t understand what was going on. It took a lot of explaining and still I don’t know that he more than just accepted it.”
“So he has no concept for nightmares. Maybe even for trauma,” Anne said, her eyes lighting with the realization. “Whatever he’s processing at night is pretty intense for your body to react like that, so it is probably tied to Riot.”
She tapped at her cup, thinking for a moment before glancing at Eddie with a worried expression. “Honestly, I think Venom has PTSD and doesn’t know how to deal with it. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of...being that wants to admit he doesn’t have an answer so he’s embarrassed and strung out from the stress of whatever’s bothering him.”
Eddie thudded back in his chair, his spine hitting the back a little too hard as he stared at the table and blinked. “Yeah that makes perfect sense. Part of me probably knew after I realized he was having nightmares but I was just so mad at him for avoiding me about it, it was easier to just think he was being stubborn.”
He squinted at the table, turning his cup around in a nervous tick. “And honestly it’s hard to picture something like Venom being traumatized, you know?” He sighed, his chest falling harshly with the weight of it. “Some investigative reporter I am, huh?”
“Yeah, well, I’m a lawyer. I’m good at making people see what I want them to see,” she teased gently, stirring at her coffee. Her expression sobered a little and she set her spoon aside.
“Seriously though Eddie, I think you both have PTSD. You just have the knowledge to deal with yours and Venom….doesn’t. This is one thing you share that’s still totally different. Venom experienced what happened to you both in a different way so he’s going to have different triggers. You just need to convince him to open up to you enough that you can help him process what they are.”
Eddie rubbed at his forehead, leaning into the table and propping his chin on his hand. “Great. So far I can’t find a pattern, other than it happened way later than you’d expect if he has PTSD from Riot, and it’s only happening at night in his sleep. Which is, you know, how nightmares work.”
Anne wrinkled her nose and sipped at her coffee, visibly thinking. “Well, what about the days that it happens? Was there something different in the room--the weather, the temperature, the kind of…….crime fighting you did the night before?”
Eddie shook his head. “No, nothing that I can think of it’s just…..totally random. Other than it usually seems to drop right in the middle of a really good week which is just rotton on karma’s part. You’d think after what happened to both of us we’re paid in advance on the karma front.”
Anne sighed. “Yeah...can’t say I disagree there.”
Eddie thought for a couple of days about how to make Venom talk to him, which in and of itself was darkly funny since not so long ago he could barely get the symbiote to shut up.
In order to catch his other, Eddie decided to take the next day off and stay up late watching Netflix. It had been so long since he’d watched that he spent more time shuffling through the bad selections and wondering how they got worse than actually watching anything by the time Venom woke up.
Eddie?
Eddie sat up abruptly, tapping the spacebar and pausing Daredevil half way through a clip of Matt beating some new thug senseless. The back of his mind thought about how he and V would have just eaten the guy.
Fisk especially. They would have eaten Fisk.
He closed the laptop and put it on the bedside table.
“Hey, V. We gotta talk, man.”
Venom rippled unhappily but it felt like a lot of the fight to hide had gone out of him. Quietly, he bled in an inky pool onto the bed and held his head up.
“I know you don't want to tell me about these nightmares but I promise you, I am not going to give you a hard time about them,” Eddie began, trying to keep his voice gentle. He really didn’t want Venom pulling away again.
“I really think you have PTSD, Venom. It's a condition where something really awful that happened sticks in your head and just keeps attacking you even if the thing is long over. I have it from Riot, and you…” he swallows a lump and his brow twists, not even wanting to think about it. “You burned alive, V,” he whispered. “Something is bringing all that back and I want to help you get free of it.”
Venom was quiet and unusually still, only his ever-present wavering there to keep him from looking like a mournful oil slick.
Eddie gave him time. Then, finally:
And you died.
The statement was so quiet, so heavy, so profoundly broken, that Eddie felt stricken.
“That's what's eating you?” he asked.
Not the burning? Not the fight with his own kind or the being ripped apart and experimented on. My death.
We went back to you, we found you and you were warm and you were pliant but you were silent.
Venom was spreading slowly closer and Eddie reached down, threading his fingers into Venom's substance. Venom reciprocated, twining his tendrils around Eddie's fingers and up his wrist to bury roots in around the brachial artery.
I did not know if I could fix you. Your lungs, your heart...they were in shreds, Eddie. Everything was destroyed and you were warm but you were dead.
Death, to a symbiote, was no abstract, fancifully looming thing. Venom's sense of life was a powerful ability that Eddie was only beginning to understand, and so his statement broke Eddie’s heart.
'Dead' meant so much more than a quiet heart and a lack of breath to a symbiote.
Your brain was fading by the time I reached you, Venom continued sadly, and Eddie was aware of the strangest sensation as Venom caressed the back of his neck, warm tendrils circling around his spine and brain stem. So much going dark…
The realization hit Eddie like a brick wall. “You've never been inside a dead host before.”
It wasn't a question. Of course Venom hadn't, because until Eddie, he really was a parasite. If a host died he'd taken another and there was no repercussion or regret. Just inconvenience.
Venom had gone against his very nature by not only entering Eddie's dying body, but by expanding great energy to heal and revive it.
Eddie could not speak for a long time, his eyes prickling and his throat tight.
“Why, V?” he asked at last, his voice strained as he wiped at his eyes. “Why is this coming back on you now?” he was less asking Venom himself and more voicing his distress at the unfairness of it, so when Venom answers he was surprised.
I am afraid you are dying again.
He blinked. Frowned.
“What? Why?”
Venom pulled in on himself, looking for all the world like he was self conscious.
Your heart...our heart does not beat like it used to. Especially at night.
Eddie blinked. Thought about that for a moment. “Like it used to?”
It is slow, now Eddie. So...so slow I wake in the spaces of its silence.
Well, that was startlingly poetic for an alien who liked to pile heads in corners and for a moment Eddie wondered if Venom spent parts of his nights awake scrolling through Shakespeare or something on his phone.
“Wait you're having attacks at night because my heart is slowing down?” Eddie asked, hand on his chest as he tried to understand. Venom looked up at him, his lips closing sadly over far too many teeth.
When it slows, we get anxious. We do not want to come back again to silence. Ever.
At least the swapped behavior finally made sense, as did the pace of the attacks. When he was stressed or awake his heart was beating fast enough Venom didn't feel like he had to keep an eye on it.
“Venom…” he said, his expression twisted with sympathy. “My heart wasn't supposed to beat as fast as it was when we met. I was a wreck, probably on the edge of a few kinds of meltdowns--cardiac included. My heart slowing down finally is a good thing.”
Venom seemed to consider that, and Eddie leaned back, resting his shoulders against the headboard.
“Listen, humans only have so many heartbeats, so the further apart they are the longer we can live, in theory,” he explained, leaning over to grab at his laptop. He overbalanced a little and Venom grabbed his free arm, helping pull him back to upright. “Thanks.” He opened the screen, clicking in his password as Venom climbed his arm to rest on his shoulder.
Eddie opened Google and started pulling up articles, Venom’s opalescent eyes peering down to read with him. “Look, there is a lot of medical research on this. Unless something is seriously wrong, most of the time a slower heartbeat at rest--especially when the person is asleep, is a good sign. It means the heart is strong enough to get the blood where it needs to go with fewer beats. Here--” he tapped the spacebar on a youtube rendition of a 3D heart model, pointing around the walls and chambers.
“See? All the heart has to do is get enough blood to the brain and everything else to keep them alive. If it’s strong and the person isn’t moving much you can get the same job done with less work.”
Venom blinked slowly, easing his way down Eddie’s chest to settle across his thigh and arm in a warm blanket. He reached out tendrils and Eddie took the hint, moving his hand so Venom could use the trackpad.
For a while he perused the articles and videos in silence, part of his mass tightening around Eddie’s wrist. Eddie stroked a reassuring thumb across Venom’s surface, knowing he was keeping track of his pulse.
“I’m okay, V,” he said gently. “Better than I was before. That really fast heartbeat I had when we met wasn’t healthy and honestly it made me feel sick. Remember when you damaged my heart?” he asked, though there was no accusation in the question. “It had to beat a lot faster because it wasn’t moving as much blood with each pump. Now that it’s healthy again, it can rest more often. Make sense?”
Eddie hoped Venom was listening, but the symbiote only continued to hold his wrist and scroll through articles in silence. Mostly he watched Venom for signs of feeling reassured, but when he did glance up to the screen again he twitched to try and stop his symbiote before Venom could click the link. The page loaded anyway and Eddie sighed.
“V, I don’t have athlete’s heart.”
You haven’t seen your heart.
He blinked. “No….”
Venom sunk down, his mass oozing across the keyboard. He just looked...tired.
“What would help, Venom?” he asked, hesitating a moment before mentioning the first thing that had crossed his mind. “Do you want us to go see Dan?”
Venom was quiet for an even longer moment, slowly reaching up to close the lid of the laptop. As the room went dark, he felt and only partially saw Venom climb back up his chest and settle in an inky, weighted blanket across his sternum to drape and then pull firmly around his ribs. He leaned his head back and rest his hand on top of the mass, rubbing his thumb back and forth gently.
For the rest of that night, Venom stayed between Eddie’s heart and his hand.