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You told Riot that he was ugly.
The rumble in Eddie’s head came so suddenly he nearly dropped his toothbrush. It brought back fond memories of opal eyes flashing in the mirror, probably a concussion, and waking up in a tangle of his own ripped shower curtains.
“Yeah yeah, good memories for you maybe,” Eddie managed around his toothbrush.
Riot, Venom repeated, you told him he was ugly.
Eddie spat out his toothpaste, wondering where this was going. “You been poking around my head again, V?”
Our head. Our memories, Eddie.
Eddie chuckled as he switched off the light to the bathroom and sank down to sit on his bed. “Y’know what, you want private access to the, uh,” he waved his hand, “Eddie Brock’s best hits of how to fuck up your life, then go ahead.”
There was a ripple of unease and disagreement down his spine that made Eddie shudder. He rolled his shoulders with a smile. “C’mon man, you know I’m kidding.”
A distressed rumble answered him that morphed into a sulky, Didn’t need your permission anyway.
Something in his tone and the jittery energy in his veins made Eddie pay more attention to what his symbiote had said before, sensing there was more to why he had brought up Riot than just rifling through his memories for fun.
“Okay - yeah - sure. I told Riot he was ugly,” he finally replied, thinking of that gaping gray maw in his face demanding to know where Venom was.
There was something nearly embarrassed, quiet and meek in the soft sensation that slid along his shoulders. But you do not think... you do not think that we are ugly?
A question disguised as a statement. Typical Venom. Eddie couldn’t help but smile as he moved across the bed and climbed under the covers, knowing that his symbiote hated feeling self-conscious. And hated that Eddie knew it even more.
Not self-conscious, he huffed, just curious.
Eddie closed his eyes and let out a relaxed breath into the darkness of his room. Their conversations in the dark were filled with a warmth that he treasured, and he spoke with total sincerity when he replied quietly, “Of course not, V. There’s nothing about you - nothing about us - that’s ugly.” He thought of narrow opal eyes, rows of wicked teeth... tongue, claws, speed, strength... Them. Together.
He shrugged against the mattress beneath him. “We’re... I think we’re beautiful.”
It should have sounded ridiculous, to say that they were ‘beautiful’, but he meant it, and he couldn’t bring himself to feel anything but complete conviction in his own words. Pleasure fizzed through him from Venom and Eddie felt the strange urge to laugh aloud in sheer joy.
“Has this... been on your mind a while?”
No.
The reply was almost instantaneous and Eddie could nearly feel the bristling inside his stomach at the suggestion that his opinion on their appearance mattered. Apparently it did.
Eddie placed a hand over his heart, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “You could have just checked any time you know.”
More ‘poking around’ in your head, Eddie?
“Well, yeah, it’s in there too, but what I meant was you could check in here, dumbass.” He squeezed his hand over his chest and felt a thick, heavy hand form beneath his own.
Their fingers laced together above his heart, beating strongly.