Work Text:
If Miles were to write one of those little recap things that were on the first page of a comic book, it would go something like this:
After an eventful year in which Miles Morales became Spider-man, discovered the existence of alternative realities and defeated Wilson Fisk, only to have to fight him again, when yet another alternate Spider-man had asked for help defeating his own Fisk before he attempted to ruin the multi-verse, he was looking forward to relaxing for a bit. Getting used to the daily Spider-grind; the muggers and the burglaries and the super-powered idiots whose plans were almost entirely characterized by their ‘plan to kill Spider-man’. Unfortunately for him, fate and the multi-verse had other plans…
Okay, so there was a reason Miles liked to draw comics and not write them. That stuff was hard. But the point still stood – Miles was totally looking forward to having some time off from the serious stuff, since for whatever reason it only seemed to happen every few months, until, out of the blue, half his alt-spider friends were popping up in his room without warning. Annoying, because he had an essay due tomorrow, and this couldn’t wait for one day? He asked them as much, but was only faced with five identical expressions of confusion.
“Does homework not exist in you guyses universes or something?” he complained, closing his laptop with a huff.
“Well, no,” said Ham, and behind him Noir nodded seriously. The others shrugged. Gwen folded her arms.
“I usually do mine when I’m given it. So stuff like this doesn’t happen,” she said.
“Okay, all right Miss Valedictorian, we aren’t here to lecture Miles on his dedication to homework,” Peter cut in with his hands raised, placating, “We’re here because –”
“You’re in mortal danger,” Noir said.
“-we have something to...tell…you – okay well, I was going to be a little less blunt about it, but I suppose that’s-”
“The truth!” Ham said with vigor. Peni and her robot – the newest edition of it – shrugged in unison. Peter made a well, I guess… gesture.
Miles sighed. “What is it this time?”
*
Turned out there was a big dude coming to get Miles. A big, like. Goo dude. Dude made of goo and bad vibes. The pretty cool but perpetually busy Spider-man that had made them all the bracelets that let them go between realities for short periods of time (boy had the visit to Ham’s universe been a trip) had told Gwen to tell Miles that he had been passing through this universe and his Spidey sense had gone off while he was here, and it had been the same kind of pinging that had happened when he faced his own version of the guy. The Venom.
Miles still wasn’t sure exactly what this Venom was about or what he looked like besides the unanimous ‘big goo monster that has way too many teeth and wants to kill you’, which was enough to have him a little concerned, but he decided to disregard some of the inconsistencies in their descriptions – it was no use using information that was probably specific to one universe. Like the fact that he was apparently dog shaped in Ham’s universe, came from Brooklyn in Noir’s, and was possessing a dude called Lee in Gwen’s universe. Also Peter said something about huge quads and a ‘tight ass’, but they’d all learned to block out the comments Peter made that were more due to a lack of filter rather than any real relevance to the given situation.
So everyone agreed to let Miles finish his homework in peace and head back to their own universes for a bit, but that they would be popping by intermittently to check on him in case the sort of inevitable confrontation happened sooner rather than later, and then they were gone. Miles apologized to his long-suffering roommate, sat still and wide-eyed on his bed, still not really comfortable with the alternate-universes thing, and then he got back to his essay.
*
So Eddie Brock was pretty cool.
Miles met him during a career day thing at school when he came in to talk about his job and how sometimes there are obstacles and forked paths and other things that would be different from what they planned for their future, and how that was okay, and they shouldn’t let it discourage them. After the talk, Miles lingered around so that he could go tell the dude how much he appreciated his work, sort of out of politeness, but mostly because this was the guy that took down Carlton Drake, no matter what the media tried to tell them otherwise. Miles knew that the interview Eddie had done had something to do with it. He’d seen the conspiracy theory videos on YouTube.
Thing was, Eddie was so nice and gracious and interesting to talk to that it took Miles like, way too long to realize that his Spidey sense was going off. Like really going off, the same way it did when something big and dangerous was within touching distance. And then a lot of things happened in quick succession: first, Eddie started to look kind of suspicious of Miles, and then he just looked plain shocked. Miles wouldn’t say he looked scared, but he for sure looked nervous, starting to make his excuses to Miles and the other kids hanging around to ask him questions, trying to leave the room as quickly as possible.
The next thing that happened was that Miles remembered all the stories about the monster that had been eating people a while back, and how the whole thing had been linked to Carlton Drake. Who had been exposed by Eddie. Eddie, who was now disappearing down the school hallway at a speed that could only be called harried. Damn. Miles really didn’t want to skip class, but he didn’t know what would happen if he didn’t follow him now – if Eddie Brock was Venom, this might be the only time Miles had the upper-hand.
His dad was going to be so pissed.
*
Eddie’s motorbike was still in the school parking lot when Miles got outside, which meant, if Eddie wasn’t on the ground, that left only one other option.
Five minutes later Miles was swinging between buildings, sticking close to the roofs so that he could see if Eddie was on any of them, when his Spidey sense pinged at him again, and he caught a glimpse of something black and shiny and really, really big on a roof nearby. He hit the little emergency-call-other-Spider-people button on the cuff on his wrist, and in the time it took for them all to appear and Miles to explain the situation, they managed to get the jump on Venom (which Miles was going to call him until they figured out if Eddie was just a cover or an unwilling party or something else) where he was – uh, sat with his knees to his chest on the corner of a roof building?
“He’s not as intimidating as you guys made him out to be,” Miles muttered when no one else said anything. Peter said something about intimidating ass that everyone ignored. Venom stood up then, a strange fluid movement that really made it clear how solid he wasn't, and at his full height, like, okay. Big, check, scary, check, and–
“Oh, uh, teeth,” Miles said. There were a lot of teeth.
“Wowee,” Ham said from behind him, and Miles turned to look with alarm as he started walking his way over to Venom. “Get a load of this guy!”
“For the last time, hiding your mouth while you say that to us doesn’t mean that they can’t hear it in this universe,” Peter said, sounding way too chill considering Venom’s mouth was opening and revealing so, so many teeth, and then a tongue that Miles was going to have nightmares about. Miles was just about ready to either nope out of the situation or yell at the others to focus oh my god how do I fight this guy again, when Venom spoke.
We don’t kill spiders, Venom said, his voice deep and rumbling and just as scary as the rest of him.
There was a brief, but resounding silence. Then Gwen scoffed loudly.
“Like we’d believe anything you say, Lee.”
“Uh, actually his name is Eddie here,” Miles interrupted, trying not to flinch at the resulting expression Gwen turned his way.
“Whatever,” she said, turning back to Venom. “I don’t care what your name is. We aren’t going to let you hurt him.”
There was a chorus of agreeing sounds from the others, everyone gearing up for a fight; taking offensive stances and readying weapons if they had them, but Venom just. Didn’t move. Didn’t even tense. Only stood there with a weirdly conflicted expression across its somewhat similar face (what was with that) like it wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to do.
“You scared, punk?” Noir said after a moment, never a fan of beating around the bush. “Come on, give us a fight.”
Venom’s tongue lashed around like a cat tail, frustrated. We would like to eat you for this, Venom said, but instead of following that up with an attack, it added but we will not. Eddie says that you are good guys, so we do not want to hurt you. But if you hurt him, then we will rend your flesh from y-
Venom didn’t get to finish his threat though, because there was a sudden shuddering that came from his center, a wave of ripples across the darkness, and then – it was Eddie again. Just like that. The dark goo going back from whence it came, if whence it came was inside Eddie. Gross.
“Sorry,” was the first thing Eddie said, and the second was: “I don’t really know why you think I’m going to hurt Miles, I only realized he was Spider-man like twenty minutes ago.”
“How did you know?”
“I’d already tracked it down to a kid at your school – but then I recognized your voice while you were talking to me. Also I can see your suit through your school shirt.”
“Oops,” Miles said. Gwen sighed heavily.
Peter laughed, then tried to cover it with a cough. “Okay, well, why was you looking for Spider-man then, if not to attack him?”
Eddie smiled ruefully, “I was thinking of doing a story on Spider-man.”
“A what?”
“He’s a reporter in this reality. His stuff is good,” Miles said.
“Yeah, well,” Eddie mumbled, smile turning genuine, “you do a lot of good stuff for this city, kid. Thought you deserved some recognition.”
“Oh, uh, thanks,” Miles said, a little flustered considering how much Eddie himself had done for like, the world.
Gwen coughed loudly. “Hey guys, sorry to interrupt, but aren’t we meant to be fighting?”
Miles looked at her, then back at Eddie. “Do you, uh, need help?” he whispered, thinking maybe Venom couldn’t hear while he was inside (gross, gross) Eddie. But Eddie shook his head, still smiling, as Venom started to manifest again, only this time separately from Eddie, little tendrils twirling around his arms and hands, Venom’s face appearing from his shoulder and rubbing gently against him in something that could only be described as a nuzzle.
Your offer is kind, little Spider, but unnecessary. We help each other.
“Um. Am I imagining things or are you guys, like–” Peter paused, scratched his head over the mask, “can someone help me with a verb here?”
“Hitched?” Noir suggested.
“Well, I meant more like-”
“Ca-noodling,” Ham said eagerly, pointing to where they were clearly holding hands.
Gwen and Peni started saying something in protest, but Miles was too busy watching Eddie to listen, re-evaluating everything they had told him about Venom in their own universes, wondering if maybe Peter was right and these two were really a thing. And if that meant that Venom was sort of good here, through the power of – well, Miles wasn’t going to put labels on other people’s interspecies relationships, but it sure looked like love.
And Eddie sure wasn’t denying any of it.
“Isn’t that weird?” Peter asked, no longer geared up to fight, “like the tentacles I get, but having your SO be in your head all the time sounds a little terrifying to me.”
“The tentacles you get?” Gwen asked incredulously.
“Well, no, but-”
“You’re really not going to try and kill me?” Miles asked Eddie and Venom, fully dropping his offensive stance. The others went quiet, finally.
“God, of course not,” Eddie said, looking pained, “we don’t hurt good people. Venom is all bark, even if you tried to hurt me he wouldn’t do anything if I told him not to. We worked things out a while ago now,” he said, looking at Venom’s face fondly, “didn’t we?”
Venom’s face looked equally pained, probably at the idea of not protecting Eddie, but he grumbled his affirmative.
If Eddie was treating Venom like a protective boyfriend rather than a terrifying space creature with inches long teeth, well, considering his history of saving the planet, Miles was inclined to trust him.
“Okay,” Miles said, “okay Mr Brock, I trust you.” Eddie smiled.
“Ooooh, I know that face,” Peter said knowingly, coming up to pat Miles’ shoulder. “I didn’t think I wanted kids until I met this one either.”