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Eddie didn’t have that many exes in his life, but he didn’t think it was normal to be as chummy with not only your ex, but her boyfriend as Eddie seemed to be. Of course it wasn’t normal to have an amorphous alien living in your body either, so maybe Eddie wasn’t the best yardstick to measure normal by.
All in all, Dan seemed like a good guy, and Eddie was more than willing to admit Dan was better for Anne than he was. Eddie was a fuckup in more ways than one, and Anne deserved someone who wouldn’t do something stupid and put her career in danger.
You’re my fuckup though, Eddie . His amorphous alien always knows just what to say… at least close enough to it, anyway.
“Thanks V,” he replied.
They were on their way to meet Dan and Anne for dinner at a new sushi place that had opened a few blocks from Dan and Anne’s apartment. It was three weeks since Venom had returned to Eddie, and Eddie had spent most of the time consuming mass amounts of chocolate while tracing shell corporations of the Life Institute.
Venom had spent most of the time investigating both Eddie’s organs and his Netflix. After Eddie had spent two hours deleting the seemingly endless variety of romcoms the symbiote inexplicably favored from his watched list, he had set up a second user for Venom and the symbiote was under strict instructions to use it or face tater tot rationing.
The sushi restaurant was far more bougie than Eddie had been expecting, and he was glad he had decided to overdress, as it seemed his dress-shirt-and-not-holey-jeans was par for the course.
Dan and Anne (and it’s funny how he thought of them as Dan-and-Anne now, wasn’t it?) had arrived before him, and they waved him over to their table. It seemed almost odd for there to be only three chairs at the table, but Eddie hadn’t told them about Venom’s return yet.
And you won’t, Venom said. Dan will try to remove us again.
Eddie stuck his hand in his jeans pocket and squeezed a tendril Venom extended in reassurance. I wouldn’t let him. Not ever again.
We will not chance it. We would have to eat him.
Eddie wasn’t quite able to stifle the snort that statement caused, and Anne gave him an odd look as he sat down. “Oh, just something I read earlier,” he said dismissively.
“You’re looking better,” she said by way of greeting.
“Hello to you too, Annie,” he said.
“She’s right,” Dan said. “Have those supplements been working?”
“I’ve been eating a lot of chocolate too,” Eddie said. “After Halloween sales and all.”
“Eat a fruit once in a while,” Anne said.
“I’ll try,” Eddie replies.
Juicy red dripping… fruit … Venom supplies visions of overripe strawberries that bear a very strong resemblance to their favorite foods.
“Oh stop it,” Eddie muttered.
“What?” Dan said.
“Nothing!” Eddie said brightly. “What’s on the menu for tonight? Any specials?” He was going to have to work on that whole ‘talking out loud’ thing.
“I think the lobster is on special,” Anne said, glancing over the menu at him.
“Oh, Annie, you wound me,” Eddie said. “Now you’re just making fun of me.”
Anne cracked a grin, “You have to admit, it was pretty funny.”
“Maybe from your point of view!” Eddie replied. “I had to throw that shirt out!” Never mind that it smelled like fish, it had a giant hole in it from where Riot had speared him through it. The thought of it had him rubbing his sternum, and he felt a slight pressure from under his clothes as Venom pressed back.
He had been doing that a lot lately, little brushing touches just to let Eddie know he was still there, or maybe to reassure himself that Eddie was still there.
“Heartburn?” Dan asked.
“Huh?” Eddie said. “Oh, no, just an itch.”
The waiter appeared then, and they placed their orders. Dan-and-Anne’s treat, so Eddie only felt a little guilty ordering a platter big enough to feed three. Venom was still taking more than his fair share of Eddie’s calories, and Eddie liked sushi besides. Anne raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.
Conversation ranged from Anne’s new public defender job to Eddie’s leads to that one gross thing that Dan had found in a patient’s butt. Eddie was privately enjoying Venom’s reaction to the new foods.
We should eat this all the time! He insisted.
Isn’t it dead? Eddie thought hard.
Barely.
“You have such weird standards.”
“You think two-ply toilet paper is a weird standard?” Dan asked.
“What? No, sorry, I thought you said four-ply,” Eddie said.
Dan-and-Anne exchanged a glance that seemed to suggest “ooooookaaaaay”.
They passed on dessert, and the meal was over before Eddie knew what had happened. They said awkward goodbyes, Eddie still wasn’t sure exactly what the protocol in this situation was, but a firm handshake for Dan and a hug for Anne seemed not to be out of order.
He would be so nice and tender .
“Dude, no!” Eddie said as he walked down the street to the bus station from Dan-and-Anne’s house. He glanced at the time, it was barely 8:30 and he didn’t feel like going home just yet. “You want to do something?”
Eat bad guys?
“I was thinking more like go see a movie or something,” Eddie said.
A movie? The Netflix?
“In the theater,” Eddie said. He felt the symbiote rifling through his memories for context.
Yes, a movie. In the theater. We will eat popcorn.
“Exactly.”
He caught the bus and took it to a cinema close to his neighborhood. The box office offerings were rather dismal, but when Venom saw a movie called, for some godforsaken reason, Cupid Meets Valentine , they simply had to see it. Eddie wasn’t entirely sure why a Valentine’s Day movie was out in late autumn, but it made his symbiote happy, so what ever worked.
It still felt disingenuous to only buy one ticket, but as Eddie entered the dark theater where previews played, he realized that it was the only ticket the theater would probably sell for this movie. He had acquired a very large bucket of popcorn, and set it in his lap as the lights went down and the movie started.
It was, indeed, a terrible movie. However, before the opening credits were even over, Venom had manifested a little head from Eddie’s shoulder, and was staring at the screen in slack-jawed awe.
This is a theater?
“It’s not even a very big one,” Eddie said, holding up a handful of popcorn for Venom to eat. He shoved his entire face into the pile of popcorn, but Eddie got the sense he was still watching through Eddie’s eyes.
We should live here.
“That might get expensive,” Eddie said.
We do not care.
Eddie huffed a laugh, and scratched under the symbiote’s chin before reaching for another handful of popcorn.
Do that again.
“What?”
The touching. Do it again.
Eddie ran a finger under Venom’s chin again and the symbiote shuddered, the feeling reverberating through Eddie’s body. He leaned his head into Eddie’s hand, and Eddie was reminded of a cat seeking attention.
We are not a cat!
“Of course not, darling,” Eddie said, but pet Venom’s head anyway.
Onscreen, the antics were beyond comprehension, and besides, Eddie was more interested in watching Venom’s face as he took in the movie. The opalescent eyes were trained on the bright moving images, and reflected the myriad colors. Eddie probably should’ve been afraid of the alienness of the whole thing, but he wasn’t. Seeing Venom experience normal Earth life for the first time was enchanting, like seeing Christmas morning through the eyes of a child again.
He was fascinated by the smallest things, and in turn so was Eddie.
The movie ended in the expected way, with the couple getting married in a big white wedding. Eddie and Venom emerged onto the street to find a drizzle glazing the city. Without any kind of prompt, Venom expanded from Eddie’s skin to form a jacket around Eddie.
Eddie jumped at the sudden transformation, but when he glanced at himself in a darkened shop window, he found that he was wearing a dark rain jacket with the hood pulled up. It was black, sure, but it looked like normal fabric and not Venom’s normal substance.
“I didn’t know you could make yourself into clothes,” he said, striking off for his--their apartment.
There are many things you don’t know, Eddie.
“I know that,” Eddie said, irritably.
That makes no sense.
Eddie stuck his tongue out at Venom, but the gesture was lost on the symbiote.
Truthfully, we did not know either. There are many things we can do with an ideal host that we cannot without perfect symbiosis. This is one of them.
Eddie’s heart skipped a beat, as it did every time Venom mentioned an ideal host or perfect symbiosis. Eddie still wasn’t sure entirely what those words meant to the symbiote, but he had a rough idea.
“Never had a perfect symbiosis before?” Eddie asked. They had reached their building and he ascended the stairs.
It is exceedingly rare, Venom said, sliding a tendril into the lock to turn the tumblers in lieu of a key. Most on my world consider it a fairy tale, something children dream of. I did tell you I was a loser among my kind too.
“That’s why?”
Venom is silent for a long while. They retreat from the jacket form and wrap in a lanky gloop around Eddie’s neck like a demented scarf.
I’m what you might call a hopeless romantic. I always wanted to find the perfect host, a being I wouldn’t have to eat and destroy.
“But why?” Eddie asked. He was genuinely curious.
My people are… not kind, Eddie.
“Geez, I never would’ve figured that out.”
Most consider themselves above other life forms, only as meat to be eaten, chemicals to be consumed. But there was always the story of the few who had achieved perfect symbiosis. The symbiote and host joined into a being who was greater than sum of its parts.
“And you think that’s me?”
I know it’s you. I believe humans have a similar idea. Something called ‘soulmates’?
Eddie scoffed a laugh, “You’ve been watching too many romcoms, V. Soul mates are just a stupid fiction trope.”
Are they?
Eddie almost replied in the same vein, but stopped for a moment to seriously consider what the symbiote was saying. Venom, the being who ran around and ate the heads off bad guys, Eddie-and-his-symbiote put together, was somehow as the symbiote described. And as much as Eddie dismissed the idea of soulmates, he couldn’t deny the stirrings of romantic feelings he had for the symbiote. He had absolutely no idea if Venom would (or even could) feel the same way, but it seemed that perfect symbiosis was an analogous, if not identical idea.
“You know, we’re in uncharted territory here, V. If you say we’re soulmates than maybe we are.”
That night, Eddie’s dreams turned dark, a seething mass of oily goo, darkness, and not sure where one mind ended and another began.
He woke with a gasp, swimming to the surface of consciousness. He hadn’t had a nightmare since Venom returned, but then… that wasn’t his nightmare, was it? Venom’s presence was close, but their mind was distant, as if they were asleep themself.
“Ven?” Eddie said, pressing a hand to his chest. “Wake up buddy.”
The symbiote writhed against Eddie’s ribs.
“Venom, you have to wake up,” Eddie said, his heartbeat quickening. He had no idea how to wake Venom up. “Darling, please.”
The writhing stopped suddenly, and then Eddie’s lap was full of shivering symbiote. A tendril left them connected, but Eddie wrapped his arms around what he could reach, the symbiote curled tight against his body.
It was a strange thing, Venom lived inside Eddie’s skin most of the time, but this gesture, holding them within his arms, felt far more vulnerable and intimate than that. This wasn’t fierce teeth-and-claws suit-Venom, this was a squishy gooey alien blob who relied on a human to even survive on this world. They were incredibly exposed like this, and it nearly took Eddie’s breath away to realize how much trust they were putting in him to be able to reveal this sort of weakness.
“Hey now,” Eddie said. “You’re safe, you’re here with me. No one else, and I’m not letting you go.”
Slowly, painfully slowly, Venom’s shivering slowed, and they relaxed. They retreated inside Eddie again, save for one thin blob that formed itself into a head.
I am...sorry.
“Don’t be, darling,” Eddie said. “Everyone gets nightmares sometimes.”
Every human maybe. But we are not human.
“Maybe I’m rubbing off on you,” Eddie said.
We do not want these nightmares. We do not like them.
“I don’t think anyone likes them.”
They make us weak.
“In whose eyes? Yours? Riot’s? Your people’s?”
Yours.
“No!” Eddie said. “Never! You survived that! You could have become cruel and hard and vicious like Riot, but you didn’t.”
I’m vicious.
“You are,” Eddie conceded. “But only when you have to be. You’re not vicious here. And you’re learning. Do you think Riot could sit and watch romcoms and eat popcorn?”
He would not. But he is not a loser.
“V, if you’re a loser and I’m a loser, how did we beat Riot?”
I told you, greater than the sum of its parts. Individually, we are losers, but together we are a winner.
Eddie nearly says something he’s not sure of right then ( I love you ) but it’s not the right time, and Venom probably doesn’t feel the same way, but there’s still time to figure that out. If Eddie has his way, there’ll be years and years to figure it out.
“A winner, huh?” he said instead.
Don’t make it weird, Eddie.
“Honey, it was weird the moment you came into my life.”
You like it weird.
“Damn straight.”
Go back to sleep, Eddie.