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After everything, once Eddie is released from the hospital, Dan takes him home and bakes him a soufflé.
Dan says what happened next was an accident. Anne laughs.
"Inevitable." She disagrees, still chuckling. "Everyone falls in love with Eddie. Few fall in bed with him and don't even have sex. I am impressed, Daniel Lewis. Or disappointed." She kisses him playfully.
"He was in shock," Dan repeats. "It would have been unethical."
"Of course," Anne teases, but she doesn't mean it. She knows what Eddie looked like when they found him.
***
At first, all Dan knows is that the famed Life Foundation rocket has exploded. Afterimages of fire linger in the smoke rising into the sky from the east.
Anne calls Dan minutes later. He answers immediately: he should be on his way home, but downtown became a giant traffic jam. Dan's been sitting in his car, staring at the news popping on his phone when her name flashes.
Anne's voice is tense as a rope bridge over a precipice. She explains she followed a few panicked personnel to an emergency exit of Life Foundation. Yes, they really did attempt an unplanned rocket launch. No, she's not hurt, per se. Could Dan come over there? Vans of medics, law enforcement and reporters are besieging the main entrance and she has to find Eddie. Her voice goes small when she says no, she doesn't know if he's okay.
Dan takes a few detours and parks half a kilometer away, walking to her via the beach. Other people are walking with him ; some thrill seekers, small groups of teens with their phones out, a man calling out a woman's name.
Dan finds Anne on the south banks of the Gate, holding a shivering and disheveled Eddie. Dan checks him over, but his body registers as astonishingly healthy, all things considered. Exhaustion and clear signs of recent blood loss are his worst symptoms. His limbs are cold and heavy during Dan's cursory examination, his assistance meek. Anne extracts enough mumbling out of him to understand the symbiotic alien sacrificed itself for Eddie, and by extension has saved the world, before Eddie clams up. They don't push.
Instead, they keep him warm until first respondents storm down the beach. Everything turns a whirlwind of red and blue lights, filling forms, and waiting.
The police, FBI and paramedics fight for a while over custody of Eddie, while Dan and Anne heavily downplay all their involvement. Eddie is singed, drenched and smells like rotten fish, but Dan put his cardigan over the giant suspicious tears and bloodstains. They say they were all nearby when there was an explosion, that Eddie jumped into the water to investigate more closely and was caught by some of the falling wreckage. It's almost true, and other bystanders have done exactly that.
Eddie stays silent unless directly interrogated and stares at his hands. It is for the best, but Anne and Dan exchange long looks over Eddie's head.
In the end, Eddie falls asleep where he sits, and Dan presses his advantage to get him checked-in, citing possible concussion and shock. Those always get people moving.
The night flips into day as they start a new circus of forms and waiting, this time within Dan's territory.
Between Eddie's medical tests, Anne kick-starts the legal fight with Eddie's ex-employer, armed with two cellphones and a tower of empty coffee cups. Dan uses his employee pass and charm to peek at each results and verify they stay within typical human parameters before they are committed to Eddie's file. Nothing is more permanent yet misfiled as medical records.
There's no beds available, so Eddie folds up in hospital chairs and closes his eyes. Dan ponders if it's out of tiredness or avoidance and concludes to both.
By the time everything that can be done within reasonable time is done, the sun is setting and Anne is swaying on her feet. Dan drives her home first, then notices Eddie is asleep in the backseat. He detours briefly for groceries, letting the window a crack open, but Eddie doesn't stir until they've reached his apartment. Dan keeps up small talk the whole way, just in case. "Here we are. Let's get you home."
Dan pats his shoulder and Eddie jerks to awareness like a startled squirrel. He painstakingly precedes Dan up the stairs, one shoulder dragging on the wall, Dan hovering at his back in case he falls.
He hesitates at his own front door. Eddie's hand trembles over the doorknob, and his bruised eyes are downcast. Eddie is lost at sea, Dan thinks. He can be his lighthouse, for tonight. He sets down the groceries he brought along, plucks the keys off Eddie's nerveless fingers and unlocks the apartment.
"Hey buddy," he hefts one of the bags. "I'm going to go in first and put this in the fridge. Can you grab the other one for me?"
Eddie looks down in confusion and reaches for the bag on the floor. "'kay."
Dan smiles and edges around him to stand inside, blocking the frame. He studies the place while removing his shoes. He supposes the clean-up homicide crew did a good job of restoring everything they could, but it still looks decrepit.
The apartment is an open room; the living room is the kitchen and is also the bedroom. Behind some dusty weights, an half-dead plant shed most of its leaves on scuffed floors, and the peeling paint job of the brick wall rides on the wrong side of distressed. It currently suits Eddie, in a horrific way. What you see is what you get. A raw wound hastily wiped clean, the leftovers of incredible violence. It smells of bleach.
Determined to ignore the apartment's mess for now, Dan steps up to the counters and starts putting away the things he brought: easy meals in cans, frozen packages, dry food in jars, cereals, eggs, bread, dairy, some hopeful vegetables.
After a while, Eddie walks in behind him and helps out. Dan hands him items, making sure their fingers touch.
When Dan is done, he turns to find Eddie staring at the closed door of his fridge. There's a few mismatched magnets on it, holding nothing.
"Why don't you take a shower, Eddie?" He suggests. "I'll whip up some food."
" 'm not hungry," Eddie mumbles.
Considering Dan hasn't seen him eat in 20 hours, he doubts that. But avoiding one feeling often means avoiding all of them, so he lets Eddie off the hook. "Maybe not, but I am."
Eddie looks through him, drawn yet blank. A moment passes and Dan realizes Eddie has zoned out too far to answer.
"Anne's going to be out for a while" he tries again. "Do you mind if I stay a little bit? I'm not confident about driving back right now. Take a shower while I cook us something warm."
Eddie blinks, eyes somewhat focusing. He scratches his wrist under the hospital band, nervously pulls Dan's shirt' sleeves down over his knuckles. "What? Sure. Yeah, okay. Shower."
Dan nods, turns towards the stove and opens cabinets in search of cookware. It takes a few minutes for Eddie to move. Dan listens to his limp to the bathroom, the soft click of the door, then gets to work.
He cuts and mixes the bread, eggs, dairies and vegetables into the biggest oven-safe pot he finds, and slides it into the oven. He sends a few update texts to Anne, reads an article on the Rocket Disaster, gets three lines into another that discusses reports of monsters fighting before he has to stop. He waters the tired plant, and tidies up what he can without being intrusive. If Eddie's a stitched wound needing some fresh bandages, Dan figures the least he can do is also mend his environment however he can.
The oven buzzes and Dan has to take the food out using dirty towels as mittens. Either Eddie doesn't own any, or they got bagged as murder evidence. Both are equally depressing possibilities.
Once he can't put it off much more, Dan knocks on the bathroom door. Eddie isn't out yet, but the shower is off.
"Eddie?" He calls through the door. "Our food is ready. May I come inside?"
Dan waits ten seconds, then twenty. He tries the handle; unlocked.
He sticks his head in. "Eddie?"
The bathroom air is thick with humidity, walls sweating, floor wet. The shower-bath has no curtains. Eddie is standing in front of the fogged mirror in loose pants, hunched over the sink and staring at the running faucet.
Now scrubbed pink clean, Eddie's body appears all the more suspiciously unarmed. The only damning evidence left are Eddie's tattoos, or lack thereof. Where inks flow and merge over his shoulders, they end abruptly around several unblemished stripes of skin. A thick part in the middle of his back has been erased, and Dan's eyebrows go up when he confirms a matching hairless patch on Eddie's front. Whatever happened, it got through Eddie. His astonishment morphs into worry, then anger. With practiced ease, he sorts through all these emotions and puts aside most of them since they are pointless at the moment.
He assesses the Eddie in front of him. The only immediate physical injury is a thin cut interrupting the single clean-shaven stripe going down Eddie's fuzzy cheek. A cheap razor lays in the sink, two smudges of blood on the edge.
Dan has never seen Eddie clean-shaven. Not in any pictures of him and Anne she kept finding and deleting from her social media accounts, not in any of the Broke Reports Dan watched in Youtube spirals within the last few weeks. Whatever impulse made him decide to shave tonight, Dan doesn't think it's worth pursuing.
He carefully picks up the bloody razor, washes and puts it away, and wets the cleanest cloth he can find. There's no first aid kit anywhere in sight. "Civilians," Dan sighs, tilting Eddie's face towards the light. "Let's get this cleaned up and put you in dry clothes."
Eddie allows it, frowning at him. Dan twists a shrug into a smile.
"Sorry. Professional hen-mother. I see blood and transform into a doctor."
Eddie doesn't laugh. His scratchy jaw moves underneath Dan's palm. Eddie looks down, then up. "Your socks don't match." He sounds confused.
Dan bites his lip on a laugh. "No, they don't."
Eddie looks down again. "And they are wet! Oh. No. My floor." He looks endearingly alarmed, and Dan could kiss him, he's so relieved. Anything but blankness is an excellent sign, but also, Dan likes people who expresses how they feel, and Eddie has the body language of a freight train.
Seeing some emotions flutter back into his expressive face only heightens Dan's protectiveness. He's starting to understand why an alien monster wanted to keep him, because Dan hungers for the mirror opposite. Dan wants to set him free.
All at once, Dan realizes he's cradling Eddie's face. While Eddie is standing wet. Mostly naked. And still definitively in shock. Ah.
Dan steps back, wiping his hands. "Are you hungry now? You should eat and rest. Tomorrow, you will feel better. Or you won't, but at least you will be in better shape to deal with that."
Eddie clears his throat. He hums, hems, gestures at his face, and drops his arms, helpless. To Dan, it is the familiar bone-deep tiredness that robs people of words and cognitive proactive actions. "Finish…shaving?" He edges.
"Leave it." Dan orders, sharper than intended. "It isn't a priority right now. Food and rest are."
Eddie looks downright pitiful. Dan breathes in, smooths down his anger. He only recently started gravitating around the bright, smart-ass spitfire that is Eddie Brock, and as sure as he knows how to fight an infection, he's going to make sure that man resurfaces from this wreck of a week.
He molds his hands to Eddie's thick neck and bends their heads together to look Eddie in the eyes. "Eddie. Eventually, you will feel better. It might need some time, and some outsourcing, but I swear it will." It feels as much a promise as a treat. Whatever is haunting Eddie, Dan will make certain Eddie is equipped to fight it. "You've got to hold on until then. If not for yourself yet, hold onto us for now."
Eddie's face crumbles, and he steps right into Dan, who catches and cradles him. Eddie burrows into his shoulder. Dan strokes Eddie's wet hair, rests one hand firmly against his nape, nails digging in. "It's alright. You are alive. You are good." And when Eddie gasps for air between sobs, Dan understands what he both dreads and needs to hear. "You are not alone. We are here."
Eddie cries for a long time.
He's a messy crier, unfit for TV and disarmingly vulnerable. He alternates breath-rattling tremors with worrying stillness, and puffs damp whimpers into Dan's collarbone. He shifts constantly and presses into Dan until Dan has to step back into the wall and take on most of his weight.
The first time he seems to calm down, Eddie whispers "Say it again".
Dan's heart breaks but still he replies, as firmly as his voice allows, "Aw, Eddie, no. You are not alone."
Eddie cracks like a dam, and starts crying again.
It goes on for several rounds. The flow of tears tides back, Eddie requests pain,
and Dan delivers the same blow every time, then supports Eddie's shaking frame as he braves the ongoing grief. With each sob, Eddie exorcists his own trauma. It is at once terrifying and reassuring, the dance of a ship sinking and resurfacing from the waves of a storm.
Eddie is a bird nest glued together with twigs, spit and dogged determination . It got caught in a hailstorm, and didn't came out unscathed but neither did it let go of its tree, either. All of a sudden, Dan understands how this sweet, touch-starved, scared man is also a carefree investigative daredevil journalist. Dan sees the underdog so pure he apparently swayed a man-eating alien into saving the Earth from its own kin.
Dan holds Eddie tight and knows, a body automatism as sure as he can clasp his watch in the dark, the same experienced-learnt way he knows from looking at an MRI color fluctuation, that He. Is. Fucked. They barely know each other, yet there is no way he could not love this man after this. No one can glimpse at such a beautiful, disastrous soul surmounting impossible struggle and not yearn to connect with it.
Eddie eventually stops crying and lies in Dan's embrace, heavy head resting on Dan's shoulder. Dan can hear him breathing through his mouth, nose no doubt clogged, a steady rhythm underneath the buzz of nearby faulty wires and the occasional steps in an apartment above. Their breathing slows, synchronizes.
The overhead light bulb goes out, and they both jump. Eddie laughs and untangles himself from Dan. He blows his nose on toilet paper and meets Dan's gaze. In the half-light from the open door, his face is deeply lined with fatigue but his eyes are clearer, more focused.
"Food?" He asks, hopeful.
"Right! I made a soufflé." Dan nods, and leads them into the kitchen.
"One of my ma' used to make those. At least, it's what she called it. It used leftover spaghetti sauce."
The conversation is easy from there, with comfortable pauses due to mutual exhaustion. Dan microwaves two shares, Eddie takes out plates and cutlery, they serve themselves and sit at the table.
Dan finishes his portion in one of those agreeable silences and observes Eddie. He's twirling his fork through his leftover food, cheekbone held up by his fist, elbows on table, shoulders rounded by the weight of his own thoughts. Dan sees a flash of white at Eddie's wrist and silently berates himself for being inconsiderate. He gets up from his chair, rummages through drawers until he finds scissors.
"Can I take this off?" He gestures at the hospital wrist tag, and Eddie looks surprised. He probably forgot about it. He extends his arm and Dan takes it, slides the blade carefully between skin and plastic, and cuts it off. Eddie rubs the red imprint left over with his thumb, over and over.
Dan watches Eddie's bowed head and wonders why this feels… wrong. He reviews his mental footage of Eddie Brock, stopping at a scene in an interview where Eddie grinned at a politician he just caught in a lie. He was wearing jeans and a soft t-shirt, sleeves tugged up, and - ah. Bracelets. Rings. Eddie is used to wearing his money and charms as jewelry. A quick glance down now reveals Eddie's naked hands, where he's still rubbing absentmindedly, lost to his thoughts.
Dan makes a decision and checks into the bathroom first, where Eddie discarded his previous clothing, singed and crusted with chemicals and loss. He finds two rings on the sink but nothing else. He picks the clothing, throws them in a hamper on his way out. He looks around the bedroom area next, and finds a bracelet on the rickety metal shelves, black beads gleaming. There's another two pieces on the main entrance doorknob, where Dan's sisters always forgot hers. Dan takes them all.
Eddie is still sitting at the kitchen table, watching his empty hands, fingers half-curled, as if he's trying to will something into the empty space. Dan picks up his wrists and slips the bracelets on them; two on the right, one of the left. He hands over the rings, nested in his palm, and Eddie falls on them as if only now realising how much he needed them. Eddie's fingers immediately fidget with all of them in turn, thumbing through the beads and rotating the rings with the ease of a self-soothing habits, the way a monk might recite his morning prayers while climbing a cliff. Eddie closes his eyes and inhales in staccato, visibly building himself back brick by brick.
Dan braces a hand under Eddie's elbow, invites him to stand up. "Come. Bed, now."
Eddie follows without a word, yawning hugely, and falls face-first into his bed with a deep groan. Dan waits a beat but Eddie doesn't move any further, is barely breathing. Tattoos decorate his splayed arms on the sheets, shift minutely on the planes of his back with each inhale. He looks strong and soft at once, and if Dan could paint, he'd burn this in his mind as reference for a martyred believer. Or as a regular human who had a string of very, very bad weeks.
Dan stares, conflicted and yearning. Dan manhandles him, tucking the covers over him, and Eddie doesn't even open his eyes. Dan should go, but he doesn't want to leave yet, and that's all the more reason why he should.
He almost has himself convinced when Eddie struggles one eyelid up. "Do you.... Ah. Cuddle?" He asks in an awkward croak.
Dan's knees don't give in but it's a near thing. "Yes. Please," he breathes out.
He takes off and folds his shirt, his belt, drops them with his wallet and keys on a chair. He pauses a second to send a quick update text to Anne letting her know where he's spending the night then slips underneath the covers. Not a moment later, Eddie is latched unto him, much like he did back in the restaurant, and Dan hugs him back, moves his limbs so they're interlaced more than clinging, and hooks his chin over Eddie's head.
"Thank you," Eddie murmurs.
"Any time," Dan replies in kind, and smiles. "In fact, no. Don't ever do that again. But you are welcome to call on me, cuddles or not. At any time you wish, Eddie."
Eddie exhales a laugh on a breath, and is asleep the next.
***
Dan wakes up as Eddie stretches languorously next to him. He does it like Dan's childhood cat used to, one arm and leg at a time and yawning so wide he could swallow the sun.
Dan watches his skin ripple, dazed, and Eddie turns towards him, smiles, and kisses him on the mouth. It is closed-mouthed and made scratchy from his beard. Dan kisses him back before his brain can question it.
"Good morning," Eddie says, lips pulled in a wide grin. "I'll go make coffee." He jumps out of bed and pads barefoot to the kitchen counter. He's radiating a good mood.
Dan forces-reboot his brain, searching his memory for what in the world could have changed during the night. Nothing comes to mind.
Eventually, the smell of coffee and toast drags him out of bed. The coffee is strong and bitter, but the poached eggs on his toasts are perfect, and by the time Dan notices he's going to be late for work if he doesn't get a move in, he's no closer to finding any answer.
He texts Anne on his way to work.
"Hello. Eddie had a rough evening, but sleep helped. Suspiciously so. Is he always very cheerful in the morning?
He kissed me good morning.
Going to work now, 8 to 8. See you tonight?"
At his first break, in the late afternoon, he finds her reply. Or rather, her replies, plural.
"Ahahah!
Good morning.
He is if there's coffee or sex offered. [eggplant emoji]
Grab some pho on the way back, please? We can talk tonight.
I want to know every detail.
I'm his lawyer, you need to tell me everything. "
Dan sends back a smiling emoji.
And as he's leaving that night, he finds new texts, scattered throughout the day.
"Where did he kiss you? Did you kiss back?
No, don't tell me here, tell me tonight.
I am still laughing.
Did he seduce you with patheticness? He does that. It's a superpower.
Think of the ethics, Dan.
(Don't you dare. I know you.)
He's an infuriatingly good boy, isn't he? "
***
"First of all, I didn't do anything untoward or that would compromise my ethics."
Anne takes another mouthful of soup. Her eyes are crinkled with repressed laughter.
"Secondly," Dan pursues. "I love you."
Anne sets aside her chopsticks and covers his hand with hers. "I love you too, honey."
They smile at each other.
".... annnnd?" She teases, picking up the sticks to poke him with them.
Dan covers his face. "And…. I could see myself loving Eddie Brock."
"Ah ah!" Anne crows. She jabs the air in triumph. "I told you. I told you three years ago, when we started seeing each other. Hey Dan, I said. I think you'd love my main boyfriend, Eddie. You would connect over your dramatization of all your emotions. And then you never met him until we had broken up! What a waste."
"I was not looking for any other partners at the time. New job, new town, my parents…. it was too much. Even what we had going on wasn't planned. What we currently have together it still new to me."
Anne grins. "Then Eddie is….?"
"An accident."
"No, "Anne shakes her head. "Eddie was inevitable. Everyone falls in love with Eddie."
Dan can't deny the truth of that statement anymore. That doesn't mean he needs to act on it, or wants to. Eddie doesn't seem to be a particularly complicated person, but he has quite a lot of baggage and tags in tow. Not to mention the less-than-ideal circumstances under which they keep meeting. Right now, whatever Dan thinks they started is more hypothesis than anything. An unknown seed dropped in a recently churned soil.
"Maybe," He allows. "But to be honest, I don't know yet if I want to pursue our relationship that way."
Anne looks at him pensively, and finally nods. "Alright. I'm glad you were there for him yesterday. Thank you."
"I'm glad too. Could we go check up on him tomorrow?" Dan needs more data.
Anne smiles. "Yes. Lets." Then, after a slight pause. "Would you like his phone number?"
Dan feels himself blushing. "Yes."
This is fine. He'll water this seed, and sees how it grows. And then… maybe.
Maybe.