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Triumph. Giddy on it, like a meal.
Turns to panic. The need to protect, keep safe. Stretched. Resignation, without hesitation.
Something else here, something sad, but deeper. Like a piece of itself, but lost.
Whatever feeling it is, consumed by the flames.
Heat. Unbearable heat. Stretched so thin.
Then
nothing.
--
It’s a miracle Eddie even sees it.
He can barely focus on anything aside from the ringing in his ears, threatening to split his head in two, assuming it isn’t already. Certainly feels that way. It’s difficult enough to keep himself afloat, exhausted to his core – didn’t he fucking die? – and doing his best not to swallow down another gallon of the Pacific. There’s fire everywhere; falling from the sky, smoldering on pieces formerly belonging to the Life Foundation’s most recent failure.
Probably their last. Hopefully. There’s no way they can come back from this, right? Not without the Asshole in Chief around. Actually, Eddie’s pretty sure Drake used Riot to straight up murder people before coming to blows with Venom. Pieces of terror glimpsed while the two of them were absorbed, when Eddie wasn’t even sure there was an Eddie anymore, or ever would be again.
He knows Anne had something to do with fixing that. Anne. He has to get back to her somehow, make sure she’s all right. Show her he’s all right, because he is. Really. There will be questions about Drake, the explosion, Eddie’s bloody, ripped shirt (which he had borrowed, fuck), and about Venom. Maybe Eddie will even be able to answer some of them. He spits out dirty water, angry.
What kind of alien comes to Earth to scope out the real estate, plan to help enslave humanity, bums around with a whackjob like Eddie, changes its mind, and then sacrifices itself saving said whackjob? Wasn’t Venom supposed to be some, some higher intelligent being or something?
Bullshit. His head pounds, the humming in his ears never ceasing. That’s neat, by the way; he’s always really wanted tinnitus.
There are several boats lurching toward him, Marine Units, Eddie’s sure, and somehow his aching arms push him in their direction, like he’s going to meet the boats halfway. Always so helpful. He does his best to shove aside the heavy feeling in his bones and the pain in his muscles, passing some wreckage floating by and on fire in the water, giving it a wide berth.
Black oil shimmers, stretched upon the nearby debris and spilling into the sea. It reflects the flames threatening to consume it, and Eddie’s first thought is that the last thing this godforsaken rock needs is another oil spill in another bay, packaged up all nice, courtesy of the Life Foundation’s fuckup.
His second thought is: hey.
“Hey!” Before Eddie can think better of it, he’s swimming noisily over, arms striking through the waves like he’s gunning for first place in some insane marathon. He yells again, lamely, like it’s going to do anything, like it’s going to prove that the flickering black is anything other than waste from the rocket. It doesn’t move as far as he can tell, tendrils dripping down the rebar and pooling on the metal below, but— it’s worth a shot.
He reaches the debris, nearly cuts his fingers trying to find purchase on the wreck. He’s crazy, he has to be. Just a few hours ago, there was some serious debate about whether or not this not-parasite was eating him from the inside out. Before it bonded with his ex-fiancée, ate a guy, and whatever the fuck else happened in the woods that Eddie is not willing to process right now. Before it saved the fucking planet.
This is a mistake. This is a terrifying alien from actual outer space who eats people and, on a moral coin flip, only just decided not to annihilate the entire human race. Thanks to Eddie, of all people, apparently, and he thinks maybe Venom put a little too much faith in him.
It’s probably just oil.
But Eddie reaches his hand out anyway.
“That you, buddy?” he asks, just shy of desperate when nothing happens immediately. The substance shimmers, but Eddie can’t tell if it’s actually moving, so he reaches further until he can actually touch it. Doesn’t feel… sludgey. Not really liquidy either, Eddie thinks, but then he really doesn’t have too much experience with how Venom felt from the outside – which is a really strange concept to try to get his head around, so he Doesn’t.
A beat. Long enough for Eddie to think, okay, he really is crazy, and long enough to hope that he doesn’t dive head first into every oil spill he sees for the rest of his fucking life in the event that it’s an old friend of his.
But then slowly, so slowly, the not-quite-liquid slinks up his fingers, his hand, wrist. By the time it reaches his shoulder, Eddie is hit with – well, he’s not sure, but it’s like finally being able to crash on his couch with a beer after a long day, a feeling that settles in his creaking bones when the world has been too much. Venom doesn’t form around his skin this time, sinking inside instead, and once the last of the tendrils have disappeared beneath his skin, Eddie withdraws his arm, staring at it expectantly.
Nothing happens.
Then exhaustion, even heavier than before, hits him like a freight train and he scrambles to hold onto the debris to stay afloat. Eddie isn’t sure he’s ever been this tired in his entire life. He feels barely alive. And he feels so hungry all of the sudden, too, like he hasn’t eaten in days, which Eddie knows is patently untrue for the both of them. He makes some noise in confusion, having intended it to be some kind of word but it gets lost in his throat. Apparently, he’s so drained he can’t even make English happen.
Venom is still quiet under his skin, but Eddie does feel something forced along their connection. A need for something, but reluctance. Pretty wild coming from Venom, who Eddie is sure has never hesitated to take anything in his entire life.
Tired rolls along the inside of his skull – not quite a thought, but Venom remains silent – then hunger pangs again. Guilt. A memory of the hospital surfaces suddenly, of Anne giving enough of a shit to try talking with Venom directly, staring at Eddie’s chest and pleading, you’re killing him.
Eddie thinks he understands what’s being asked here.
Venom almost died. Right? He’s pretty damn sure he would have if Eddie hadn’t found him. There’s a weakness in the symbiote that Eddie hasn’t felt the entire time they’ve been bonded, not even initially, not even right after Maria.
Consumed, comes across, like a gunshot. Guilt, guilt, guilt. A friend, lost. Eddie’s not sure if it’s spoken word, shared thought, explanation, or apology.
“S’fine,” he slurs, even though it’s not. He’s not talking about Maria, though. That’s—they never did handle that, did they? Later. Later. Right now, they’re negotiating. “You said you can fix it, right?”
Affirmation. It’s weird hearing— or not hearing Venom like this, only passing faint ideas and emotions between the two of them. He must be really fucked.
“Do what you gotta do.”
And, well, if Eddie expected to be able to feel an alien symbiote munching on his insides, he’s glad to have been wrong. Either the symbiotes can munch on whatever they want without their hosts realizing until it’s too late – which is kind of funny thought, in a terrifying, not funny at all kind of way – or that Venom is purposefully being really careful not to hurt him any further.
“Big, bad alien,” he muses, still staring at his skin, “askin’ permission to harvest my organs.” He snorts, only distantly aware that he’s rambling. “So polite. Betcha hold doors for all the lady symbiotes back home.”
Eddie supposes the blank in his memory from then until he’s picked up by the San Francisco Police is in retaliation.
--
It’s easier not to tell Anne.
Eddie hates it. The last time he kept something from Anne, well, a metric fuckton of things blew up in his face. But what’s the alternative? ‘Yeah, Annie, Venom really did almost die in a huge explosion, but he’s very barely alive and has to snack on some of my insides to stay that way, don’t worry, just a temporary thing, I dunno, until we can eat somebody.’
If Venom has any opinion on the lie, he’s not saying so. There’s only silence across the connection. Either he’s still just that tired or his mind-mouth or whatever is too full of Eddie’s organs to talk.
Surprisingly, Anne is entirely sympathetic about the whole thing. She saw it happen, she says, she’s just grateful one of them got out alive. Eddie can only stare dumbly at her, hungry, tired, and wet for the umpteenth time in the past few days. He must look absolutely pathetic – which is saying something, because he’s looked pathetic in front of her before, quite recently even, and it’s never done anything to help his case.
His refusal to go to the hospital is met with slightly less understanding.
“You honestly think that’s a good idea?” she asks, arms crossed, hips cocked, and Eddie very immediately knows how much trouble he’s in. He thinks even Venom knows enough about body language to know they are in Danger right now. But there can’t be any tests, they can’t shove him back into the MRI or anything without splitting his dirty secret in half, and honestly Eddie’s not sure Venom could survive any more torture. Couldn’t survive being taken away from Eddie.
“Not really,” he says, sheepishly, but doesn’t back down. He hopes his refusal comes off as more ‘Eddie refusing to play along as usual’ and less ‘Eddie is hiding something from his ex-fiancée that will surely bite him in the ass somewhere down the road’ – and it must be the former, because finally, Anne relents.
Her arms swing in the air, like she’s fed up after dealing with a particularly petulant child, and,
Apt.
Oh. Oh, now we’re feeling chatty. Eddie bites down on his lip hard to keep from responding aloud, trying to focus instead on the cop who braves cutting in front of an angry blonde lawyer to ask Eddie some more questions about what went down with Drake.
Somehow, he makes it through the rest of the night. Morning, really. He figures he’s in no position to refuse Anne’s insistence on giving him a ride back to his apartment after the feds are done with him and before the media vans threaten to circle him. Eddie can tell his own story about Drake’s Fuckup Foundation, thanks, and boy does he plan to, but for now he just wants to rest. Maybe eat an entire grocery aisle beforehand, once Anne’s out of sight.
Need more than that, says Venom. As wonderful as it is to hear his sweet, angelic voice again, Eddie chooses to resolutely ignore him and the implications of what he’s saying.
The drive is fairly uneventful, which is good because he’s barely awake anyhow. He can’t remember the last time he’s been so eager to get back to his shitty bed in his shitty apartment surrounded by his shitty neighbors. It’s not until they arrive and he sees an abandoned strip of caution tape flap sadly in the wind that he remembers that the last time he was home, he and Venom may or may not have killed a bunch of guys. At the very least, there was some severe ass whooping. Maiming even. He’s pretty sure he needs a new coffee table. The fact that there’s no sign of police now and there isn’t a warrant out for his arrest or anything (hopefully) tells him the Life Foundation cleaned up any and all bodies and swept the incident under the rug. Maybe he’ll write a thank you card later, after he sleeps for a million years.
Anne is looking at him. Right, he needs to get out.
“Sorry,” he mutters absently, feeling for the handle in a daze. He’s so tired. It’s probably why Anne is staring, clearly unsure if she should be helping or just pushing him out of the car. Somehow, he makes it out into the fresh San Francisco air unassisted.
“Eddie,” she says, stern, like a grade school teacher, and that is the second freaking comparison he’s made of himself to a child in the span of a few hours. “Get some rest.”
He leans against the car door a moment before nodding, patting his free hand against the roof. “Yeah. Yeah, I will. Take care, Annie.” He pauses, tilts his head. “Dan, too. Nice guy.”
Surprisingly, Anne laughs at that. “He’s spoken for. And don’t act like you’re never seeing us again.”
It’s a much more forgiving farewell, a kinder promise than Eddie thinks he deserves, and he stands there smiling like an idiot just shy of too long before he backs off, shuts the car door. He walks backward to the front steps of his apartment building, watching Anne take the SUV out of park, drive slowly away. He waves with his hand still shucked inside the pocket of the SFPD jacket they gave him after discarding his ruined shirt.
After Anne’s out of sight, Eddie remains on the sidewalk. His smile is gone, eyes shut.
“What do we need?” he asks quietly. He’s pretty sure he knows.
Back to the woods.
Yeah. “We really should lay low, man.”
Back. To. The woods.
“What, leave a sandwich out there?”
Something like that. We should put him out of his misery.
Oh, fuck.
--
It’s one of Treece’s goons.
Well, there are two of them, actually, but only one is still alive, unconscious, at the base of the cracked tree Venom had unceremoniously thrown him against last night. The first guard was lucky enough to have his neck broken on impact. The second,
His spine is crushed.
“Great,” mutters Eddie, taking a wary look at the man’s face. He’s barely breathing. There are streams of dried blood leading from his ear and nose down the side of his face. Eddie’s stomach lurches slowly the longer he looks.
It’s too there. Too real.
“We can’t,” he starts to say, stepping back on shaky legs and ignoring Venom’s immediate protests. He feels lightheaded, knows the color is draining from his face, the feeling slipping from his fingers, hands. “Dude, c’mon, he’s – he was on the Life Foundation’s payroll, all right? That’s it, and now they’re up in smoke. Literally. He’s just a—”
He would have killed you without remorse, given the chance.
“Yeah, well, he didn’t—”
Thanks to me.
“—and Anne. We oughtta take him to the hospital.”
Eddie!
He doubles over at once, hand flying to his chest, as if he can feel his heart, grab it, shield it. Restart it, because it’s stopped. Right? It feels like it’s come to a complete, abrupt stop, like someone’s flipped a switch. He can’t breathe. He’s sure someone is squeezing his lungs, or that his throat caved in, or something.
He can’t think. His vision is clouding at the edges and he can’t fucking breathe.
Then suddenly, he can. Switch flipped once more. He falls to his side in the dirt, taking huge, gulping breaths, digging his fingers into the dead leaves and grass beneath him, like he needs the tangible reminder. Everything feels cold.
“The fuck?! Asshole!” he exclaims between hoarse coughs. His head is pounding, reeling at the temporary lack of oxygen. “Was that a threat?!”
It is an inevitability. I cannot survive alone, Eddie.
Yeah, no shit. Eddie can’t find the words to respond, isn’t even sure how Venom is expecting him to respond. Isn’t sure he wants to. What the fuck was that.
The symbiote continues, like he’s simply stating facts. Technically, he is. I will continue to consume you from the inside out. You’ll wind up like nothing more than the bodies in the gutter at the Life Foundation.
Maria.
I don’t want to kill you. There’s a small stretch of silence, then, I don’t want hurt you, either.
That’s new.
You are good.
That’s newer.
If you want to survive, you either need to let me take over or let me go.
Eddie isn’t sure why he expects Venom to elaborate, so he’s a little dumbstruck when it becomes apparent that exactly the opposite is true: Venom is expecting an answer from him.
Pretty stark contrast between this and being told he’s not much more than a ride.
… Wait. “Are you saying—”
It’s really not so complicated.
Eddie really doesn’t think he deserves to be patronized right now. Not when he’s been given a choice like this. Venom has literally put his life in Eddie’s hands, and damn if he doesn’t think he deserves that type of responsibility any more than he deserves it for the life of some Life Foundation schmuck.
And he has no doubts that Venom would— would just, accept it. Slip off of him like a worn coat and die, starving in the woods. Alone.
Eddie thinks about the burning wreckage from this morning, the shimmering black thinning out on the metal. Venom, dying.
Why did he reach for him?
Reaching for Venom while trying to stop Drake? That just made sense. Riot would’ve killed Venom, killed Eddie – in fact, he did do that the next chance he got. Brutally so, and Eddie’s only still here now because Venom reached him. He could have easily cut his losses. ‘Oh well, gave it my best shot, there goes Earth,’ and who would know, who would even give a shit before it was too late?
But Venom did. Give a shit, that is. He kept fighting, blew up an entire rocket ship, and then sacrificed himself in a desperate attempt to keep his idiot host alive for just a little while longer.
Venom was prepared to give everything. For Earth, for Eddie. Truthfully, he already had.
Why did Eddie reach for him?
Eddie lifts his gaze to the study the trees around him, like any of them have any insight to give. It’s quiet. Silent in a way Eddie feels like he hasn’t experienced in a long time.
He has no idea. Maybe someday he’ll figure it out, but for now.
For now,
the decision is caught somewhere in his throat, his eyes on the face of the dying man at his feet. He doesn’t think he can speak; doesn’t think he can open his mouth without emptying his stomach of what little contents it has left.
Luckily, Venom understands anyway.
The symbiote slips outside of Eddie’s skin slowly, coating his legs, waist, arms, chest in itself. Everything is thick and warm. Safe and right. Once Eddie feels himself slip out of control, he’s delighted to realize he doesn’t give two shits about it. He closes his eyes, tilts his head back towards the grinning maw forming around him, like it’s some kind of sweet embrace. Allows it to take over completely, his skin cocooned in a seemingly gentle caress of other, of being protected, of letting go.
And they feed.