Work Text:
Where are we going.
Eddie pocketed his keys. “To see Dan. He’s gonna give me a checkup.” Venom froze in their chest. “Don’t worry, no MRIs. Just a regular exam.”
Why.
“No reason, just in case.”
You are fine, Venom contended.
“Anne and Dan are nervous about this whole ‘other’ thing. It’ll put their minds to rest.”
This ‘whole other thing’ is not about them, Venom snarled.
Eddie felt their body lock up in the doorway. It was the first time Venom had seized control outright since the night they’d met. He took a slow breath in and out. They both knew he could push through if he wanted to, but that wasn’t the way to solve this. V was just panicking.
“I told you, no MRIs. It’s not a big deal. Come on, V.”
Venom didn’t answer, but after a second he did, reluctantly, let Eddie go.
These days, Venom usually kept a few tendrils wrapped around Eddie, hidden by clothing, but by the time they arrived at the hospital, Venom had withdrawn into their chest.
“Are you sulking?”
No answer.
“Real mature.”
No answer.
The door opened. “Eddie?”
“Dan! Hey.” Venom stirred in their gut.
“Come on in. Most of the staff have gone home, but if we run into anyone, you’re here to pick up a copy of your MRI results.”
“Great.”
Dan led the way to his office.
I thought things were better, Venom said suddenly.
“What?” Eddie kept his voice to a murmur.
Before Anne separated us, you asked him to fix you. You did not trust me.
Eddie wanted to answer, but not out loud in front of Dan. Would it be weird to ask for a minute alone? Then Dan was opening the door to an office and gesturing for them to sit and, well, they could talk about this later.
Dan checked their height, weight, blood pressure, breathing, and heart rate before pressing cold, gloved fingers against their chest and abdomen. Venom burrowed even deeper and lay as still as possible, as if to hide from his touch.
Dan held a penlight to their eyes. “Look straight ahead for me. Have you had any swelling? Especially in your hands, feet or abdomen?”
“No, none.”
Dan put the light close to their forearm, stretching the skin with a thumb. “How about shortness of breath? Dizziness? Nausea? Fatigue? Feeling of pressure? Fever? Racing heart? Coughing?”
Eddie shook their head to each one.
“Any pain?”
“No, not at all. Even when we’re injured, it doesn’t hurt.” Dan frowned. “V suppresses the nerves or something,” he explained.
Instead of looking reassured, Dan seemed more worried. “So Venom could be disguising symptoms and you’d never know it?”
Eddie looked him in the eye. “He wouldn’t do that.”
Dan still looked uneasy but tactfully didn’t comment. If they’d been any other pair of soulmates, his silent skepticism alone would have been an overstep, but given that Venom had in fact tried to kill Eddie, they hardly had grounds to take offence.
“Anything else you wanna go over?” Eddie asked.
“Actually, I’d like to check in with Venom too, if that’s okay. I’m no xenobiologist, but the more complete a picture I get, the better I can help you guys.”
Venom didn’t acknowledge the statement.
“V?”
No. If you want Dan to fix you, that is your decision. Do not involve me.
It was unlike Venom to draw such a sharp line between them. He had always chafed a little at Eddie’s “me things.”
Dan couldn’t hear Venom’s side of the conversation, but he seemed to guess the slant of it. “Venom, I know I hurt you, but I can’t apologize for what I did that night. I was just trying to take care of Eddie. Like I am now. Surely you can understand that?”
Eddie was the first to break the awkward silence. “Well. Um. Thanks for the checkup.”
“Any time.” Dan smiled. “If you need a doctor, you can always give me a call. I know there isn’t really anyone else you can go to.”
Venom’s grip on their ribs tightened.
~~~
Venom lifted the woman by the throat and bared their teeth in her face. What kind of idiot tried to fight off an alien predator with an antique cannon?
“V. She’s just scared.” Eddie’s voice was shaky. Right, they’d been hit. Suddenly Venom didn’t give a damn about the wannabe hero.
He dropped the woman onto the ground. “Run.” She was more than happy to.
They sank to the pavement as Venom retreated inside, careful to brace their injured leg.
He started to wrap black tendrils around the shattered bone, gentle with the injury even though Eddie wouldn’t feel any pain. He hated that Eddie was broken, but—he paused.
“What? What’s the matter?”
Do you want me to fix this or do you want to go to Dan?
“You, obviously. It would take months for this to heal in a hospital, V.”
Yes. Doctors are not very good at fixing us, are they? Venom mused, letting a touch of smugness slide into his voice.
“I don’t get why you’re being passive-aggressive about this. Dan’s nice to us. Nicer 'n we deserve, considering you tried to kill him.” Venom felt a pang of guilt. Dan wasn't the only one he'd tried to kill.
Instead of answering, he slid tendrils through skin and fat and muscle, down to the bone, tugging fragments back into place, resealing torn connective tissue, reknitting muscle fibers, reconnecting blood vessels and nerves. Finally he smoothed over the bone to feel out any remaining cracks, cleaned up the internal bleeding and debris of dead cells, soothed the inflammation already setting in. Good as new.
“Thanks.”
Any time, Venom said. He meant the words to be bitter, but somehow they came out sincere.
~~~
Eddie was deliberately not looking at the guy in the navy shirt sitting alone beside them at the bar, even though Navy was unabashedly watching him. Venom didn’t know what was happening, but going by Eddie’s acute self-consciousness, it was probably a human thing.
Eventually Navy leaned over, close enough that Eddie couldn’t pretend not to notice him. Venom tensed in case he started a fight.
“C’n I getcha a drink?”
Eddie’s thoughts probed Venom’s own, seeking a reaction. Venom wasn’t sure what Eddie wanted. It paid to be cautious, but Navy was too drunk to be threatening, and this seemed like a “me” thing if there ever was one. Eddie's fingers worried at the hem of the nylon sleeve that covered his mark. The silence stretched on a second too long.
“I’m good,” he said at last. “Thanks.”
“I’m just askin’, ‘cause—”
“I’m good,” Eddie said again. He caught the Jack's eye over the bar, put down a few bills, and fled.
As they headed home, Venom played back the interaction in his mind. Could the man have been trying to poison them? No, that was a terrible strategy for poisoning. Why did he want to give you a drink.
“He was hitting on me,” Eddie mumbled, keeping an eye on the pedestrians ahead of them. Again there was the sense that he was waiting for a reaction.
Stupid. You already had a drink, Venom reasoned.
Eddie laughed softly. “Yeah, wasn’t the smoothest. He was pretty drunk.”
They walked a few blocks in silence. Why did you want my opinion, Venom asked at last.
“Um,” Eddie said. He was quiet for a long time. “It doesn’t bother you? If someone else hits on me?”
Else? Venom wondered. Do I hit on you?
Eddie scratched at their forehead. “Well, if you’re asking I guess not.”
Flirting was a prelude to dating, or sometimes sex. Venom didn’t understand the connection to himself. I do not want to have sex with you, he stated, in case that needed saying.
“Good,” Eddie said easily.
Or date you, he added.
“Right,” said Eddie with a shade less certainty.
What does it have to do with us?
They’d arrived at their apartment building. Eddie started up the stairs before answering. “Weeeeell…” he said, “we’re not dating. Per se. But we are…?”
Symbiotes, Venom supplied.
“You’re a symbiote. I’m a human,” Eddie pointed out.
It is not a species. You are in a symbiotic relationship. That makes you a symbiote. Venom wasn’t actually sure how that worked, but it felt right.
“Oh,” Eddie said, sounding pleased. “Okay then, we’re symbiotes. So... do symbiotes sleep with and-or date other people?”
I do not.
“And…”
Why are you asking me.
“'Cause it’s our body.”
It is fine.
“Because, whatever it's called, we’re some kind of close and dating and-or sleeping with people is a way of bein' close,” Eddie tried.
A different way. Do you want to be close that way?
“Not with you,” Eddie said. “I like our way.”
With other people?
“I think so,” he said hesitantly. “But not if it makes me less close to you.”
I do not care, Eddie. As long as we are still symbiotes.
“Okay, glad that’s settled.”
They unlocked the door to their apartment. Do you want to go back to the bar.
Eddie shut the door behind them. “Not tonight.”
In the safety of their home, where the curtains were always drawn shut, Venom draped himself around Eddie like a blanket and felt his other make a comfortable humming sound that Venom assumed was the human's best approximation of a purr.
~~~
Venom didn’t outright tell Eddie “go to bed,” but Eddie was getting better at reading his gestures—the slight weight to their limbs, the gentle tug in their chest. “Okay, okay.” He stripped off their day clothes and Venom dropped them in the hamper before reaching into the drawer and handing him a soft shirt and a pair of shorts. Eddie flopped face-first into bed and was out before Venom flicked off the light.
He woke a few hours later lying on their back, Venom sprawled over him. Their whole body felt strangely awake and relaxed at the same time. “V?”
We are fine, Eddie. Go to sleep.
“What are you doing?”
Fixing you.
“I thought we'd already healed from the sound cannons yesterday.”
Yes. I got behind on… he seemed to be searching for a word... maintenance.
“What kind of maintenance?”
Venom guided his mind through his own senses. He perceived their body through touch and taste and heat and electricity. There was nothing visual, not even a perception of darkness, but through those senses, Eddie could feel everything happening in their body at once: their pulse rippling under their skin, their diaphragm and intercostal muscles pulling in tandem, their nerves firing sporadically.
Venom had microscopic tendrils spread all throughout their body, he realized, integrated into their human tissues. He could feel them woven through the muscle fibers, some supporting and reinforcing, other stretching out tense muscles and repairing micro-tears. He could feel them in the blood and lymph vessels, monitoring and filtering dozens of components. He could feel them wound into the major nerve bundles and into the spine and up through the hindbrain, scanning sensory input, waiting to block pain signals that arose, modulating neurotransmitters—Oh. Huh.
I do not want to take too much from you. But I need to eat. And your nervous system does not produce enough, even for you alone.
“Hold on. Since we bonded I’ve been like... things've been easier. Are you tellin' me you're being an antidepressant?”
I am much more effective, Venom protested. Eddie laughed softly in the darkness.
“Do you do maintenance all the time?”
Not usually so much at once, Venom said, but always some.
Eddie lay still and took it all in.
You are surprised. There was a note of uncertainty that Eddie didn’t quite understand.
“I knew you fixed us. I knew you made us stronger. I just never really thought about how.”
~~~
Venom scanned the lab for any remaining sign of life. “I think that’s all of them,” Eddie said from inside. Venom mostly receded back inside their skin and Eddie leaned on the lab table to catch their breath.
There was a stabbing pain in their palm. “Fuck,” Eddie muttered, pulling out the dart. “Any idea what this is?”
Just a minute, Venom said frantically, cutting off blood and lymph flow to quarantine the compound.
“Fuck,” Eddie said more vehemently. He started rummaging around the lab table, looking for any indication of what the scientists had been working on.
Using tendrils only a few nanometers thick, Venom managed to pluck a single particle out of the bloodstream. He felt its surface, trying to get a sense of its structure. A spherical lipid membrane. Biological. And there—glycoproteins, designed to latch onto cells. Not good. He ripped the particle open and tasted RNA. Very not good. It might have already infected some cells. Its DNA would be mixed in with Eddie’s, too small and too camouflaged for Venom to separate. Even if he caught and destroyed every virion, that DNA could activate years down the line and infect them all over again. Nothing for it but to destroy and replace every single cell.
Luckily, Venom had isolated the injection site quickly and the virus had only spread to about 10 billion cells. It was the work of a minute.
Got it.
“Oh. That was fast.”
Venom preened a bit at his surprise. It was a retrovirus.
“Like HIV?” Eddie asked sharply.
Venom searched his semantic memory. Similar.
“Maybe we should get this checked out.”
I destroyed it. We are fine.
“Just in case.”
What do you mean 'checked out,' Venom asked suspiciously.
“I mean get a medical opinion.”
I gave you my opinion.
“A doctor’s opinion, V.”
A doctor would have watched you die, Venom snarled. What was it with Eddie and doctors?
“What is it with you and doctors?”
Venom had had enough. What do you want from me?
“Nothing!”
Nothing? Every time we get broken you want me to fix you—
“Us.”
You, Venom snarled back.
“What happened to 'our body?'”
You think I fix you for my comfort? To have a nice clean body to live in?
“Don’t you?”
Venom recoiled.
"I didn't mean that," Eddie sighed.
What can a doctor do that I cannot?
“This isn’t some kinda competition! God, you’re acting like a—” Eddie stopped.
What.
Eddie was silent for too long. Venom plucked at his consciousness, not forcing entry, just trying to draw him out. “Jealous partner,” Eddie said at last.
What is that supposed to mean.
“No, wait, I think I get it now, V. This is a kind of close for you. Isn’t it?”
How could it not be? Their body, their lives, what was closer? And if Eddie was just now realizing that, then what was it to him? Those times Venom had fixed him, careful and thorough—what did they mean to Eddie, if not close?
For once, Eddie seemed to catch the drift of Venom’s thoughts. “I do care. You know I do, V.”
We are symbiotes, Eddie. We take care of each other.
Eddie's thoughts brushed against a memory of Drake, ranting about humanity. We're parasites. You're a good example. All you do is take. “Well, I don’t fix you.”
Of course you do.
“How?”
Venom showed him the memory of waking up after the explosion. The way Eddie’s mind and body had wrapped around him, kept him safe, helped him grow.
“But that was you. You got better over time. I just gave you a place to do it.”
It should have taken me weeks to recover, but your nervous system produced three times as many neurotransmitters. Human bodies do not do that, not without drugs or illness. Yours barely makes enough for you to function. But when I was hurt, it gave me what I needed.
Oh.
We take care of each other, Venom said again.
“It’s one of our things?”
It is the thing.
“Huh. I like that.”
Eddie straightened up cautiously, still clutching their arm to their chest like it might fall off. Venom instinctively wrapped around it and surveyed the wrecked lab. Best not to brush up against any more bioweapons. Who left that kind of thing lying around on a lab table? Someone who didn’t expect to have their work interrupted by a fanged slime, probably.
Eddie’s mind was elsewhere. “Y'know, in movies and articles and stuff,” he began, stepping over a mangled body, “soulmates always just get each other. It's all, ‘Don’t overthink it. Listen to your intuition.’ I’m not sure if that’s bull or if my intuition is just crap or if maybe symbiotes don’t get intuition.” He paused in the laboratory’s doorway, checking the hall for signs of survivors.
Intuition? Venom had a general sense that it was a soulmate thing, but humans had so much culture built up around their soulmates that sometimes it was hard to parse. He wondered if Klyntar had their own culture around their others, back on the homeworld. If so, the Kree had taken away his chance to learn it.
“Intuition’s like a soulmate instinct,” Eddie explained. He glanced at the emergency exit sign and followed it to the left. “Mostly mental stuff, but sometimes physical too. It helps you recognize your partner, and tells you what kind of bond you have, and lets you sorta feel what they need. There’s all this stuff in bond theory too, 'bout how intuition makes it easier for you to learn your soulmate’s language, even before you meet, and how your immune systems develop to work together and stuff.”
He sighed. “Only I didn’t recognize you at all and I can’t do the mental communication thing for shit and you live off neurotransmitters but I have depression and I still don’t really get what symbiosis means and I just… I don’t know if this is right. I’ve never seen a bond like ours. You’ve never seen a bond like ours. No instinct telling us which way to go. And now this. Why couldn’t I feel it? What else am I missing?”
Venom didn’t know how to answer. As far as he was concerned, they could do whatever they wanted and deal with problems when they came up, but he understood that kind of open-endedness was difficult for Eddie. He wrapped himself around his other, knowing Eddie found reassurance in touch.
“I have some intuition,” Eddie said after a minute, bending down to search the director’s corpse. “I felt somethin’ that first day. I felt... confused, at least. And what you said about me making more neurotransmitters when you’re hurt... I’m glad my body knows what it’s doing, even if I don’t. But it’s still not exactly a road map, y’know?”
We are psychically linked. Maybe the Higher Power decided we do not need intuition.
Eddie pocketed an important-looking flash drive. “Got a point. Still makes me wonder, though. Anne picked up the psychic stuff in minutes and here’s me who can’t hardly get a sentence out. Seems like there’s a mistake somewhere.”
I said the same thing, Venom recalled. He felt Eddie wilt. He’d been hoping Venom would disagree. When I was with Anne, I could see how much she cared for you. I did not believe I could be a good other to you. I was sure we were a mistake.
Eddie paused in the hallway and leaned against a wall splattered with drying blood. He didn’t seem to notice. “You are a good other, V.”
I am learning to be. We will both learn, Eddie. With or without a road map.
Eddie sighed. “Sounds like a plan.”