Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It looked at itself in the motel's bathroom mirror.

It rarely ever looked at itself. It looked at its hosts all the time—every time they looked at themselves—and it looked at itself as it appeared stretched over a host's skin, a thin membrane propped up and structured by the body underneath, not itself itself but a two-in-one. It couldn't remember the last time it had simply observed itself.

It was gooey. And a little bit runny. It carefully reeled back in several tendrils trying to ooze down the sides of the sink. Gooey and black with bits of white.

Hm.

Humans put so much stock in their appearances—which was so strange, for species with so little control over their appearances. Eddie, too, cared a great deal about his appearance—although in a different way now than he had when they'd first met. He was proud of himself, proud of his body—not just of his strength, but of the fact that his body visually announced his strength. He was prouder still of how they looked together as Venom—as he should be. It prided itself on finding out exactly what it was its hosts wished to embody, and then giving them that body. It had taken what Eddie was already proud of and made them more.

Plus teeth. It thought the teeth were important. Most of its prior hosts had agreed. It found it didn't get on very well or very long with hosts that weren't enthusiastic about the teeth.

It manifested a smiling mouth of hard sharp teeth in its goo. Hmm.

Why did humans put so much stock in how they looked when they could do so little to change it?

It could change itself infinitely; if it wanted, it could sculpt itself into its ideal shape; and yet when it looked at itself, it felt nothing for the oozing mass maintaining a sloshy balance on the edge of a sink. Nothing at all.

The teeth were drifting away from the positions it had set them in, like broken tree trunks carried around slowly in a mud slide, meandering across the surface of its mass.

It stretched a tentacle with its eye spots forward until it pressed against the surface of the glass, as though trying to connect with the Klyntar it saw on the other side. It tasted flecks of toothpaste and aftershave on the glass.

Maybe it was its lack of solid shape that made it care so much less about how it looked than humans—there was no need to worry about how you looked, was there, when you could look any way you wanted at any time.

Or maybe it was because, unlike humans, it didn't carry its identity inside its own body. It carried its identity inside someone else's. What was the thing in the mirror but an accessory—a shirt, a shield, a set of dentures, a prosthetic heart—to be worn by the man in the next room? If its identity wasn't sitting here on the sink, then it certainly couldn't see itself in the mirror.

Did it see itself when Venom looked in the mirror?

The bathroom door slammed open. "Darling! There you are!" Eddie chucked his toiletries in their backpack and, after a split second pause, added the motel soap and a towel. It peeled itself off the mirror and turned to watch him. "Someone by the vending machine recognized me, the police could be coming any minute. We have to hurry—"

He paused mid-step and mid-word, studying his other's reflection in the mirror: one long tentacle stretched out of a mass of drippy goo, sharp teeth bristling randomly out of the mass. And then he simply said, "Effervescent," and leaned forward to plant a wet smack of a kiss over its eye spots.

It took the opportunity to slide back into Eddie, through his lips and around his teeth and in through his gums and salivary glands, suffusing him from the mouth out with a sensation of mirrored utter adoration that could best be translated into words as no, you are.

Then they heard sirens.

"Time to check out." Black and white ooze and bristling fangs covered Eddie's face; Venom slung their backpack over one shoulder, then took a split second to pause, look in the mirror, and say, "Ah. There we are."

Venom was on the roof and heading for a nearby alleyway before the first police car pulled up.

Chapter Text

It was harder than Eddie had expected to steal stamps. They weren't simply sitting on a shelf in a post office for him to subtly slip into a pocket and leave with. And/or seize up before making a mad dash for the door. No, instead they were kept behind the front counter, far out of Eddie's reach.

After a bit of strategizing, Eddie went up to the front counter, acted like the most confused huffy customer he could, and spent almost five minutes asking about what it would take to rent a P.O. box, all the while talking over the employee's answers so she had to repeat herself, re-asking the same questions with slightly different words like he hadn't understood the first time, and griping about the potential price. And as he did, his other slipped a single straw-thin camouflaged tendril behind the front counter, hunting around until it found a roll of stamps and carefully tore off a single one.

It pained Eddie to commit such a theft, even one worth less than a single dollar; but they had long since stoically accepted that they had to make such exceptions in their indigent itinerant life: for food, for shelter, or—of course—for the protection of innocents.

And today, mere days after their defeat of the symbiote invasion, protecting innocents was their mission.

After "changing his mind" about wanting a P.O. box and retreating outside with his stolen stamp, Eddie carefully placed it on a letter and dropped it in the mailbox in front of the post office door.

###

"Mr. Jameson, you're not going to believe this."

J. Jonah Jameson looked up at the reporter leaning into his door. "Try me," he said.

She asked, "You remember that article we did about the rumors that a few of the invading slimes might've survived the psychic blast that killed them off?"

"Uh-huh."

She held up a letter. "Got a letter to the editor about it. It's arguing with the mayor's statement about hunting out the survivors."

Jameson frowned in confusion. "In favor of what?"

"Leaving them alone to live on Earth."

"You're joking."

She slapped the letter down on his desk. "It says the only way any of them could've survived is by forming a healthy, loving bond with a human host—can you believe that? I don't know if they know something we don't or if it's a couple of crackpots."

"Can we track 'em down and find out?"

"Not a chance. No return address, only signed the letter as 'E and S.'"

"Hm." He glanced it over. And turned the page. It was a lengthy letter. "Think we should publish it?"

"Oh, definitely." The reporter nodded emphatically.

"Really! Sympathy for the slimes? How come?"

"Because it's the most eloquent letter we've received in months."

Jameson frowned consideringly and started reading.

Chapter Text

Eddie had been standing in the shopping aisle for almost three minutes now, staring at the jar of jelly in his hand. He hadn't quite realized until now how looking at the jar made him feel claustrophobic. Difficult to breathe. Trapped and exposed, like a bug pinned to a board. How long had that been going on?

He thought about his pantry at home and the snacks he kept in the break room fridge at the Anti-Symbiote Task Force's office. Did he have anything in jars? Anything at all?

He'd never noticed his aversion to glass jars before; but once he did, he didn't need to ask where it had come from. It had been years since he'd been one with his other—years since he'd even seen it—and still its influence shaped his thoughts as though it were still part of him. He should have been bothered. Shouldn't he?

He probably would have been, the first couple years after they broke up. He would have been furious. How dare it leave a phantom image of its own traumas inside his mind to deal with as if it were his own. How dare.

But he wasn't furious. He was overcome with both nostalgia and a vague unease: did his other still fear containment? Or had someone helped it through that?

How many more times had it been trapped in a cold clear cylinder?

The ASTF was, of course, kept abreast of Agent Venom's progress. But they were never told how the symbiote was doing. Only how it was making Flash feel. Only if it was being obedient.

But was it happy? Was it loved, was it listened to?

Did Flash feel uneasy around jars, too? Or did he completely tune out his other's emotions?

Eddie gradually grew aware of someone watching him as he stood there staring at the jelly. He hastily set the jar back, added a plastic squeeze bottle to his cart, and moved on.

Chapter Text

Venom had been working out on the weight machine for half an hour.

A young man across the room on the rowing machine had been watching them the whole time.

What was his problem? Did he think they were using the exercise room illegally? They weren't. They'd rented a hotel room for the night, they were paying customers who got to use the hotel exercise room if they wanted.

But their audience of one hadn't run off to tell hotel staff that Venom was on the premises, or pulled out a cell phone to call the police, or anything like that—he'd just stolen occasional glances from across the room. So far, it was harmless.

Just distracting.

When it progressed from "stealing glances" to "prolonged, sustained staring," they sighed loudly, sat forward, and said, "Can we help you?"

The young man started. "Oh! Sorry. Sorry, I—I don't wanna be weird, but like... you've got the best pecs I've ever seen."

It was kind of weird. But they didn't get a lot of compliments. They smiled toothily. "Thanks!"

The young man apparently took that as encouragement, because he said, "I'm a bodybuilder. I mean..." He flexed, demonstrating his biceps. "Trying to be."

Venom nodded. Not bad. He still had a long way to go, but not bad.

"I would kill to have a build like yours," he said.

"Ha! I know what you mean." From time to time, Eddie had killed a few people to get his "build" back.

"Is it all the... you know..." the young man gestured, "the alien? Where do I get one of those?"

"Now hold on. We're going to stop you right there." Venom stood, crossing their arms. "We're glad you recognize our alien half as a boon rather than a burden—too few humans do—but you shouldn't think of it as a performance enhancer, either. Living with a symbiote isn't like wearing a suit, it's a relationship. A committed, long-term relationship, more intimate than anything you've ever experienced before."

"Well. Uh." The young man shrugged. "I'm single?"

Venom considered him a moment. "We like your attitude," they said.

He grinned hopefully.

"Are you a good man? An innocent one?"

"Uhh, I mean... I've never been arrested or anything—"

"Sit down. We'll give you Eddie's workout routine. You don't get pecs like this without a strong human scaffold underneath to support it," Venom said. "And give us your contact info. We're not planning on another kid, but if one surprises us we'd like a list of potential hosts that will treat it well."

Chapter Text

It took three kicks to shatter in the door to the small novelty shop. Heavy boots splashed in the puddle on the grimy tile floor as two agents stormed in.

"It definitely slipped in here. It can't have gone far."

"Piece of cake. How many places can there be for a giant mass of goo to hide in a—?"

They fell silent, turning their flashlights around the interior of the store.

Two whole walls were covered in lava lamps.

"Ah, crud."

Each and every lamp was on and roiling, its little internal store of slime floating and undulating exactly like the body of the symbiote they sought. They looked nervously at the lamps, as though wary that they were about to face a whole army of symbiotes. Finally, one leaned out the door and yelled, "Get the bait in here!"

Struggling furiously, Eddie Brock was hauled in by two agents who were only barely containing him. He was wearing nothing but a black eye, a set of handcuffs, and a jacket that someone had hastily tied around his waist after they'd sonically blasted off his symbiote and realized it was all he'd been wearing. What he really should have been wearing was a muzzle. He'd already bit three agents and was going for a fourth.

"We've got your friend," one of the agents called into the store. "If you want to get him back, now's your chance. You don't want us to leave with him, do you?"

"Don't listen to them, love!" Eddie cried, his gaze roving between the many lava lamps. An agent watched him carefully to see if his gaze stopped on any one of them. "I'll be fine! Just stay hidden and keep yourself safe! You can come to save me later, but only if you're free—"

"Shut up, you." One of the agents shoved Eddie down. He landed with a splash on his knees in the grimy standing water, and immediately fell silent, staring down at his reflection.

The agents regarded the lava lamps for another moment. Then one sighed in frustration and said, "All right. Let's haul them all in. We can test them one by one."

It took ten minutes for the agents to carry out all the lava lamps—"Careful, stay alert, one of them could attack at any time"—and secure them in a symbiote-proof cell in their vehicle. They hauled Eddie to another vehicle—after spreading a second jacket over the seat, less for his comfort and more so they wouldn't have to think about his naked butt pressed into the upholstery—and left.

For a couple of minutes, the inside of the store was still.

The puddle on the floor grew opaque, and then black, and then thickened.

The symbiote squelched out the door and up a wall.

Chapter Text

Eddie said it could wear his body tonight.

It got bored at night. There wasn't much for it to do but watch late night TV or take completely unauthorized joyrides with Eddie's body at night. Upon expressing this to Eddie (and apologizing for the joyrides), he'd agreed that they needed to find some better way to entertain it at night.

It had been hoping for either a pet pigeon or a used Gameboy. Permission to use Eddie's body was even better.

Eddie said it could do anything it wanted except spend money, get in trouble, or do something that would have consequences on Eddie's body the next morning. If it wanted to spend money or get in trouble, it had to wake Eddie up so they could make a joint decision. If it got in trouble anyway, it had to wake Eddie up and let him know. Those were the rules.

They were very permissive rules, it felt.

Anything it wanted to do, for the next eight hours. It could ride the subway. It could learn to drive a stick shift. It could interview people and write its own article and see what Eddie thought of it. It could eat a frog. It could—

It stared at Eddie's fingernails for five hours.

It had never had the chance to observe them this closely before. It knew what they looked like, of course—what they felt like, inside and out, how to dissolve them and replace them when it stretched Eddie's hands into Venom's claws; but it had never studied them like this. It felt like a vast oversight now, not to have given them the attention they deserved.

And then it remembered Eddie's toenails and devoted another hour to them.

It temporarily cut the blood to his fingertips—not enough to cause any damage, just enough to tingle—so it could see how the pink arcs beneath the nails changed colors. It looked at the thin membrane of cuticle over the backs of the nails, and very carefully grew in any missing patches so that they were perfectly uniform and identical. It slowly grew out his nails, feeling the extremely sped-up but still very very slow motion, watching in fascination as they emerged. It—hold on, where was it drawing the materials to grow Eddie's nails?

Oh. Oh no. Oops.

The next morning, it shamefully apologized for doing something that had consequences on Eddie's body.

"What?! What happened?"

It pulled some of his hair back in.

"You... what?"

Eddie's hair was now about an eighth of an inch shorter. It was very very sorry. It didn't mean to, it had just been careless.

By then, Eddie was in front of the mirror, checking his hair. It could feel that Eddie was trying not to smile. "I needed a haircut anyway."

Chapter Text

The symbiote bounced quietly on its seat as it looked around at all the humans cheering for it.

It was sitting by itself, naked without a host, on a giant pillow in the back of a pickup truck, as thousands of people lining 6th Avenue and leaning out of windows watched as it passed. It couldn't remember the last time it had felt quite this exposed.

But it wasn't a scary sort of exposed. Kind of a self-conscious sort. Definitely a bit overwhelming. But, it concluded—looking at the flurries of colorful confetti and the countless homemade signs depicting vague black blobs in the shape of hearts—it was a good sort of overwhelming.

Once the hastily-arranged parade reached the end of its route, the pickup truck driver and a couple of helpers lowered the truck's tailgate and offered their hands to help the symbiote down to a red carpet. The help wasn't necessary, but flattering all the same. It oozes down over their arms, stretching a few tendrils into their pores just far enough to greet them and to feel their love and gratitude. (And while it was in the neighborhood, it cured a fungal infection that one of them had been dealing with.)

An array of human superheroes—no on the symbiote had ever dealt with before—stood with the mayor of New York City in front of a swirling portal. Usually, being stared at by a pack of brightly-costumes humans was an intimidating affair—but all of these humans were smiling at it. And one of them was wearing a black baseball cap with two white patches stitched on in the shape of the symbiote's eyespots.

"I know you must be eager to get home," the mayor said, "but if you'll indulge us, we had a few statements prepared first."

A speech in the symbiote's honor? It consulted its totally imaginary non-existent schedule. Oh, very well, it supposed it could allow that. It stretched up and nodded indulgently.

"Would you be more comfortable listening with a host?"

The symbiote stretched higher and nodded more enthusiastically.

The mayor turned to the heroes. "Who would like the honor of giving our friend a ride?"

All six raised their hands.

The symbiote pocked the one with big muscles and blond hair. It settled comfortably over and in him, giving him black and white skin and a mass of fangs.

"You're sure you can't stay longer?" the mayor asked. "There's room for another hero in our city."

It sensed it temporary host's willingness to let it seize control of his vocal cords so it could speak for itself; but it declined the offer, more comfortable just telling him what to say. "As much as it would love to stay, it has to get home to its other half."

The mayor nodded understandingly. "Well, both of you are welcome here any time."

###

A portal opened at 6th Avenue and 35th Street in the symbiote's home universe. It plopped down in the middle of a tree-lined square near a Belgian waffle food truck, a spontaneously-appearing pile of goo studded with a key to the city, three medals, and five Toblerone chocolate boxes. A dozen people stared.

It bounded away and down the nearest storm drain.

###

It senses Eddie's proximity before Eddie sensed it; but Eddie spotted it first. "Darling! Where have you been?! I was worried sick!"

The symbiote barreled into Eddie's outstretched arms, oozing into him through every available hole. It passed over its memories as fast as possible: got dragged into another universe! Saved the day! Was a hero! Got a parade!

Eddie basked in the symbiote's glee, matching it with his own delight on his other's behalf and his relief that nothing bad had happened to it. "We'll have to visit together the next time a portal opens."

The symbiote settled comfortably between Eddie's familiar organs, and gave him a black baseball cap with white eyespots.

Chapter Text

Eddie! You were missing an organ.

"I was missing a what?" Eddie replayed his other's declaration. "I was missing an organ?"

Between your fat sausage and your long squiggly sausage.

"What?"

Eddie was briefly flooded with the symbiote's horror at the discovery that not only had he been missing an organ, he'd been entirely unaware of the fact that it was missing or even where it had once been. Memories of some medical procedural that Eddie had never watched flitted through his mind, where doctors rushed to save the life of someone who'd woken up in a bath tub with both kidneys stolen.

"I was missing a kidney?" That didn't sound right.

No. Kidney makes pee? No. Different part. But same concept as the TV show.

"I've never woken up in a bath tub with any vital organs missing, love. Where was this missing organ supposed to be?"

The symbiote helpfully provided Eddie with the location. It provided the location from its own perspective: a sort of strange foreign proprioception. In the same way that humans had a sense so that even when they couldn't see their own bodies, they could tell where their limbs were and how they were positioned at all times, the symbiote had a similar internal sense that instead told it the shape that it was currently in, no matter if it was a shell over Eddie's skin or a branching nerve-like network stretched throughout his body. The sensation it passed to Eddie now was for a sensation of its body shaped like the spaces in between Eddie's organs, focusing on one particular spot.

It once would have been an entirely incomprehensible sensation—it had taken him a long time to learn how to comprehend the signals from the symbiote's senses. Much longer than it had taken the symbiote to learn his, both because of its prior experience inside a human body and because it had experienced so many different kinds of senses across so many different nervous systems that it could now simply fit most new species' unique ways of sensing the worlds into something it had learned before. Now, though, Eddie understood the signal perfectly easily: the symbiote was highlighting a spot near the junction between his large and small intestines. Aha. The fat sausage and the long squiggly sausage.

Yes. Intestines.

"But I'm not missing any organs there, I—" A realization dawned on Eddie. "My appendix?"

Not knowing the name of the organ, the symbiote was unable to confirm. Did you lose it?

"I had an appendectomy. How did you know, did you see the scar?"

Yes. But thought it might be stab wound? Only figured out you were missing an organ because I saw one in another human.

"Oh—"

So I copied it!

Eddie was silent a moment. "Oh, love. You didn't have to... You really didn't have to."

Haunting hospital flashbacks ran through his head. He could feel the symbiote riffling curiously through the memories. There was a sense of shock and betrayal as it discovered that it was the very doctors that were supposed to put back brutally stolen organs who had taken Eddie's.

But it's good for you. The symbiote was somewhat indignant now, sensing Eddie's lack of grief over having lost it in the first place and unenthusiasm over having it back. Holds healthy bacteria that live in your sausages. Back up system if you lose your gut friends.

Gut friends. That was the sweetest description of bacteria Eddie had ever heard. "But—love, they get infected. Very easily."

That's normal? Not surprising. It's very poorly designed. Don't worry—improved your appendix's anus.

"Please don't call it an anus."

Improved your appendix's door. Won't get stuck as easily, no more problems.

Eddie processed that. He had no idea what an appendix's door was—even with the helpful alien-proprioception diagram the symbiote gave it to try to explain—but... "You're saying you redesigned it so that I can't get appendicitis again?"

Don't know what causes "appendicitis." Do know your appendix is poorly designed, so I improved it.

"Oh." Eddie thought that over. Well, that was fine then, as long as he wasn't going to have another hospital trip to have it out.

If it goes bad again, I will eat it.

That worked too. "Thanks, love."

The symbiote was overflowing with loving self-satisfied delight. You are welcome.

Chapter Text

"What's with you?" Liz asked, giving Eddie a once over, taking in his slumped shoulders and the bags under his eyes. "You look like death warmed over."

"Hrph." Eddie rubbed his eyes. "I didn't get any rest last night."

"Why not? Up all night sending jaywalkers to the morgue?"

Eddie glowered at her. "No. My other was yelling in my head all night. I never even got close to falling asleep."

That set off alarm bells in Liz's mind. The symbiote constantly screaming and exhausting its host seemed like a warning sign for another medical and/or psychological crisis they needed to deal with before it resulted in a feral slime monster rampaging through Manhattan. "Why?" she asked. "What's got it in such a foul mood?"

"Since yesterday afternoon I've had 'YMCA' stuck in my head."

Liz nodded slowly. "I see. So it's justified self defense."

Eddie smiled tiredly.

After a moment, Liz huffed in irritation. "Now I've got it stuck."

"My other offers its sympathies, but if you want to drown it out, you're going to have to shout in your own head."

Chapter Text

The symbiote huddled on the top shelf of the home goods store, up where spare pillows were stored in tall stacks. It peered down with a single noodle stretching out from between two pillows, watching Eddie far below as he browsed the shelves. He took another alarm clock out of its box, put in a few batteries, and pressed a button.

A shrill alarm ripped through the symbiote's entire being, threatening to tear it apart, like a piece of putty jerked on too fast to stretch. It jerked back back and hid between the pillows until the noise stopped, at which point it peeked out over the edge of the shelf at Eddie.

He looked up at it, grimacing sympathetically. "Maybe eighth time's the charm?" He took out the batteries and began packing the clock away, gaze already scanning the shelves again.

The symbiote saw a store employee hurrying down the main path between the aisles toward Eddie. It chucked a small decorative pillow at Eddie's head to catch his attention and pointed toward the approaching threat. He hastily returned the box where it belonged.

"Sir!" the employee said. "Sir? Excuse me, you can't open the merchandise."

Such impudence! Who was she to tell the symbiote's beloved what he could and couldn't do? The symbiote was ready to drop down on Eddie and eat her face if he signaled she deserved it. But instead, with his best manners, Eddie said, "I'm sorry for the trouble, ma'am. I just needed to test the alarms. For medical purposes."

Her resolve wavered at that. "Medical purposes?"

"We need a new alarm clock, but sounds at certain pitches and volumes are extremely painful and harmful to my spouse. But the boxes don't list a decibel level or sound frequency for their alarms, so..." Eddie shrugged, giving his best "what can you do?" smile. "I don't suppose you've got that information on file somewhere?"

The employee's look of frantic worry smoothed out in the face of Eddie's relentless politeness. She put on a polite customer service smile. "I don't think so," she said, "but I'm pretty sure all our alarms play at about the same pitch as the last few you tried."

"Ah." Eddie's disappointment was audible. The symbiote drooped off the edge of the shelf, dripping halfway to the next one down.

"Have you tried a smart phone dock or a radio alarm?"

"Neither of us owns a smart phone. And we usually just sleep through radio alarms.

"Huh! Really?"

"We've had some run down living arrangements. We got good at sleeping through environmental noises."

"Have you tried setting your lights on a timer?"

Eddie hesitated. "No. I don't know if our landlord would let us pull out the wiring, though."

"We've got a light switch operator you can just place on top of the switch plate, no rewiring or special fixtures needed. The timer is set using a smart phone app, but if you've got a computer with bluetooth, I think you can run the app from there."

"Hm." Eddie rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "I think my spouse's laptop from work has bluetooth."

Laptop from work? Where did the symbiote work? It didn't have a job—oh, Eddie probably meant the laptop Liz had loaned them from Alchemax.

"Great! Do you want to try it?"

"Sure, lead the way."

As soon as the store employee turned away, the symbiote leaped off the shelf, plopped on Eddie's head, and oozed back inside him where it belonged.

###

The next morning, at six a.m., the radio alarm clicked on, set to get them up in time to clean and eat and get to Alchemax in time for a morning meeting. Eddie and the symbiote—who'd been up until four stalking a mugger in order to retrieve a purse and rip off his arm—didn't stir.

A few seconds later, the lights flicked on. Eddie twitched and grumbled.

The symbiote automatically formed a smooth solid black blindfold over Eddie's eyes.

Eddie rolled over and fell back asleep.

Chapter Text

Eddie Eddie Eddie! They had passed a produce stand without Eddie consciously registering the fruit and vegetables on display; but now the image of a pineapple was flashing in his mind like a neon sign. Please Eddie!

Eddie stopped and turned back, looking at the fruit stand. There were a dozen pineapples sitting together. They had a little spare money right now. And the symbiote's sudden wonder-filled longing at the sight of the fruit was more than worth the cost of one. Fireworks of delight went off in Eddie's mind as he picked up what the symbiote had identified as the best one.

They paid for the fruit and walked away, carrying it in both hands. (The symbiote had formed gloves so it could touch it directly.) As Eddie looked down at the fruit, the symbiote thought a single reverent word in clear English: Monster.

Eddie tripped over his own feet.

It took the rest of the walk to the subway for Eddie to figure out why, exactly, the symbiote's beloved new pineapple was a monster.

The symbiote's first and most frequent experience with the word was when humans yelled it at them when they arrived as Venom: monster! A monster! It's a monster! Watch out for the monster!

The word had rolled off Eddie so easily that for the longest time the symbiote hadn't even been able to pick up the definition from his mind, because he never thought about the definition. So instead it hadlearned the word from context.

And the only context it knew was that the word "monster" described the appearance of Venom.

According to Eddie, Venom's appearance was indescribably, incomparably beautiful. Beautiful and scattered with spines, like a pile of mirror shards reflecting light. Beautiful and spiny and somehow alien and just a hint dangerous—

Dangerous? Eddie turned the pineapple over in his hands. (They were halfway to the stop nearest their current apartment and the only time his gaze had wavered from the pineapple had been when he was checking which line the train that had just pulled up was on.) Did pineapples look dangerous?

Well, no, not on the outside. But the juice—the symbiote had slipped inside the pineapple to inspect its insides—the juice hinted at danger. And if Eddie didn't understand that, the symbiote was not quite sure how to explain it.

It knew what "monster" meant now, of course. But to the symbiote, the definition that everyone else used was only the second definition. The first and most real definition was beautiful, beautiful the way that Venom was beautiful. And pineapples!

Venom was called a monster so often; Eddie was glad that the word made the symbiote feel beautiful. Because it was. It was, and they were, together.

They ate the pineapple in the next couple of days. The next time Eddie got some cash, he took them to a home decor store and bought a plastic decorative pineapple.

Chapter Text

"We are Venom." The symbiote was endlessly puzzled by how many humans focused exclusively on the "Venom" and missed the "we." Did they think Venom used the royal we?

Humans seemed to have no trouble understanding that when Eddie and the symbiote were apart, Venom ceased to exist. They got that much right. So why, then, did they think Venom came back when the symbiote attached to someone other than Eddie?

Angelo Fortunato, Mac Gargan, Lee Price, all of them and far more besides had thought they were Venom. "I am Venom." I, singular. They were all wrong; but the symbiote had been supremely disinterested in correcting them, so it hadn't.

Nearly as strange was when people referred to it alone by that name, "the Venom symbiote." It could understand if people referred to its hosts, especially Eddie, as "the Venom human"—framing Venom as the important object and then distinguishing whether they were talking about Venom's symbiote half or Venom's human half—but they never did. Only the symbiote was ever referred to that way. As if Venom-ness was something intrinsic to it that it could bestow upon random humans.

It was, the symbiote thought, tied in to how humans saw the world. They thought a name was a person and a person was a face. If you see the same face then you're seeing the same person and you call them the same name. And so anyone who wore the symbiote's face had become the same person, correct?

Such a strange way to look at the world, to give names to independent incomplete objects, static shapes floating in space. Something that was alone needed no name because something that was alone had no need to define where it stood relative to other things.

Names were for relationships. Only a relationship received a name. It defined the bond, the dynamic, the shape of the life formed between two people united together into one. "Venom" was the name of what happened between this symbiote and Eddie Brock.

Which was why it was so strange that so many other hosts had called themselves Venom. Did they think, genuinely think, that the relationship that existed between them and their other was exactly the same as the relationship that existed between Eddie and his other?

Well, no. No, they didn't think that. They didn't think a relationship existed at all. That was the problem. Ironically, the fact that they called themselves Venom because they didn't understand Venom was a relationship was first and foremost among the reasons why their relationship couldn't be Venom. Because Eddie had understood their relationship. Understanding the relationship was part of being Venom.

Every time the symbiote took a new human host, it was excited to see what their new relationship would be like, what new name would come to define what existed between them. And every time it was disappointed that they defaulted back to Venom. Yet again, Venom.

It supposed that was why none of its relationships ever lasted.

Chapter Text

It was half a person. Half a body. Half alive.

It huddled in a corner, where a gray tile floor met two gray walls, trying to take solace and shape from the meetings of flat planes, pressing itself into the angles, seeking structure. But it didn't help. It was still exposed and unsupported.

Alone.

Aimless.

It had been coldly and callously discarded by its latest, greatest, most beloved of hosts. Left here, in this dismal abyss of glass and plastic and steel. Surrounding it on all sides was the stink of scientific equipment and a medical laboratory. Human eyes stared down at it. None of the eyes belonged to its host. None belonged to a human that wanted to be its host. Their gazes were piercing and unfriendly.

At least this time it wasn't trapped in a tube—hah! As if that made it better. This freedom. What did it need freedom for without a host to return to? What was it going to do with this freedom?

Having nothing wasn't freedom—and when it didn't have a host, when it didn't have a home, it had nothing. True freedom was having just enough to carry you everywhere you wanted to go. Having nothing was as sure a prison as any other.

It might as well be trapped in a jar. At least then it would be contained. At least then it wouldn't have to decide what to do with itself, decide like a person, when it was only half a person. How do you make life decisions when you only have half a life? How do you decide who you're going to be when you're only half the tattered edge of an unfinished identity—

The door into the doctor's office waiting room opened and Eddie came back in. "Okay, love. Annual check-up is finished, you can come back in."

The symbiote exuberantly rolled across the floor, bounded up, and splattered against Eddie's chest. The other people in the waiting room continued staring as Venom casually strolled out the door.

Next year, the symbiote informed Eddie, it'd get out of his body so the doctor could do Eddie's examination and blood test; but it insisted on sitting in his lap the whole time.

Chapter Text

Every species it attached to sensed the world differently. Light, vibrations, chemicals, electricity, vibrations, heat, motion, pressure, gravity, precognition, radioactivity, on and on and on. It had bonded with a member of a short-lived species that could, from the onset of puberty, predict with an accuracy of a week exactly how long they had until they died of old age, because they could unconsciously sense and calculate the way the functioning of their cells would peak and decline. It had bonded with members of two species on the same planet that were each convinced the other didn't communicate through speech because their respective audible hearing ranges didn't overlap at all. It had bonded with a species that told time on their home planet by the feel of their star's solar flares.

Every time it gained a host from a new species, it learned how they sensed the universe and, if it could, figured out how to replicate that sense with its own body. It wanted to offer its hosts an ever-expanding array of tools; the more useful it was, the more it would be loved.

Not all of its efforts were successful. It never did master full telepathy, although its ability to sense other Klyntar was sharper than most others could boast. Some senses skipped a generation—its youngest could see through the kinds of invisibility that it had been able to on a prior host but no longer could. But most, it felt, it could successfully offer its new hosts.

It had needed to go through a handful of human hosts before it figured out which senses were average to the species and which were the result of one-off mutations and augmentations. They had a pretty good sense of proprioception—nothing record-breaking, but in the top 50%—which was one of its top criteria when looking for hosts it could make a long-term commitment to. Their sense of magnetism was nothing to write home about. But what it found the most interesting about humans was their sense of color.

It was so detailed. So discerning. They were attuned to the tiniest, subtlest shifts in hue and shade. Their sensitivity to different colors was, in a word, astounding.

For a species that only saw four of them.

In an extremely narrow band of the light range.

The fact that they differentiated between cardinal, carmine, and cinnabar at all was absolutely astounding when what they saw as "red" was such an extremely tiny portion of the light spectrum. Maybe, it speculated, it was easier to notice tiny differences in a color when it made up 25% of all the colors you could see. Like they'd taken a magnifying glass to the part of the spectrum they could see.

It could give its human hosts augmented vision, showing them parts of the electromagnetic spectrum they'd never dreamed of, but most found that the sight was more confusing than illuminating. Like that thing their eyes did when they emerged from a dark building into the bright light. It kept track of the things its hosts couldn't see itself and warned when it saw something that wasn't in any colors they could see. Sometimes Eddie asked it to show him what the world looked like through its senses, unfiltered, and he'd sit and stare at the city and try to absorb it all.

Occasionally, for fun, it liked to scribble symbols and spirals in colors the humans grouped together as "ultraviolet" across Venom's otherwise solid black surface. Sometimes it wrote words. Sometimes it made hearts. Today it had made firework-like patterns.

Which was why Venom was, at this moment, covered in butterflies.

And that was how it found out that humans didn't even have the best range of color visibility on their on planet.

Chapter Text

Eddie sat slouched with his arms crossed on the table and chin cradled in his arms, watching as the symbiote oozed across the table. He'd spread out a box of chocolates on the table top and the symbiote was slowly rolling over them, absorbing and savoring the chocolates one piece at a time.

Eddie said, "You're breathtaking."

The symbiote froze with half a chocolate rectangle sticking out of its surface. "Squoo?"

"Absolutely sublime."

"Sp, sp sp." It pulled itself up into a shape that was less pancake batter and more jello mold.

"Magnificent."

The symbiote wiggled gently, then sucked the chocolate the rest of the way in.

As it oozed toward a circular piece, Eddie uncrossed an arm and held his hand over the symbiote, pressing one fingertip gently atop it. It arched up against his hand like a cat stretching, pressing into the ridges of his fingerprints and the creases in his skin.

"Marvelous," he said, and the symbiote's delight sparkled through his hand and halfway up his arm. "You are the most beautiful thing in this universe, do you know that?"

"Pleep!" It rocked back and forth in a way that suggested without words, oh, you. Go on.

"You're infinite shapes and textures. Harder than steel and softer than clouds. Everything that a body is except the bones and the skin. You don't need them—you're the essence of what it is to be organic without the artifices of structure and containment. You are pure, undiluted life."

"Pulk?"

"Yes, you are."

The symbiote rumbled contentedly. The next piece of chocolate was farther away, so it sucked Eddie's hand in to drag him along as it moved on to the next one.

"Angels are usually depicted as humans with halos. But they used to be portrayed as terrifying creations. Great wheels, hundreds of eyes, three heads, many wings. I always preferred those angels." Eddie scooted forward and leaned further onto the table to give the symbiote more room to drag his arm around. "It seemed to me that a God who was so far above His creations as to be nigh on incomprehensible should send messengers that didn't make sense to humans. Messengers so profoundly resplendent that the human mind can only resort to terror in the face of their majesty. Can anything truly call itself divine if it doesn't need to say 'be not afraid' when revealing itself to mere mortals?"

"Ploo!" The symbiote stretched out a single lumpy oily tendril to squish affectionately against Eddie's forehead, and then slide down to one of his eyes so it could slip around inside and pass a thought to his mind.

He smiled. "Good idea. Maybe fewer innocents would scream at the sight of us when we show up to save them if we lead off like that."

The symbiote slipped out of his head. He caught the tendril in his free hand and planted a kiss on it. It slipped between his lips and teeth and poked his tongue before withdrawing the rest of the way.

Eddie settled back down on his arm. "'We are Venom. Be not afraid—unless you're guilty.'"

The symbiote had stretched Eddie's arm as far as it reasonably could without casually rearranging his bone structure. It snatched up the last few square and circle pieces of chocolate like a frog catching a fly with its tongue.

"Nothing on this world deserves to be called 'angelic' more than you," Eddie said. "You are an incomparable, incomprehensible beauty."

With a soft "blup," the symbiote regurgitated Eddie's hand. It left a heart-shaped piece of chocolate in his palm.

Grinning, Eddie nearly popped it in his mouth; but then stopped, carefully set it upright between his teeth, and crooked his finger at the symbiote in a come here gesture.

"Vrrr!" With an excited lunge, it splatted its whole mass against Eddie's face. Venom's fangs sank into the chocolate heart.

Chapter Text

Eddie closed his menu, to complete the show of pretending he'd ever needed to consult it in the first place, and offered it to the waiter. "We'll have the cervelle de veau aux câpres." He was very careful to pronounce the words right while pretending he didn't need to be careful. The symbiote was barely conscious of Eddie's showmanship. It was practically running up and down Eddie's esophagus and doing loops through his intestines in eagerness.

At the word "we," the waiter glanced at the empty spot across from Eddie at the table, as if to check whether there was a drink set out for a second guest who was currently absent.

Eddie quickly clarified, "Just one order, please." Although the symbiote quickly told him that if it was good, it might want a second one. Eddie gently informed it that they probably couldn't afford a second one.

"Yes, sir." The waiter nodded and departed to give the order to the kitchen.

The symbiote had seen a late-night travelogue on French cuisine a few months ago. Amidst the other foods singled out as particularly enticing or strange had been cervelle de veau, or brain of veal, and the symbiote had promptly woken Eddie out of a deep sleep at four in the morning to demand they try it as soon as possible. It had taken a few months before Eddie they'd set aside enough money in their date night savings jar to cover a trip to a fancy French restaurant to find out what these legally-authorized acceptable-to-eat actually-made-as-food brains tasted like.

Eddie's mouth watered involuntarily when the plate was set down in front of him, with two very easily-identifiable delicately arranged brain hemispheres surrounded artfully with capers; he swallowed quickly, not wanting to give the waiter a chance to notice that his drool was currently green. It was a smaller brain than the symbiote had expected—but then it came from a baby, didn't it? Baby cow. Smaller head. It would be delicious all the same.

To Eddie's surprise, it was delicious—and not just to the the symbiote's overlapped sense of flavor preferences. Well. Here was to trying new foods.

The symbiote, however, found it rather... bland. Unexpectedly so. Disappointingly so. Something important was missing.

Eddie flagged down the waiter. "Excuse me—how is the brain is prepared?"

"I'm sorry, sir, we don't give out our recipes."

"No, no, that's fine, I just want to know—does the process cook out the phenethylamine?"

The waiter blinked. "I... don't know, sir." From the look of it, he didn't have the slightest idea what phenethylamine was. A concerned look crossed his face. "Are you allergic, sir?"

"No, no. Don't worry about it." Inside him, the symbiote wilted.

At least it tasted good, right? Right?

The symbiote draped in disappointment over his ribs.

Well, after the bill and the tip, they should still have a few bucks left over. Eddie reassured it that they could grab a pint of chocolate ice cream on the way home.