Chapter Text
They sit on the beach for a long time. It’s beautiful here, and peaceful. Eddie is fresh off a night of actual sleep, and he’s not feeling the usual drag of exhaustion. There’s no rush to go back to the room. There’s no rush to do anything now.
V slides his feet through the sand, back and forth. Eddie feels it muted, like sensory feedback at a distance. That’s nice sometimes, to feel things with less intensity.
It seems like he and V have been running at full speed since they met. Even before Kasady and Carnage they were… not great.
We know we are difficult, Venom says.
Eddie sighs. He’d love to blame the symbiote for everything, but that wouldn’t be fair. Or accurate. Like V pointed out before— Eddie’s life fell apart before V even showed up. He hardly needed help.
And Venom’s been trying since their run in with Kasady. He’d been good all the way through their mad dash to escape the country. Hadn’t brought up his hunger even when it began to bleed into Eddie because it was so gnawing.
That’s something Eddie will need to figure out soon. Relationships are about compromise, and if Eddie wants to keep the human eating to an absolute minimal, then a serious solution needs to be presented.
He’d felt the way Venom had lagged at the top of the cathedral. How exhausted he’d been trying to keep up with Carnage. Trying to keep them all alive.
The food is a problem for another day though. In this moment, there’s only one thing he can resolve.
“It’s not just you, I’m plenty difficult all on my own.”
That is not inaccurate.
Eddie almost rolls his eyes.
It’s only the memory of Venom saying ‘when you love someone,’ that stills Eddie’s tongue on a retort.
Venom loves him, and that means something. He—
He’s been avoiding thinking about the two of them. About the long term. About relationships .
It was easier before just to hold onto the idea of Anne. To the idea that his life could still be going in that direction, with her. Normal and boring and simple.
But now Eddie is sitting on a beach with his symbiote, a fugitive from his own country. Nothing about his life anymore is normal. Simple.
Boring.
“I want to fight less,” Eddie says. It seems the most straightforward thing to say. “We’re a match, you and I. And uh, I want us to work together.”
We do work together. I make breakfast, you complain.
This time Eddie does roll his eyes.
“I mean it.”
V is silent, but Eddie can feel him turning the words over.
I want to fight less too.
Eddie remembers that night before the fight— the two of them running up buildings, careening through the sky without fear. He’d felt V’s joy. The unbridled excitement he’d tried so hard to push into Eddie.
But Eddie hadn’t been in the mood to enjoy it. He had been exhausted and stretched too thin. He had been at the end of his rope with V’s constant criticism and needling.
“So how do we do this?” Eddie asks.
His toes continue to move in the sand. Across the span of water, the sun is just beginning to set. The colors of the sky deepen and bloom.
Dan said couple’s counseling.
“I think we’d have trouble finding a therapist to see us, buddy.”
Venom is almost all the way sunk into him, but Eddie can just imagine his expression. He can feel the symbiote’s frustration bubble up.
We could do it ourselves. I’ve read things on the internet.
This piques Eddie’s curiosity.
“You’ve been looking up couples counseling on the internet?”
There’s a feeling like a shrug. We were curious. Dan is smart, we thought we’d look into it.
The blatant shift in Venom’s feelings about Dan isn’t lost on him. It’s nice in its own way not to have to hear V go on about eating Dan.
“And?”
There are five basic principles.
Eddie reaches out and grabs a handful of sand. It sifts pleasantly through his fingers. “What are they?”
One: change the views of the relationship. Two: modify dysfunctional behavior. Three: decrease emotional avoidance. Four: improve communication. Five: promote strengths.
Venom recites these easily, and Eddie has no doubt it’s word for word. The alien does indeed have an impeccable memory.
“So, real easy steps.”
There’s the equivalent of a huff.
Eddie.
Fair. He swallows down any more defensive remarks and actually thinks it over.
How they are now is unsustainable. They’re certainly not as dysfunctional as Kasady and Carnage, but not actively falling apart is a low bar. If they’re going to keep a discreet profile and hide out here, they need to do more than just manage. They need to work .
“Okay,” Eddie says. He pushes himself up to standing. The blackness over his feet recedes. He’s covered in sand, but he doesn’t mind. He’s glad he could give Venom this beach time. No doubt soon they’ll have to move on, and the next place might not be as picturesque.
“Lets do it then. Couples counseling. You’ll show me the stuff you read?”
Yes , Venom says. Then, you mean it?
“Did you mean what you said earlier?”
He doesn’t need to repeat it. The words have settled in the back of his mind, and he’s certain Venom can feel their weight.
There’s a pause. Yes.
Eddie takes a deep breath. In and out.
“Alright, then yeah. I’m in.” Eddie says. “The first step was ‘change the view of the relationship,’ right?”
It’s a powerful shift to even be using the word relationship. It cements something between them.
Principle. But yes.
“Okay,” Eddie says. He turns away from the waves to make his way back up the beach. “Tell me about it.”
There’s a rumble in his head, like a car engine crossed with a cat's purr. It’s strange, but Eddie knows instantly it’s Venom’s pleasure. It’s different from the electric energy of his joy.
Eddie walks back through the trees and toward their little motel. Venom in his head starts talking about the first principle of couples therapy, regurgitating the information as though he were reading it off a page.
And for the first time in a long time, Eddie feels something soft and warm tuck itself right in under his rib cage. It feels fragile there, exposed, but he tried to leave it be. They’re in this together now, for better or for worse.
When you love someone, you love them with all their defects.
Eddie smiles.