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“Woe Unto Us”
We are under attack, Eddie.
Eddie's eyes snapped open in the darkness of the bedroom, instantly alert. He threw off the bed covers and scanned his surroundings, prepared for anything. It became quickly apparent that-
“There's no one here,” Eddie said with relief, his heart rate gradually returning to normal. He didn’t appreciate getting woken up in the middle of the night, especially when he had work in the morning.
I meant from within.
Thinking back to when the symbiote had first bonded with him and how much he’d suffered bodily as a result at first, Eddie sat up in bed. He rubbed at his forehead tiredly.
They'd reached a semi-peaceful existence together with a lot of time and patience. Not to mention compromises. So many compromises. If something had changed between then and now, Eddie was sure he would have been able to sense it.
“What do you mean?” he asked Venom, reaching for the glass of water sitting next to him on the nightstand. His throat was dry, and the drink helped immensely.
A smooth warmth encased his shoulder as Venom poured forth from inside him, its small dark head extending far enough from him that Eddie could meet its eyes. Annoyingly, Venom looked wide awake compared to Eddie.
“There is an infection I am unable to keep at bay much longer.”
Not being much of an optimist, Eddie assumed the worst. “It's not like before, is it?” When he’d mistakenly thought he was near death because the symbiote was killing him. Eddie never wanted a repeat of the experience.
Venom watched Eddie drain the rest of the glass of water with narrowed eyes. “It is an aggressive viral biological component that will weaken us. What you would call the flu.”
Eddie couldn’t help chuckling, Venom looking askew at him. “I've had that before. It sucks, but I'll get over it. Never had any warning, though.”
He plopped back down onto the bed, Venom moving to Eddie’s stomach, looking like a cat with its small folded arms. “You done trying to give me a heart attack?”
Venom let out a frustrated breath. “Do not mock me. I was worried about us.”
Wanting to smooth things over, Eddie patted Venom’s head, who leaned into the touch, its eyes nearly closing. “I know, and I appreciate it. Now let’s go back to sleep, okay?”
He pulled his hand back, not surprised when Venom slowly sank back down into Eddie’s chest, disappearing from view entirely.
Okay.
He could feel the symbiote’s warmth inside him for a moment, having to reach for his bed covers again when it faded away. The remainder of Eddie’s worries buckled under sleep’s formidable sway.
Eddie hung his head over the sink as he clutched the sides of it, eyeing his pale reflection in the mirror. He looked about as good as he felt, which was to say-
“We are dying,” Venom announced with all the subtlety of a roaring train. It hung off Eddie’s waist, worriedly watching him start to hack his lungs up into the sink.
His brain felt full of fuzz, Eddie’s sinuses stuffed up to no end. Even worse, he was nauseous, the thought of food enough to make him nearly gag.
Eddie was sick, just as Venom predicted two days before.
“We are not,” Eddie replied, finished spitting into the sink for now. “Stop blowing it out of proportion.” His voice sounded slightly hoarse, having to clear his throat a few times to speak again. “You getting any of this on your side?”
Venom put its head to the side. “A little, but not nearly as much as you are. What do we do to fight it?”
Eddie blew out a breath. “Liquids, rest, and lots of daytime television.”
“No work?”
He laughed, regretting the choice when the urge to cough hit him again. Once the fit had passed, Eddie shook his head. “I’m no good to anyone like this, am I?"
A set of large arms came to rest over his shoulders, Eddie realizing that Venom was all but hugging him, resting its head atop Eddie’s. “I will always take you as you are.”
Venom’s frank honesty concerning their affection towards him sometimes caught Eddie off-guard. Everything the symbiote did spoke of them, leaving no room for any misunderstandings. Eddie’s feelings weren’t so clear-cut, and Venom knew it. Just as it was aware of everything else about him. It was hard to hide anything when they shared one brain.
“Sorry,” Venom said, its body beginning to shrink down. Feeling guilty, Eddie reached to grip Venom’s arms, making it pause as it gazed at him expectedly for an explanation.
Eddie smiled. “Feel free to keep doing that,” he said, though a small part of him said it wasn’t a good idea to encourage Venom’s possessiveness. “I’m starting to get chills. Another wonderful gift of the flu.”
The far too toothy grin Eddie got in response was wide, Venom spreading itself thin along his back and shoulders, essentially becoming a living, breathing blanket around him. Supple and warm, it felt amazing.
Eddie fought down a shiver as his body absorbed the heat Venom was radiating from its body. “You need anything from the kitchen? I can’t eat anything myself.”
“Ho-Hos, Eddie.”
Eddie shook his head. Venom had a hell of a sweet tooth. The two boxes he had in the kitchen wouldn’t survive the afternoon. At least it was cheap junk food. Eddie tried not to buy anything high-quality for Venom in case the symbiote started developing a taste for it.
“’Kay.”
“You should eat too,” Venom added. “Your body needs the energy to fight back against the virus.”
Eddie scoffed. “I eat anything now, and it’ll come right back up.”
He grabbed the Ho-Hos from the kitchen counter and headed to the couch. The first order of business was turning on the television. Eddie quickly navigated past the soap operas, leaving the TV on old sitcom repeats.
Venom tore into the wrappers for the chocolate snack food, a veritable pile of sugar and crème sitting before it in no time at all.
“Eddie,” Venom warned before the slickness on Eddie’s back and shoulders extended upward. Shadows fell on his face as the symbiote took over, plunging Eddie into darkness for a few seconds before his vision cleared.
At first, the symbiote taking over had induced panic and fear, mostly because Eddie had had no idea what was happening to him. But now, it was a little like having an out-of-body experience, vaguely aware of his mouth and throat moving on their own.
“Done,” Venom announced after a few minutes, releasing its hold on Eddie’s upper body. “They are tasty cakes indeed.”
Eddie rotated his neck, the stiffness in the muscles easing quickly. “Good.”
Sweeping aside the mess of plastic wrappers on the couch, Eddie laid down on his side.
The colorful cast of characters on the TV went through the usual antics, Eddie falling in and out of consciousness throughout the afternoon, his rest only interrupted by endless sneezing, coughing, and wiping his nose. He even managed to get a bowl of oatmeal down.
Early in the evening, Eddie decided he had suffered long enough. It was time to pull out the big guns. He stood up and headed towards the bathroom, his throat raw from all the hacking he’d done. Relief was desperately needed.
“Did any of your previous hosts ever get sick?” Eddie asked as he grabbed what he was looking for. Luckily, he had more than one bottle of cough syrup in his medicine cabinet at the moment.
Venom bounced a little on his shoulder. “Typically, we would abandon sick hosts and move onto a healthier specimen.”
Eddie picked up on the unspoken implication as he made his way back to the living room, his investigative journalist instincts alive and well, even under the weather. “ ’Typically?’”
“It is why I was considered an outcast among my kind,” Venom explained. “Because I stayed and healed my hosts when such an event occurred. I did not see the point of leaving a good match when I could easily shorten the duration of any illness. Right now, I am mass-producing white blood cells in your body, so there are millions of antibodies available to fight this flu invader.”
Venom was playing doctor, huh? That explained why Eddie didn’t feel quite so bad compared to the last time he’d had the flu.
“Well, keep it up, buddy.”
There was a distinct warmth that coiled around his chest as Venom replied, “Of course, we belong together no matter what happens.”
It sounds like we’re married, Eddie thought as he returned to the couch, his salvation in hand. Yet he and Venom were closer than any couple had a right to be. Still, if Eddie had a choice between living with the symbiote and not, he knew which option he would pick every time.
Eddie shook the empty bottle of cough syrup, frustrated with the fact that while it was soothing his sore throat, his usual buzz was nowhere to be found. Had he bought alcohol-free stuff by accident? By now, he was usually pleasantly passed out, drunk out of his head on the stuff.
What was so different? Then it hit Eddie. When was the last time he’d felt buzzed at all while drinking? Not since he’d met…
“Venom?”
The symbiote glanced at him from its seat next to Eddie. It was fascinated with daytime television. The predictable sitcom plots, game shows, and wild reality television. “What?”
Eddie picked up the empty cough syrup bottle and shook it pointedly. “What’s the key ingredient in this?”
Venom stretched out a tendril and grabbed the bottle, wide eyes scanning the list of ingredients. “Alcohol?”
“Yeah,” Eddie said, raising an eyebrow. “And you know what I’m not feeling right now?”
Clutching the bottle closer, Venom peered at Eddie curiously. “You want to get drunk? You just had to tell me, Eddie.”
Eddie scoffed. “What, I need your permission to…”
The world wavered around the edges suddenly, Eddie’s eyes fluttering shut for a second as he relished the sensation of looseness that gripped his body. He stopped caring about the fact Venom had withheld the alcoholic effects, simply grateful the cough syrup was finally kicking in as intended.
Venom shuddered beside him. “Oooh, that made you happy. Dopamine and serotonin are flooding your body. It’s delicious.”
“Happy to provide,” Eddie said, settling deeper into his blanket, the remaining bottle of cough syrup in the pocket of his robe. He opened it up after a few minutes and took a sip, intent on embracing oblivion as soon as he could.
“Eddie, you are drunk,” Venom accused with a light slur at the end of its words.
Eddie looked at the symbiote spread out beside him, its body language on the loose side. He took another chug of the nearly empty cough syrup bottle. “You mean we’re drunk.”
“Surely, that is the only reason to watch four hours of Judge Judy.”
At that, Eddie yanked Venom closer, struggling to focus for a moment. “What’s your beef with Judy? She's a fair but tough woman.”
“Her judgment is clearly skewed,” Venom replied, waving a tendril in the direction of the TV. “Take that last case; the husband was clearly in the right.”
“Are you kidding?” Eddie said in disbelief, well aware that the couple they were discussing was long gone. “She caught him in the neighbor’s house with his pants down.”
Venom rose in the air, a tad unsteady. “He explained it was a terrible misunderstanding.”
“He was lying, Venom. Humans do that.”
The symbiote paused. “A bad guy?” Suddenly, its gaze sharpened, likely trying to scour Eddie’s memories for the man’s name as if planning to track him down later. He was thankful that it was probably an old repeat they’d caught and not a new episode.
It was oversimplifying the matter, but for all of Venom’s claims about their superior intelligence, sometimes things needed to be spelled out in basic terms. Issues about mortality in particular.
“Yeah, a bad guy. He cheated on his wife and lied, so Judy was right to rule against him.” Eddie knew the price of such mistakes, his thoughts running to Anne before he could stop them. No, deception never paid, no matter how well-intended.
“Eddie,” Venom said. “Does that mean we can eat people like him?”
“No, it doesn't.” Eddie killed the bottle of cough syrup and tossed it over his shoulder. He’d done nothing but lounge on the couch all day watching television, but he was having a hard time keeping his eyes open.
“Spoilsport.”
The symbiote seemed to shake itself, leaning forward to touch Eddie’s arm. “We should go to bed early. You should be much improved tomorrow if I have managed to produce enough antibodies.”
Eddie yawned, valiantly trying to stand but failing. “Never mind, I’m fine here.”
Abruptly, Venom took control of his body, forcing Eddie onto his feet. They walked down the hallway towards Eddie’s bedroom. “You will thank me in the morning.”
Venom? Far too comfortable with the situation, knowing he was in relatively safe hands, Eddie let himself relax.
“Yes, Eddie?”
No hangover?
They’d reached their destination, Venom shortly pushing aside the bed covers and getting underneath them. “Never.”
Eddie had to admit the bed was nicer than the couch, allowing him enough room to spread out. Venom retreated inside him but for one tendril that it used to pull the covers over Eddie’s shoulders.
Comfortable and warm, Eddie sighed as he hugged one of his pillows close. “Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
He was aware of a soft touch on his cheek, Eddie’s last thought before he fell unconscious that even if Venom’s prediction were wrong about tomorrow, it wouldn’t be so bad spending another day hanging out together.
There were worse things, like being alone.