Chapter Text
By Eddie’s standards, his life was going fucking fantastic.
Maybe waking up to being hit in the face with a pillow wasn’t the most pleasant way to return to the land of the living, but said pillow was thrown by a beautiful woman, so really, who was he to complain?
“Wha?” he mumbled oh so eloquently as he blinked and squinted at the reintroduction of sunlight to his occipital system.
“Wake up, sleepyhead,” Anne said, throwing another pillow at him. He manages to deflect it on reflex alone. He slung it back at her, but she ducked away. “Really? Throwing things at the person who brought you coffee?”
That got his attention. He sat up and reached for her. “Sorry, beautiful.”
She leaned over and placed a chaste kiss on his lips, pushing the warm mug into his hands. “I guess I accept your apology,” she joked. “I’m leaving now. Don’t forget your meeting with your editor.” He noticed her sharp pantsuit that she wore on court days. He nodded. He loved how she looked in that suit.
“Don’t forget date night,” he said as she left the room.
“I won't,” she called across their house. He heard the front door close and knew he would have to wait til that night to see her again.
He groaned, pulling himself from the bed and dragging himself through his morning routine.
Anne was by far the best relationship he’d ever been in. She liked all of his positive traits. His determination, loyalty, street-smarts, and understanding. And she didn’t seem to mind his negative traits most of the time. His prioritisation of work, his penchant for getting himself into sketchy situations, his impulsivity, apathy, and lying.
Finally having a person who would stick by his side through thick and thin was what finally got him to propose. Eddie had had a long string of unhealthy relationships, crazy exes, and uncommitted relationships before Anne. Having her as his fiance was like a breath of fresh air after living in a submarine for five years.
He checked the time. He was running late. “By Miss Belvedere,” he said, grabbing his keys, wallet, and helmet and hurrying out the door. The chilled air rolling off the ocean was shut out by his motorcycle jacket.
He was on his bike and halfway to work sooner than was strictly safe.
Walking into work, Alverez yelled at him that he, “Cannot park your bike there. I tell you this every time you come in.”
“There is no such thing as can’t,” he chirped back as he headed to the elevator.
“Brock! I’ll have you towed.”
“No you won’t.” Eddie couldn’t hear anything else Alverez said as he was already in the elevator up to see his boss.
He knocked lightly on the cracked door before waltzing right in. “You wanted to see me?” he addressed his boss, Mr Graves.
“Brock, yes,” the man said, looking from his computer. “Take a seat.”
“Is this a new assignment?” Eddie asked, taking one of the two seats placed in front of the expensive-looking desk.
Graves grabbed a small packet and passed it to Eddie. “Yes. Carlton Drake, CEO of the Life Foundation has reached out to us. He wants to do an interview concerning the recent rocket crash in Malaysia and the company’s direction concerning future space exploration. As you are the only reporter we have not currently on assignment, this story is yours.”
Eddie scanned the packet while his boss talked. There wasn’t too much info in the packet. Just a more detailed version of what Graves was saying. “There’s not much here.”
Graves’ brow furrowed, “It's all you’ll need. You are only to ask questions concerning the aerospace branch of the company. There is enough information there for you to do so.”
Eddie shook his head. “As a company, they are more than just aerospace. You can’t expect me-”
“I can and I will.” Graves set his face and leaned forward, seriously. “Drake is a very powerful man, Mr Brock. We will be doing as he asks. Dismissed.”
Eddie left the office, planning on doing the exact opposite of what Graves and Drake wanted. He wasn’t afraid to dig and poke. It was what he was good at, afterall. And if it upset Drake, well, it wasn’t the most powerful man he would have pissed off. Eddie had been run out of New York. He knew power. And still didn't inherently respect it.
He sat at his desk and pulled out his laptop. If Graves wasn’t going to provide all the information, he would find it himself. He spent the next few hours balls deep in the Life Foundation website and related reports, articles, and publicized legal cases.
When he left, he had a handful of questions written down and an hour to pick Anne up for their date.
Sitting next to each other on a park bench, they smiled.
“So, you got a new assignment?” Anne remarked, snatching a fry from Eddie.
“Hey!” he exclaimed, stealing one of hers in retaliation. “Yeah. I’m interviewing Carlton Drake.”
“Oh no.”
“I’m supposed to ask him about the Malaysia crash and their future space exploits.”
“You’re not going to, are you?” She knew him too well to think he would stick to the assignment.
“You know me so well. Why would I ask him ‘bout something he has a statement prepared for when there are so much more interesting things going on concerning their medical ethics.”
Anne sighed. “No, ‘cause why would you want to keep your job?”
“Drake is not the most powerful person I’ve exposed,” he reasoned.
“If you get kidnapped again, I swear to god-”
“I’ll be fine. Besides, even if I am kidnapped, the welcome home sex is always the best,” she said with a mischievous smirk.
“Eddie,” she said a warning and resignation.
“Though the sex is good all the time.”
“If you don’t shut up, I’ll make you.”
“Is that a promise?” He leaned in.
She leaned closer to him and whispered, “If you want it to be,” before pulling away and smirking at him, popping another fry in her mouth.
Eddie blinked, watching her eat another fry before picking up their shared milkshake and slurping some down, maintaining eye contact. She raised an eyebrow as Eddie stared. He wasn’t one to really blush, but he felt his heart flutter in his chest.
Damn, he loved this woman.
The ride back to their house was tense, the air so sexually charged, you could physically feel it. Anne’s arms, squeezing around his middle to keep her securely on the back of his bike, wound lower til they were resting on his hips. They were pressed front to back and her head peaked over his shoulder, watching the city as they sped by.
If Eddie was going a little (or a lot) over the speed limit, Anne didn’t mention it. And as soon as he was parked and helmets were off, they were locked in a kiss, Anne pinning him against his bike.
She tasted of french fries and cookies’n’cream milkshake and Eddie felt like being devoured by her. She broke the kiss and started kissing down his neck, nipping and sucking at the sensitive skin.
When she bit the junction of his neck and shoulder, he let out a groan. He felt her smile against his skin.
Then her hand was clutching the collar of his shirt and he was being dragged up the stairs and into their townhouse.
<...>
Eddie pulled himself out of bed, still quite unrested, but definitely awake. Unfortunately. The red numbers on the alarm clock informed him it was a dark and early 3 am. It wasn’t the earliest he’d ever woken up, but it certainly was not a time he wanted to be awake at.
He pulled on a clean pair of boxers before wandering through the dark room and out to his and Anne’s shared office space adjacent to the kitchen. Technically it was supposed to be the dining room, but fuck conventional interior design or whatever. They needed an office space.
Eddie opened his laptop and grabbed the little pocket notebook he used to write questions in for interviews. If he was awake, he might as well get some work done.
Articles, an hour, and maybe a bit of illegal information acquirement later the pc monitor that had been asleep chimed and lit up. This, of course, drew his attention.
There was a notification of an email from Goldstein & Wagner, the law firm Anne worked for. Eddie would have left it alone, ignored it, but there was one thing that caught his eye. The subject line read: ‘Sarah McKinley v. L.I.F.E. Corporation, individually and dba The Life Foundation’.
He knew it wasn’t right. He knew he shouldn’t. But when had Eddie ever made the smart decision? He clicked on the notification and entered Anne’s password when prompted (she should really change it if cybersecurity was of any importance to her). The email contained little information on the case itself in the body, but the attached documents; bingpot!
Blatantly ignoring the ‘Confidential’ watermark across every page, he read through the details of the case. The deeper he got, the more red flags popped up. He scrolled through Anne’s past emails, accruing a list of names. McKinley, Jameson, Mickleson, Smith, Jones. All wrongful death claims due to medical malpractice.
When he heard shuffling from the bedroom, he quickly closed the email, marked them as unread, and put the pc to sleep. He had a substantial list of things to look into in more… legally acceptable ways now.
“Good morning, beautiful,” he said, poking his head into the bedroom. He received unintelligible grumbling from the pile of blankets that was his fiance. He placed a kiss on her forehead and backed out of the room to make coffee.
<...>
Three days later, he drove the winding, cliffside road up to the Life Foundation building. He was to meet the camera and sound crew there. Walking through security, he was hyping himself up. His small black notebook sat like a weight in his jacket pocket.
He knew the questions he was going to ask. And he knew that very few of them would have been approved by Graves. Good thing they didn’t need to be. He followed one of Drake’s assistants up a few floors and through a long hallway until they reached a conference room.
“Wait here, please,” the assistant told him before disappearing back out the door. Eddie took a seat in one of the office chairs closest to the door (and furthest the window).
The entire building was modernly designed, all bright lights and steel fixtures, big windows and white tile.
He flipped through his notebook once again, compulsively re-reading the notes and questions scribbled there. A light knock announced the assistant’s return, this time followed by Carlton Drake.
He stood to shake the man’s hand. “Hello. I’m Eddie Brock. I’ll be interviewing you today,” Eddie introduced.
“Nice to meet you, Mr Brock,” Drake said, dropping Eddie’s hand. “My assistant, Miss Reynolds, had your crew set up just down the hall so we can walk and talk.” There was something behind Drake’s eyes. A certain coldness that set warning bells off in the back of his head. He knew with every ounce of his being that Drake could destroy him, should he step out of line.
Oh well. Eddie was never one to heed the warning instincts in the back of his mind. Self-preservation was for the mentally stable.
“That sounds perfect,” he told Drake and followed him out into the hall. He spotted his crew set up and ready to go. “So I’m just going to ask you some questions. This shouldn’t take more than an hour. And we aren’t live so edits can be made after the fact,” he told Drake. Eddie wasn’t the happiest that they weren’t live, but he had a bit of a track record for going off script so it was at least expected.
“Sounds good,” Drake said simply.
They stopped in front of the crew and waited for the go ahead to begin the interview. When the red light on the film camera and the cameraman gave him a nod, Eddie began.
“What do you say, Dr Drake, that we start at the beginning?” Eddie asked as they meandered towards the walkway ahead. “Born to British parents and then, at 19 , you discovered a gene therapy that literally doubles the life expectancy of those with pancreatic cancer.” Eddie could see that Drake was uneasy with his choice to start with his medical side of things, versus his newer space exploration, but the man went with it. For now.
“Well actually it tripled their life expectancy,” Drake corrected. “But it's okay,” he said, waving off Eddie’s mistake.
“Okay,” Eddie said, glancing down at his notes. “24, that's still extremely young. You create,” Eddie gestured wide, “the Life Foundation.”
“Didn’t happen overnight,” Drake said, but Eddie just kept talking.
“And then rockets. You then decide like any normal human being that you're gonna go and explore space.” Okay so maybe Eddie was a little acerbic and sarcastic, but Drake had started the undermining, so really, whose fault was it?
“You know what it is?” Drake said. “I have always believed space exploration is crucial in our quest to cure whatever ails us here on Earth.” Eddie noted the obviously prepared statement. A prepared and practice speech delivered just naturally enough to seem organic. “I mean, if you think about everything we’ve found in oceans and on land, isn’t it time to look up there?”
Eddie made a small noise of acknowledgement disguised as agreement.
“This, this plethora of untapped resources,” Drake said, giving Eddie just the opening he needed.
“You have a plethora of untapped resources also from the pharmaceutical companies that you're involved with,” Eddie segued to the meat and potatoes of what he really wanted to bring up. “Y’know to help you realise that ambition, I suppose?”
“Well it's full circle,” Drake stumbled slightly. These were obviously dangerous waters.
Eddie dived right in. “So I have to ask, how does that work? Y’know, exactly? The Life Foundation thing; how does it,” Eddie looked at his notes, acting to be thinking over his words, searching for the question he wanted to ask. “I dunno, how does it go about, let's say… testing pharmaceuticals?”
They stopped walking halfway down the walkway, Drake circling to seemingly casually bring the walking to a halt. There was a dangerous guarded look in Drake’s eyes.
“Eddie,” Drake’s assistant said, warningly. “We’re talking about the rocket here.”
Got him. “No we're not, I’m not. I’m talking about the allegations.” The look in Drake’s eyes and the man’s posture told him that the man didn’t think he had anything concrete to bring up. That he was just waffling out his ass and trying to get a rise out of him.
“I’m sorry,” Drake denied, shaking his head and feigning ignorance. “I don’t--”
“It says that your entire empire is built on dead bodies,” Eddie cut him off.
“Eddie!” Miss Reynolds chided.
He ignored her. “It's true, right? The allegations that you recruit the most vulnerable of us to volunteer for tests that more often than not end up killing people.”
“I’m aware of these rumours online.” Drake was on PR release mode, giving him the information preprepared with only the assumption of Eddie’s source and its unreliability and vagueness. “There's a lot of fake news out there, these days,” he said, trying to wave off Eddie’s allegations.
“What about the legal cases,” Eddie said, damningly.
“I’m sorry.” Drake was daring him to continue.
Eddie charged on ahead. “Yeah, the actual legal cases like Sarah McKinley.” At the dropping of a name, things shuffled around them. Drake began to unmic and security approached them. Eddie kept going, reading out names, “Stephan Jameson, Alyson Mickleson, Donald Smith, Bailey Jones.”
“That's it. We’re done. Have a nice day,” Drake said, handing his mic off to the crew. Security was blocking off the camera crew, starting to shepherd them off.
Eddie kept talking. He was still being recorded and he knew that even if there was no visual due to burly security, there would at least be audio. “Because these people are dead, but the dead still speak. Especially in court cases. The families want to hold you and your company liable for medical malpractice.”
“We’re done. You’re done,” a security guard was telling him.
“Don’t touch me,” he added when the security guard tried to grab him. “So many dead at your foundation's hands. Dead. The Dead Foundation.”
He was being forced backwards, back towards the exit. “We’re not finished,” he called out to Drake who was presenting an untouchable front a few yards away.
“Yes we are, Mr Brock,” Drake told him in a cold, level tone. The look in the man’s eyes told him that his words held a promise deeper than a simple dismissal.
“Is that a threat?”
“Have a nice life,” were Drake’s final words to him, hand raised and threat clear to anyone who had been discreetly threatened before, as Eddie was fully shuffled to the elevator.
<...>
So maybe Eddie had fucked up and pushed too far, but really, who could blame him? Sitting in front of Mr Graves desk he knew the punishment to befall him was not going to be pleasant.
Mr Graves was giving him a look.
“I know what you’re gonna say,” Eddie starts. This wasn’t the first time Graves had told him off about his behaviour during an interview. “I know what you're gonna say, but this guy… Carlton Drake is bad. Like all the way bad. Graves, if you just-”
Graves’ expression didn’t change, but he did sit up in his chair. “Who was your source?” he cut Eddie off.
Eddie’s thoughts stuttered. “Excuse me?”
“Who was your source, Eddie?” Graves repeated.
Eddie couldn’t tell him that. Yes, he had a source. He had multiple sources, technically speaking. But none of those sources was legal nor ethical. His ‘sources’ were reliable, yet undisclosable if he wanted to remain employed.
He sat back in his chair and rubbed his stubbled jaw, feeling the cold metal of his engagement ring against his skin. “I don’t have a source,” he lied. He felt like the thin ice he was constantly on had finally cracked, but he wasn’t about to drag Anne down with him. It wasn’t even her fault. Eddie was just nosey.
“I don’t have a source, I had a hunch.” A correct hunch backed up by sources that he couldn’t tell his boss about.
“This isn’t the wild west, Eddie. We don’t go half-cocked based on a hunch,” Graves told him in a measured tone like he was explaining that 2+2=4 to a stubborn two-year-old. “We do the work. We substantiate our accusations. We provide evidence. ”
Eddie knew this. But sketchy sources and sketchy ethics meant he wouldn’t be explaining shit.
“You really are a dumbass,” Graves said sincerely. Eddie agreed with him wholeheartedly. He really was. Graves got to his feet and stood to stare out the window behind him. Eddie had a gut feeling he knew what was coming. And he didn’t like it.
“You're fired, Eddie. I can’t trust you,” his boss stated simply. “Have a nice life.”
Those words. The same thing Drake had told him. And Drake was a lot smarter than Eddie really liked to believe, but he knew. There was a high chance Drake had a lot more direct hand in his firing than just being a catalyst for Eddie’s poor life choices.
And if Drake knew how to get Eddie fired, there was at least a 75% chance he knew where Eddie had gotten his information.
On his way to grab the few things he kept in the office, he pulled out his cell and phoned Anne. He had to at least warn her, apologise. It rang and rang and rang, but no one picked up.
Shit. In-person it was.
He was too late. By the time he made it to Anne’s place of work, she was storming out the front door, box in her hands, and murder in her eyes. She saw him getting off his motorcycle and her fury was sparked.
“Hey,” he said, carefully, but that just seemed to set her off more.
“You! You are pathological! You are selfish, careless, a fucking impulsive bastard! You are a self-important, workaholic with a self-destructive streak a mile wide. And you are stubborn as hell,” she yelled, marching straight at him. “And you know what, I thought you actually cared. About me and about this relationship.”
“I did, I do,” Eddie said quickly, not liking where this was going.
“Y’know for all that, I still stuck with you. Because I loved you.”
“Loved? What is that supposed to mean?”
She dropped her box between them. “You finally did it. You pushed too hard this time and I got burned. You got me fired.” She pulled off her engagement ring. “And you used me.
“Y’know. I knew how reckless and impulsive you are. I knew it. I just never thought that I would be the one who got hurt.” She scoffed and shook her head.
“Annie, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Ice was filling his veins and nausea was turning in his stomach.
“But you did. You did hurt me. And that's not something I can just forget now, is it?”
“Please Annie. I’m sorry.” He was ready to get down on his knees and beg Anne not to go anywhere. His heart was cracking and he only had himself to blame.
“No. I can’t do this anymore.” She didn’t say anything else, just tucked the ring into his shirt pocket, grabbed her box and stalked away.
“Annie?!” he called, slightly panicked. “Annie.”
He didn’t go after her. She was always a woman of her word, stubborn as he was, and he had hurt her. He had a feeling nothing good would come of him chasing her down.
So he let her go.