Chapter Text
It started with a ping at 2 AM. Eddie had rolled over in his sleep, knocking the pillow off his face, which is probably the only reason he even heard it. Two-thirds asleep and with shit to do the next day, he had ignored the noise.
A couple nights later there was a blue light pushing against his eyelids. He had groaned and slapped his hand over them.
Sorry, Eddie, Venom growled, but Eddie was asleep again before he finished.
Then there was the morning about a month after that where he woke up to his phone on the blanket, very much not where he'd left it on the nightstand, and with the battery barely charged. He'd chalked it up to being extremely tired the night before and forgetting to set it where he wouldn't roll on top of it. He bought a new charging cable and didn't think any more about it.
Funnily enough, the final hint that something was going on didn’t come when he was sleeping. It came exactly one week later over breakfast while he was on his laptop, checking the twitter feed on his blog. There was an influx of new followers and mentions trying to get his attention. They all had a lot to say about him and some other person named Xenonn—mainly asking if they knew each other and how.
Eddie ran a hand over his mouth, scratching at the stubble around his cheeks as he did so. Xenonn. What kind of username was that? It seems that they’d garnered enough popularity that people were affectionately calling them “Xee” instead, but still.
He clicked over to this mysterious Xee’s profile. Their icon was still the default bland silhouette. Very minimal information was filled out; their location was simply “Earth”, their bio had a random string of letters, and their birth date was hidden. Xee had joined less than a year ago, which struck Eddie as weird that they’d gained a few thousand followers so quickly.
On top of that their posts were really vague. There were a lot of them—at least one a day most days, but far from consistent so a bot account was unlikely—and they seemed to simply be observations on daily activities mixed with a generous handful of typos. Things like “went to the st ore tobay and saw a dog. cant eat dog in store but can eat lob str in store. dos number of legs makathing more oh kay to eat?” and “tater tos are goood warm. frosengoood too. loook like tiny brains.”
He scrolled until he saw his name. It didn’t take long. The latest was from three days ago: “Eddie took me to the parj and we saw s small human. He caled it a baybee. I have nver met one in pesrson before.”
Eddie read some of the threads, taking his time to see what everyone had to see about these strings of nonsense. Apparently people loved reading the strange perspectives. They thought they were insightful, putting a perspective on things they didn’t think twice about, and some likened it to as if an alien were studying humans. Most seemed to agree they were funny and entertaining, at the very least.
Then there was the smaller subset of people who’d become invested in this “Eddie” that Xenonn kept mentioning. It was the only name they provided in any of their posts and it came up several times. Xenonn themself never replied to anyone, seemingly only making their daily report and nothing else. Fans started forming theories and sleuthing out who it could be based on context clues and some dedicated people compiled evidence into screenshots of notes and tweets. The mention of a few weather anomalies and landmark descriptions placed Xee’s most likely location as California, then that was narrowed to San Francisco thanks to a music event Xenonn had complained about. A few shots in the dark had been made to share posts around and see if an Eddie from San Fran would come forward, but obviously they never came to fruition, and a lot of the fans were content with that. Plenty of people were curious but didn’t expect to actually find the rando connected with this unusual yet entertaining observer.
The chaos broke when Xee posted a tantalizing clue: “Eddie sad he must rite fluf pess but words ar not fluf ey. they have no fur. I do not get it.” After that it didn’t take long for the prevailing theory to be that Xee was referring to investigative reporter Eddie Brock, which is when the deluge of at’s and DMs began.
Despite everything, however, there was no solid confirmation from Xee or Eddie on whether or not it was indeed him being mentioned, or who Xenonn even was. A bunch of people were staving off the unknown wait by speculating what sort of relationship they might have; were they friends? Family? Lovers? The same person? A weirdly structured pet account? It was a hot debate at the moment.
Finally Eddie sat back in his creaky wooden chair. He cleared his throat. “Hey V?”
Yes Eddie? came the deep voice inside his head.
“You wouldn’t happen to be going on my phone at night, would you?”
…No…Yes.
Eddie hid his smirk and schooled his features into a serious face. “And did you make your own twitter account?”
A small inky black tendril sprouted from his shoulder and snaked forward, growing just enough to accommodate milky white eyes that stared up at him with guilty defiance.
Thought there would be birds.
Eddie crossed his arms and raised his eyebrows. “Really?
There were no birds. Only whiny people.
“Sounds about right.” He nodded.
Not mad, Eddie? Venom asked, pulling back a bit.
A smile cracked his unconvincing stone face. “No bud. I wish you’d asked before taking my phone, but I’m not mad.” He gently rubbed at the chin of the tendril-face with his knuckle. Venom closed his eyes to slits, much like a cat. “So why did you make a twitter anyway?”
Eddie likes being a reporter. Wanted to try, too.
His smile grew wider. “Aww!”
Shut up. The tendril grew a mouth and bit his finger. The tiny needle-like teeth only barely broke the skin, not going deep enough to draw blood.
“No way, man, that’s awesome! I’m so proud of you!” Eddie chuckled and pulled Venom’s small head closer by his trapped finger and pressed a noisy kiss to the rippling surface.
Venom hissed and let go of Eddie to draw backwards. “Don’t patronize me, Eddie.”
“I’m not, I promise. This is actually pretty cool.”
Venom seemed unconvinced.
Eddie gestured to the screen. “What sort of stuff do you like to write about?”
Reluctantly the symbiote slithered around Eddie’s shoulders to rest there like a boa. “We write about things we learn. Humans are complicated. We wanted to… document what they are like.”
Eddie started slowly scrolling through the feed, glancing at more of his partner’s posts. “Sounds good. I’m glad you did this. I bet it’s really helping you, huh?”
He felt the black goo roll, like it was shrugging. “It is something to do while you sleep.”
Eddie hummed. He read a few more, Eddie taking the time to figure out when each post was made. Some of them he could remember happening, others were things he either forgot or didn’t think to pay attention to. Something still bugged Eddie a little though.
“What’s with the username? Xenonn?”
He felt Venom shrink down a little and spoke with a defensive edge. “We are still trying to figure out your silly human symbols. There is no literature on our planet.”
“Don’t you have access to all that info in my brain already, though?”
“How to read, yes. But typing without Eddie…” Venom waved little black tendrils, each perfectly the width of the keys on his phone’s keyboard. “Want to learn on our own!”
He paused. “It is hard, sometimes. The letters look alike and many of your words do not seem to be written the way they sound.”
“Oh. Uh. I mean if you learned to read through me, then,” Eddie chuckled sheepishly, “that’s- that’s probably my fault then.”
Venom perked up. “What do you mean?”
“I got this thing that makes reading kinda hard.” He wiggled a hand in the air. “I mess up words, letters get mixed up, that sort of thing. It helps if I go slow, y’know, follow along with my finger to focus a little or mouth the words. Plus English is a weird god damn language in general, so that don’t really help.”
His symbiote hummed in agreement and tightened around his shoulders. “You are brave then, Eddie. To make a living off of something that gives you such trouble.”
“Ha! I don’t know if I’d call it brave per se, stupid maybe, but thanks anyway. Appreciate it, buddy.” Casually Eddie pet his symbiote. He guided the screen back to his own feed, where he stared at the annoying number of unread notifications. “Guess I should respond to the masses, though, huh?”
“Hm?” Venom sounded a little distracted by the petting.
“Well,” Eddie scratched the top of his tiny black head, “you have quite the fan-base bud. In fact they figured out the ‘Eddie’ you talk about is me and will not stop pestering me about whether or not we know each other.”
Venom sank back under his skin with a quiet growl. Then you should tell them who we are.
“What, that we share a body and run around as a secret vigilante that eats bad guys?”
Venom purred approvingly.
“That doesn’t sound like the smartest idea if we wanna lay low.”
We have no problem with others knowing you are mine.
He felt a possessive squeeze in his chest, like his insides were being hugged tight. With a sigh Eddie started a new post. “Alright, alright, how about I keep it simple. Nothing too revealing, just a ‘yes we hang out with each other.’ Does that work?”
Venom growled again but seemed marginally satisfied by this, so Eddie rolled his eyes and started typing.
---
Later that night they lay on the couch, watching Netflix together and munching on popcorn. Eddie had offered to help Venom change his username but the alien insisted on leaving everything as is. To ‘preserve his journalistic integrity’ or whatever. So Eddie promised to leave the account alone for V to handle. It was probably for the best anyway, as having his actual name on there would make it easier for anyone who happened to hear that name to find them.
“You smell like beef and cheese, you don’t smell like Santa,” the green-clad human on screen whispered accusingly.
Venom popped a kernel in his mouth. “Mmm, beef and cheese.”
“You’re seriously thinking about more food while eating?”
He looked up at his host and licked the salt off his teeth. “Always.”
Eddie sighed. He picked up a piece of popcorn and flicked it at Venom who snatched it out of the air with a tiny crunch. A laugh bubbled out of Eddie. Venom may have been a head-eating big-toothed living slime monster with a habit of climbing to unreasonable heights and drooling everywhere, but he had plenty of adorable qualities, too. It was endearing enough that Eddie couldn’t help the goofy smile that stuck on his face, or the way he was paying more attention to how his symbiote was digging through the popcorn instead of watching the movie.
“Hey V. What do you say we go out to eat this weekend?”
The black goo perked up and his toothy grin widened. “More bad guys?”
“N-no, no, I was thinking a restaurant or something.”
“Lame.”
“Aw come on. We’ll find one you like.”
“Everything is dead in restaurants. Why would we like them?” Venom reasoned. Eddie had to admit he had a point there.
“Well, you like tater tots, right? We can go to one with tater tots. There are some that serve those. Maybe not a fancy restaurant but-”
He felt Venom vibrate as he was suddenly up in his face. “Warm tater tots that we do not have to cook? And chocolate?”
“I don’t know if they’d have chocolate, too, bud.”
“Chocolate, Eddie! We want chocolate and tater tots!”
Drool started to drip onto Eddie’s chest. Eddie tried in vain to push at Venom’s face, and when that proved useless he stuck his fingers in the corners of his mouth and pulled him away.
“Alright, alright Hungry Hungry Hippo! We’ll find one that serves both.”
“Yessssssshhhh.”
---
Anne’s hesitant confusion was practically a tangible being in the air. “A double date? Like… me and Dan, and you and… Venom?”
“Yeah, exactly like that. See you get it.” Eddie picked at dirt under his finger nail, making more eye contact with the brick wall behind her than with Anne herself. They stood in front of the entrance to her apartment, Anne dressed to go meet a client, and Eddie in the same pullover and jeans he’d been wearing for four days in a row now. “Are you, like, not available Saturday, or…?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s not that, it’s just… Isn’t it a little weird?”
“What’s weird about it?”
Anne leveled her gaze at him. “Really? Going out on a double date with your ex and your alien parasite. That isn’t weird at all to you?”
“No p-word please,” Eddie whispered, ignoring the gravelly complaints welling in his mind.
“I didn’t even know you and Venom were a thing and now you wanna go on a date?” Anne asked incredulously, lifting her hands and shaking her head in disbelief. “That’s a double whammy out of nowhere you’re hitting me with, Eddie.”
He cleared his throat and shook his head. “No, I mean, yeah, maybe a little, but things just sort of ended up that way and that- that’s life, right? Stuff happens sometimes. Like wanting to, for instance, get out of the house for a nice little treat without looking crazy for talking to myself the whole time. And it’s not like I- we really know anyone else besides you two, so…” He quietly trailed off.
She crossed her arms and sighed, twisting her mouth as she gave up. “You always did have the saddest puppy-dog eyes. Alright, fine.”
Eddie, you have the eyes of a puppy? Where? Can we eat them?
“No, it’s just a- no. No. You are not going near any dogs for a while my dude.”
Anne squinted but seemed to have a good grasp of what Venom said. “Don’t let him near Mr. Belvedere either.” She sighed. “Where are we going then? And before you say it, know that anywhere with lobster is off the table.”
Is Mr. Belvedere edible?
Eddie pointedly shut Venom’s voice out. “Hm? Oh, to eat. Well, I don’t know yet. Got a picky eater on board.”
“Ha!” Anne tossed her head. “Since when was Venom a picky eater?”
Eddie winced. “Since I told him you can get tater tots and chocolate at restaurants.”
At that Anne lost it. She cackled unabashedly and gasped through her laughs, “yeah, at McDonald’s maybe. Not at an actual restaurant.”
He pouted. Inside, though, Venom was proverbially slapping him repeatedly like a kid that found the toy they wanted. That one Eddie. We’re going to that one.
Still Anne was having a fit of giggles that she was struggling to keep under control. “No, but seriously, where did you want to have dinner?”
“Uhh…” Eddie shrugged apologetically. “Big guy wants McDonald’s.”
“Pfft. No. Seriously.”
Venom bristled. McDonald’s!
Eddie shoved his hands in his hoodie pocket. “You said it, you should be prepared for the consequences.”
She sighed. “No, we are not going to McDonald’s for a date. Come on, there are so many other nice places! What about that Italian restaurant that just opened downtown?”
McDonald’s! the voice yelled.
Eddie shook his head.
“Um, okay, how about the steakhouse on Brannan?” she tried.
No! McDonald’s! McDonald’s! There was an angry rhythmic thumping against Eddie’s skull. He shook his head again.
“V really wants to go to Mickey D’s.”
Anne bit her nail. “Hollywood Café? French food maybe? I’d even settle for a bar and grill. Anything but-”
Black goo swarmed over Eddie, engulfing him into a sea of darkness and muscles. Within seconds Venom towered over Anne, face stretched back, teeth bared. He roared.
“WE ARE GOING TO MCDONALD’S AND THAT IS FINAL.”
Anne pulled back, blinking. She seemed more inconvenienced than afraid however. She sighed heavily. “Alright, fine. Fine. McDonald’s it is. But next time we’re going to someplace classy.”
With a victorious grin Venom sank back into Eddie’s skin. Good.