Work Text:
Eddie weaves in and out of the people on the sidewalk, barely missing impalement via a pair of glittery, pink wings. He’s muttering to himself which isn’t unusual, in and of itself, except that he truly is muttering to himself right now. Not to the dark cloud perched at the base of his neck and radiating irritation.
When the call came through, he had half thought this meeting on Halloween was a joke. A last fuck you from the network after the mess he’d made of his last show. But all the players had been there. The contract had been legitimate. The offer is everything he thought he wanted.
Shouldn’t I feel more excited?
“‘Scuse us, Mister.” Eddie glances over his shoulder, then steps to the side when he sees the crowd of kids in costume, clutching buckets of candy, trying to pass him on the right.
“Right. Yeah,” Eddie says. “Excuse me. After you.”
Jesus. He sounds like he lost the filter between his mouth and his brain. Which maybe isn’t far from the truth. He’s experiencing that vague floaty feeling he used to get when he’d had just the right amount of alcohol. Not too drunk, not too sober, balancing on the edge of humorous bad decisions instead of dangerous ones.
Fuck.
Does that mean the show is a bad decision?
Eddie. Look. That one is dressed as Spider-man.
Eddie blinks after the gaggle of kids and, sure enough, one of them is dressed like Spider-man. Eddie hasn’t quite figured out why Venom is so obsessed with the comic book character and Venom has been unusually tight-lipped about it but, just in case…
“You know that’s not the real Spider-man, right?”
A huffing scoff that reverberates between Eddie’s ears is the only answer that he gets.
Venom has been irritable since the meeting. Right around the time that Jack had played a clip of Eddie’s most popular story from The Eddie Brock Report, Venom had latched onto the base of Eddie’s brain tight, a tense black ball that made it hard for Eddie to focus on the meeting. On the offer.
Our other news shows just aren’t as popular.
People love your hard-hitting, no-nonsense style.
We’d like you to come back, Eddie.
He should want that. Eddie loved his show. He loved being a journalist of that caliber. But he also did some pretty shit things to keep that level of success. Fuck. Anne would tear him a new one if she found out he was even considering it.
There is another one, Venom growls in his brain. Why do so many children want to dress like him?
Normally, Eddie would tease the hell out of Venom for their excessively intense dislike of Spider-man but, today, his brain is stuck on the job offer.
He could take it. He could take the job and move into a better apartment. He could take the job and keep Venom in tater tots and M&Ms for the foreseeable future. He could take the job and change everything.
Maybe it’s telling that, on the list of Eddie’s worries about the job, Venom accidentally revealing themself isn’t number one. He doesn’t even think it’s in the top five.
For some reason, all he can think about is that demonic framed print hanging above his desk and the hour it took Venom to hang it so that the picture would be exactly centered and straight. That and Venom’s satisfied hum when it was finally perfect and this goddamn job offer.
The apartment comes up faster than Eddie was expecting, lost in thought like he is. He’s only partially aware of the walk home and Venom draped across his shoulders like a jacket and the streets filled with people in costume.
Eddie shuts the door to his apartment and slumps back against it, reaching behind him to secure the locks. He used to like Halloween, or at least tolerate it. He used to squeeze himself into whatever couple’s costume Anne wanted (this year, she and Dan are dressed like Daphne and Fred from the Scooby-Doo Gang) and hold court at the parties with a drink in his hand and a smile on his face.
It’s weird how quickly things change.
He can’t even imagine that life anymore.
Eddie shoves himself off the door and heads toward the kitchen. Maybe Venom will let him have some of the vodka in the freezer. Or maybe he’ll sit on his couch with a thousand-yard stare, shoving ice cream into his mouth and trying to decide what to do.
As soon as he takes the first step, he hears it.
Tink.
Click.
Tink.
Followed by what sounds like an endless pattering on the floor as candy pours down Eddie’s body like rain. He watches as fun-sized Snickers and single Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and tiny boxes of Milk Dudes bounce and scatter across the floor at his feet.
In fact, the further Venom recedes under Eddie’s skin, the more candy falls to the ground.
Eddie opens and closes his mouth a few times before finally landing on, “What the fuck, V?”
There’s no answer but the ball of irritation at the back of his neck loosens.
Eddie looks down; he must have the candy haul of at least three enterprising children at his feet.
“Did you…” he squints at what looks like a full-sized Hershey’s bar. “Did you steal all of this?”
NO. The shout comes in his head and then Venom is pouring out across his shoulders into a long, thick tendril with their face attached. “This is what the holiday is about, Eddie. You told us.”
“How, exactly, did you get all this candy?” Eddie explained Trick or Treating to his symbiote but he’s starting to doubt that Venom understood the tradition as well as they insisted they did.
“One candy from each bowl.”
“Whose bowl?”
“The disguised children.”
“We didn’t pass this many kids,” Eddie says as he gestures wildly at the amount of candy on the floor.
“We may have taken more than one candy from the ones that were dressed like Spider-man.”
Oh god.
As if today couldn’t get any worse.
Now Eddie has to contend with the knowledge that his symbiote was stealing candy from kids.
A tendril dips down to the ground and fishes through the pile of candy, pulling out the full-sized Hershey’s bar and holding it out to Eddie.
He sighs. Tired. Disgruntled. Frustrated. Maybe a little sadly nostalgic. “What’s this for?”
“You.” Venom presses the candy into Eddie’s hands. “Chocolate is linked to brain chemicals that make humans happy.”
“I’m happy,” Eddie protests.
Venom nudges the chocolate bar harder into the back of Eddie’s hand until he finally takes it. They look at him, their noodle head tilting and their eyes narrowing.
“What?” Eddie huffs. “I am.”
“Eat the chocolate, Eddie.”
Eddie grumbles but he does it. Unwrapping the bar and taking his first bite under Venom’s watchful eye.
“Are you happy?” Eddie asks. It’s supposed to come out sarcastic but it almost sounds pleading when it leaves his mouth.
Are they happy? Here? With him?
Could he make them happier if he took the job?
“We do not like how those people at the TV station made you feel.”
Venom picks up another piece of chocolate with their tendril and nudges that into Eddie’s hand, too. He wraps his fingers around it automatically, his brain whirring off in a different direction.
They had been irritated. Eddie had felt it and assumed it was because he hadn’t immediately said yes to the job. He had assumed that he was letting them down somehow but—
“Did you steal all this for me?”
Venom’s head is tipped down as they root through the pile of pilfered candy on the floor, collecting the pieces that have the most chocolate. The thing that produces the chemicals that will make Eddie happy.
“V? Babe?” They don’t look up. “Love.”
Those moon-white eyes lift to Eddie’s and his fucking heart beats double time in his chest before rolling over.
“I’m happy,” he tells his symbiote, hoping they hear everything else that he isn’t saying. “I’m happy here.” Together. With you.
“Will the job make you happier?”
It’s almost funny how similar their thoughts are to Eddie’s.
“I don’t know,” Eddie admits with a shrug. “It’s complicated.”
Venom closes the distance between them, wrapping around Eddie’s chest and shoulders before rubbing their face against the side of his neck.
“Humans,” they purr, the vibrations loosening the muscles that have been tense since Eddie walked into the network building, “always think everything is so complicated.”
“Isn’t it?” Eddie asks, stepping carefully through the mass of candy on the floor so he can collapse on the couch.
“Eat your chocolate, Eddie.”
Eddie stretches out on the couch, head propped up on one of the arms, laying where he can look directly at the print he and Venom picked out together. He takes another bite from the chocolate bar, chewing slowly and trying not to think about Jack’s offer.
“Did you have any other Halloween plans aside from stealing candy from babies?”
“They were not babies. They were human children between the ages of four and twelve.”
Eddie snorts and takes another bite. “That’s very… specific.”
“It is Halloween, Eddie. You said this is how it is done.”
Nowhere in his explanation of the holiday did Eddie mention petty theft but he lets that go. The chocolate must finally be doing its job because he’s feeling less off-kilter than he was five minutes ago.
Venom is curled up across his chest, purring softly and clicking through scary movies on one of the streaming services. Eddie takes a deep breath, in and out, under the weight of them, and the last of his tension bleeds away.
“Happy Halloween, love,” Eddie murmurs softly. He glimpses the spill of candy out of the corner of his eye as he finishes his chocolate bar. “I guess at least we’ll have candy if any Trick-or-Treaters come by.”
Venom’s rusty laugh settles something in Eddie’s chest. Maybe… maybe he can worry about the job tomorrow.