Work Text:
Time comes to a slow, and for a painfully steady moment, there is just Venom and Eddie. The monsters alongside them snap their jaws open and shut, tearing at Venom’s black mass, ripping fruitlessly at it.
—
Our Eddie.
Your language, it does not hold the capacity I hold for you. So, I will imbue this knowledge into your head. This is my language. The language of the symbiotes. Do not forget it, but we know you will, because you are a ‘dumb ass’ as English would put it.
How unfair is it, then, that there has never been a more perfect bonding? Our union is so perfect — that it creates something new and beautiful.
We are too perfect for each other Eddie. For a year, we were two puzzle pieces, but perfection is difficult to maintain. ’Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order,’ We read that on Instagram while Eddie slept.
Humanity is occasionally wise. It is true, Eddie, we have abused you.
“No,” Eddie swallows.
We forced him to change, to take a life, to shoot one in the neck — the start of a decapitation, but no end. The neck doesn’t sever. Eddie does not eat the soldier.
He is weak without us, he is broken because of us. We have put him in these awful situations. He said it himself.
“You’re a dick. But you saved me,” Eddie groaned, “From Drake. From death. From despair. I could’a left you, burned you out of me, but I never could. You saved me, buddy,” Eddie says, our language tangled up in his tongue.
For a reporter, the words are so inadequate. It matters not, we can feel the planet-sized welt on his heart, burning away and swollen.
We mean that much to Eddie?
The welt bursts and from it, black puss, shiny and thick, swirling around in Eddie’s blood. Metallic and ironic. Curdling in our blood — or is it Eddie’s?
It overrides any sense of logic or rhyme or reason. It is nonsensical. It is Venom. It is us.
Nonsensical fate has made us.
We love chocolate. We love the rush of adrenaline. We love small, helpless creatures like chickens and dogs and kittens. We love the sound of nineties music, and we love the sounds of Eddie when he sighs.
We love the way a skull crunches between our teeth, the way the brain slides down our trachea, and Eddie’s throat bulges as he grimaces, but he feels it too. The burst of pleasure that follows the spurting blood of a decapitated corpse.
The head, Eddie, We always like the head. Just the head and no more.
We like Eddie.
“No. No, what are you doing.”
Feel it Eddie. Feel in our native tongue, our native body, our native mind, how we loved your alien home. Your alien warmth and edges. All our fights and adventures and nights alone. Our meals with Annie. Our feasts from roofs and tree tops. We were always fighting Eddie. Ourselves, each other, but we would never stay apart for long. We always morphed back into each other, and talked as one — as Venom.
In our conversations — Eddie talked to us; we talked to the world.
We are a writhing liquid, and you gave us shape.
There is a planet-sized human and a tiny symbiote inside him. Let our time as one become sweeter by being cut short, our transient love. Chocolate comes in small bars for a purpose. Soon, you will have to eat your vegetables, Eddie. Without us.
We have enjoyed our time as us.
We have enjoyed our Eddie.
“Venom,” Eddie breathes, and says, “What is this?”
The last head has been swallowed. For our last meal, one of us has to roast on the fire, Eddie.
It is either you or us, and it cannot be you.
“I am us too, there is no us without you.”
No Eddie. Feel my hands cradle your face, your back, your knees and thighs and ankles — my fingers shaped in your image, pentadactyl and human-like.
There is no us without you.
We have always relied on you — it is you who rescued us. We cannot exist without perfection, but Eddie will persevere even as a clumsy, stumbling thing. Humans are so fragile, but symbiotes are weaker. We are needy creatures Eddie. How lucky were we, to encounter you. We needed you, but you never truly needed us.
You will find another. You will be a good father. When we were you, we were happy and in love with this planet. We were in love with us.
Do not forget me.
And Venom spits Eddie out of the writhing amalgamation.
—
You think I’m gone ‘cause I left?
But I’m in the trees, I’m in the breeze,
My footsteps on the ground,
You’ll see my face in every place,
But you can’t catch me now.