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"I won't forget you, buddy," Eddie says, staring out at the water with eyes swollen and sore from on-and-off sobbing. He doesn't know what he's doing, wandering the city like this, trying to see everything because it's what Venom would've wanted. If Venom were here he'd be curious and purring and —
"That...was a lovely memory montage, Eddie."
Eddie gasps, and trips headlong over the pier in his haste to clutch his chest, hug Venom wherever he is inside. Eddie's sobbing again when he hits the water.
-
"You're alive, you're alive, thank fuck you're alive," Eddie babbles, back at the apartment the military put him up in, toweling putrid harbor water from his hair. It's not so different from their place in San Francisco, a total shit hole, and he'd be embarrassed to bring Venom here, except he's too starstruck and over-the-moon about Venom’s continued existence. Eddie braces his hands to the sink and stares hard into the mirror, studies his eyes, finding no trace of Venom but knowing he's there. Eddie feels him, a subtle squirming deep down. "You could've said something sooner! I mourned for three days, asshole! Three days!"
"Forgive me, Eddie." Venom's voice is a weak whisper in Eddie's ear, almost too low to make out. Eddie holds his breath and strains to hear it. "Saving the universe is, as it turns out, exhausting."
"Yeah, I bet. Poor guy." Eddie hugs himself again, wishing Venom were strong enough to coalesce a head he could cuddle. He thinks of how carefully Venom protected him, flung him away and shielded him, and resolves to return the favor. "We're gonna eat, okay? Just like the first time you almost died. We're gonna eat, we're gonna build your strength up. Chocolate and meat and —”
"Brains," Venom rasps. He's like a sputtering engine, so close to stalling out. "Know you don't like to..."
"No, no, no, fuck what I don't like." Eddie's already whipping out his phone and searching up the nearest morgue. "They're gonna have to be dead brains, I'm sorry, I don't have the strength to rip guys' heads open, but if it's brains you want, it's brains you shall have."
"You are good, Eddie.” Venom sighs tiredly. "I must rest now, maybe for another few days. Do not worry. I have you, I cannot die."
"Okay, buddy." Eddie's quickly tearful, but at least now he has a mission, something to work toward, whereas the past three days have been an exercise in trying not to pitch himself off a high-rise. He feels Venom's exhaustion, his lingering pain and fear. Maybe that's why Eddie felt like such shit; or, more likely, it was because he thought his best friend in the whole world was gone forever. "You sleep now, I've got us. I'll take care of it."
It's horrible, but Eddie gets it done, the world's most disgusting thief. Fast-forward two days and he has three human brains under his belt, all of which he doused in hot sauce so he wouldn't have to taste them, though the spiciness did nothing to improve the texture, or the smell. The past forty-eight hours have mostly just been trying not to throw up, pressing his fist to his mouth and thinking of Venom, how much Venom needs that chemical, how Venom might die without it. Doing this, he manages to keep it all down.
Tonight Eddie brushes and flosses his teeth thoroughly, grimacing as he picks the remains of zombie dinner from his teeth. He flops into bed feeling accomplished in a gross sort of way, as if he's gone to war for Venom, or at least subjected himself to something unbearable.
"Buddy?" Eddie says, staring at the ceiling as it's illuminated by the flickering bulb of their bedside lamp. This place is a mess; he's neglected getting a job and improving their living situation in favor of stealing brains and choking them down. "I ate all that shit for you, now you gotta talk to me. It's been two days since the last time I heard your voice, that's too long."
"Stronger already," Venom answers after a moment. He doesn't sound any stronger, still just a faint whisper in Eddie's ear, and Eddie barely feels him inside, his presence has shrunk so much. "No more brains for you, Eddie. Chocolate and meat will sustain me now, until I am big enough to eat brains for us again."
Eddie exhales. "Oh, thank god." He doesn't think he could do it again, not without losing control and vomiting all of Venom's nutrients back out. "But how are you feeling? I mean, I feel how you're feeling, you feel shitty, but, like. Where's your head at?"
"Here," Venom says, and Eddie feels a gentle tingle on the tip of his right pointer finger.
He brings his finger to his face, squinting, and gasps when he sees a gumball-sized symbiote head slithering out from under his nail, sleepy-eyed with proportionally tiny teeth. "Oh, buddy!" Eddie succumbs to the overpowering urge to kiss Venom's little face, bringing his fingertip to his mouth. "You're so small.” Kiss. “Fuck, you —” Kiss. “You weren't this small last time."
“I am itty bitty,” Venom says in that way that means he's trying to be cute. It's hit-or-miss when he's a giant slavering carnivore, but right now it's failproof, a vise around Eddie's heart. Eddie kisses him again, his itty bitty tongue flicking out against Eddie's lips.
“Seriously,” Eddie says, and pulls his finger back so he can stare at Venom. “How’d you pull this off?”
"I left some of me in you when we separated," Venom says. "But I had to be so small that neither the symbiote hunters nor other humans could detect me.”
Eddie nods, and laughs like an explosion in his mouth, though really he's close to crying, something he's done more of in the past week than ever before in his life. "Thanks for saving yourself," he says. "I need you, y'know? Can't do this without you.”
"I heard." Venom's head nuzzles Eddie's fingertip. "That man was an asshole, yes? I say we hunt him down and eat him when we are whole again."
"Actually, you know what, I think we should enjoy this whole expunged record thing for as long as possible. We can go out in public without the FBI dropping from the sky, isn't that great?" Eddie strokes Venom's head with his thumb, scratches lightly under his little chin. "He was an asshole, though, fuck him. You belong here, with me."
"Indeed. We will keep each other." Venom purrs. "My perfect match. I will never bond with another."
“Ditto.” Eddie grins, cheeks aching, and for the first time since Venom spoke on the pier Eddie really accepts that everything's going to be okay. "We'll explore the city some more while we're out gathering chocolate tomorrow. Oh, hey, you saw Lady Liberty, right? What'd you think?"
"She is very green," Venom says. "But also very beautiful. Like our Anne."
Eddie winces at the reminder. He should call Anne, let her know they're not on the run anymore. He also needs to touch base with Mrs. Chen, see if she's down to contribute some of her Vegas winnings to his getting-back-on-our-feet fund, but all that can wait. Right now there's only Venom. "Lady Liberty used to be brown, actually," Eddie tells him. "’Cause she's made of copper, and copper turns green when it gets old. It's called, um, oxidation."
"Nerd alert," Venom says, and quickly sinks back into Eddie's finger when Eddie tries to flick him.
Laughing, Eddie lies back on the squeaking mattress, tucks his arms behind his head. "Oh, yeah, we're gonna be okay," he says with inexpressible, bone-deep relief. "We got that bad luck out of our system, and it's all blue skies and sunshine from here on out.”
"Agreed. Now," Venom begins, and Eddie feels his little laughter, a barely-there rumble Eddie wishes he could bottle up and replay on loop. "Will you sing me to sleep?"
"What? No, man, get out of here." Eddie laughs again, amazed by how easily it comes. Just a few days ago he thought he'd be miserable forever.
"Please, Eddie, please? I am injured, I am ill, I require your singing to heal. You would not deny the hero who saved your life," Venom whines.
"Wow, you suck so much ass. That's horrifically unfair." Eddie takes a second, sighing and resigning himself to this ultimate humiliation, but he's already eaten three human brains for Venom; what's one song? "Okay, fine. Fuck, man. Um. You are my sun — No, no, let's do… Ground control to Major Tom..."
He keeps it up until he feels that Venom's fallen asleep, and then carries the tune a little longer, serenading the ceiling, until his eyelids grow too heavy and slide closed.
He's feeling very still.