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He’s chopping carrots when it happens.
The overlarge knife is serrated, nice and sharp with a thick wooden handle. It slices through the meat of the knobby peeled vegetables with ease.
The snap of it is always familiar. Like bones, only no blood. They’re even shaped like fingers. Like the knuckles of the others he’s broken so many times before.
Eddie never forgets the sound of bones breaking. The snap of it, the crush of the human skull beneath a maw of razor-sharp teeth. He dreams of it, sometimes—more often than he wishes. The gush of blood, the haunting, spongy spring of marrow, but mostly the snap. The crack. It’s the kind of vision that never leaves you. One that haunts you for the rest of your life once you’ve heard it, felt it.
The bottom of the blade hits the cutting board with a lazy rhythm, one much less traumatizing than bones. Thwick, thwick, thwick. It’s oddly relaxing, letting him almost forget about the snap of it, the violence of the deed—until the serenity of it all shatters, implodes in on itself all around him.
The front door of the three-storey brownstone opens with a violent BANG, rattling windowpanes. This model swings inward, so it hits the doorstop with so much force it threatens to punch a hole right into the drywall. The kitchen where Eddie’s chopping carrots is adjacent to it, attached to the hallway via a handsomely moulded archway. His back is to this opening when it happens.
He stiffens. His heart jumps, fingers twitching on reflex. His hand balls into a fist around the blade as he hears the footsteps, instantly ready to sink it to the hilt. The reflex is automatic, thoughtless. Something programmed into him from eons spent being jumped, assaulted from behind. It’s always in the moments when he lets his guard down when it happens.
Eddie listens carefully. There’s the sshhhhk of fabric moving, the gentle sound of an object being put down. The very wet slapping of something animalistic, a dog shaking, flapping its gums, followed by alien clicking and snorting. A symbiote—and a very human, overly loud obnoxious sigh.
The door closes, and the human part of the duo says without troubling to keep their voice down, “Why do you always have to drool like that.”
Eddie relaxes immediately. His grip on the knife slackens. He doesn’t even have to turn around to know what’s going to happen next. It’s half-past three in the afternoon—he knew that. He should have known that. He’s a King, now. He knew when his son was about to arrive home from school.
Still. Old habits die hard. Reflexes like that are a bitch to reprogram. Even Kings get PTSD.
He hears the scrape of chair legs. Dylan flops unceremoniously into one at the table behind him. Eddie’s Other follows, announced by the rippling bubble that accompanies movement of his alien flesh, the skittering tick of each of his four simulated paws’ nails hitting the linoleum, panting with breath he doesn’t need.
Eddie envisions his Other’s disguise. He pictures it with a smile. The long, wagging, prehensible tongue curling out of the black dog’s mouth. The viscous drool Dylan so regretfully criticized, dribbling droplets onto the tiles as he walks.
Dylan himself just sighs and slams his schoolbooks onto the table, pushing his chair back onto its two hind legs. It scrapes the scuffed tiles with a grating creak as it moves.
Eddie’s grinning fully now, but doesn’t look up from the carrots, continuing to chop. “How was school?” he asks his son casually, but before Dylan says anything, Eddie feels a familiar heavy warmth pierce his lower back. The symbiote dog pounces, morphing into a blurred, elongated putty string for the sharpest of moments before it vanishes squarely in the center of his human host’s back.
It races up his spine, melds right into his flesh. It spreads warmly around the narrow of his hips like a gentle lover’s caress. He can practically hear the words: honey, I’m home.
Eddie’s eyes close involuntarily as his breath becomes deep and even. He always loves this part of the day the most—when his Other comes Home.
“Same as every day,” sniffs Dylan, resting his chin atop the arms he throws over the table. “Stupid. Boring. Mrs. Lee tried to give me detention again for doing nothing wrong. What’s for dinner?”
Before Eddie answers, a long, thick tendril of black sinew bursts from behind his shoulder blades. The sensation of his hips being held intensifies—the black coils rest atop his pelvic bones, squeezing gently. He can ‘hear’ the words, now: ‘MINE, MY EDDIE’. The black pulses with them, sings them into him even though technically there are no words spoken, no words thought.
There are just emotions between them—sensations. Vibrations of a frequency no human being could compete with, comprehend, or replicate.
The long tendril outside his body curves around to his left side. Eddie is used to this—he knows what to expect next. The gooey bubbling movement changes its tone at the closeness, goes quieter, ripples with affection as it approaches his ear in the shape of a head. It has a face with eyes, mouth, and tongue.
There is a deep, rumbling growl, barely perceptible from within his Other, muffled from behind barred teeth. His Other doesn’t really need to breathe but there is still breath, hot on the side of Eddie’s face and neck, carrying the scent he has become so used to associating with him.
Eddie’s eyes reopen just as his Other’s lips slide over his lethal maw to hide his armory of teeth. These shapeshifted ‘lips’ don’t make for a very good kiss by human standards, but Eddie appreciates them deeply all the same. His Other bumps the ridge of his jaw against the corner of his wiry greying cheek while Eddie works at the carrots, clicking out a stream of happy, possessive Klyntar chirps.
My Eddie, he feels through their connection. My Eddie. Mine. Mine. Mine.
Eddie doesn’t even flinch at the contact. His eyes soften. His lips become a crooked, dopey smile as the knife pauses in his hand. He leans into his Other, nuzzling him affectionately before breaking away, turning his head towards his latex-like face. His knife-free left hand reaches up to the back of his tendril-suspended head, braids its fingers deeply into the rubbery sinewy mass of symbiote matter that exists there with a gentle squeeze, pulling him close.
He kisses his Other right back on the lips, sighing into the vibration of the rippling purr that surfaces there.
“Dad,” Dylan complains, pulling a face. “Gross.”
The Other breaks away, turns to his human son and pops out his wriggling tongue teasingly. “SOMEDAY YOU WILL UNDERSTAND SUCH AFFECTIONS, OUR YOUNG ONE.”
The preteen just rolls his eyes and ignores this. “Gross,” he says again, scowling at his human parent as he shakes his head to wipe the image of the kiss out of his mind. “You didn’t answer, though…” He’s trying to look disinterested in the subject of food, despite his persistence. “I said, what’s for dinner.”
“…Shepherd’s pie,” Eddie shrugs as his Other turns his attention toward food too, hovering over his shoulder dubiously, staring down at the carrots with a snort of distaste.
There is a moment of silence as everyone absorbs this new information. “It’s something easy…” Eddie defends, bracing for impact. “You know. Meat. Carrots. Potatoes,” he explains. “Everyone likes those.”
“BUT EDDIE, WHY CARROTS,” comes the inevitable protest he was waiting for. Of course. “WE DON’T LIKE—”
“That’s not for your dinner,” Eddie snaps back, interrupting with a grunt of annoyance. “I know the deal. No things that grew in the ground for you. Except potatoes.”
The Other pauses. He narrows the white splotches of his eyes and rumbles out, “…OKAY, EDDIE.” Satisfied with this, he nuzzles the salt-and-pepper thatch of hair on Eddie’s cheek.
Eddie feels his heart skip a beat, but he pushes him away as softly as he can, frowning at the glistening tongue now swirling with enthusiasm in front of his face.
“Don’t get drool on the carrots,” he warns.
His Other automatically snaps his jaw with a low snarl, but complies, darting it back behind his teeth as he hovers a little further away instead.
“Sheperd’s pie…” Dylan picks a spot on his chin and flairs his nostrils, considering this. “Ugh. Never had that before. I want spaghetti.”
The sigh of exasperation that comes from his son is frustrating to Eddie.
“It’s potatoes, meat, and vegetables. It won’t kill you. You’ll eat it, or you’ll go hungry,” says Eddie with determination, knowing Dylan won’t hate it once he tries it.
He begins chopping again, a little rougher than before. He wasn’t a chef, for god’s sake, but he was trying. Couldn’t they both see?
Eddie had never really learned to cook for himself, on account of never being awarded the luxury of a safe, stable home life through the crux of his developmental years. As a grown adult, he was always on the run, often living on the streets, crashing under overpasses in alcoves where he wouldn’t get jumped in his sleep, anywhere without criminals, cockroaches, and rats.
He’d lost count of the number of midnight moves he’d made; the secret addresses he’d adopted. Too many late-night rendezvous with old friends stepping in when he was in dire straits to even count. Sometimes they’d even gift him a gig or two at a bottom dollar rate in addition to letting him crash on their couch. Weeks and months of dumpster diving, soup kitchens, and pawning everything he owned.
Once, he had even tried to pawn the TV, hating the frustration and despair that rippled through his bond from his Other. Lucky for them, the pawn broker wouldn’t even take it.
But Eddie Brock was a father now. He didn’t want his son to ever know struggles like that. And there was a silver lining: a hefty government payout had bought his silence after becoming the King in Black. He could afford to house them, to feed them properly, thank god.
Eddie Brock wasn’t going to let his son survive on a diet of Chinese takeout and pizza with an absentee father who hated him, like he had done as a kid. No way. Not if he could help it.
Plus, taking up cooking had given him an excuse to teach his Other some much-needed finesse in the kitchen, too. His enthusiastic ‘helping’ at meal prep sans training had been … chaotic, at best.
The Other reaches under the cupboards with his tendrils to collect a frying pan and a pot while Eddie finishes the carrots, the latter of which he fills with water from the sink. Eddie himself pulls the raw meat from the fridge, holding it aloft before he places it on the counter a safe distance away, watching the face of his Other try to follow its trail hungrily, a bead of saliva shivering dangerously from the bottom of his chin. Eddie wipes an excess string of it from his shoulder, and sets the water to boil on the stove.
“Fine,” Dylan eventually concedes to the Shepherd’s pie, with conditions. “But I don’t want carrots in it either,” he huffs.
Can’t the kid see that he’s trying?
Eddie pushes the frustration down all the same as he heats the frying pan. He swallows it into the pit of his stomach, deep down where all his shittiest of shitty emotions hide. He’s almost a teenager, he tells himself. He remembers what he was like at that age and shudders.
Could be worse.
“YOU MUST EAT ROOT VEGETABLES. IT IS NECESSARY FOR YOUR BIOLOGY, LITTLE ONE,” the alien still hovering over the edge of his shoulder clicks out, turning to face their son with eye splotches softened into curled crescent moons. “THE SAME IS NOT TRUE FOR A KLYNTAR. I? I AM NOT AN OMNIVORE. IT IS DIFFERENT.”
Eddie sends a warning signal through their connection. He doesn’t want to witness the start of a war just now.
“Well, why do you always get to eat the better stuff and I don’t… Like chocolate…”
“He’s got sharper teeth,” Eddie points out with a flair of amusement. “Much better to threaten me into allowing dessert before dinner with.”
“CHOCOLATE?” the Other repeats, glancing around in expectation before hyperfixating on Eddie instead.
“Not you, too,” Eddie rolls his eyes, shaking his head at the symbiote with a groan as he pushes him away. “Don’t get any ideas.”
Dylan was trying to hide his smile, but Eddie could still hear his amusement when he replies. “I could get Sleeper,” he suggests to his two Dads ominously. “He could come grow them for me. He’d be on my side for sure.”
“I WOULD LIKE TO SEE HIM TRY,” the Other snarls back, arching his tendrils, but the threat is an empty one. Everyone present knows that the Other has a huge soft spot where both Dylan and Sleeper were concerned.
“Oh, so would I,” grins Dylan with enthusiasm, straightening at the idea of a playful brawl between his parent and his brother. “Not for real. But for fun. I wonder who would win…”
Eddie knows exactly what kind of bait Dylan’s about to set, just before he does. The knife in his hand pauses as he finishes cutting the last of the carrots.
“My money’s on Sleeper,” Dylan giggles mercilessly.
The Other whips around to face his child again, tongue lashing out like a stretchy, muscular wet whip, slingshotting spittle. “OH! SURELY NOT!” His voice is awkwardly high, cracking. Drool flies in a mist from his jaw. The grand effect of this while untransformed isn’t scary—but it is humorous—and Dylan giggles harder than ever.
“WHY WOULD YOU SAY SUCH A THING? SLEEPER IS OUR SPAWN, WE MADE HIM, HE WOULD NOT DARE TO DEFEAT US, THERE IS SIMPLY NO WAY. NOT WHEN WE ARE—”
“—You’re Venom, I know—” Dylan chimes in, still giggling.
“—THE SYMBIOTIC LIFE-PARTNER OF THE KING IN BLACK, MASTER OF THE LIGHT, DEFENDER OF THE DEFENSELESS, SAFEGUARDING THE UNIVERSE AS A SWORN PROTECTOR OF THE INNOCENT—”
“—Alright, then, Dad, sure—”
Eddie stifles a laugh, closes his eyes and blows out a breath, shaking his head at his Other. “That’s enough, you two,” he rumbles, reaching up to run his fingers through the black of the back of his Other’s face to calm him. The alien clicks in surprise, flinching at the contact, but retracts his flailing tongue, softening instantly as he turns to stare at his host with the closest thing he could come to a purr, bobbing his head.
“Stop all that before I jump in and make you two,” Eddie threatens, but he’s laughing now. “Don’t forget, I’m a King,” he teases with a broad smirk. “Even if ‘Dad’ will always supersede ‘King’ when it comes to ranks. Got any homework, Dylan?”
“…No,” blinks Dylan, steepling his hands as he tries to look innocent, watching his two parents share another moment of close affection from the table.
“LIES.” The Other tilts his teardrop-domed face at Dylan as he analyzes his son, hissing knowingly. “WE KNOW THE PATTERNS OF YOUR BEHAVIOUR WELL ENOUGH. YOU ARE NOT BEING TRUTHFUL, DYLAN. WE ARE YOUR PARENTS…” the symbiote purrs out the last word emphatically, savouring it as his maw splits into reluctant lethal grin. He just can’t help but bubble right down to an affectionate fifth state of primordial matter when it came to their child. “YOU MUST NOT LIE TO US. WE KNOW YOU, DYLAN.”
Eddie can feel the surge of adoration the Other feels at the word, too. It hits him square in the gut like a missed step going downhill, sends a cocktail of hormones and affections and swelling fatherly pride shivering through him that culminates in a heady sweep of outright love for his symbiote.
His knees quiver gently as he thinks, Damn. It's a long way we’ve come since that Church, isn't it?
Their son is silent, pouting. Eddie dumps the carrots into the now-boiling water with a melted sigh and plops the meat into the hot open pan with a moist sizzle, prodding it with a flipper. “Why don’t you go hang with Sleeper upstairs while we finish making dinner?” he suggests, knowing the missing symbiote was likely curled up on Dylan’s bed waiting for him faithfully, as he always was. “You know he loves to help you with that stuff.”
A curl of steam rises from the browning meat. His Other tastes its scent, cringing. “VERY MUCH SO, DYLAN,” he tells his son, agreeing with Eddie. “SLEEPER SAYS HE FINDS HUMAN TEACHINGS ON THIS PLANET COMICAL IN THEIR SIMPLICITY. BUT YET, ADORABLY SO. HE LOVES TO HELP.”
“I guess you’ve got no excuse to ever fail a chemistry test with him as your tutor,” muttered Eddie, chuckling.
“EDDIE, THE MEAT,” the symbiote gasps, licking the scent off the air with disgust while flexing his tendrils uncomfortably. “WE WANT OURS RAW…”
“Right, right,” Eddie remembers, cutting a hunk off quickly before it got too hot and placing it in a dish beside the stove, trying not to burn himself in the process. “Right. Sorry. Forgot, my love.”
His Other purrs out a string of pleased clicks at the pet name, and he feels the tendrils still clinging lazily to the outside edges of his hips beneath his pants squeeze out their appreciation, too. Yet another slippery cord of oozing black breaks off from the mass protruding from his back, draping itself happily over his right shoulder with another tender squeeze. The spade-shaped pseudopod at the end of it suctions wetly to his shirt just below the collar, right over where his heart beats.
Dylan bites his lip thoughtfully, watching as Eddie minces the slowly heating slab of ground beef. Deciding that his father’s suggestion does sound more fun than watching his two parents cook together, Dylan agrees.
“All right,” he singsongs, blowing out a puff of air that lifts the mess of white-blonde bangs from his forehead as he pulls his books back into his chest, skipping back into the hallway. “Call us down when it’s ready.”
“Deal.”
Eddie listens to the moody preteen shuffling off and thundering up the stairs, thinking. Since when did the child have such skill to transform him into such a softie? Here Eddie was, now an actual living breathing intergalactic King, and when it came to Dylan Brock—a child he’d known was his for less than a full year—the kid was liable to melt the symbiote right off him and downgrade him into the biggest spineless sap in the history of both Klyntar and humanity combined!
Eddie grins tenderly as his Other watches him rip open a box of instant potatoes, spilling them into a pot and mixing them with the prescribed amount of water, happiness vibrating like a string quartet inside his chest. He stirs this lumpy mess roughly with a worn wooden spoon, oblivious to how chunky and unappetizing the overly wet goo stays, setting it to heat.
Half-human, half-Klyntar, he fawns, not noticing his Other staring down into the pot with confusion. Twelve years old, going on twenty. Born with the unique ability to conquer the King in Black with nothing but a single wide-eyed look and the word ‘please’.
Better not let anyone outside this house ever find out our Kryptonite, Eddie chuffs wordlessly, turning to an old tape player stashed away on the far corner of the counter. He switches it on while his Other’s tendril grips the handle of the wooden spoon, stirring slowly before raising it up, careful not to spill. The sopping wet powdered potatoes fall from the end of it in battery, soupy hunks, making a rather depressing, slimy plop.
His Other pops out his tongue to taste its scent, wrinkling his rubbery black forehead in obvious disgust as he peers inside the discarded instant potato box, looking just as confused as ever. “EDDIE…” he rumbles in his unmissable baritone, turning around to see where his host had got to just in time to watch him finger the rectangular ‘play’ button atop the boxy retro console. It click-clacks into action, rolling tape. “SINCE WHEN DO POTATOES GROW FROM A BOX?”
The Other stirs the pot again, allowing yet more wet potatoes to fall from the end of the spoon as he raises it up, staring. “…AND WHY ARE THEY SO … WET?”
“They do since I said they do,” Eddie snaps back, but softens into a loving laugh as the stereo crackles into life. The music that flows from its bulky square speakers is lofty and flowery, reminiscent of an era of time that now felt wholly removed from reality. He waves away the notion of the oversaturated potatoes, musing that he never set out to become a Julia Child, after all. “It’ll taste just the same. Now. Where were we…?”
Eddie’s hands reach up to cup his Other’s inky black face. His soft blue, glinting eyes crinkle as they meet his Other’s pale moonshimmery ones dead-on. The kitchen around them gradually falls away, filled with the scent and sizzle of cooking meat, the faint simmer of the carrots still bubbling away on the stove. The romantic dreamy melody flittering quietly from the stereo speakers is from a Frank Sinatra cassette Eddie had owned long before he’d ever even met his Other.
♫ I’ve got you, under my skin ♫
♪ I’ve got you deep in the heart of me ♪
♫ so deep in my heart that you’re really a part of me ♫
♪ I’ve got you, under my skin ♪
“Be a doll and c’mere,” Eddie instructs, pulling his alien lover close as he forgets about the whole universe for the moment. His Other purrs out a string of possessive, joyful clicks as he collapses into his beloved human host’s touch, iridescent white eyes turned to deeply comforted swirled crescent moons.
“I want another kiss,” Eddie admits breathily right into the crux of his Other’s lethally sheathed maw as they cuddle in front of the heated surface of the stove. Tendrils have corkscrewed around his middle like a wine bottle opener. His lover obliges him, glancing to the doorway to check they were indeed alone before unbridling his over-enthusiastic tongue with a sloppy slide.
MINE, he chants repeatedly through their bond, a word he could never, ever tire of as Eddie moans into his tongue. MINE. EDWARD CHARLES ALLAN BROCK IS MINE.
WE WANT TO BE TOGETHER, EDDIE. FOREVER.
He hears his host whimper back without words. His mouth is simply too occupied to reply.
Yes, dear. Forever, he thinks.